Technology

How can Lime differentiate its scooters and bikes from the piles of Birds and Spins filling Los Angeles sidewalks Apparently with a physical storefront where it can convince customers of the wonders of on-demand mobility. According to a job listing from Lime seeking a &Retail Store Manager,& the startup plans to open a &lifestyle brand store in Santa Monica&.

[Update: Following the publication of this article, Lime responded to our inquiry, telling TechCrunch &In the coming year, Lime will be opening brick - mortar storefronts in major US and international markets, starting with Santa Monica, California. Locations will place heavy importance on community engagement, rider education, and brand experience.&]

Lime will rent vehicles directly from the store as well as charge them, with the full-time managerrole including &monitoring inventory levels& as well as daily operations, and employee recruiting. They&ll also be throwing live events to build Limehype. Given the company is calling this a lifestyle store, the focus will likely be on showing how Limescooters and bikes can become part of peoplelives and enhance their happiness, rather than on maximizing rental volume.

A rendering of Limenew office itbuilding in San Francisco. The design could hint at what Lime wants to do with its retail store branding.

TechCrunch has confirmed Limeplans for the store, and that the deal to build it came through Limeinvestor Fifth Wall Ventures that arranges partnerships between tech companies and real estate developers. As for what will happen at the store, Fifth WallAdam Demuyakor tells me &There will be deployment of scooters, charging of scooters, and some sales of apparel and accessories that are related. There will be demos, tutorials, and presentations on how to be safe.& Growing Limetraction is critical to Fifth Wall, which led the startup$70 million Series B extension in February, and joined its $335 million Series C in July.

The big motive here is for Lime to repair relationships with the local community. Demuyakor tells me &when e-mobility companies appeared, some people really loved it, but some people said ‘you dropped a bunch of scooters on my sidewalk'& in what he called a &really irresponsible manner&. But with a physical store front, Lime will have human faces to push its side of the story. &Lime would have an opportunity to control the narrative, engage with the local community, and invest in Santa Monica.They can make it clear that they care about the constituency there . . . Educate them on the benefits, educate them on safety, and provide helmets.& That could counter the idea that scooters just get in the way and are an urban eye sore. &The narrative took on legs of its own& Demuyakor explains.

Fifth Wall worked on the Lime retail store deal with one of its core LPs, Macerich, the third-largest owner of shopping malls in the US. Lime will become the exclusive distributor of scooters at the Macerich-owned open-air mall Santa Monica place. The idea is that by linking up with Macerich, Lime will be able to deploy and charge scooters &where people are coming and going from the mall& Fifth Wall co-founder and managing partner Brendan Wallace tells TechCrunch. He explains that scooter companies have thought about expansion too purely from the standpoint of acheiving market saturation. &You have to partner with local organizations both public and private, and real estate organizations because real estate developers are typically the most politically influential.&]

The listing was first spotted by Nathan Pope, a transportation researcher for consultancy Steer, and later by CheddarAlex Heath. We&ve reached out to Lime and will update if we hear back from the company. Glassdoor shows that the store manager job was posted more than 30 days ago, and the site estimates the potential salary at $41,000 to $74,000.

The sheer number of Lime scooters in Santa Monica where the store will arise is already staggering. Supply doesn&t seem to be bottlenecking as it is in some other cities. Instead, itthe fierce competition from hometown startups like local favorite Bird that Lime wants to overcome through brick-and-mortar marketing. Often you&ll see scooters from Lime and Bird lined up right next to each other. And with similarly cheap pricing, the decision of which to use comes down to brand affinity. According to Apptopia, Birdmonthly U.S. downloads surpassed Limein July for the first time ever, despite Lime offering bikes as well as scooters.

There are plenty of people who still have never tried an on-demand electric scooter, and going through the process of renting, unlocking and riding them might be daunting to some. If employees at a physical store can teach people that itnot too difficult to jump aboard, Lime could become their default scooter. This, of course, comes with risks too, as electric scooters can be dangerous to the novice or uncoordinated. More aggressive in-person marketing might pull in users who were apprehensive about scooting for the right reason — concerns about safety. And therealso the issue of overhead costs. Beyond charging and repair facilities near its major markets, brick-and-mortar stores could crank up the burn rate on Lime$467 million in funding.

As cities figure out how to best regulate scooters, I hope we see a focus on uptime, aka how often the scooters actually function properly. Itcommon in LA to rent a scooter, then discover the handlebar is loose or the acceleration is sluggish, end the ride and rent another scooter from the same brand or a competitor in hopes of getting one that works right. I ditched several Lime scooters like this while in LA last week.

Regulators should inquire about what percentage of scooter company fleets are broken and what percentage of rides end within 90 seconds of starting, which is typically due to a malfunctioning vehicle. Cities could then award permits to companies that keep their fleets running, rather than that litter the streets with massive paper weights, or worse, vehicles that could crash and hurt people. Scooters are fun, cheap and therefore accessible to more people than Ubers, and reduce traffic. But unless startups like Lime put a bigger focus on helmets and cautious riding behavior, we could trade congestion on the roads for congestion in the emergency room. Hopefully the retail store will drive closer ties between Lime and city governments to prioritize safety.

This article has been updated to include Limestatement as well as comments from Fifth Wall Ventures.

