GLIDING INTO THE FUTURE— BY PLAYING WELL WITH OTHERS

E-scooter wars have been raging from Atlanta to Nashville to Salt Lake City, ever since Bird, Lime, and Spin released their fleets onto the sidewalks of San Francisco last March— unannounced. That got noticed. And led to some light chaos that ticked off local authorities.

So meet Skip, the San Francisco e-scooter startup that seeks to revolutionize personal transit by trying something new and daring: following the rules. Skip’s approach— move deliberately and ask for permission—is working. The company was one of two startups to earn a one-year operating permit from the city of San Francisco in August. In other cities, like Washington, D.C., and Portland, Oregon, it’s operating fleets of several hundred scooters in conjunction with city boards. “We said, from the start, we would resist the temptation to just go ahead and launch—though there are a lot of good reasons to do so from a business perspective,” says co-founder and CEO Sanjay Dastoor. Like those of its many competitors, Skip’s scooters are dockless, so they’re often left clogging the sidewalks— but soon the company will roll out handlebars with retractable cable locks, allowing the scooters to be fastened to poles or bike racks. “You don’t want to design a service that makes most people angry and they just eventually accept,” Dastoor says. “Your business is stronger in the long run if you’ve got broad support.”