Bird Was The Fastest Company In History To Reach A 1 Billion Valuation Today The Scooter Company Has Crashed Into The Gutter

Confused, I asked what was going on. And that’s when I first learned of the concept of Bird scooters. Within a few months of that first encounter, you literally could not walk 10 feet in Los Angeles without either tripping over a parked Bird or being clipped by a rider zooming down the sidewalk. Bird was founded in Santa Monica, California in 2017 by an entrepreneur named Travis VanderZanden. Travis started his tech career at Qualcomm. He then spent a few years at a company called Yammer before founding an on-demand car wash service called Cherry. In 2013 Cherry was acquired by Lyft. With the acquisition, Travis became the Chief Operating officer of Lyft, a position he held for about a year before he jumped ship to become VP of International Growth for Uber. Lyft actually sued him for allegedly breaking a confidentiality agreement. Travis stayed at Uber through October 2016. As we stated a moment ago, Travis founded Bird in 2017. The company’s first scooters were distributed around LA in September of that year. In February of 2018 the company raised $15 million in Series A financing. A month later, Bird raised $100 million in a Series B round. Just two months after that, Bird raised another $150 million in a Series C round. At this round, Bird’s valuation breached $1 billion for the first time. That’s also known as reaching “unicorn” status. From founding to unicorn in less than a year. Bird is the FASTEST company to reach a $1 billion valuation. In June 2018 Bird raised $300 million at a $2 billion valuation. After several additional funding rounds, Bird eventually reached a private valuation of $2.8 billion. In total, Bird raised $415 million in a half dozen private rounds. It has been estimated that company founder Travis VanderZanden personally took home $100 million of that $415 million selling his personal equity. Perhaps as much as $200 million. Even after these private sales, Travis still owned an estimated 20% of Bird’s stock. At the $2.8 billion valuation he had a paper net worth of…

$560 million

With that newfound paper wealth (and actual real wealth from his stock sales), in November 2018 Travis paid $8 million in cash for a newly-constructed mansion in Santa Monica, California. He sold this home in June 2021 for $9 million. In August 2020 Travis paid $21.7 million for a mansion in Bel Air. The seller was Trevor Noah. Six months later, Travis decided he didn’t want this mansion anymore so he listed it for $25 million. He lowered the price to $19.9 million in October 2022. It has not sold as of this writing. Here’s a video tour of this mansion:

In November 2021, Travis decided to take his talents to Miami, with the purchase of a $22 million mansion in the town of Coral Cables. So as of this writing, Travis owns around $40 million worth of real estate.

Bird Crashes

The very same month of the Miami mansion purchase, Bird went public via SPAC. Bird went public at price of $8. That gave the company a market cap of…

$2.5 billion

At that point, Travis owned 13% of Bird. That stake was worth $325 million on paper. One year later, in November 2022, want to guess how much a single share of Bird (ticker symbol “BRDS”) would cost? Remember, one year ago today a single share would cost you $8. In November 2022?

24 cents

It gets worse. Fast forward another year to September 2023 and Bird was de-listed from the New York Stock Exchange for failing to maintain a market cap above $15 million.  As I write this article, Bird’s market cap is…

$7 million

That is not a typo. Remember, Travis owns a $22 million mansion in Miami. So the entire company Bird, is worth a little less than a third of his Miami home. Assuming he still owns 13% of Bird’s equity, that stake is worth $910,000. Down from several hundred million not that long ago. Yikes.