The Venture Codex

Participated · Series B · Sep 2024

Aifleet provides a proprietary AI algorithm and technology suite for trucking operations, including dynamic pricing tools, a modernized in-house TMS, real-time tracking, and driver-centric scheduling. The company manages 20 quintillion permutations per truck per week, which it says equates to 250K loads per week and $20 billion in orders per year. Aifleet plans to use new capital to expand technology research and development, grow its operations team to support the fleet at scale, expand its sales organization, and further develop scalable infrastructure and processes. Leadership is headed by CEO Marc El Khoury and the company is based in Austin, TX. The firm also intends to bring AI-adjacent use cases to the industry and, in the future, operationalize electric and autonomous technologies. The business appears focused on scaling both its technical platform and operational capabilities to support larger volumes and more complex routing and pricing scenarios.

Participated · Equity · Feb 2023

Dance operates a subscription service for electric bikes and mopeds, offering a premium, hassle-free alternative for urban mobility. The company runs fleets in Paris, Berlin, Hamburg and Munich and was launched in 2020 by SoundCloud founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss and Alexander Ljung together with Jimdo co-founder Christian Springub. Dance reports over 10,000 customers and more than 80 corporate clients. The business is on track for full-year EBITDA profitability in 2025. Recent plans focus on scaling fleet and operations while refining hardware, software and service to expand access to clean mobility. Its latest financing combines equity and an asset-backed debt facility to support sustainable growth. Dance provides electric bikes and mopeds on a monthly subscription basis that include servicing, repairs, theft insurance and replacement bikes. The company launched out of Berlin in 2020 and is now available in Paris, Hamburg, Munich and Vienna. Dance also sells its vehicles as an employee benefit via Dance For Business and has signed partners including Google and Urban Sports Club. A partnership with IoT Venture helps locate and recover bikes in theft cases. The startup says its largest market is Paris, where it has seen strong uptake tied to the city's plans to expand bike lanes. The company reports growth from a few hundred members to many thousands across its markets. Dance operates an electric mobility subscription service that removes the hassle of e-bike ownership by offering full-service mobility memberships. The company has expanded its product line with an e-moped option and launched Dance for Business to provide sustainable transportation perks for employers. Dance emphasizes a superior end-user experience, supported by founders Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, Alexander Ljung (SoundCloud), and Christian Springub (Jimdo). It is pursuing international expansion, having recently entered Hamburg, Munich, Vienna, and Paris. Financially, Dance has tapped debt financing to fund growth and has raised €56 million in total to date. The business has also attracted a roster of high-profile angel backers, which the company cites as helping fuel its scaling plans. Dance designs and operates an e-bike subscription service centered on its proprietary Dance One electric bike. The Dance One features a carbon belt, hydraulic disc brakes, an integrated smartphone mount and a detachable battery with an expected range of 55 km. Customers subscribe for €79 per month rather than buy the bike, with no long-term commitments and on-demand mechanic support for flats and repairs. The company has begun rolling out the service in Berlin and there are "hundreds" of Dance e-bikes currently on the streets. Dance recently raised €16.5 million ($19.4 million) in new funding to support operations and expansion. It plans to double its team with hires in operations and engineering and expand to more cities across Europe starting in 2022. Dance offers an all-inclusive e-bike subscription that delivers a fully assembled e-bike to subscribers’ doors within 24 hours and includes maintenance, theft-replacement insurance, a dedicated smartphone app, concierge services, and GPS tracking/unlocking. The service is currently running an invite-only pilot in Berlin and the founders say they have received strong global interest since the pilot launch. Dance plans a broader launch next year with expanded accessibility, availability and service in new cities across Europe and eventual expansion to the U.S. The company was founded by Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, Alexander Ljung and Christian Springub. The raise comes amid a post-lockdown e-bike boom noted in the article (U.K. sales surged ~230%) and growing urban bike infrastructure in the EU. Dance positions itself between ownership and on-demand rentable micromobility by removing upfront cost and maintenance friction.

