How Moove Built a Global Mobility Powerhouse
Welcome back to Scaling at Speed, your destination for Speedinvest's most engaging company-building stories.
In this edition, I spoke to Tingting Peng, Chief Transformation Officer at Moove, our mobility Fintech company. Moove is on a mission to democratise vehicle financing globally, working with leading players like Uber and Waymo to provide Drive-to-Own vehicle ownership options in major mobility markets.
Tingting has been a driving force behind Moove’s growth since joining the company in 2021, and her invaluable learnings and insights from scaling the business across geographies are not to be missed.
An excerpt from: How Moove Built a Global Mobility Powerhouse
Moove’s business model required capital sophistication far earlier than most startups encounter. For lending companies in particular, capital structure is an existential necessity and determines whether a business can scale at all. To get vehicles on the road, the company had to master equity, asset-backed debt, DFIs, and venture debt, often in parallel.
“Our business model required us to be asset-heavy at the beginning,” Tingting explains. “We needed to get cars on the road to start generating revenue.”
Early asset-financing facilities were denominated in US dollars, introducing FX risk that quickly became apparent. Over time, Moove transitioned toward local lenders and local-currency facilities, better aligning liabilities with cash flows.
Tingting describes one of the most important lessons succinctly: “In emerging markets, you have to switch to local lenders and local currency as quickly as possible.”
Another inflection point was learning how debt structure affects growth. Amortising term loans forced Moove to use operating cash to pay down principal, limiting the ability to scale. Revolving facilities can change that dynamic entirely.
“Revolving facilities mean you can grow your asset base over time while only servicing interest,” Tingting says. “These are things we now bake into new facilities and lender relationships.”
From Our Investors' Desk
From deep sector expertise to our take on the future of tech and venture capital in Europe, here are some of our recent musings from social media.
Our GP, Marie-Helene Amestreiter, shares her takeaways from Davos and Germany's DLD Conference, saying, "Europe’s moment of truth is not about inventing more. It’s about commercializing faster, scaling bolder, and turning conviction into action."
Rana Abdel Latif, Partner with our Middle East, Africa & Beyond investment team, shares why speaking at the upcoming Harvard Business School MENA Business Conference means so much to her and the MENA region.
Our AI Partner, Frederik Hagenauer, congratulated the team at Complyance for their well-earned $20 million Series A after "grinding away quietly" for 3.5 years.
Andrea Zitna, Partner with our Health & Bio team, congratulated our portfolio company Aerska on their $39 million Series A funding round – and founder Jack O'Meara for his infamous Guinness analogies 😉
👉 What else we're reading:
VCs Break Taboo by Backing Both Anthropic, OpenAI in AI Battle - Bloomberg
How a ‘zombie’ chipmaker became Nvidia’s vital AI ally - Financial Times
How Jeffrey Epstein Helped His Publicist Become A Big-Time Venture Capitalist - Forbes
Thanks for reading — see you next month,
Have feedback, suggestions, or topics you'd like us to dive into? Email us at press@speedinvest.com.