🌐 Trust Scales: Veo Is the Micromobility Partner Cities Love

Adoption Archetype: ✅ De-Risked Adoption - proof beats promise.

I remember when scooters first hit my city.

It was 2018. I was running The Collider, the country’s first innovation center for climate resilience, in downtown Asheville, North Carolina.

I stepped outside and saw them — a pile of scooters blocking the sidewalk, tipped over like someone had thrown them from a truck.

Practically overnight, cities were flooded with them. Riders wove through traffic however they wanted, then ditched the scooters wherever they wanted.

The tech press called it innovation. It looked like chaos.

Asheville is a small mountain city. I’d helped launch its startup scene. I knew the mayor and the city council. I couldn’t fathom how anyone had approved this.

And the truth was — no one had.

The first wave of micromobility startups ran the Silicon Valley playbook: move fast, don’t ask, let cities catch up later.

The failure wasn’t just civic — it was systemic. Scooters built to last three months can’t sustain a business. Eventually, the economics caught up.

The Moment Mobility Stopped Working

When Candice Xie moved to Chicago after graduating from Purdue, every way of getting to work broke down.

The train ran late. Walking home after dark didn’t feel safe. Her bike was stolen within a month. Rideshares got too expensive.

She finally bought a car — and hated it.

The frustration wasn’t traffic or payments. It was the loss of choice. Owning a car had become the only way to participate in city life.

That moment became a question: what would it take to live in a city without being forced into car ownership?

Candice found an answer in a friend, bike engineer Edwin Tan. He’d seen how docked bike-share systems were costly and limited. Together, they quit their jobs and started building something better — mobility that was flexible, affordable, and built to last.

They launched Veo in 2017.

A Company Built on Partnership

Candice envisioned something steadier—a company that treated cities as partners, not obstacles.

“Every business is about trust,” she said. “We don’t launch without permission. We don’t overpromise. We do what we say, and we do it better next time.”

That philosophy turned Veo into an outlier: the first U.S. micromobility company to reach profitability.

Today, Veo operates in more than 50 U.S. markets, has replaced over 10 million car trips, and wins more than 90% of the city contracts it bids on.

The Veo Playbook: Scaling at the Speed of Trust

This isn’t a story about scooters.

It’s about what happens when you ask for permission first, so you never have to apologize later.

1. Build the Machine Yourself

Veo is a hardware company. “This is transportation,” Candice said. “The vehicle itself is the key.”

Early competitors bought cheap scooters, deployed fast, and recycled entire fleets every few months. The waste — money, materials, credibility — was staggering.

Veo took the opposite path. It designs and builds its own vehicles: durable, repairable, and circular by design. Parts work across models. Components are reused or recycled. When one scooter retires, most of it stays in circulation.

Hardware discipline unlocked profitability.

2. Treat Logistics Like It’s Part of The Product

Every Veo employee, including Candice, works shifts in the field, moving scooters, swapping batteries, and watching how people actually ride.

On a shift in Washington, D.C., Candice noticed one scooter parked outside the same house three times in three hours. The same rider had taken nine short trips that day — errands, meals, daily life.

“You can see availability change how people behave,” she said. “That person didn’t need a car.”

That’s how logistics becomes product. Vehicles that just work when and where people need them. Reliability earns trust. Trust builds new habits.

3. Design for Inclusion

Early data showed 60% of Veo riders were men. Candice didn’t need a dashboard to see why. Riders with heels and handbags tended to avoid stand-up scooters.

“I’m a conservative rider,” she said. “I wanted a vehicle I could ride even when pregnant.”

So Veo built one — a sit-down scooter designed for stability and comfort. Then came a two-seater to replace unsafe double-riding and make trips cheaper for pairs of people.

Now those vehicles anchor fleets in Columbus, D.C., and Santa Monica — expanding the market and making micromobility safer for more people.

Inclusion isn’t marketing. It’s good design — and good business.

4. Partner, Don’t Pirate

The first generation of scooter startups launched without permission. Veo built a business around earning it.

When cities issue RFPs, Veo wins over 90% of the time. It bids with need-based data, performance proof, and alignment with local goals.

After winning Santa Monica, Veo moved its headquarters there, hired locally, and invested in bike lane infrastructure. It doesn’t just follow city policy — it helps shape it.

“We show cities our track record,” Candice said. “We connect our product with their policy goals.”

Where others disrupted, Veo was invited in and stayed.

