Ashton Kutcher thinks electric scooter regulatory issues are ‘absurd’

Brian
Ach/Getty

• Electric scooter companies like Lime, Bird, and Spin
  faced regulatory issues after introducing their pay-as-you-go
  scooter services to the streets of San Francisco earlier this
  year. 
• Ashton Kutcher, who invested in Bird through his
  venture firm Sound Ventures, says that the regulatory issues
  facing the electric scooter companies is ‘absurd.’
• During an onstage conversation at TechCrunch Disrupt,
  Kutcher described these issues as “an aversion to
  change.”

SAN FRANCISCO, CA — The first on-demand startups
tended to follow a strategy of asking forgiveness,
rather than permission, when it came to entertin new
markets. 

As an early investor in both Uber and Airbnb,
actor-turned-venture capitalist Ashton Kutcher is familiar with
this particular playbook. Now, Bird — a red-hot scooter
startup in which Kutcher’s Sound Ventures is an investor — is
facing problems of its own. In the wake of a backlash from the
residents of San Francisco, Bird and other startups have been
barred from operating in the city; only rivals
Skip and Scoot were granted the permits necessary to return.

Kutcher, for one, thinks that people who take issue with the
scooters. During an onstage chat at TechCrunch Disrupt in San
Francisco, Kutcher described the steep regulation facing Bird as
“absurd.” 

“Fundamentally…the Uber thing was very frustrating the whole
way through,” said Kutcher. “The Airbnb
thing— regulatory-wise — has
been incredibly frustrating. To me, [the scooter issue] is the
simplest of them all.”Ashton Kutcher’s venture
firm, Sound Ventures, has invested in Bird.Facebook/Bird

He continued: “Nobody wakes up in the morning, opens their front
door, looks outside and says, ‘God look how many cars there are
parked everywhere. They’re f–king parked everywhere! … It’s
ridiculous! And they’re clogging up the roads…’ But boy, we
open up the door and go, ‘Man! There are just scooters all over
the place. And it’s like hold on…wait a second. This is just
aversion to change.'”

“If you think about it  from a pure square footage
perspective — how much space a scooter
takes up relative to a car, this is absurd, right? And fine, I
understand, maybe we need to find appropriate parking places for
these and everything else, but the regulatory function on this
[is] just something you’re not used to. It’s just a better world
if this takes off and works.”

Bird, the fledgling Santa Monica-based electric scooter startup,
has taken in a whopping $415 million since it was founded less
than one year ago.

Earlier this year, competing electric scooter startups Bird,
Spin, and Lime introduced their dockless scooters on the
sidewalks of San Francisco.  While many praised the new form
of transportation for its ease and efficiency, others took issue
with the number of scooters littering the city’s sidewalks.

Regulation was swift:
In April, San Francisco’s city attorney issued a
cease-and-desist order, effectively shutting down the companies’
free range use of the city’s sidewalks. Currently, the
startups are embattled in a long-running permitting issue with
San Francisco’s Municipal Transportation Agency, with Skip
and Scoot being granted the permits necessary to return starting
in October.