On May 16, 2017, at 12:27 PM I received an email from Aydogan Ali Schosswald, who wrote: "hey Horace, i know this comes out of the blue, but i'd like to invite you to host your own summit at Techfestival. it's a progressive non-profit with 15,000+ participants in copenhagen in september. no hype, just real talk. 100+ thought leaders produce independent summits, meetups, and installations on a wide range of themes."

My reply was “I’m interested.”

I was offered a room with a stage in the Meatpacking district of Copenhagen. Aydogan asked me what to put on the bill. I decided to call the event “The Micromobility Summit”.

The program was published a few weeks later:

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This event took place almost exactly 5 years ago.  We had about 30 people present. I like to think that half of them started a business within a few months.

In the aftermath, a fully-fledged, standalone Micromobility Conference was launched. We were at the fifth Micromobility Conference in California during the anniversary month but did not mark the occasion because we were too busy building the community, now in the thousands, that is building the future.

But now we have some time to remember this anniversary. Five years. Seems either a long time or a short time. A tumultuous time. A global pandemic unseen for a century. A hot war in Europe, also unseen for almost a century. Interesting times indeed, but a glorious time nonetheless.

A time when micromobility continued its ascent.

We saw the rise and fall and rise again of shared (e)bikes. We saw the rise and fall (and persistence) of shared scooters. We saw the introduction of new 1-wheeler, 2-wheeler, 3-wheeler, 4-wheeler, and yes even 6-wheeler vehicles with more form factors than I can remember. We saw delivery, trailers, self-driving, containers, DTC, insurance, communications, theft prevention. We saw business models on top: aggregation, data, sensing and wearables. We saw tons of research, reports, and data sets. We saw micromobility competitions and sport emerge. We saw capital flow, and we saw cities act, react, and do nothing. We saw auto makers and tier-one suppliers enter, and some even exit. We saw environmental studies and narratives emerge pointing out the obvious decarbonization opportunity. A recent survey I did showed at least 7,500 vehicles from 1600 companies on the market today.

Our events are a proof point: we continue to see more amazing vehicles and business ideas launched. We fill our venues and stretch to multiple days. We see searches from consumers booming (see ridereview.com). We see videos on YouTube reaching millions. We have more listeners to our podcast and more citations among decision makers.

As you should expect, market data is hard to come by but anecdotes abound. But some samples: 800 million shared bike rides this year in Beijing alone. 1 billion micromobility users world-wide. eBike and scooter sales growing at triple digits, outselling eCars by 10x. A culture of micromobility is emerging in influential urban centers such as Paris, New York, and Los Angeles. Micromobility is visible on most streets now without the help of advertising. And yet micromobility is still below what might be considered 2% of its potential. In terms of trips taken and miles substituted from other modes.

We are still in the early adopter stage of the idea. Our users are leaders and we are not yet in the early majority. My advice is to focus on the next adopter not on the laggard. Know that this idea has a sequential spread: one stage induces the next. It requires behavioral change and that is rooted in imitation rather than calculation.

So, now with five years behind us, what should be defining characteristic of the movement? How do we measure success? From the beginning I said to watch the language: if the word itself is in use it means the idea has legs. And as the word became more popular the definition began to wander. The idea escaped its definition. Many definitions have appeared, indicative of its slippery nature:

- vehicles weighing less than 500kg

- a specific set of vehicles (which, exactly, set seems to be a moving target.)

- vehicles defined by a set of speed/dimension/power limits (I strenuously oppose this)

- things that lean into, rather than out of, turns

- things you ride (rather than things you drive)

And my current favorite:

- personal mobility that is not a car

In retrospect, micromobility is an obvious idea. “Personal transport that is not cars” existed before the word "micromobility" was coined. But what the word does is concentrate a multitude of ideas into a coherent singular concept. It helps build a theory, unites a community and coordinates efforts. It illuminates what is otherwise invisible. The thesis of the event was the unbundling of the car, but the converse is just as surprising: the bundling of multiple modes into the appearance of a single. That’s the asymmetric nature of micromobility. E pluribus unum.

So for me, the greatest measure of success is that the idea has gained many parents. That it has many definitions and that it’s pulled in many directions. This is the idea; that Micromobility is negative space: you see it only by unseeing something else.

So micromobility was not invented, it was discovered and its discovery still awaits many who have yet to see it. But once you see it you can’t unsee it.