Brad Bao of LimeBike on Tackling America’s Last-Mile Problem

GGV Capital’s Hans Tung and Zara Zhang interview Brad Bao, the co-founder and chairman of LimeBike, a fast-growing dockless bike-sharing company in the U.S. based in San Mateo, California. Founded in January 2017, LimeBike is currently in more than 50 different markets in the U.S., and has helped users with more than 2 million trips since it launched. Before founding LimeBike, Brad was an investor at Fosun Kinzon Capital, and previously helped launch and build up Tencent’s U.S. operations as Tencent’s first employee outside of China. LimeBike is an example of a phenomenon known as “copy from China” — importing innovative business models from China into the U.S.

In this episode, we discuss Brad’s “pivot” from an investor searching for a bike-sharing deal to the founder of a bike-sharing company, why bike sharing can work in the U.S., and why being cross-border is a crucial advantage in this space.

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The 996 Podcast is brought to you by GGV Capital, a multi-stage venture capital firm based in Silicon Valley, Shanghai, and Beijing. We have been partnering with leading technology entrepreneurs for the past 18 years from seed to pre-IPO. With $3.8 billion in capital under management across eight funds, GGV invests in globally minded entrepreneurs in consumer internet, e-commerce, frontier tech, and enterprise. GGV has invested in over 280 companies, with 30 companies valued at over $1 billion. Portfolio companies include Airbnb, Alibaba, Bytedance (Toutiao), Ctrip, Didi Chuxing, DOMO, Hashicorp, Hellobike, Houzz, Keep, Musical.ly, Slack, Square, Wish, Xiaohongshu, YY, and others. Find out more at ggvc.com.