Startup Series: Dance
Today's guest is Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, CEO and Co-Founder of Dance, a premium ebike subscription service based in Berlin.
Eric also co-founded music streaming platform SoundCloud, and occasionally angel invests in companies in the sustainability space. With Dance's electric mobility subscription, their members can easily explore their city with an ebike or emoped while benefiting from included maintenance and repairs. Both individuals and businesses can make convenient and fun mobility choices without the investment of ownership: membership is flexible.
In this episode, we cover Eric's startup journey, climate journey, and how they ultimately intersected. We talk about the Dance origin story, vision, progress to date, and key strategic priorities. And we have a great discussion about mobility, the future of cities, and what it will take to decarbonize transportation. And finally, it was super useful to hear Eric's thoughts on how to balance maximum impact on a spreadsheet with finding things to work on that give you energy and align with your passions and skills.
Enjoy the show!
You can find me on Twitter at @jjacobs22, @mcjpod, and @mcjcollective, and via email at info@mcjcollective.com, where I encourage you to share your feedback on episodes and suggestions for future topics or guests.
Episode recorded April 22, 2022.
In today's episode, we cover:
How Eric went from building SoundCloud to working on climate solutions
Eric’s decision to focus on urban mobility
The state of the e-bike market
Dance’s business model and impact focus
Next steps for the company
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Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. I am the My Climate Journey Show host. Before we get going, I wanted to take a minute and tell you about the My Climate Journey or MCJ as we call it, membership option. Membership came to be because there were a bunch of people that were listening to the show that weren't just looking for education but they were longing for a peer group as well. So we set up a Slack community for those people that's now mushroomed into more than 1300 members.
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There's a bunch of great things that have come out of that community, a number of founding teams that have met in there, a number of nonprofits that have been established, a bunch of hiring that's been done, a bunch of companies that have raised capital in there, a bunch of funds that have gotten limited partners or investors for their funds in there, as well as a bunch of events and programming by members and for members and some open source projects that are getting actively worked on that hatched in there as well.
At any rate, if you wanna learn more, you can go to myclimatejourney.co, the website and click the become a member tab at the top. Enjoy the show. Hello everyone. This is Jason Jacobs, and welcome to My Climate Journey. The show follows my journey to interview a wide range of guests to better understand and make sense of the formidable problem of climate change and try to figure out how people like you and I can help.
Today's guest is Eric Quidenus-Wahlforss, founder and CEO at Dance. Dance is an e-bike subscription service founded with the purpose of having a positive impact on health, sustainability and livable cities. With Dance, you have a state of the art e-bike at your full disposal without the hassle of buying and owning. The goal of Dance is to spark a global movement built on a connected community of passionate e-bike riders, ultimately making cities more bike friendly and livable.
Now I first met Eric, I think it was in 2019 and he was of course, the founder of SoundCloud for many years since 2007, and he had recently left and was trying to reorient himself around working on climate. So he was out talking to people, learning, reading a bunch, essentially doing the same thing that I was, only I was doing so loudly and publicly, and Eric was doing so more quietly.
At any rate, he uncovered cities and making them more livable and uncovered micro mobility and the trends there and uncovered subscription and how it could be applied to micro mobility to create a powerful experience, not just in terms of renting versus owning, but also the types of capabilities that you could build into a platform around these bikes and scooters if you had a cloud and a software platform built in. In this episode, we talk about Eric's journey, how and when and why he became concerned about climate change, when he was out traveling, what it was that convinced him that building one company was the right path and that it should focus on making cities more livable.
And then we talk about the Dance story, how it came together, the different components of its offering, what types of customers they're targeting, how many cities they're in directionally, where they're going, and if they're successful, what it will look like and what they'll have achieved. We also talk about what some of the factors are outside of Dance's and Eric's can control that can help their vision for livable cities manifest more quickly and effectively. It's a wonderful discussion. I wish it was longer, but I'm so grateful that Eric made time to come on the show. Without further ado, Eric, welcome to MCJ.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Thank you. It's a pleasure.
Jason Jacobs: Well, so it's funny. You're... I mean, you're coming on to talk about Dance and of course we're an investor in Dance and a really proud one at that. But Dance aside, I feel like we were on kind of similar schedules where, you know, we each were founders in an unrelated space and I don't know exactly how the timing lined up, but I caught you pretty early in my journey and you were writing the thick of yours. I think one big difference was that mine was public and yours was a lot more introverted in nature, but I- but I really identified with you as you were going through that journey and- and was so thrilled to hear that you found a spot, and at any rate, just psyched to have a chance to catch up with you and about Dance, but just in general as well.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah, no, it's really great to be on the show. And I exactly, that's how I got to know about you, was through your show at the time. And I think I was probably one of your biggest fans. You know, [laughs] I listened slavishly on like every episode for months on end in 2019.