Brendan Iribe, the co-founder and former CEO of Oculus, announced today that he is leaving Facebook, TechCrunch has learned.

Iribe is leaving Facebook following some internal shake-ups in the companyvirtual reality arm last week that saw the cancellation of the companynext generation &Rift 2& PC-powered virtual reality headset, which he had been leading development of, a source close to the matter told TechCrunch.

Iribe and the Facebook executive team had &fundamentally different views on the future of Oculus that grew deeper over time,& and Iribe wasn&t interested in a &race to the bottom& in terms of performance, we are told.

Iribe announced his departure in a Facebook post today:

So much has happened since the day we founded Oculus in July 2012. I never could have imagined how much we would accomplish and how far we would come. And now, after six incredible years, I am moving on.

I&m deeply proud and grateful for all that we&ve done together. We assembled one of the greatest research and engineering teams in history, delivered the first step of true virtual presence with Oculus Rift and Touch, and inspired an entirely new industry. We started a revolution that will change the world in ways we can&t even envision.

Yet, as far as we&ve come, the journey has just begun. Michael Abrash is right: &These are the good old days&. Now is when we get to pioneer the foundation of the next great computing platform and medium & this is our time to be pushing the state-of-the-art onward and upward. Every part of VR and AR needs to improve, especially the hardware and core technology, and Oculus has the best team in the world to do that. Although we&re still far from delivering the magical smart glasses we all dream about, now they are nearly within our reach.

Working alongside so many talented people at Oculus and Facebook has been the most transformative experience of my career. We have a saying when someone compliments or thanks you & &Team effort&. The success of Oculus was only possible because of such an extraordinary team effort. I&d like to sincerely thank everyone thatbeen a part of this amazing journey, especiallyMarkfor believing in this team and the future of VR and AR.

As for me, this will be the first real break I&ve taken in over 20 years. Ittime to recharge, reflect and be creative. I&m excited for the next chapter.

The cancellation of the companynext-gen PC-based &Rift 2& virtual reality product showcases how the interests of Facebookexecutive leadership have centered on all-in-one headsets that don&t require a connection to an external PC or phone. In May, Oculus released the $199 Oculus Go headset and plans to release the $399 Oculus Quest headset sometime next spring. A Facebook spokesperson tells TechCrunch that PC VR is part of the companyfuture product roadmap and that much of what Iribeteam has been working on will be manifested in future products.

Update: 2:13pm PT

While Facebook did not deny our report that the &Rift 2& being developed under IribePC VR team had been canceled, the company reiterated to us in a comment that they are continuing to invest in PC.

&While we can&t comment on our product roadmap specifics, we do have future plans, andcan confirm that we are planning for a future version of Rift,& a Facebook spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and then-Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe at Oculus Connect 3 in late 2016

Iribeexit comes at a time when a number of the founders of Facebookhigh-profile startup acquisitions are leaving the company. Less than a month ago, Instagram co-founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger announced their plans to leave the company in a decision that TechCrunch was told was partially the result of mounting tensions. WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum left Facebook earlier this year. Iribefellow co-founder Palmer Luckey left Facebookin early 2017, a decision he recently recounted was not a choice that he made.

Iribe came onto Facebook after the $2 billion acquisition of Oculus VR in 2014 where he had been the companyfounding CEO. After a substantial company reorganization in late 2016, Iribe was moved from the CEO position to the head of the companyPC VR division.

Before co-founding Oculus VR, Iribe was the chief product officer of Gaikai, a cloud-gaming startup that Sony bought in 2012 for $380 million; before that, he co-founded and led Scaleform, a gaming user interface tools startup that Autodesk bought in 2011 for $36 million.

We&ve reached out to Iribe for comment.

The website of the Saudi governmentupcoming Future Investment Initiative conference was hacked and defaced with images of the murdered Saudi journalistJamal Khashoggi.

Several reporters tweeted screenshots of the site after its defacement, purporting to show Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman — the kingdomde facto ruler — brandishing a sword. A portion of text on the site was replaced with an accusation the kingdom of &barbaric and inhuman action,& referring not only to the death ofKhashoggi but also the governmentinvolvement in the ongoing offensive in Yemen.

Names and phone numbers of several Saudi individuals were also uploaded to the sitehomepage, including government employees and senior staff in state-backed companies.

The site was pulled offline shortly after the defacement on Monday.

Nobody has yet publicly declared responsibility for the defacement. It comes days after the Saudi regime admitted thatKhashoggi was &murdered& in its consulate in Istanbul, more than two weeks after TheWashington Post columnist walked in to obtain marriage license papers. Saudi officials claimed he died following a &fist fight,& which Western nations decried as nonsensical. Leaked audio, believed to have been leaked by the Turkish government, claims the journalist was beaten, killed and dismembered.

Britain, France and Germany issued a statementdemanding clarity and an explanation for his still missing body. Turkey is expected to reveal more about the killing Tuesday.

The Future Investment Initiative — also known as &Davos in the Desert& after the original Switzerland-based investment conference — is set for later this week.Saudi Arabia invests billions in U.S. tech companies, but the conference has seen dozens of well-known investors, tech companies and business leaders pull out of the conference after the journalistmurder.