One of the companies leading the charge is Bird , which was founded by Travis VanderZanden, a former executive at both Uber and Lyft. The e-scooter startup launched in beta in Santa Monica in September 2017 and has expanded at lightspeed: Within just 10 months the company has reportedly reached a valuation of $2 billion, and was one of the fastest startups to reach Silicon Valley’s coveted unicorn status . Meanwhile, other companies are racing to get in on their own share of the scooter funding craze: Lime , a bike-share business, has quickly become a top competitor. The company launched its own fleets of e-scooters, and is currently in a $335 million fundraising round . This week, Uber invested in Lime as part of its own efforts to diversify beyond its existing car-based offerings. There’s also Spin , another company that started out in bike-sharing and quickly scooted into the other two-wheeled transit mode in February. Save some minor color variations — Bird has pops of red, while Spin opts for orange and Lime for lime green — the e-scooters look and work relatively similarly.