Electric moped startup Revel could expand to Texas next

Revel, the New York-based shared electric moped startup, appears to be preparing to expand into Texas, according to job listings first spotted and reported by Thinknum Alternative Data.

The expansion into Texas would be Revel’s fourth market and its first west of the Mississippi River, a move that would be consistent with comments CEO and co-founder Frank Reig made earlier this week to TechCrunch.

Revel, which launched in 2018, has more than 1,400 mopeds in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn and Queens, New York. The company announced Thursday that it raised $27.6 million in a Series A round led by Ibex Investors. The equity round included newcomer Toyota AI Ventures and further investments from Blue Collective, Launch Capital and Maniv Mobility.

Revel plans to use the funds to expand its fleet of scooters within the cities it currently operates as well as  into new markets. Reig wouldn’t name where Revel will launch next. However, he provided a few hints.

Revel is targeting about 10 cities by mid-2020, Reig said in an interview earlier this week. He added that likely candidates would be major U.S. cities with temperate weather conditions. That puts cities in Florida, Texas, Arizona and California as likely destinations.

Thinknum, which tracks companies and creates data sets that measure hiring, revenue and other factors, charted out job listings at Revel. What the company found was nearly a dozen jobs posted since July that will be based in Texas.

While Revel’s job listings point to Texas, the company isn’t ready to talk.

“We can’t confirm specific launch timelines right now, but Revel is having productive conversations with markets in Texas among other places,” a company spokesperson said in response to TechCrunch’s inquiry. “We look forward to bringing our service to new cities in the coming months.”

Revel is different from other shared mobility-as-a-service providers, especially scooter companies, because it doesn’t use gig economy or contract workers. It only employs full-time workers. This would suggest that Revel isn’t merely experimenting with Texas; it has intentions to build out operations there.

The job listings include openings for a manager, mechanic and customer service support. Some of these jobs actually list Texas City, Texas as the destination. It’s not clear if this is actually where Revel will deploy. Texas City is about 42 miles southeast of Houston.