Jason Jacobs: Who else has time for that besides in between founders? [Laughs].
Eric Quidenus-W...: [Laughs]. Exactly. No. And it was like exactly the space that I was exploring, right? And you were- you were asking all the right questions, all these i- interesting people, right? So it was great for me to- to be part of your journey as well.
Jason Jacobs: Well, so maybe just give a quick overview on Dance just so that the listeners have that context. But then I wanna put the Dance aside, and we have a lot of other fun things to- to talk about your journey. But first Dance, what's Dance?
Eric Quidenus-W...: Totally. So Dance is an electric mobility platform really, a subscription platform, I should say, where starting with e-bikes, we also now have e-mopeds as vehicles that you can subscribe to. So the main idea is very simple. You get your own e-bike or e-moped. If something happens to it, if it breaks, if it gets stolen, then there is an app. We're there for you 24/7. And typically within, you know, a couple of hours during business hours, we will come out and- and sort of repair, replace your vehicle quickly.
And so that in a nutshell is what it is. And the reason, or kind of the impulse for this was, you know, I was talking with a friend. Long story short, I was taking a long walk talking with a friend about renting versus owning things when we landed on talking about e-bikes and could you make a subscription around it? And the realization is that an e-bike is very expensive. It's a big sort of purchase decision. It's a highly fragmented market out there, you know, lots of choice. And then it's a fast moving market, right?
So e-bikes are, you know, the next year there will be a new model and you'll have, you know, better specs on the battery, on the motor, everything, right? And so there's a lot of velocity in the space. And then if you buy an e-bike, you now own a complex electric vehicle, and this vehicle will need some level of maintenance and it does occasionally, you know, break or get stolen. And so it's kind of a pain to own an e-bike. And so what if you could take all the friction out of that and just, you know, give you the- the pleasure of the ride really? And that's what we do.
Jason Jacobs: Amazing. And well, I have a lot of questions about Dance and a lot of different directions we could go there. But before we get too far down the path, like me, you are an entrepreneur in an unrelated space. And then when you found yourself in between, you were compelled to do something in climate. Can you talk a bit about what it was that compelled you to do something in climate and whether it was a light bulb moment or if it, you know, transpired over time? Just how and when and why did that desire come about and how did those ultimately end up intersecting, you know, with your passion for company building?
Eric Quidenus-W...: My interest in this topic actually goes way- way back. So my father used to work in a bunch of sus- sustainability topics. He was an industrial designer by training, and he ended up writing this book about the future that involved a lot about electric cars and wind power, solar power, and all kinds of technology around sustainability. And this was in the '80s and '90s, you know? So when I was super young, I remember talking about [laughs], you know, electric cars and all this kind of stuff with him.
And then just before we started SoundCloud, it was the Al Gore movie came out with, uh, the Inconvenient Truth. And I remember watching that movie and was really like shaken by it and the fact that, you know, everything was sort of going in the wrong direction. But then, you know, I started SoundCloud and worked on that for a long time. That was quite the ride. And in 2015, around the time of the Paris Agreement, that's when I started to get really pulled into this topic again and I started reading a bunch on the side, read a bunch of books, started shifting my own sort of angel investing activity into climate impact stuff over time, and now I'm, you know, since three or four years now, I'm only doing really climate impact stuff as an angel investor.
And then, you know, eventually realized that my heart sort of wasn't in it anymore for the mission that SoundCloud was on really. And so after 12 years, I stepped down from it early 2019 and I took kind of a sabbatical, but really I was just running around like a madman, you know, turning stones everywhere and explored various thesis and met lots of people, asked a lot of questions.
Jason Jacobs: I'll have to check my email, but I feel like that was probably around time when we first got connected.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah. Yeah. I think it was in 2019. I think it was some point, you know, maybe half way into my kind of journey. And I had a number of different thesis that I looked at. And the main core question for me was really, you know, with my background and my profile as an entrepreneur, my passions, my skillset, how could I contribute here and do something that's, you know, exciting to me and- and would be fun to work on for 10, 20, 30 years?
That's really was the goal. And it was hard, was hard at times sort of opening. I remember, you know, occasionally opening my laptop, you know, sitting somewhere [laughs] maybe in a foreign country and just realizing I'm completely alone, basically unemployed and sort of really don't know what to do with my life, but I just kept turning stones. And eventually, you know, we had this idea of an e-bike subscription and I was exploring that. And then a mutual friend connected me with this guy, Christian, he also had that idea.
So he had explored same idea and made some of the same observations and drew some of the same conclusions, and the two of us really hit it off. And this was end of 2019. We then went on this like deep exploration. My co-founder at SoundCloud, Alex, who is the- the chairman of the board at SoundCloud in the meantime, he joined us as well in this exploration. So we did that probably three, four or two months, um, before deciding to go for it. And this was early 2020.
