There are now six brands of rental e-scooters cruising the sidewalks and streets ofDetroit, up from none four years ago.
All but one are stand-up scooters. For the casual rider, thosebrandsare more or less interchangeable, aside fromdifferingcolor schemes, logos and smartphone apps to download and constantly update.
The other company, Boaz Bikes, is unique in its design as well as itsfounder's backstory.Most noticeably, it'sthe only e-scooter in the city with a seat for ridersanda basketfor carryingthings. The company says itssit-down scooters aresafer than regular scooters and accessible to more potential riders.
Boaz also is one of the fewBlack-owned e-scooter companiesin the country, andone of only two that are headquarteredin Detroit and not the West or East Coast. The other Detroit company, C-Max Scooters,has just 20 of its stand-up scooters deployed in downtownbut hopes to doublethat number soon.
Boazfounder and CEO Emil Nnani, 32, who grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, has had one of the mostunique journeys to becoming an e-scooter companyfounder.
He is aformer Bloods gang member who, after serving stints in juvenile jail for robbery,found Christandbecame aChristian hip-hop artistknown asE-Fetti.
Prior to starting Boaz, Nnani hada Christian apparel business that he eventuallysoldand anerrands-on-demandstartup based in Dallas, where he resides with his wife andfamily when not in Detroit.
Since COVID-19 hit,Detroit has been the only citywhere Boaz's fleet of 400scooters operates.However,the company plans to deployinLos Angeles later this fall, thenexpand to other cities next year if and when it can obtainmore investment.
Last year, Boaz pulled out of Plano, Texas, as well asAtlanta, whichdeclared all e-scooters nonessential businesses early on in the pandemic.The company thendoubled-down on Detroitafter theinitialwave of COVID-19 subsided.
"In Detroit, we were considered an essential business," Nnani said."People needed to get around."
Nnani'sidea forBoaz came after witnessing a nasty e-scooter crash in Dallas in 2018that involveda young person,and a sidewalk. He recalls seeingblood everywhere and the injured rider leaving by ambulance.
"I wasthinking, man, how unsafe these scooters were andfor this person, life was going to be different," Nnani said.“I got to researching and I saw articles everywhere about accidents on Bird and Lime scooters. I was like, OK, I can create something safer."
Boaz is a biblical reference and the result of brainstorming for the perfect four-letter name for a new mobility startup.
"You’ve got the Ubers, the Lyfts,the Birds and Limes—everybody has a four-letter word," he said. "And me being a believer, Boaz is a biblical character. Hewas married to a lady named Ruth, and he was strong andhe was wealthy. And so I said, 'I'm running withBoaz.' ”
Yet Boaz the e-scooter companyisstill very much an underdogcompared to the bignationwide e-scooter companies such as Bird andLimeandFord-owned Spin.
Bird and Limehave raised hundreds of millions inventure capital, which gave them the ability to quickly deploy indozens of cities nationwideand internationally. Theycontinue to burnthrough great volumes of cash byfocusingon growth— not profitability.
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That approach was never an option for Boaz.Nnani recalled how after heco-designed and built an early Boaz sit-down scooter and app prototypein late 2018 with China-based partners he knew from his earlier business ventures, he made a visit to San Francisco in hopes of meeting venture capitalists and getting investment.
But lacking Silicon Valley connections, hemetan indifferentreception.
"It’s really just a relationship model and it’s all about who you know," Nnani said."If you’re not in that network, if you didn’t go to that school, if you don’t know the connections from the people who graduated from that school—I was completely out of that circle."
Growing desperate,he at one point tried posing as an UberEats deliveryman in an attempt to sneak pastbuilding securityand deliver his Boaz pitch to a venture capitalist. The ploy nearly worked, he said, until he was stymied by a keycard reader in the elevatorto the venture capitalist's office.
Nnani returned home from that trip empty-handed.
"We would probably be in, I don’t know, 50 cities by now if we’d had that VC backing," he said.
He later managed to raise about $350,000 from friends, family and acquaintances, which was enough to order from China hisfirst batch of 500 Boaz scootersin 2019. He soon deployed those scooters in three cities: Detroit, Atlanta and Plano, Texas.
Until that time,Nnani had never before visited Detroit. He launched in the Motor City at the suggestion of an early Boaz investor,Travis Wilder, who lives in metro Detroit and owns the Christian apparel lines God Got Me and Spiritual Sports Socks.
Wilder had been following Nnani on social media and watchingthe growth ofNnani's earlier apparel company,Christ Lyke Clothing.
