Overview
Lyte Charging Inc. (lyte.city) is a venture-backed startup technology company founded by early executives of Lime Scooters building their company from their headquarters in Portland. Lyte maintains a network of kiosks where users can check out and return portable phone chargers to make sure they always have the juice they need to go about their day. Kiosks are conveniently located in venues, such as stadiums, malls, restaurants, schools, so users are never far away.
When 645 was first introduced to they Lyte team there was a major shift occurring in the rise of mobile. Battery life for mobile devices was not scaling the same pace of innovation as mobile application, device sizes, and data plans. Battery life innovation driven by modern day physics and dependent on major technological breakthroughs that don't occur as frequently as software development and adoption. Software performance was being driven by Moore’s Law and continued exponential increases in performance that led to power shortage problem, where devices reach "low power" after ~4 hours of usage.
Investment Rationale
Founders DJ Wei and Jason Wilde conceptualized an innovative solution to the country’s “low power” problem by combining the behavioral change seen in the shared economy (Airbnb, Lime, Uber, etc.) and a network of physical charges that people can pick up when they need them. There could be an iteration where kiosks are not required if there are partnerships with venues and a mobile network (i.e. Uber or Lyft drivers).
This thesis, coupled with the strength of the Lyte team and early adoption of this technology in China was enough to excite our team about the prospect of working on a solution with DJ and Jason.