The Wild, Broken Ride of Bird and Its Scooter Empire with Joe Fenti and Maddy Smith | 100
The Big Flop
Audible
4.6 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 11 August 2025
⏱️ 56 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2017, Santa Monica residents woke up to find their streets invaded by mysterious electric scooters. The culprit? Travis VanderZanden, a former Uber exec with a plan to revolutionize urban transit. But between drunk-tweeting executives, phantom revenue reports, and scooters being hurled into oceans, Bird's flight path was destined for turbulence.
Joe Fenti and Maddy Smith join Misha to watch Bird's $2 billion flight plan nosedive
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Picture this. You're lounging on your couch, ready to indulge in another hilariously disastrous |
| 0:05.8 | episode of The Big Flop, but then, bam, an ad. Don't let that be you. With Wondery Plus, |
| 0:14.6 | you can enjoy The Big Flop a whole week early and completely ad-free. It's like having a fast pass to the front row of the VIP section. |
| 0:24.4 | Upgrade your listening experience and join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or in Apple Podcasts. |
| 0:30.7 | Your uninterrupted flop fix awaits. Y'all, some people will walk straight into starting a business with subpar plans and the audacity. |
| 0:48.8 | It's always, how much can we raise in Series A funding and never, hey, does this business work? |
| 0:56.5 | It's all billion dollar valuations and $22 million palatial homes until you realize you've accidentally been overreporting your revenue. |
| 1:08.4 | Oops. |
| 1:09.8 | Grab an e-scooter bestie and crank that thing right up to 15 miles per hour |
| 1:14.2 | because Bird Scooters is about to take you for a ride. |
| 1:18.4 | That's been called the Uber of electric scooters. California-based startup, Bird has grown from a |
| 1:24.0 | $300 million dollar valuation to being worth over $2 billion in less than six months. |
| 1:29.7 | Who is in charge of fixing your bikes and maintaining them? |
| 1:32.7 | We call them the fleet managers. |
| 1:34.1 | They were taking these scooters, these ones right here, all the way to the airport. |
| 1:38.0 | It's crazy. |
| 1:40.3 | We are on a sinking ship. |
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