"He had a Christian clothing line, and I also have a Christian clothing line. So I was really intrigued by him and we both shared similar views on our religious background," Wilder said.
Wilder wasn't surprised to learn aboutNnani's struggles to get the attention of venture capitalists.
"A lot of times in life it’s not what you know, it’s who you know," Wilder said."So if you don’t have some of those relationships, it can be tough to get VCs to even look your way."
Nnani twice applied to the popular ABC TV show "Shark Tank" for a shot at gaining investment.His2020 pitch was initially accepted, he said,but ultimately turned down because of the show's rules concerning pastcriminal convictions.
A representative for "Shark Tank" didn't respond to a Free Press message seeking comment.
Pandemic pullout
Boaz was operating in its initial three cities, with plans to expand into Dallas, when the pandemic hit in March 2020.
"So we halted everything and pulled out of all cities," Nnani said. "For a few months we’re just sitting there, and I'mthinking what to do next and what’s the pivot.And that’s when I decided to double-down on Detroit."
Boazscooters reappeared on Detroit streets in June 2020, this time in greater numbers, and ridership grew.
A Boaz ride costs $1 to start, then33 centsper minute. Surveys showedthat about 80% of Boazrides are taken for fun, with about 15% for transportation to work.
In an interview last week inside the the Boaz storage and repair garage in the Russell Industrial Center,Nnani declared that the company is now doing more business in Detroit than all of the other e-scooter brands here.
Asked how he was so certain,Nnani laughed and said he's not at liberty to reveal his sources.
“Let’s say it’s an assumption, because we don’t know what Lime is doing," he said."But we know we are beating Bird and Spin."
Representatives for Spin and Lime wouldn'tcomment about the Boazclaim and Bird didn'trespond.
To grow its scooter fleet, Boaz launched a crowdfunding campaign in late 2020 that raised about $1.2 million from 4,000 investors. The company also raised an additional $700,000 from general investors, he said, and itslatest valuation was $35 million.
No blitzscalingfor Boaz
E-scooter leaders Bird and Lime burned throughpiles of investors' cashpursing an expand-at-all-costs business strategy, known in Silicon Valley as"blitzscaling." To date, Bird has yet to become profitable and Lime has reported only one quarter that it wasn'tin the red.
Boaz,by comparison, never had the option of running massive losses for the sake of fast expansion.
Nnani said the company's operations are currently profitable. One reason is Boaz'smonthly scooter loss rate, which at about2%, is below the industry's common 5%-10% rate, he said. He credited the lower rate to the durability of the sit-down scooter design and his staff's close attention to the health of the Boazfleet.
“We still have some vehicles from 2019," he said.“We are so small, we have no choice but to look at everything — we can’t afford to lose a vehicle.”
Nnani said Boaz saves money by using an in-house staff of about nine people to do scooter retrievals, battery chargingsand repairs. Othercompaniessuch as Bird hiregig workers to be "fleet managers," whichNnani said can getcostly because of the significant revenue splitting.
“It’s a horrible model,but it works for them because they don’t care about making money, they care about expanding and growing," he said.
Investors have recently been warming toBoaz, and Nnani said the company is looking to try again with venture capitalists through a Series A financing round in the coming months to likely raise between $10 million to$20 millionto build about 10,000 more scooters and expand beyond just Detroit and Los Angeles.
"We will start talks here in November and December, and kick the round open in January and we hope it closes within 30 days of opening the round," he said.
Scooters going SPAC
The L.A. scooter deployment, setfor later this fall, is being financed from Boaz's crowdfunding. Those who participated in the crowdfund can see future paydaysunder several possible scenarios, he said, such asa Series B round thatbuys out earlier investors, an acquisition of Boazor if the company goes public.
Bird is preparing to go public on the New York Stock Exchange through a blank-check company, known as a SPAC, at a possible $2 billion-plus valuation.Lime also sought to gopublic through a SPAC, according to news reports, but encountered difficulties and thatplan stalled.
In the nearer future, Boaz plans to debut its first stand-up scooter, which has three wheels and a deck similar to awide skateboard.Nnani insisted the devicesare safer than conventional stand-up scooters and that the first 25 will be deployed later this year around Wayne State University.
Further out, Boaz could introduce a scooterwith two seats for which it recently filed apatent.
Detroit scooters
The six rental e-scooter companies in Detroit, listed by order and year of arrival:
1. Bird (2018)
2. Lime (2018)
3. Spin (2018)
4. Boaz (2019)
5. C-Max (2020)
6. Link (2021)
ContactJC Reindl at313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jcreindl. Read more on business and sign up for our business newsletter.