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In Zurich, a hungry man is thinking about a sausage. His favourite grill, the Sternengrill, is about one kilometre from his apartment. Too far to walk. Too close to bother with the car. Most people would sigh, put on their shoes and walk. Wim Ouboter decided to fix the problem.
A small problem that would not go away
Wim Ouboter was not a famous engineer. He had no experience in the industry and not much money. What he had was a small annoyance and the habit of asking a simple question: why does it have to be like this? Millions of city trips are exactly like his: to the bakery, to the station, to a friend a few streets away. Too short for the car, too long to walk comfortably.
From kickboard to folding scooter
His first idea was a three-wheeled kickboard. A man with no name in the industry does not get many doors opened, so he found a partner, the sports brand K2, and together they brought it to the shops. With that money he founded his own company, Micro Mobility Systems, and built the little two-wheeled scooter: light aluminium, small wheels and a frame that folds in seconds. Adults rode it to work, students across campuses, and children begged for one. At its peak the company sold 80,000 scooters a day and more than 30 million in a year.
Five hundred copies
Then, about a year later, sales collapsed. More than 500 factories had copied the scooter, cheaper versions flooded the shops, and a price war began that a small Swiss company could not win. His invention was everywhere, and almost none of it was his.
Starting again
Wim chose to keep inventing. He designed the Mini Micro, a colourful three-wheeled scooter that small children steer just by leaning. In 2013 his company launched the eMicro One, one of the first electric kick scooters, years before rental e-scooters appeared on street corners. In 2015 his sons Oliver and Merlin began building the Microlino, a tiny electric city car with its door at the front; series production started in late 2022. The same question, how to cross a city without walking too far and without a big car, passed from a father to his sons.
What we can learn
Most of us have a small annoyance we have learned to live with. Wim Ouboter took his seriously, and when others copied his success, he made something new. Many families have a tinkerer like that: a grandfather in the garage, a mother who always found a better way. Their stories are usually told once, at a kitchen table, and then lost. Get free questions to ask them, and start writing your own story at talesof.life.
Sources: Micro Mobility Systems, The Micro Success Story; Levy Electric, Wim Ouboter, the inventor of modern electric scooters; Lyft blog. Photo: Sternen Grill at Bellevue, Zurich (DarkNight0917, CC BY-SA 4.0) and Micro scooter (Andrew Krizhanovsky, public domain), via Wikimedia Commons.