5. Let Profit Fund Progress

Veo raised venture capital, but didn’t spend it like everyone else. While competitors burned through cash to flood the market, Veo invested in durable hardware and disciplined operations — the foundation for long-term profitability.

Now profit funds innovation.

“That’s how we roll out new vehicles almost every year,” Candice said.

And Candice is clear on why Veo’s approach worked:

“We weren’t in the Silicon Valley bubble,” she said. “That forced us to focus on fundamentals, how to build a business that lasts. We weren’t chasing the next valuation target; we were building for the next fifty years.”

Profit isn’t the endgame. It’s the engine that keeps the mission advancing.

6. Focus on the Mission, Not “The Competition”

Candice doesn’t see other micromobility companies as competition. She sees cars.

Veo measures success in car trips replaced — more than ten million so far. 31% of riders don’t have a driver’s license. 41% percent don’t have access to a car.

Each ride is a small step toward a city where most trips of five miles or less are made by micromobility or transit. Walkable centers. Clear air. Streets built for people.

The goal isn’t just more bikes and scooters. It’s about freedom to choose.

Supercool Takeaway

Candice Xie didn’t move fast and break things. She moved deliberately and built something that lasts. Veo proves the most radical innovation isn’t disruption. It’s discipline. And the fastest way to move a city is to earn its trust first.

Operator Takeaways:

• Own the hardware. Control the vehicle, control the economics.

• Design for everyone. Inclusion expands your market.

• Let profit fund progress. Durable design and disciplined operations compound efficiency and margin.

This Week’s Podcast Episode

Trust Scales: Veo Is the Micromobility Partner Cities Love

🎙️ Listen on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, and all other platforms.

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Stats of the Week:

Stat #1: 225 Million

The number of micromobility trips taken by riders in North America in 2024, according to NABSA (The North American Bikeshare and Scootershare Association).

Stat #2: 333,000

The number of micromobility vehicles in North American fleets in 2024.

Stat #3: 415

The number of cities in North America with micromobility programs as of 2024. 

• 354 in the U.S.

• 52 in Canada

• 9 in Mexico 

Quote of the Week:

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🌐 The Climate Adoption Playbook - Module 2

Every day across the U.S., parents face an uncomfortable reality: their kids are having the same school bus experience as their great-grandparents. Time has passed, but the school bus remains stuck in the past.

So, when a bus leaves the depot, neither administrators nor parents know where it is. Delays ripple through families. Kids lose learning time, and parents miss work. It’s a system still running on diesel and guesswork.

Zum erases that friction. The company transforms a fragmented, multi-vendor bus system into a single, integrated service — with intelligent routing, electric buses, vetted drivers, real-time tracking, and charging infrastructure.

In Oakland, Zum optimized the fleet from 136 diesel buses to 74, converted it to 100% electric (the nation’s first), and improved on-time performance.

Now parents get reliability. Districts get simplicity. Kids get clean air.

Today, Zum operates transportation for over 4,000 schools nationwide — proof that when you remove friction, scale follows. And it’s just getting started. School buses represent the largest commercial vehicle class on the road, moving 27 million kids daily on more than 500,000 buses.

That’s the operator’s job: not to push harder, but to center adoption on removing the reasons people hesitate to say yes.

You can learn more about how leading climate companies are applying this same adoption principle to win customers and grow top-line revenue in The Climate Adoption Playbook, our new course for operators.

Zum is featured in Module 2: Friction Removal.

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Related

Micromobility companies are taking a page from VEO’s approach—becoming more attuned to the needs of cities and their citizens. Here’s how the sector is evolving into a true partner and catalyst for a low-carbon, car-free future that expands freedom, choice, and affordability.

Lime is reimagining shared bikes for family life. In Paris, it’s deployed 500 e-bikes equipped with child seats, building on an earlier rollout of 150 in Milan. The expansion responds to research showing parents want to replace short car trips with bike trips but lack family-friendly options.

Dott is integrating micromobility into public transit. Across cities like Berlin, Vienna, and Oslo, riders can plan, book, and pay for scooters, bikes, and trains through a single, seamless app experience. The approach positions micromobility as an extension of the city’s transportation network.

Denver’s e-bike rebate program shows what happens when policy drives adoption. By offering residents up to $1,400 off an e-bike purchase—and prioritizing lower-income households—the city has replaced thousands of car trips and sparked a surge in local bike sales. It’s become a national template for how cities can scale climate-friendly mobility through direct investment in access.

Together, these programs mark a turning point for micromobility, an industry that aligns with civic goals, fosters public trust, and addresses the everyday realities of urban life.

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