Photo of abandoned Birds shows the electric scooter backlash has begun

Bird
scooters.

Facebook/Bird

• Electric scooter startups are raising billions of
  dollars in capital, but the backlash might be
  beginning.
• A Santa Monica resident posted a startling image on
  Twitter comparing scores of abandoned Bird electric scooters to
  the Hitchcock film “The Birds.”
• Electric scooter startups have run into trouble with
  city officials around the US for dumping their wares into new
  locations without asking.

Silicon Valley’s venture capitalists might be pouring billions
into electric scooter startups, but firms like Bird, Lime, and
Spin are already facing a backlash from residents.

This was highlighted by a light-hearted tweet from Madeline
Eskind, a product manager at Twitter. She posted an image of
scores of abandoned Bird scooters in the startup’s home city of
Santa Monica, with the caption: “The 2018 remake of Alfred
Hitchcock’s ‘The Birds.'”

The plot of “The Birds” revolves around a huge number of birds
going berserk and attacking a town and its residents.

Though intended as a joke, the photo highlights issues of
electric scooter oversupply.

The electric scooter startup model involves dropping hundreds of
dockless scooters into a city and then hoping people will use
them.

Despite the startups themselves racking up huge valuations, that
approach hasn’t always been successful, or to residents’ taste.

Bird pulled out of Louisville, Kentucky a day after launching
because it put scooters
into the city without asking officials. Similarly, Nashville
wrote a cease-and-desist because Bird users were simply
abandoning scooters by the sidewalks. And San Francisco was

forced to issue permits to a handful of scooter companies to
clampdown on the spiralling numbers of scooters clogging up the
city streets.