Jason Jacobs: Now I'm gonna ask you a question that you probably don't typically get asked with your Dance co-founder hat on. And- and that is given that you're so climate motivated but that you have this long career as an entrepreneur, one challenge that I've had, or that I had before I figured out where to anchor was that climate is such a systems problem yet I identify as an entrepreneur and building any one company, you're going deep in this niche of a niche of a niche in terms of the scale of the problem since the problem touches every industry and function and geography touches everything, right? Not- and not just everything in innovation, but everything across everything, right? And so if you wanna have the biggest impact on climate, did you worry at all before you figured out where to anchor with Dance that building another company wasn't the way to maximize your impact?
Eric Quidenus-W...: I did think about that for sure. And I- I also looked into who actually, should I just be starting a fund or some sort of incubation space or something like that in Berlin or maybe sort of pan-European thing, but I ended up just realizing, or just being honest to myself, my passion is really in just building things and sort of designing things from the ground up. And I love great products, I love technology, and I love going kind of deep on something, really sort of figuring something out.
And so for me, there were so many ideas that we looked at. And actually funny enough, like with SoundCloud as well it was the same. You know, we had so many ideas that were floating around and it wasn't this one thing started then getting a lot of traction and then you- you get completely sort of consumed by it. But at the time, you know, it was hard to make the choice. To your point, you're putting your feet down and you're basically down in a tiny little niche, you know, you're chipping away in sort of one little area and you're competing with other companies doing that kind of that exact thing.
Not quite, but, you know, but- but- but something similar, right? So you're in this, you know, heavy competition with others as well on a small thing. But I think ultimately this mission of- of accelerating the transformation of cities and just making cities more livable and shifting the mix of cars in cities, making cities more for people and less for- less about sort of core infrastructure, I think is a big mission that by going to places like Amsterdam and Copenhagen, it's very real.
You know, you can get very excited about the potential of other cities moving into that direction. I'm in Paris right now, by the way, doing this from Paris where we just launched a service here. And it's amazing the transformation that Paris has gone through in the last four years. You know, I was here four years ago the last time, and then came back in November and was just blown away, 'cause there's so many bikes, so much more infrastructure for bikes and that just is deeply motivating to me.
And I think if many cities transform like that, it's a very meaningful impact on climate. And that's of course a systemic big shift. You know, there's regulation involved, there's tons of infrastructure, billions and billions, hundreds of billions, right, involved and then of course, companies and exciting products. I like being part of that.
Jason Jacobs: So we've just touched a bit on the why one company versus investing or doing something else at more of the systems level. What about from a category standpoint? I mean, it sounds like you've got a deep passion for making cities more livable, which I certainly identify with as well. But I'm sure that you could have looked at, I mean, whether it's carbon markets or whether it's ag or whether it's, you know, building a new kind of electric vehicle or... I mean, to go from music to relivable cities, you could have gone from music to anywhere. What is it about mobility that made you think that was the right spot to anchor?
Eric Quidenus-W...: For me, it wasn't about having the absolute biggest impact in an absolute sense on climate. I think it was important for me to have an impact on climate and have a meaningful impact. Then it's- it's very hard to say, you know, like if we scale massively, this is going to be a very, very impactful company. You know, you can have gigaton level impact that list indirectly with something like this if it really works, and so that is meaningful impact.
That said, there are maybe other areas where I could have had more direct impact, but I would've been less passionate about the mission and I would've been less maybe able to stay in the space for, you know, 10, 20 years. And the truth of the matter of course is that a lot of the stuff that we need to do in order to transform, it's just not very sexy and it's not very...
So it's a lot of big infrastructural changes that need to have in the back end and grid level stuff and many other topics, right? And I had a hard time just with my passions and my skills to get really, truly engaged in those things. And while I could see completely the rationale why I need to do certain things, like I just couldn't see myself in that space. So ultimate becomes a kind of a founder company match thing.
Jason Jacobs: I think that's such a huge point that kind of gets lost when you see domain experts for example. It's like they'll see that a founder launches X company, and it's like, you know, it's having an impact, but they like start throwing spears at it because it's not having the maximum impact and it's well, everyone needs to find their spot and they're not gonna to find their spot on a spreadsheet. Have you ever built a company before? Like you have to really love it because it sucks. Its so hard.
And if- if you're not like irrationally motivated to see it through, like you're screwed before you even get out the starting blocks. And you can't fake it, you can't force it, you can't spreadsheet your way to get there. At least I can't. And it- it sounds like you can't either. And I think that message should be reassuring for people that are maybe want to do something in climate, but are worried that their thing isn't like on the top 10 list in the spreadsheet.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Totally, totally. And I mean, I- I mean, I do admire the entrepreneurs who truly go and do something super hard and something that frankly most people won't ever notice in their life, but that sort of has this transformative and essentially effect on how, you know, we generate energy or whatever it might be, right? And I think, you know, that's highly admirable. But on the flip of that, I've seen a lot of people talking the talk, right?
