SANTA MONICA, Calif. (BRAIN) — Spinlister, which launched as a peer-to-peer bike rental program (short-handed as "Airbnb for bikes") and went on to offer a dockless bike share program and bike rental and demo management software for bike shops, is shutting down.
CEO Marcelo Loureiro announced the shut down in a "farewell message" on the company's website. The company also emailed retailers last week to tell them of the planned shutdown.
"I don't have great news, after 5 years since we relaunched the Spinlister platform into the market, we will unfortunately be shutting down our services on April 22, 2018. We were not able to raise new funding, so our board of investors decided that the best option was to close shop," Loureiro wrote.
Loureiro was an investor in Spinlister when it launched in 2012, and later invested further and became CEO after the company briefly shutdown. Besides bikes, Spinlister had programs to rent snowboards and surfboards.
According to Crunchbase, Spinlister has raised $2.3 million in investment through three funding rounds; the most recent was $1.6 million raised in 2015. Spinlister also had acquired Cycleswap, a European bike share company, in 2016.
According to the company's site, it will be shutting down over the next few weeks. Rentals that booked for after April 22 will be canceled and the money will be refunded to renters. In the email to retailers, the company said stores that had got an iPad from Spinlister to manager bike rentals and demos could keep the device.
Related stories:
