The shared mobility market in 2018 had one dominant question: which city would get the first serious scooter service? Lime and Bird both understood that whoever arrived first in a city would have enormous structural advantages: brand familiarity, operational learnings, city government relationships, and the data that comes from having real users on real streets.
Lime chose to move at maximum speed. In several cities, they deployed scooters without permits, banking on the forgiveness-vs-permission principle: it is easier to apologize for being in a city and negotiate terms from a position of "we are already here" than it is to get permission and face competitors who get permission at the same time.
This strategy was not without cost — Lime paid fines in some markets, was required to reduce fleet size in others, and faced backlash from city governments. But in the cities where they established first-mover advantage, the cost of the fines was far lower than the cost of being second. Cities that already had Lime scooters on the streets had little political appetite to bring in a second competitor.