So also on the fun side where people are, you know, on the investor side where people are, "Oh yeah, yeah, we do climate, you know, impact stuff." And then when it comes down to it, they're only doing software or they're only looking at SaaS with like, you know, super fast scaling and there's like 85% margin type stuff. And it's we can't be doing only those things if we're gonna succeed with this. And so sometimes I can feel slightly guilty about sort of not taking on some of those less kind of sexy challenges 'cause like obviously I love mobility because it's... I can actually, you know, be listening to SoundCloud and riding a bike, like how awesome is that? And it's like my own product, right? And it...
Jason Jacobs: Oh, look at that. No way to thread the needle and uh, pit... No, I'm ju- just joking.
Eric Quidenus-W...: [Laughs]. No, but that's- that's of course a wonderful feeling and it gives you a lot of energy. You can't do that with all products, right? So...
Jason Jacobs: So now let's talk about cities. What did you see about cities that made you think they need to be more livable and how do you define more livable, and- and what's the theory of change? So we, I mean, we're not even getting into Dance yet, but it'd be fun first to just talk a little bit about how you think about the market.
Eric Quidenus-W...: I mean, it's really interesting how we sort of accidentally almost ended up in a world that's heavily dominated by cars. It was really after the second world war where you had this sort of imperative by a lot of nations to build up, you know, and it was- it was- it was also leading up to the second world war where you had the combustion engine and the power of that for militarization and also road networks.
There was just this national imperative by many countries to basically say we have to have a car industry, we have to build this infrastructure in order to defend ourselves, right? And so you- you ended up with huge amount of investing in that, and that led to this sort of massive car industry that then evolved of course, and sort of became this very commercial thing and it became something that everyone aspired to in the maybe, I don't know, '60s, '70s, 80s, but already in the late '60s, you started having voices that were very concerned about this sort of development and where that's going.
And look at Amsterdam. I mean, in the '70s, '80s Amsterdam was like a heavily car city. Look at some of the pictures and you know, you can't believe that it's the same city. Same with Copenhagen. I'm from Sweden. We used to be in the south of Sweden in the summers. We had friends, you know, in Copenhagen or my parents have friends there and- and I went, you know, every summer. It was very car city in the '90s. Now it's not. Now it's more than 50% of people go by bike everywhere in Copenhagen, the city has transformed.
So I just see it as almost like a natural evolution where it's literally the optimal way for a city to function. Cars are amazing, right? Cars is an amazing in- invention and they have their place in the world but we can't have cities that are completely built around them. And so, um, I see Berlin. You know, I came there more than 15 years ago now, mode share, which is, you know, the tech- the term used for like how people get around, mode share for bikes have been consistently going up for the last 15 years and it continues to go up.
In fact, it ac- accelerates now. So that trend is just almost like an inevitable. I mean, it's not inevitable, there has to be the political will there. But now because of the climate imperative that's sort of overarching, we can't just, you know, electrify cars. That's not the way we're gonna get out of this. We are gonna do that and more, but we also need to change the ways we get around cities. So that's something I think is a pretty clear vision. It's almost not super controversial.
I mean, in the US, it [laughs]- it's more controversial, but in Europe it's something that a lot of people can subscribe to. And then it's of course in- in practice it's harder to- to achieve it. The last two years for me have just given me a lot of confidence that like if a city like Paris can transform this quickly, then it- it surely can be done in many other cities. So that is how I would describe it, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: One concern I've heard, not necessarily about mobility specifically, but about things like last mile delivery with, you know, robots or- or things like that is that the change, so much of it is reliant on the infrastructure being there and on the policy being there on a city by city, town by town, municipality by municipality level, and it's just such a grind to get the landscape in a place where you're set up for success and then there's so much that's outside of your control that's just a lot of muck and a lot of risk. How much does that carry over to the mobility landscape with e-bikes and e-scooters and how much do you think about and resource to that as you're building Dance?
Eric Quidenus-W...: It's a huge driver for mass scale sort of adoption of course. The thing I guess about the market and just from our perspective is that it's already huge, right? So you have in- in Europe, you have, I don't know anywhere between 15 and a hundred million people commuting very regular by these sort of vehicles, if you, you know, depending on how you count. So there's already kind of a massive momentum around how these vehicles are being used. But of course, it could, you know, there's enormous potential to grow that by much more.
We wanna play a small role in that and we are looking at ways channeling kind of the voice of that movement, uh, with Dance. We did some of those things with SoundCloud, like we hope to be able to replicate some of that with what we're doing here. The key is to build something broader than just, you know, one company or one- one vehicle or something like that. It has to be about embracing the fact that cities need to change.
