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Two early executives at Lime have quietly left the scooter company

It’s a season of change in the leadership ranks of what was once the hot new thing.

Two people push Limebike scooters over the Dolores Park bridge in San Francisco.
Two people push Limebike scooters over the Dolores Park bridge in San Francisco.
LimeBike

This winter has been a season of turnover at Lime.

A pair of early executives at Lime have in recent weeks left the scooter company, which is trying to go to the next level amid a cooldown in an industry that was once seen as the Next Big Thing.

Lime Head of Finance Scot Mollot and Human Relations Chief Rosemarie Carbone have left the company, Lime confirmed. Their exits, previously unreported, are the latest leadership changes at the $2 billion, two-year-old company that has seen a lot of those changes recently.

After some rapid growth, Lime needs to grow up quick if it wants to become a true global juggernaut. Lime has been in a global war for users and dollars with Bird, a similarly aged scooter upstart, and facing new competition from other transportation players like Uber and Lyft, who are also seen as potential buyers of companies like Lime.

Startups mature and try to make sure their C-suites mature, too. That’s normal. But it’s clear that Lime is trying to upgrade its leadership team as it confronts a more challenging environment. In the last three months, the company has hired a high-powered chief operating officer and an experienced chief business officer.

But it’s also clear that Lime has more professionalizing to do. Its general counsel, Lindsey Haswell, has expanded her duties and now wears three different hats — she is also the interim head of human relations (after Carbone’s departure) and interim head of communications. And some people close to the company think CEO Toby Sun could still use more help.

“Lime’s team grew over six times last year, and leadership changes are natural in any company, especially fast-growing companies like Lime,” a Lime spokesperson said. “We are grateful for the contributions every employee has made to Lime, including Rosemarie’s and Scot’s, and we are excited for the future as we continue to build out the Lime team globally with exceptional talent.”

Mollot and Carbone didn’t respond to requests for comment.

If you roll the clock back six months ago, Silicon Valley investors were gaga for the electric scooters that some saw as the future of urban transportation. Both Lime and its closest competitor, Bird, raised money at nine-figure valuations.

But this winter, as the weather turned cooler and concerns about safety, vandalism, and their economics mounted, the fundraising environment for both Bird and Lime grew significantly more challenging. Lime originally was pitching investors on a price that was twice as high as what it eventually ended up raising at.

The executive turnover could be a boost to Lime in the long-term, but for now, it’s just a lot of change.

This article originally appeared on Recode.net.

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