Participated · Equity · May 2021

Zoomo builds high-performance utility e-bikes and fleet management software sold via weekly subscriptions to gig workers and as fleet solutions for enterprises. It offers servicing and support, with U.S. rider pricing typically between $20 and $35 per week and discounted rates via delivery‑app partnerships. The company is developing the Zoomo One e-bike, new vehicle form factors and accessories, and an end‑rider app, and is expanding its fleet and vehicle management offerings for mechanics and customers. Zoomo says it expanded to 16 cities across six countries since its 2017 founding and added Spain, France and Germany last year. The startup reported 4x global revenue growth and 20x enterprise business growth in 2021, and plans to hire more team members globally to support expansion. CEO Mina Nada told TechCrunch the company sees a future where last‑mile delivery runs on light electric vehicles supported by the Zoomo ecosystem. Zoomo builds heavy‑duty e-bikes and offers micromobility subscription services, fleet management software and a servicing network for couriers and enterprise fleets. Its business serves both B2B customers (including enterprise fleets like Domino's) and B2C channels through partnerships with gig platforms such as DoorDash. Zoomo offers weekly subscriptions that include servicing, ranging from $20 to $49 per week, and designs vehicles for high‑usage delivery conditions (customers report up to 50,000 kilometers per year on a bike). The company operates in Australia, the United Kingdom and the United States and has expanded into cities including Manchester, Chicago, Valencia, Paris and Stuttgart. With the new funding, Zoomo plans to invest in its software platform, expand its servicing network, scale hardware into existing and new markets, and begin developing light vehicles for parcel and other urban delivery form factors. The funding structure combines equity to support product and platform development with asset‑backed debt to enable monthly subscription financing of its bikes. Zoomo is an Australian startup that electrifies delivery fleets by offering e-bike subscriptions to gig workers and enterprise customers. It provides a full-stack solution including custom-designed hardware, software, same-day servicing, and financing options to help partners deploy and manage fleets at scale. The company has expanded to more than 10,000 units globally and operates in New York City, San Francisco, Los Angeles and Philadelphia. Clients include Uber Eats, DoorDash, Gorillas, Just Eat Takeaway and enterprise customers such as Cornucopia. Zoomo plans to use the new funding to expand into continental Europe and additional U.S. states, grow its consumer model beyond couriers to commuters, and invest in next-generation vehicle development. The company previously raised an $11 million Series A in August 2020. Zoomo, formerly Bolt Bikes, builds and sells electric bikes and offers them as a subscription product aimed initially at gig-economy delivery workers but now serving corporate clients and individual consumers. Its subscription includes the electric bike, fleet-management software, financing, servicing, 24-hour bike access, and accessories such as a battery charger, phone holder, USB port, secure U‑Lock and safety induction. The company operates sales and service centers in Sydney, New York and the U.K., and says the need for physical locations limits how quickly it can expand the subscription service. Zoomo plans to use the new funding to add sales and service centers in Los Angeles and Brisbane and to expand within New York while ramping up direct bike sales. It also plans to add corporate categories such as parcel, mail and grocery deliveries and to introduce models better suited for individual consumers. The company raised $11 million in fresh capital in a Series A round led by the Australian Clean Energy Finance Corporation. Bolt Bikes provides a subscription platform for electric bikes tailored to gig-economy delivery workers, bundling the vehicle with servicing, financing, fleet-management software and accessories. The company sells e-bikes but primarily rents them on week-to-week commercial contracts, offering 24-hour access and a first-week free trial. Subscriptions include a battery charger, phone holder, phone USB port, secure U-lock and safety induction. Bolt Bikes operates in Sydney and Melbourne as well as San Francisco and London, and Postmates has been piloting its rental program in San Francisco since June. The startup was founded in 2017 by Mina Nada and Michael Johnson. Management says it plans to increase its fleet and expand to more cities across the U.S., U.K. and Australia.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2020