And yeah, it's about... it's like you- you say, right? Ultimately it's the- the will of the people [laughs] and the drive policy and everything else. And then yes, there's like real concrete and- and asphalt that has to build, you know, forward and put into place. And- and that change is slower, but also doesn't have build that slow as we can see, you know, in some cities. But of course, yeah, we're talking decades here. If- if you're gonna look at, see the massive change across many cities, then it's decades, but I'm convinced it will happen.
Jason Jacobs: And so if you took a look and you saw the trends and you see that the policy is starting to come and that the consumers are starting to demand it and that there's more and more are form factors that are starting to come out as these, the e-bikes and scooters and different modes of transportation continue to improve, what was the gap that you saw and how did you cobble these ingredients together as you thought about the Dance approach, the Dance business model and- and the Dance go to market strategy?
Eric Quidenus-W...: It's really three mega trends that I think we saw when- got us very excited about this. And one is e-bikes are taking over all the bikes. E-bikes are just much more capable bikes. And it's not only the fact that they are faster and easier to ride around and can ride them more, and all the studies show that people, you know, ride them longer, more frequently and more and you know, are happier with- with e-bikes and versus regular bikes. So it's that, but there's also the fact that then you can't- you have an electric vehicle, so you can put sensors and connectivity and all this kind of, you know, safety features, all kinds of stuff in the vehicle in a way that wasn't possible before.
And- and that's very early in terms of the- that sort of trajectory for the product cat- category. So there's a lot of interesting change in- in bikes and- and lots of adoption. So it's just a killer sort of product category and- and we're in the middle of that transition now. And then the other- the other mega trend is subscription, right? So people prefer just to subscribe to things and to have services versus owning things and it's just a very massive trend.
And you know, that's going category by category, and interestingly it hasn't fully reached micro mobility yet. It's starting and it's gonna become big, but it's still early. And so we felt timing of that was super interesting. When I started SoundCloud, the word music streaming didn't exist, right? So it was called, I don't know, cloud access or something [laughs]. Music was uh, was in the very early days of streaming. And then, you know, decade later, everyone was streaming their music. Here it's the same.
Everyone's buying their bikes. Like sharing is big trend, share bikes and stuff, and that's... you know, it's been very exciting and there's lot of technology stuff that's come from that, which is interesting. But- but ultimately the vast majority of people are still owning their vehicles and using own vehicles. And so ownership is just a how it works today. But I think, you know, in 10 years, a lot of people are gonna look back and say, "Why did we like own all of these things?" Like doesn't make sense. And the third one's the one we just talked about, right? The fact that cities are actually embracing this and actually changing. So those three things together for me is just sort of a perfect storm and- and there's just a lot of change that's gonna come from that.
Jason Jacobs: How do you think about your own bikes and scooters and other lines down the road versus this wave of all kinds of different products coming out from all kinds of different manufacturers, and also how dependent is the overall experience on it being your own in terms of integration? Are there unlocks with capabilities at the systems or platform level that wouldn't be possible if you went and- and bought one of these bikes or scooters on your own?
Eric Quidenus-W...: Totally. We're seeing right now a kind of Cambrian explosion of micro mobility, right? So there are all kinds of form factors being tested. It's fun actually to be here in Paris and just look at, you know, a bike lane and see what comes [laughs], what comes through, right? You have all kinds of e-bike form factors. You have this one wheel things, you have e-scooters, you have cargo bikes, you have various kinds of mopeds and e-mopeds coming through. And so there's a lot of stuff that's have happening.
E-bikes in my view are probably the most capable kind of form factor here. It's the one that has also kind of the biggest future in terms of broad adoption. It's the safest mode, it's easy, it's very comfortable. So and doing it sort of every day is easy. Whereas some of these other things, it's harder and kind of less safe to do on an everyday basis. I think cargo bikes, super interesting, of course, and have real potential to replace cars for many more things than just a regular e-bike has.
In terms of how we thought about it, one of the things that got us very excited was that when we looked at e-bike subscription, we, of course, as you know, coming from software backgrounds, our first impulse was like, okay, could we take something that's already out there and just, you know, maybe lightly brand it and, you know, build all the software and everything else around it, you know, and be heavily software leveraged in all ways that we can but not having to do the hardware?
So we started there and we actually realized after probably two months that there isn't a hardware product that's made for subscription so we had to design our own product. And that was this big, you know, conundrum is like, do [laughs] we wanna do this? But it's been an incredibly fun challenge to actually build the hardware and to design that part of the experience as well and to design something that really borrows the best from shared mobility where like all of this technology innovation has happened with this massive fleets and then also from owned bikes.
