Jeffrey Wu was looking to settle down and start a family after leaving a high-paying but overly hectic job at McKinsey. The Taiwan-born, USA-raised, third-generation member of the family behind the Shin Kong Group, Wu returned to Taiwan and noticed that the high-tech island actually had very poor air quality. In 2016, he launched WeMo, Taiwan’s first electric scooter-sharing company, in a bid to transfer Taiwan’s vast scooter-riding public over to more environmentally friendly vehicles.

WeMo developed an Internet-connected black box to be used in the scooters made by Kymco. Starting with a fleet of only 200 however was not enough to make an impact, and Wu worked hard to find funding. In 2020, WeMo raised a multi-million-dollar Series A led by AppWorks to help expand beyond its current markets of Taipei, New Taipei City, and Kaoshiung. The company has over 6,000 vehicles in the capital, with half a million registered users logging around 1 million rides per month.