Vol. 15: Let the Bullets Fly a While: What ofo Shows About Whether Something Can Keep Going

There is a Chinese saying, "A single spark can start a prairie fire."

—Mao Zedong, "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire"

The last post said that when something first shows promise, don't rush to judge it by today's size.

Let the bullets fly a while.

What it can hand to the next step is usually more worth watching.

But the next step can look another way too.

ofo's little yellow bikes are a great example.

Peking University

ofo started on the Peking University campus.

Campuses have never been short of bikes. But when you actually wanted to ride one, the trouble was often the key: the bike was there, the lock was there, but who knew where the key was. The early team noticed this small hassle and thought about turning a bike from "somebody's bike" into "a bike anyone can ride next." In September 2015, ofo launched at Peking University.¹

The idea sounds simple, so simple it hardly seems like a business.

You need to go somewhere, there's a bike nearby, you ride it. When you're done, you leave it somewhere, and the next person who needs it rides it off. A bike that used to be locked up in one person's hands starts to flow.

That was ofo's first spark.

It was a real need, so lots of people were happy to use it. Later it rode out of the campus into cities, and more and more yellow bikes appeared by the roadside. Walk out of a subway station, see a row of bikes, scan one with your phone, and ride off: back then that was new, and it really was convenient.

By 2017, ofo was describing itself as operating in many countries and regions, with a very large user base.² Yellow bikes showed up in all kinds of places, and many people felt this thing really was the real deal.

That's easy to understand.

When something is suddenly used by this many people, anyone would take it as a good sign. For founders, a sign like that is especially precious. What you built is being used, and people are starting to tell others about it. The hardest stretch seems to be behind you.

But the truly hard part of the story often only starts here.

Onto the Streets

Putting bikes on a campus and putting bikes into a city are, in the end, two different things.

Once the bikes are on the street, someone has to keep the operation running. Users have paid deposits, and when they want them back, someone has to actually return that money. Every extra bike makes things a bit more complicated.

At first, these complications aren't necessarily visible.

A row of yellow bikes at a subway exit, and what stands out is the convenience. In that moment you rarely think about who will fix the bike someone broke, or who will haul it back from some remote roadside. But those things don't stop happening just because nobody sees them.

In 2017, several government departments issued guidelines on internet-based bike rentals, with specific sections on deposit management and orderly development of the industry.³ By then, bike sharing was no longer a small experiment on a campus. It had to face how a city really runs.

Later, getting deposits back from ofo became something lots of people ran into. In 2018, the Ministry of Transport publicly said it was pressing ofo to clear the channels for refunding deposits, and mentioned strengthening companies' capacity for sustainable development.⁴

While the yellow bikes were still on the streets, what people saw was how convenient they were. Only when people started queuing to get their deposits back did it dawn on everyone: I might not be getting this money back.

I don't want to boil this story down to "it expanded too fast, so it failed." By the time a company gets that far, there's always a lot we can't fully see from the outside. But the turn it left behind is enough to make you think.

People being willing to come only shows that something has gotten started. Whether it can keep going still takes time to see.

Afterward

Bike sharing met a real need.

Short trips are still a thing today. The problems ofo ran into later didn't erase that first small hassle.

But between something hitting a real problem and its being able to keep solving that problem, there's still a long road.

If every extra user makes things run a little more smoothly, there's a chance to keep going. But if more users also bring up all the trouble that hadn't shown before, then the faster things move, the more easily the ground gives way underfoot.

Reading "A Single Spark Can Start a Prairie Fire," I feel that what Mao really cared about back then was this second half too.

Of course he saw that there was already a Red Army at Jinggangshan. But he didn't stop there just because the Red Army existed. He kept looking and analyzing: could this bit of strength take root locally, and could it keep growing with the situation of the time?

Later history proved it all. But back then, those judgments still rested on picking out the conditions in front of him, bit by bit.

ofo's story is the same.

When the yellow bikes appeared, the spark really did catch. Lots of people wanting to ride them was the most direct proof. But once the fire caught, someone had to look after the bikes, and someone had to keep the promises. The things that didn't stand out amid all the buzz slowly became what decided whether it could keep going.

So when something suddenly gets very hot, I now remind myself not to rush.

Wait a bit. See what's left once the buzz passes.

Let the bullets fly a while.

Only the days that follow slowly reveal what something really is.

Footnotes

1. According to ofo founder Dai Wei's public talk in 2016, the team started from how bikes were used on campus and the hassle of keys, and launched the service at Peking University in September 2015. See: CNR report. ↩

2. The operating footprint and user base that ofo founder Dai Wei described at a public event in 2017. See: People's Daily Online report. ↩

3. See the 2017 Guiding Opinions on Encouraging and Regulating the Development of Internet-Based Bicycle Rental, issued by ten departments: Chinese government website. ↩

4. See the Ministry of Transport's 2018 response on deposit refunds and companies' sustainable development: Chinese government website. ↩