Mobike

Mobike was a Chinese bike-sharing company founded in 2015 by Hu Weiwei, a former journalist who saw an opportunity to solve the "last mile" problem in urban transit — the gap between subway stations and final destinations . The company grew rapidly, raising roughly $1 billion within two years and becoming a symbol of China's sharing-economy boom . In 2018, at what 暗涌Waves described as the peak of its visibility, Hu sold Mobike to Meituan for $2.7 billion, personally cashing out an estimated 1.5 billion RMB at age 36 — a deal later framed as "a case study written into business school textbooks" . The exit was unusually fast for venture investors: Joy Capital's Erhai Liu went from investment to liquidity in just three years, matching the cycle of his NIO bet but standing in sharp contrast to the decade-long wait he endured with Tuhu . Mobike's rise also rode broader hardware trends — specifically the advances in gyroscope and GPS sensors that turned smartphones into positioning devices, enabling the dockless model that distinguished it from earlier bike-sharing attempts .