And so combining that into a package, that sort of looks like an owned vehicle, but actually has all of the tech and all of the benefits from this, you know, shared fleets. And so that's what we're doing. And we ran a pilot for over a year where we had hundreds of people on different bikes in Berlin. We were running like the live service with smaller group of people, about 200 people. And so we learned a ton during that time and we realized that none of the- the bikes that we had bought like were holding up very well and they had all sorts of systematic problems and basic things, you know, that you as a fleet operator would realize pretty quickly.
You know, if we have tens of thousands of vehicles and the kickstand is rattling or breaking very quickly, we have to fix it. Whereas if you sell a bike, you don't have to deal with that problem in the same way that the incentives are just very different. Same thing with theft. If you buy an e-bike, you have to go and then buy a lock for it, and then you're kind of left on your own. Whereas for us, we can engineer a locking solution or several locking solutions.
We can look at tracking, we can look at alarm systems, we can look at sending a notification to a customer parking their bike, you know, in an area where there has been a lot of theft. So we can do a lot of things that you couldn't do if you were just selling individual bikes. But then of course, the thing that people sort of... I did subscription for over 10 years with SoundCloud and people think of subscription as, oh yeah, that's monthly billing.
But it- [laughs] it just goes so deep in terms of what is the product if you're offering a subscription product 'cause it's an ongoing relationship with your customer. There's just so many things that you can do around subscription when it comes to partnerships or bundling or CRM or whatever it is that's just different from selling. Yes. The answer to your question is yes [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: And when you think about go to market, how many cities are you in today and are you at the point where you're starting to have a playbook when you go in to a new city or has it tended to be custom on a city by a city basis given the unique landscape and infrastructure and consumer sentiment and whatever else factors in?
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah. We've been live in Berlin for a couple of months. We have now fairly recently launched four additional cities. So we have Berlin, we're now in Munich, Hamburg in Germany and we're in Vienna and Paris since quite recently. Now we're seeing a ton of traction in Germany overall, super happy with the growth and everything in the adoption. So that's really exciting. Vienna and Paris are super and it's, you know, it's earlier- too early to- to tell really.
Our approach was sort of going to large trend setting sort of metropolitan areas that have critical mass in terms of the behavior already being there and sort of people riding these vehicles and then influential cities. Paris is as arguably the- the most exciting micro mobility market in the world, but it's also a kind of trendsetting city, stylish and sort of interesting in many ways, and so that's been our approach. and then launching not too many cities, but also not too few cities. So somewhere in between just to get a- to have enough sort of to play with and test things, right?
And now it's all about just quick iteration and learning on the marketing branding, PR sort of things and of course, in product as well. Like we're looking a lot at- at- at product enabled growth as well. So yeah, lots of exciting things and learnings. We haven't decided fully yet if we're launching any further cities this year. It's likely we're not gonna do that. So we have these five cities and these are massive markets, right? So the potential is big. But of course in the next years we want Dance to be hundreds of cities, millions of subscribers across the whole world, right? Starting in Europe, but then looking a lot that the US and other markets as well.
Jason Jacobs: And I understand that- that the answer to this question might change over time as you evolved and maybe there might be different answers and different service offerings with different tiers and- and stuff like that. But when you're initially going to market here, who are you building for? What does that customer look like? What are they motivated by? Are they someone that has a scooter or micro mobility already and you're getting them to convert to subscription? Are they someone that maybe isn't ready or wouldn't do it otherwise? How clearly do you have that person visualize and what are their attributes?
Eric Quidenus-W...: To be honest, it's a super good question and it's one that we are kind of obsessing with, but also realizing we don't know the answer to fully yet. We're sort of learning our way into it. I think we've had a wave of early adopters who are I'm not sure are representative of the customer we're kind of really going after. Our marketing and branding, if you look at it, it sort of tries to be appealing. Or if I start somewhere else, when we look [laughs] at kind of the bike space and micro mobility, we saw a lot of brands that are not exciting and that appeal first and foremost to white men, that's really the feeling we had.
And they were really going deep on the sort of performance and sports side of things and all these elements where we feel this is a product for lots of people for broad audience. And we think women could build the largest target group here, and- and depends of course, a little bit on how we also go with the product portfolio, right? But we have cargo capabilities now, we're just rolling out child so it's across all of the cities. So we do have a lot of- of utility thing that are, I think very interesting for like families and- and all kinds of people, right?
But of course, our core audience where we're starting now, it's a premium product so we want sort of the product to feel somewhat aspirational. It's a lifestyle product. We have a bunch of well known people who are investors in the companies who are of course working with them. And we have trend setters, let's say who we're working with. So of course there is that sort of urban professional, 25 to sort of 45 type profile that we are looking at. But I think it's work in progress and we're learning it. So yeah, I don't have the sort of final answer to that really, uh, yet.
