Travis VanderZanden is the founder of Bird Scooters, the electric scooter rental startup. Bird raised over $400 million before it declared bankruptcy in late 2023. At the absolute peak of Bird's success, circa 2018-2019, the company's private valuation was a little under $3 billion. At that point, Travis' stake gave him a paper net worth of around $500 million. Armed with hundreds of millions of dollars worth of paper wealth, Travis went on a bit of a mansion-buying spree.
In November 2018, he bought a newly-built mansion in Santa Monica for $8 million. He sold this home in 2021 for $9 million. In January 2021, he paid $21.7 million for a mansion in Bel Air. That's the house we are discussing today in this article. The seller of the two-story mansion was comedian Trevor Noah. In November 2021, Travis paid $21.8 million for a waterfront mansion in Coral Gables, Florida.
Bird went public via SPAC in the middle of 2021. On the day of its SPAC IPO, Bird's valuation was $2 billion. Exactly one year after going public, Bird's stock price had dropped from a 52-week high of $11.25 to $0.34 per share. The company's market cap fell from $2.5 billion to $70 million. At that new low, Travis' stake was worth around $9 million. Just before Bird declared bankruptcy in late 2023, the company's total market cap was just $7 million. Travis' stake was worth $910,000. At that point in time, between the Bel Air mansion and the Florida mansion, Travis owned $40 million worth of personal real estate. Roughly 40 times the entire value of Bird.
In April 2021, Travis first listed his Bel Air mansion for sale with an asking price of $25 million. In early 2023, the price was reduced to $18.9 million. It just sold for $10.8 million, an $11 million loss for Mr. VanderZanden.
Across its approximately 10,000 square feet of interior space on an acre of primo real estate looking out over the exclusive Bel-Air Country Club, it's got six bedrooms and 7.5 baths, plus features like a deluxe home movie theater, cigar room, and a stone wet bar complete with 500-gallon saltwater aquarium. There's also a separate building that can serve as detached quarters for household staff.
Interestingly, despite all of this it doesn't appear to be known whether VanderZanden ever actually lived on the property after he purchased it. For six months following his initial purpose, the home was under extensive interior renovations. You can see in the video below from Open House Foto and Film on YouTube that this is an impressive piece of real estate in a priceless location. See what official marketing materials described as "an entertainer's dream home" for yourself:
