On a September morning in 2024, two Jonathan Cohens — one from the Rockaways in Queens, the other from London — stood in an empty 15,000-square-foot parking garage near Hudson Yards in New York City. As they walked over chipped yellow lines, they explained how the space would help Joco, their shared e-bike startup for delivery workers, continue to scale.
“We’re removing all the cars, and it’s gonna be fully dedicated to electric two-wheelers, three-wheelers, four-wheelers, and charging light electric vehicles,” Cohen (NY), Joco’s chief growth officer, told TechCrunch, beaming.
The two paced the cavernous lot, interrupting each other like a married couple telling a story to friends as they set the scene of a place that would be as much about utility as community: A mechanic workshop towards the back, several rooms with charging cabinets so riders could swap out e-bike batteries, docking stations, two bathrooms.
Cohen (London), Joco’s CEO, pointed towards an area not far from the front that would be designated for a Joco concierge service, where delivery riders could check in, pick up supplies, and take a breather from the chaos of the city.
“Think about it like a gas station [for delivery riders],” Cohen (NY) added. “They’ll use it as a place to just relax and take a break.”
The concept of providing gig workers with a pit stop — a place to use the bathroom, charge their phones, and even pray — isn’t new to Joco, which already offers this service in partnership with Grubhub at two locations in Alphabet City and Midtown West. And after the business almost died several times in its first year, such duties of care to the customer are a big reason why Joco is still alive today.
Joco co-founders Jonathan Cohen (CEO) and Jonathan A. Cohen (CGO) stand in what will be an e-bike hub and warehouse in NYC in September 2024.Image Credits:Rebecca Bellan Joco — named after its two co-founders, who met at Columbia Business School in 2017 — launched in 2021 in NYC with a mission to compete against Lyft-owned Citi Bike with shared, docked e-bikes. The Cohens thought that placing Joco’s docking stations on private property would allow them to avoid both Citi Bike’s territory and the city’s regulatory eye. They were wrong. The NYC Department of Transportation promptly sued Joco for operating a bikeshare without prior authorization from the agency, forcing the startup to pivot away from offering consumer rides towards last-mile delivery.
Now, Joco serves both gig workers who rent e-bikes at daily or weekly rates and enterprise customers that order dedicated fleets from the startup. Joco counts about 18 enterprise customers — including Grubhub, Reef, Fresh Direct, and other large logistics companies — across New York, Chicago, and Miami. As part of its B2B package, Joco also provides fleet management technology, servicing and maintenance, docking stations, and, increasingly, battery charging cabinets.
Those cabinets, which Joco says are FDNY-approved, are a growing vertical for the startup, particularly in NYC where battery fires have run rampant due to unsafe charging practices, leading many buildings to ban e-bikes and e-scooters. Joco has sold roughly 100 battery cabinets to residential buildings, like those owned by Related Companies, and last-mile logistics companies, like Travis Kalanick’s Cloud Kitchens, across the country with plans for international expansion.
From cease and desist to cash flow expansio
Gig delivery workers can rent e-bikes, rest, charge their phones, use the bathroom at this Joco and Grubhub concierge in NYC.Image Credits:Rebecca Bellan The Cohens say the DOT’s pushback was a “blessing in disguise” that helped them become profitable – not EBITDA profitable, “net, net, net profitable” with “real salaries” — despite having raised only $7.5 million in VC money. Other similar hardware-as-a-service startups have raised many millions — even billions — more in venture capital, and just as many have gone under due to the high capex, low margin nature of the business.
“It forced us to focus,” Cohen (London) told TechCrunch. “That’s one lesson that we got to faster than we should have, inadvertently. The other lesson we learned is to really pay attention to the customer. Because we go crazy for our customers. Just this Sunday, we had a guy whose bike broke down in Queens, and I rented a car, I went there, I picked up his bike, and I brought him back to another station in Manhattan.”
