Travis VanderZanden

Travis VanderZanden is an American businessman and the founder and current CEO of Bird, a scooter sharing service. Before founding Bird, VanderZanden was Chief Operating Officer at Lyft, then VP of International Growth at Uber.

Travis VanderZanden
VanderZanden speaking in 2019
EducationUniversity of Wisconsin–Eau Claire (BBA)
USC Marshall School of Business (MBA)
OccupationEntrepreneur
Known forFounder of Bird
Notes

Education and early career

VanderZanden attended University of Wisconsin–Eau Claire from 1997 to 2002, receiving a Bachelor of Business Administration. He worked as a product manager at Qualcomm starting in 2002, and received an MBA from the USC Marshall School of Business 2007 while working there.[1]

After leaving Qualcomm, he was Chief Revenue Officer for Yammer from 2009 to 2011, then left to co-found Cherry, an on-demand car-wash service. He was CEO of Cherry until 2013, when the company was acquired by Lyft, and he was brought on as Chief Operating Officer.[3] He left Lyft for Uber in October 2014; Lyft sued him for allegedly breaking his confidentiality agreement, and the lawsuit was settled for undisclosed terms with VanderZanden denying any wrongdoing.[4][5] VanderZanden then left Uber in October 2016.[6]

Bird

VanderZanden founded Bird in the summer of 2017. The company deployed its first scooters that September, before raising a $15 million Series A round of financing in February, 2018.[7] In October of 2018, Bird released its latest edition of the scooter, Bird Zero, which was designed and built in partnership with Okai. [8] As of 2019, the company is now in 120 cities across the globe. [9][10] The company is valued at $2 billion and has taken in $415 million in funding. To date, Bird has provided more than 10 million rides. The company currently receives $1.27 on every Bird ride taken, which is inclusive of all costs. [11] VanderZanden was a speaker at TechCrunch's Disrupt SF in October 2019. [12]

During the COVID-19 mass layoff of Bird employees, he was criticized for not informing employees in person about their dismissal, rather, delegating the task to the company's Chief Communications Officer.[13]

gollark: You can get some sort of wrapper like that for one API, but it won't translate well unless you somehow parse some standard API doc format.
gollark: Yes, they do.
gollark: No, the biggest hurdle would be that there's no actual standard.
gollark: REST isn't actually a standard, though. would be nice if it worked.
gollark: I see.

References
  1. "Travis VanderZanden". Crunchbase. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
  2. "Travis VanderZanden - CEO & Founder - Bird". LinkedIn. Retrieved 2018-05-31.
  3. "Lyft Acquires Cherry, Prepares for Lyft-off in Seattle". Lyft Blog. 2013-03-26. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  4. Kosoff, Maya (2014-10-06). "Uber Has Hired The Former COO Of Its Biggest Competitor". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  5. Levine, Dan (2016-06-28). "Uber, Lyft settle litigation involving top executives". U.S. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  6. Carson, Biz (2016-09-30). "The only executive to hold a high-ranking position at both Uber and Lyft is leaving Uber". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  7. Loizos, Connie (2018-02-13). "This former Uber (and Lyft) exec just raised $15 million for his controversial e-scooter startup: Bird". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2018-06-01.
  8. "Bird unveils custom electric scooters and delivery". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
  9. "Bird CEO on scooter startup copycats, unit economics, safety and seasonality". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-05-07.
  10. Yakowicz, Will (2018-12-10). "14 Months, 120 Cities, $2 Billion: There's Never Been a Company Like Bird. Is the World Ready?". Inc.com. Retrieved 2019-07-03.
  11. Griffith, Erin (2019-07-22). "Bird Is Said to Raise New Funding at $2.5 Billion Valuation". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2019-07-31.
  12. "Bird CEO Travis VanderZanden to talk scooters, unit economics and a multi-billion-dollar valuation at Disrupt SF". TechCrunch. Retrieved 2019-10-06.
  13. "Bird layoffs". TheVerge. Retrieved 2020-04-23.
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