Talking Tier, SPIN and Mobility with Philip Reinckens, ex-CEO of SPIN
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Show Notes
What did the micromobility “gold rush” actually feel like from the inside—and what lessons still matter in 2026?
In this episode of the Micromobility Podcast, host Prabin Joel Jones sits down with Philip Reinckens (ex-CEO of SPIN, early employee at TIER, involved in the Nextbike and SPIN deals, and part of the SPIN → Bird acquisition). Philip shares a candid, operator’s view of what went right, what went wrong, and what the industry still misunderstands.
We unpack:
- The early days of TIER and the 2019 expansion playbook (including launching multiple German cities on day one)
- Why micromobility scaled so fast—and how much of it was execution vs hardware luck
- COVID, in-house ops, and how operational decisions changed the trajectory
- The “charging network” thesis (why it didn’t take off then, and why it might return now)
- Why many investors cooled on the sector: hardware, ops intensity, vandalism, and city complexity
- Europe vs the US: pricing vs utilization, seasonality, and the “joyrider” dynamic
- The SPIN turnaround: cutting burn, upgrading fleets, and shifting culture to operations
- The logic behind the Nextbike acquisition—and why integrations are harder than they look
- Philip’s 2026 take: micromobility is an operations game, and “the right vehicle in the right place at the right time” beats everything else
- What he’d do differently today with AI-lean org design
🎟️ Micromobility Europe is coming to Berlin — 2–3 June. Early bird tickets are on sale now at micromobility.io.