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The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

cyclingtips.com

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Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#31

Post by luqa »

RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution.

I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat.

Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#32

Post by microtherion »

DanFeldman wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just you. In a capital rich environment (where getting money for new ventures is easier than normal) a single success (even if it is just perception) and a low barrier to entry, can lead to many copycat companies appearing. And yes, they over saturate the market, and no you can't easily tell which will win and which will lose from the outside. For the "serial entrepreneurs" this is an easy way to stay employ…

> it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?

There might be at least the perception that the CEO will spend most of their tenure plotting their next startup (and quite possibly poaching employees and intellectual property on the way out). Think Anthony Levandowski.

Are there any well known cases of startup CEOs who were wildly successful as employees in another company?

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#33

Post by Barrin92 »

luqa wrote: post #31
RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

In my city (Milan, Italy) bike-sharing is an extremely common solution. I feel like the business model is the main problem. Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat. Every few years a new startup can enter the marketing with a better bike. The incumbents have to improve their or risk losing the entire market in a matter of weeks.

>Low margins high-costs (you frequently need to replace thousands of bikes) and basically no moat.

the story of the sharing economy right there. I seriously don't know how bike / taxi / scooter rental companies have become a favourite of tech investors. It seems like some Robin Hood scheme to distribute money from investors to customers

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#34

Post by adambyrtek »

I wonder how does Kickstarter deal with credit card chargebacks? Their support site basically says "talk to us directly please"[1], but it's common for chargebacks to be awarded to customers regardless of arguments provided by a merchant. Would they just consider it the cost of doing business or try to recover the money from the backed project?

[1] https://www.kickstarter.com/disputes

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#35

Post by maxxxxx »

DanFeldman wrote: post #7
ChuckMcM wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It isn't just you. In a capital rich environment (where getting money for new ventures is easier than normal) a single success (even if it is just perception) and a low barrier to entry, can lead to many copycat companies appearing. And yes, they over saturate the market, and no you can't easily tell which will win and which will lose from the outside. For the "serial entrepreneurs" this is an easy way to stay employ…

> it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?

Big corps usually want people who do what they are told to do. An employee with startup experience has shown that, a lot of founders are probably not good followers.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#36

Post by rdiddly »

RugnirViking wrote: post #2

Is it just me, or are there seemingly far more people trying to invest and profit off bikeshares than there are using them? I've lived in several cities in europe and i'm not actually sure i've ever seen anybody using them. Yet there seems to be tons of competing companies putting out bikes in the street. On top of that, they don't even seem to bother marketing or anything. The first I'll hear of a new company is see…

I've pondered that question too. Something like Uber or Lyft works partly because of the cost and burden of car ownership. It's attractive to use someone else's equipment if you don't have to buy, maintain, finance, fuel, insure, and store (park) similar equipment yourself, to the tune of thousands of dollars per year.

But then you look at bike ownership. I almost want to put "bike ownership" in quotes because even the mere phrase makes it sound so much more serious and demanding than it is. It's so easy and cheap, it seems obvious you would just do that. Or put it this way, I don't find myself going "I just don't want & can't handle all that responsibility of a bike!" It's like, boy you better not get any houseplants then, that much responsibility will stress you right out!

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#37

Post by mbesto »

nradov wrote: post #14

It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so. The last major innovation was aero carbon frames. Since then everyone is just copying each other and trying to improve by fractions of a percent for weight, stiffness, and efficiency. Most of the value and innovation has shifted to the groupset suppliers, with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a f…

> It's a shame that there's been little innovation from road bike manufacturers in the past 10 years or so.

Are you not familiar with electronic shifting? Integrated components? Sure, frames have basically all consolidated down to a few similar model types, but I see that as a good thing. It means the market has all figured out that "this is the most aerodynamic frame possible". I mean honestly, what else would you expect their to be improvements on?

> with Shimano taking the lion's share of the market and a few smaller players picking up scraps.

Uhh SRAM would like to have a word with you...OTOH it's basically a duopoly (with Campy's lagging 3rd). This is a good thing because it means I can swap parts in and out as I please since Shimano/SRAM basically can fit on to any modern bike. I see this as a feature, not a bug.

> It would be nice if one of the big bike manufacturers would make their own high-quality components to compete with Shimano

You mean like every major bike brand is already doing? Trek with Bontrager, Specialized with Roval, etc. etc. Sure they aren't the shifting/braking components, but I'd rather have 30+ years of mechanical innovation behind progress on components than a frame manufacturer and assembler trying to do it. The reality is that most of the bike brands are providing high quality wheels, handlebars, accessories, etc. now, and that should be applauded.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#38

Post by mbesto »

Oh man, I remember when SpeedX first came out. I can't describe it exactly, but it was an immediate red flag for me. Basically they tried to fix everything about buying a bike in one fell swoop and said it was going to cost less than other providers. If they were able to provide a superior experience to bike sizing, bike computer, wheels, frame, etc all in one fell swoop, then I would expect the overall product to be more expensive...not cheaper. Huge red flag.

Re: The birth and death of a bike company: What happened to SpeedX

#40

Post by arkades »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #15
DanFeldman wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it can be surprisingly hard to get a job at BigCorp with CEO on your resume Why do you think that is? It's so common to hear advice that bigco's will always want to hire people w/ Startup experience, but does that not extend to the founders?

I can only speak for places where I've worked and hired folks, but the consensus seemed to be that people who seek out the CEO role are highly correlated with a need to control everything and less well correlated with "team players" (or people who can work with peers in a give and take sort of situation). In acquisition scenarios such companies are sometimes much more keen on keeping the VP of Engineering ("get thing…

There is such a series of studies - but they were all done by the same PI, who has built his career on redefining "sociopathy" over-broadly, more or less to enable him to have headlines like "20% of CEOs are sociopaths!"

edit: I don't know why this is being downvoted. Is it because I'm lampooning a "common knowledge" that people like? For pete's sake, the research paper that spawned this meme even got retracted by the authors: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/23744006.2016.12...

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