“When our customers see that, they freak out, and they tell everyone else,” he continued. “We do unusual things for the customer, stuff they wouldn’t expect.” Cohen (London) noted that on its face, some of those decisions don’t necessarily make “financial sense” but have created customer loyalty.
The concierge service — which involves having several staffers onsite to help address delivery riders needs — is an example. Joco also hands out free bike helmets, visibility vests, hand warmers, and through the partnership with Grubhub, free temperature-controlled backpacks.
There are other startups that offer couriers e-bike rentals. Whizz and Zoomo come to mind, but those offer longer-term rentals where the delivery worker has to store the bike, lock it up, and charge the battery. With Joco, gig workers can access high quality e-bikes at a reasonable cost and they never have to worry about locking them up or carrying them up stairs – Riders can lock and unlock the bikes with an app — a small, but effective convenience when making deliveries all day.
“We make a lot more money per bike than another company where you rent the bike and take it home for a month because we have multiple people using the same vehicle, and they’re delivering around the clock,” Cohen (London) said, noting that the life cycle of the new Segway bikes is three to five years.
There also appears to be a quiet community among Joco riders. Workers picking up bikes from the Alphabet City concierge can be seen chatting and fist bumping, and when they catch another Joco rider in the streets, they often wave and say hello to each other.
Joco’s customer obsession is clearly manifesting in growth. That empty parking garage? Flash forward two months later, and it is now almost open for business, with 1,000 new Segway e-bikes lined up and another 1,000 on the way. That location is one of almost 50 docking stations, large and small, accessible to couriers across the city. And the Cohens say that’s still not enough to meet the demand for their service.
“Every one of our vehicles is getting used every single day,” Cohen (NY) said, noting that Joco has “spent $0 on marketing” since launching. He says the team has managed to grow the company’s gig worker vertical double digits every month mainly through word of mouth.
Joco crew standing in front of four-wheeler e-cargo bike and battery charging cabinet. Left to right: Jonny Cohen (Co-Founder, CGO/Chief Growth Officer), Guman Gezici (Head of Operations, came from Getir), Jonny Cohen (Co-Founder, CEO), Julia Rindenow (Partnerships and Marketing Associate)Image Credits:Joco That’s one of the Cohens’ tips for early-stage founders: Don’t blow your money on marketing too early in an attempt to garner attention and raise capital. Just put your head down and focus on execution. That’s how the two said they got to where they are today, where cash flow is funding their expansion, rather than venture money. To them, “founder mode” is essential, because it means always being available to roll up your sleeves, even on Thanksgiving and Christmas or at 3 in the morning.
“Like when we switched from the old Acton bikes to these Segway bikes, it was a full all-nighter,” Cohen (NY) said.
Joco still runs a lean ship, with about seven people on the corporate team. In total, they have about 50 employees across maintenance, call center, operations, warehouse management, software, and supply chain. And many of those teams are outsourced to employees outside of the U.S., which the co-founders say saves them money as they work to grow the business. They also hire fractional employees, like their CFO, a good strategy for early-stage startups that want to bring on a seasoned C-suite executive on a part-time basis.
That financial prudence is what will help Joco to scale in 2025. The founders said their plans for near-term growth comes from cash on hand and potentially some debt, but that they don’t intend to raise more equity.
Their goal for the next year is to grow Joco’s gig worker fleet from 3,000 today to 10,000 by the end of 2025 and build out new docking stations in Brooklyn and Queens. Joco also wants to get 1,000 battery charging cabinets in buildings and double its B2B footprint in the next 13 months, in part by bringing more four-wheeler cargo bikes to its lineup.
And Joco has some tailwinds at its back, especially in NYC where a congestion pricing pla is set to go into effect in January.
“There will be more opportunities for us to get garage space at better prices,” Cohen (NY) said. “You don’t need a two-ton vehicle for short delivery commutes. And so the more we can do to build infrastructure and the tech, the more convenient it will be for the riders.”