Too Late to Hold Me Back novel Chapter 179

"Wait—we've got a ride!"

Just moments later, the analyst shouted in pure elation.

From there, the numbers on the massive screen skyrocketed. One became eight. Then twenty. A hundred. A thousand...

The backend metrics for total ride time and cumulative mileage exploded exponentially, transforming from a single hour and mile into thousands in the blink of an eye.

At a forty-dollar deposit per user, a thousand riders meant an instant forty thousand dollars in liquid capital. Ten thousand users meant four hundred thousand dollars.

The math was beautifully simple—as long as people were unlocking bikes, they were printing money.

At this furious pace, they wouldn't even need to hit their four-hundred-thousand bike milestone to completely recoup their initial investment.

The tight lines around Owen's mouth finally eased into a relieved smile.

The fact that people were actually riding meant the market demand existed. That alone was half the battle won.

Owen rarely showed genuine emotion in the boardroom.

Before this, he had only seen Mira's theoretical pitches, watching her meticulously model the projections over and over.

Her logic was flawless: when commuters got off the bus or the subway, they still had that grueling final mile to walk. If they could just pay a few cents to hop on a bike and cruise to their doorstep, who wouldn't take that deal?

Better yet, there were no docking stations. Once they were done, they could just leave it in any designated parking zone.

And those zones were literally everywhere—just standard sidewalk edges painted in the app.

What truly put consumers at ease was the fully refundable deposit system. If they didn't want to use the app anymore, they got their money back instantly.

This guarantee had been plastered across all their marketing materials and was a flashing banner on the app's home screen.

In theory, it was a gold mine. But reality was often cruel to startups, which was why the entire executive team had been holding their breath all morning.

Between the three main partners, they had pooled a staggering seventy-five million dollars in backup capital.

She and Liora were close friends, sure. Calling in a minor favor was one thing, but asking her deeply entrenched political family to burn serious capital on a startup shortcut was a heavy, risky ask.

It was infinitely better to just play by the rules—pay the lobbyists, pay the taxes, and do everything strictly above board.

The launch-day target was ten to twenty thousand bikes, with the full fifty-thousand reserve deploying over a brutal three-day sprint.

There was no need to flood the streets instantly. This was a radical new tech concept, and the public needed a grace period to adapt to the learning curve.

Rolling them out in waves allowed their deployment teams to act as on-the-ground street teams. When curious pedestrians stopped to ask questions, the workers could give them a live demo, turning them into instant customers.

The moment a critical mass of people started riding them, the visual proof would trigger a snowball effect. It would become a cultural staple overnight.

Over at Mr. Blake's factory, the assembly lines were screaming. His crews were working brutal round-the-clock shifts to keep up with the demand.

Still, Mira firmly vetoed his request to blindly expand the manufacturing footprint.

Soon enough, they would hit their four-hundred-thousand ceiling. Once the market hit saturation, the order volume would fall off a cliff.