Tier and Dott are two of the largest European providers of scooter- and bike-sharing solutions.
After a merger, the scooter start-ups plan to offer a combined service under the Dott brand. Subject to regulatory approvals, the two startups said they plan to form a single merged company in January 2024.
This wasn’t a merger to create a conglomerate of micromobility services; this was a scale-driven merger. The micromobility space is ruthlessly competitive with razor-thin margins. Scale helps improve unit economics and grow the fleet of available vehicles to better compete against its main competitor, Lime.
Due to the coming together of the two organizations, “we have been working towards operating as one company, under one technology stack and a coherent set of operations practices in all markets, instead of two,” said Dott CEO Henri Moissinac. 
The company is integrating all operations onto a single app for the consumer and into one unified fleet of vehicles. Users at every level will be migrated progressively onto the Dott app, which will happen on a city-by-city basis. This should all be finished by March 2025.
“In the cities where Tier is operational and Dott is not, users need to download the new app,” he says. Features are just a few clicks away in the newest version of the Tier app. “If that’s the case, you will have to download and re-register,” Moissinac said.
Tier e-bikes and scooters are here to stay. The Tier logos will be refreshed and covered using the Dott stickers. You may have noticed that in some cities, you have had the availability of both Tier and Dott services.
“There are huge challenges in bringing the two fleets onto one common technology stack and reengineering our standard operating practices … Moissinac said, “We’ve found things that were done really well in one place, things done really commendably in another and our task is to bring those together.”
The new combined Dott fleet spans across 427 cities in Europe and the Middle East, with very limited overlap since Dott and Tier were competing in only 17 cities. This adds up to about 250,000 electric bikes and scooters in all.
Combined, Dott and Tier have seen over 10 million unique riders take more than 100 million trips on their mobility solutions in the last year alone. The average user takes a trip 10 times; this can vary between very frequent users and people who have used the service once. This, according to the company, is one of the most key metrics going forward.
Our approach is heavily community-engaged. We offer a local service to the community, frequent riders. And according to Moissinac, this is the metric on which one should focus: the monthly ride count per active rider.
That means rides are growing faster than revenue, as passes-which Dott actively promotes-mean heavier recurring use of the service. For instance, you can have a €4.99 Paris Pass, which means you will pay just €1.75 per ride for the next 30 days.
Dott and Tier announced their merger in conjunction with a big fundraise, pulling in €60 million, or about $67 million at today’s exchange rates. There’s no funding round attached to today’s news. “We take cash with no issues,” said Moissinac.
“While we are not in need of additional funds, there are opportunities we could capitalise on with a modest increase in investment.” I am not sure whether to pursue this now or to leave it until later. In any case, for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere, winter is the appropriate time to take a step back and reflect on where to put your energy in the coming year,” he added.
