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It wanted to change commuting: no easy task. And it would do so with electric scooters.
In a little over a year, it reached a billion-dollar valuation and flooded cities with its products. With a disruptive CEO, the right product, and a do first, ask later attitude, this company was well on its way to achieving its goal.
But 2020 rolled along. The global health crisis turned transportation upside down and revealed what was happening behind closed doors. It seemed out of a movie, but it was real life.
In this Forensics episode, we talk about a young, promising company with a dark side: Bird.
Origins
Meet Travis VanderZanden, Bird’s founder and CEO. His mother was a bus driver in Atlanta and had to take him on routes because she was a single mom.
Instead of playing with other kids, Travis was more a witness of the good, and the bad, of public transportation.
From a very young age, he noticed that transportation got you from A to B. It just didn’t do it efficiently. Such an experience, in his own words, prepared him for Bird.