Superpedestrian develops electric micromobility vehicles and an advanced software platform centered on its LINK e-scooter and Vehicle Intelligence system. The company recently announced Pedestrian Defense, an AI-based safety system that fuses multiple vehicle sensors to detect unsafe riding behaviors and can automatically slow or stop a scooter in real time. Superpedestrian’s LINK fleet has launched in 57 cities and has logged tens of millions of miles, and the company holds over 40 patents in vehicle safety, automated maintenance, fleet optimization, and context awareness. Following field tests, the firm plans to deploy Pedestrian Defense in the first 25 cities across the U.S. and Europe during 2022, while expanding the LINK shared e-scooter service and boosting R&D. The new funding will be used to scale deployments in micromobility and support advanced R&D programs. Superpedestrian was spun out of MIT in 2013 and positions itself as a world-leader in transportation robotics and human-scale mobility. Superpedestrian develops the LINK e-scooter, which incorporates On-Board Intelligence and an active safety system. The company intends to use the new funds to accelerate expansion of its LINK scooter fleet. Spun out of MIT and led by founder and CEO Assaf Biderman, Superpedestrian invested eight years and $75M to patent more than 30 electric vehicle technologies. The LINK scooter performs autonomous maintenance and safety verification before every ride, with each vehicle containing five computers that act as an "A.I. Mechanic," monitoring components thousands of times per second and self-repairing electronic systems. From the outside LINK appears like a typical scooter but is more rugged and designed to protect riders and the vehicle in real time. LINK has thousands of vehicles on the road across 12 cities from Seattle to Rome, and the company is vying for permits in New York City and other major global cities. Superpedestrian, founded in 2012 by CEO Assaf Biderman, is a mobility engineering and technology company known for designing micromobility vehicles including the Copenhagen Wheel. It develops intelligent e-scooters featuring a proprietary Vehicle Intelligence System (VIS) that monitors the entire vehicle in real time and runs a self-diagnostic check before each ride. Superpedestrian’s scooters are engineered to last more than 2,500 rides, can travel up to 55 miles on a single charge, and the company says resilient vehicles keep per-ride operating costs around 50% lower than other operators. The company acquired Zagster’s micromobility fleet operations business and launched LINK, a shared micromobility platform that lets riders rent e-scooters via smartphone. LINK emphasizes collaboration with cities, fast onboard geofence enforcement, rider safety, and fleet management designed to meet city needs. Superpedestrian makes electric scooters equipped with a vehicle-intelligence platform that detects more than 100 situations that could lead to malfunction, triages issues, and determines responses to prevent vehicle damage and rider injury. Its software continuously monitors for problems such as water penetration, cut internal wires, battery cell temperature imbalances, and braking issues, and can enforce local speed limits via geofencing. The scooters can last up to seven days without recharging, assuming about five to six rides per day. Superpedestrian is currently focused on selling its platform and vehicles to operators, though it plans to eventually sell directly to consumers. The company is on track to launch in multiple markets in January, with operating partners yet to be announced. Financially, the startup has raised a total of $64 million to date. Superpedestrian began as the maker of the Copenhagen Wheel, a circular unit that adds motorized assist, battery and sensors to bicycles. The company is shifting to a B2B business selling hardware and software diagnostics to e-bike, scooter and moped fleet operators, leveraging roughly one million kilometers of aggregated data from Copenhagen customers. Its stack includes sensors, embedded controllers, and software protected by dozens of patents across multiple jurisdictions. Superpedestrian says its technology improves rider control and synchronization of power to pedaling, and can monitor battery health to reduce overheating risk. The company is micro-vehicle agnostic and plans to introduce these products and services into the rapidly growing shared scooter and e-bike market. It employs roughly 50 people and has drawn investor support for the new direction.