Jason Jacobs: Uh-huh [affirmative]. And this next question's also kind of a weird one, but how do you think about impact? Is it something you measure it all? And I have a follow up question, but I'm gonna save that one until maybe you answer this question first.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Well, I think impact is absolutely core to our mission. So we need to have a very good sort of handle on that. And it starts with, I think, transparency and reporting and making sure that we look at our supply chain, we look at our operations and everything else we are doing and, uh, that we're accounting for all of that and then make that publicly available. Um, that's certainly the ambition here and- and of course, once we have all of that data to actually act on it as well.
And we're doing some things already. We're- we have, for example, only electric vehicles right now when we do our delivery. So we have a kind of fully electrified fleet. There are other things we're doing as well in the warehouses and everywhere else. We only use green sources of power. It's early, right? We're a two year old startup and in my view, this has to be done right. So we're actually right now we're hiring a sustainability lead for Dance and we are gonna go deep on all of these things and make sure we have, yeah, some of the kind of reporting criteria there as well.
I mean, in the EU, it's getting stricter. So you're getting more and more, this kind of, you have a mandate where you have to report and you have to provide your environmental impacts, right? And so we wanna do that, you know, we want to take a step further as well. We've been looking at- at other things as well. Like I don't want to kind of announce anything publicly, but that's of course, i- it's core to our mission, right? We're a circular economy company, we're an impact company and so we want to do it well. I looked at it as well. I looked at building something in sort of transparency around carbon in particular and I ended up investing as well in a company that's doing carbon accounting. So I know how challenging it is to- to kind of do it well and do it in a scalable way and I wanna do it right.
Jason Jacobs: One question I have is that if you were a profit seeking mercenary who was not climate motivated, but you smelled opportunity and you saw the way that cities were evolving in those three trends that you mentioned, and you came here to go build a big monster financial company and that's it, would you be doing it any differently than you are now? And- and if so, how? Or- or I guess said differently, how are you doing things di- differently building Dance given that you are so impact motivated?
Eric Quidenus-W...: I mean, it- it is a really interesting question, right? We are trying to evolve from capitalism into something more like stakeholder capitalism and looking at planetary boundaries and these things and trying to incorporate this ki- kind of negative externalities into the whole economy kind of at large, right? And I think ultimately how that happens is through more strictly kind of regulating things, and maybe even on a global level things like, you know, global carbon tax and- and other things I think would be very effective to drive this change. And unfortunately, I think it will have to be enforced.
But there is also this sort of ground swell and there has to be a- a grassroots kind of movement towards making it happen. And so even if that's kind of the end game, it has to start somewhere. And I do think that people like myself need to take more responsibility quite frankly, and just sort of take the matter in their own hands because the realities, I mean, even the EU level where you do have this criteria where you have to report, there's no real deep specification on what exactly do you have to report on and like what's the standard and- and then do you have to do something about it?
There's just, you know, we just have a simple starting point that says you have to report it so at some point. But it's incredibly vague in terms of what is then the criteria. So we are not far on that journey, but we are in a kind of transition phase, and that's very exciting to be part of that. And I think, yes, we are doing things differently obviously. we wouldn't be obsessing about things like, you know, sustainability reporting and transparency and doing that right If we didn't have to if we weren't motivated by the mission that we're on to do it.
There are corners that you can cut the supply chain as well, why optimize that? Why look at that right, if you wouldn't have to? So there's a lot of ways in which this business could be built differently, I think. But I mean, it's- it's a really good question. The fact that there is no one coming from the outside and actually poking at things more than from a purity financial perspective with auditors, there is no environmental auditor coming and knocking on our door yet. We don't have to do things. So it- it's actually has to come from us. And so there are a bunch of stuff that are optional. And that has to probably change over time. I don't think there's really a way around it. We only have this one planet
Jason Jacobs: And a- a related question. I'm not going to get these words right because I'm just not an expert on this area. But I've heard that, for example, big oil majors, if they get mandated to clean up their act, what they might do is they might take dirty assets and get them off their books. And they didn't actually get them to stop doing harm, they just passed the buck and made it someone else's responsibility where they can report nice and squeaky clean, right?
But that- but actually all the damage is still getting done. And I wanna bring that back around when I think about the subscription model and I think about the upgrades. And as a consumer, it's like I'm psyched to always have the latest and greatest, but what happens to all those bikes and scooters once they're outside of the Dance fleet? And whose responsibility is it to make sure that it's circular or that the waste, the energy that wanted to make them et cetera, is accounted for?
Eric Quidenus-W...: In large part, that responsibility again comes back to us. There's no one telling us that you have to be a circular company and you have to do these things. This is sort of on our own initiative. And I think we can only, best thing we can do is try to lead the way and try to set certain precedents. We are at the early stages. We are working right now with a number of like second life battery partners, and that's one of the things that we absolutely have to get right.
