Wheels Raises $37M in Funding

wheelsWheels, a Los Angeles, CA-based dockless electric mobility and transportation company, raised $37m in funding.

Backers included Tenaya Capital, Bullpen Capital, Crosscut Capital, 3L Capital, Naval Ravikant, and a collection of strategic investors from the entertainment and sports communities.

Co-founded by brothers Jonathan Viner and Joshua Viner, Wheels is a last-mile, shared electric mobility platform, which is introducing a cost-efficient maintenance and operations model for the dockless electric vehicle economy.
This includes:
1) modular manufacturing methods which result in swappable parts and batteries and in real-time dynamic maintenance, and
2) relocation to a location where Wheels handles upkeep and battery swaps based on real-time monitoring services.

The company plans to increase rapidly across Southern California and nationwide and is working closely with city officials as it rolls out.
Wheels is also adding former Bird, Uber and Lyft executives to its management team. The newest members include:
– Ben Shaken, who is joining as Chief Product Officer from Lyft where he was Director of Product,
– Marco McCottry who is joining as Chief Operating Officer. Previously, McCottry served as an executive at Uber where he ran the Midwest business, and most recently led North American Operations for Bird.

Prior to Wheels, Viner’s brothers founded the dog walking app Wag with the mission of creating a safe platform to get dog walked. They scaled to over 100 cities, raising almost $400m in funding.

FinSMEs

23/01/2019

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