After a hyper-funded boom saw companies scale too fast and burn cash before fixing their unit economics, the mobility sector faced a brutal tightening. Capital dried up, bankruptcies mounted and investors who had once rushed into the space were left questioning whether many business models could ever deliver sustainable returns.
But today, that is starting to turn.
Few people have had a closer view of that cycle than Florent Roulet, Managing Director in Stifel’s Technology Investment Banking team. Advising mobility, transport and technology businesses across Europe and beyond, Roulet sits at the intersection of founders, investors and acquirers, giving him a front-row seat to the sector’s evolution from a funding frenzy to recovery and increasing consolidation.
In the season finale of Zag Talk, Roulet shares his perspective on shifting investor sentiment, why profitable mobility companies now have the “luxury of optionality” on their next move and why the future of mobility relies on ecosystem convergence.
Zag Talk: Tell us about yourself and Stifel.
Florent: “Stifel is a global investment bank with a market cap equal to approximately $11 billion and revenue of $5.5 billion in 2025. Our main offices are located in the US, Canada and across Europe including in London, Paris, Munich and Frankfurt. We are a company with 9,000 employees globally. My job is to do two things: work with businesses and entrepreneurs on M&A-related topics and to advise them on anything related to financing including private companies, IPOs, equity and debt.”
Zag Talk: Stifel Europe served as the sole financial advisor to Getaround on the strategic merger of its European operations with Danish shared mobility company GoMore. Could you tell us about that?
Florent: “Many Europeans will know ‘Drivy’ which was acquired by Getaround back in 2019. The business was not doing too well in the US and had to shut down its operations there. We worked for several months with the Getaround Europe team on trying to find the right strategic partner for them. I insist on the word “partner” because they were looking for a company with the same DNA around car sharing and scaling in a smart way. We eventually found GoMore from Denmark which was fairly complementary with Getaround Europe in terms of geographic footprint.”
Zag Talk: What was your role in the transaction?
Florent: “Our job was to advise Getaround Europe on negotiating the terms with GoMore, structuring the transaction and advising the shareholders. By combining the two, we are creating a proper pan-European champion. In the moment we are in as an industry, it’s important that some players become scalable and champions over a larger geography. We have many domestic champion businesses that may be seen as subscale and we need some of them to grow larger and become even more profitable.”
Zag Talk: Is there a sweet spot in terms of scale?
Florent: “We don’t do any seed or Series A-type transactions. Probably Series B or C would be where we start getting involved. Our job is to take companies from growth financing up to IPO and beyond. We are skilled at helping businesses find the right investor at each of those scale points.”
Zag Talk: So from the buyer’s perspective, the fact that they’re working with you provides validation?
Florent: “Correct. I do have access to the relevant buyers who should think that if I’m working with that client, I’ve vetted them. So it’s about access and credibility on that side and saving time but it should also ultimately include the ability to execute and close transactions.”
Zag Talk: Where do you think we are in a broad sense: the capital markets, the landscape for emerging mobility?
Florent: “That’s part of my challenge every day – to convince some of the investors who are still stuck with an old paradigm. Two or three years ago, mobility was a bloodbath. A lot of players had raised way too much capital, under-delivered and over-promised. Some of those investors are still stuck in this mindset. The best example being shared mobility or micromobility. Many investors still think this industry is not mature enough. My job is to convince them that they’re wrong and should absolutely revisit.”
Zag Talk: Have things become calmer than they were a few years ago?
Florent: “I’d say yes. 18 months ago, we were at rock bottom; many businesses were still bankrupt and many were unprofitable. It was really difficult for me to convince any investor to reconsider the sector but now we are on the right trajectory. The strongest players have the luxury of deciding what’s next for them – the “luxury of optionality” – whereas two years ago, they needed to raise money every six or 12 months because they were still burning cash. Now that many of those businesses are profitable, they have the luxury of deciding what can happen to them. The obvious route is IPO. This is what Lime is doing. That’s the dream scenario for many entrepreneurs, to be on the Nasdaq or the New York Stock Exchange.”
Zag Talk: Where do you see new mobility headed over the next few years?
Florent: “Autonomy and electrification is what everybody is looking at. I do spend a lot of time in the EV charging infrastructure sector and I think we are just at the beginning of this. In the last few months, BEV registrations in Europe and the US have increased significantly. Why? Because you have a lot of new electric cars coming out and fuel prices are through the roof. So a lot of those players are surfing on that wave for sure. And a lot of investors who were against it a year ago and telling me, ‘Look, we think EV charging and electrification will take much longer,’ are looking at it a bit more seriously because things have accelerated.”
Zag Talk: Any final thoughts on the mobility sector’s future?
Florent: “I actually think that everything is converging. Micromobility, shared mobility, electrification and autonomy. For me, it’s an ecosystem of players around the same area. They may not have the same business model or the same product but in the end this is about how we move. And that’s what makes it interesting for me as a sector specialist. It’s not like whatever I do in EV charging is completely different from what I do in micromobility – everybody’s in the same ecosystem. The buyers and investors could be the same.”
