We've seen plenty of wildly unprofitable companies make it far past Series C. Lyft is on its 19th round and lost a billion on two billion dollars revenue in 2018.

yes, but the unit economics probably pencil out, meaning the direct costs of providing the service (distribution, charging, maintenance, and support) are paid for by the revenue. that’s unit profitability.

but they’re probably losing money in capital costs and overhead (marketing and the like), so overall unprofitable.

lyft was (is) principally both a hedge against uber and a way for VCs that didn’t get into uber (ever or early enough) to make a bet in the space (the top 2-3 companies in a new market usually survive to a decent exit), so profitability wasn’t an important metric for funding (but the probability of surviving to exit very much was).

At least you had to build a two-sided network. Without the driver, there literally is no barrier to entry, which is funny when you think about all the future rideshare "profitability" once you have self-driving cars...

On sale for US$410 retail right now, including shipping to EU (possibly from EU warehouse) if you choose the Fast-08 warehouse:

https://www.gearbest.com/skateboard/pp_596618.html

Don't use Gearbest. They're incredibly shady, and have terrible customer service. I've never had the issues that I had with gearbest with a vender on Aliexpress. Also Xiaomi even has a store on ali.