Um, ultimately I think every part of the bike should be recycled, right? And be- be upcycled or be reused in one way or another. And I mean, in the meantime, there are a bunch of good companies that are doing these things. 10 years ago, you know, Apple wasn't really talking about these things much and- and today they really do. And the trend is sort of going in the right direction. More and more and more companies are- are doing the right thing. But ultimately, I- I actually, I'm a believer in- in regulation. I think there needs to be more, you know, in some cases more forceful dealing with- with- with the topic, yeah.
Jason Jacobs: I mean, this is confirmatory for me, as we're talking, just one of the filters that we look for. When we back companies, it's not only that what they're doing is putting climate at the center, but that it's one of the driving motivators for the founding team. I think that part of that is because like you said, we're kind of in a stage where if you truly want to do the right thing in this regard it does in many ways need to come from within. And maybe that won't always be the case, but today in large part, it is. It's good to sort through this here and I think it's gonna be helpful to a lot of other people who are- who are in your shoes who are trying to figure it out, which is pretty representative of the MCJ community to be honest.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah. It's been positive to see that there's more and more capital shifting towards this sort of topics. And the theory, of course, with those oil companies that at some point the cost of capital for them starts to go up. And I think that's- that's the hope and so it's gonna take a long time. And the prospects are not great, you know, as we both know.
It's sort of... it's a really tough challenge and we're not making the kind of enough progress on this, and a lot of it is rooted in this like systemic issues where you don't have the enforcement, you don't have the incentive, you don't have the right carrot and- and sticks in place to be honest, to make the change happen faster. I mean, if you look at something like Norway where there's like massive adoption of electric cars, the reason is taxation, right? So in some cases, the answer is quite- is quite simple, I think. But of course, yeah, it's complex- complex conversation.
Jason Jacobs: Well, this seems like a good time for the magic wand question. If you could change one thing that's outside of the scope of your control and outside of the scope of Dance's control that would most accelerate your progress to fulfill this vision of more livable cities, what would you change and how would you change it?
Eric Quidenus-W...: [Laughs]. That's a good question. I mean, I think the carbon tax, the global carbon tax thing is one of the most powerful ideas, I guess, that I've seen because I think it would just be, or cap and trade scheme, whatever you wanna call it. Like take the European ETS and scale it to the whole world, just make that work. Like I think this would be amazing, but of course, as we know, not really realistic. The other thing, you know, waving a magic wand would of course be create more on hidalgos, the mayor of Paris. How did she in such a short period of time change a city like Paris, which is, you know, incredible sort of old city with all this kind of precedence? How did she turn that around so quickly? That's just incredible and-
Jason Jacobs: Sounds like I need to get her on the show.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah [laughs].
Jason Jacobs: [Laughs].
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah. Maybe you should.
Jason Jacobs: Yeah. And the message is, "Hey, come on the show." And then for any other mayor of other cities who haven't followed down this path, but aspire to, I don't speak to general, everybody speak to them.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah.
Jason Jacobs: We'll give you a platform. So anyways, that's my pitch.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Totally. No. And I know that, you know, she's loved and hated in the city, of course, but the fact that she has done this is incredible.
Jason Jacobs: And for anyone listening that's inspired by the Dance mission, who do you want to hear from, how can we be helpful to you? Like are there certain cities where you want to hear from customers who want to try out the service? Or I know you're doing a bunch of hiring, are there any specific roles that you wanna call out? How can we be helpful?
Eric Quidenus-W...: We're doing a ton of hiring. I mean, I would probably just go to dance.co/jobs and look if there's anything that's, uh, exciting to you. And if you think we should be in your city, I mean, send me a note. We are looking at a ton of different cities and evaluating them against a lot of criterias. But we're excited to expand our footprint of course.
Jason Jacobs: Eric, anything I didn't ask that I should have or any parting words?
Eric Quidenus-W...: I think we covered everything. It's been super, super nice talking with you.
Jason Jacobs: You too. Oh, I love your approach, I love how thoughtful you are and I love the Dance mission. And track record speaks for itself in terms of what you've been able to get done in a short period of time. And you know, we at MJC Collective are just so proud to be in business with you and I'm proud to call you a friend. So thanks for coming on the show and I can't wait to see what you go and build here.
Eric Quidenus-W...: Yeah, no, we're super happy to have you on board as well. It's uh, really fun.
Jason Jacobs: Hey everyone, Jason here. Thanks again for joining me on My Climate Journey. If you'd like to learn more about the journey, you can visit us at myclimatejourney.co. Note that is .co, not .com. Someday we'll get the .com, but right now .co. You can also find me on Twitter at Jjacobs22 where I would encourage you to share your feedback on the episode or suggestions for future guests you'd like to hear. And before I let you go, if you enjoyed the show, please share an episode with a friend or consider leaving a review on iTunes. The lawyers made me say that. Thank you.
