A val-U-turn... Lime is the world's largest e-scooter sharing company. But as major cities like LA and Paris turn into ghost towns, familiar Lime scooters disappeared from (nearly empty) streets. Riders are self-quarantining — that means no scooting to your morning latte. Now Lime is reportedly raising emergency funds at a valuation of $400M — that's 80% less than its 2019 valuation of $2.4B.
- Lime shut down its scooter rental in almost 24 countries and 100 cities (aka basically all its locations), even though officials in cities like SF consider them "essential services."
- Despite raising over $700M in venture capital funding, Lime only has $50M-$70M of cash left — and that's only expected to last a few more months.
And there's not much more saving it can do... Lime already sadly laid off 100 employees (or 17% of its staff), and plans to continue cutting. So now it has to raise more funds, but at a wayyy lower valuation than when it fundraised in 2019. FYI, Lime had been one of the fastest companies ever to evolve into a unicorn, hitting a $1B valuation a year-and-a-half after launching.
Private companies have stocks too... You just don't see them. Unlike public-traded companies — whose stocks constantly gain/lose value as their prices move up/down — private companies' value only changes with funding rounds (when investors offer to buy new shares). Lime is a reminder that private valuations can drop fast too, like stocks... even if you don't see the ride down.