YouSaid · the spoken record

Mike Radenbaugh

lines on the record: 102
first: 2020-09-07
most recent: 2020-09-07
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“I'm all e bike, and you know, I have been since I was 15. I thought I got to school every day. It's how I got to college every day. And it's how to get to work every day.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I have a 2009 Toyota Tacoma. It's currently sitting in one of our back parking lots in our buildings with a dead battery because I haven't driven it in about 10 months. Wow.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we definitely could not have done this without luck and timing. But I think hard work and grit have definitely been a foundation of this business. It's been a pure passion of mine since I was a youngster and really our fanatical owners. They're what's driving us now is like we just have to keep up with demand. And we also have to innovate and build the future. And so that's going to take a lot of work. And the company that becomes synonymous for electric bikes and the future mobility is going to be the one that takes an early mover advantage like RAD has. And I think we're well set up to do that. But gosh, I hope we have some more luck along the way.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is the question that came up in all of our kind of fundraising conversations. You have people that are joining the business and they want to know what they're going to be in for here. And I'll tell you the same thing that I've told all these folks. It's that this is the most fun that I think I could ever have. It's what I want to commit the rest of my life to. And it's also really hard. But I learned early on that no matter what you're doing, it's going to hurt in some ways and it's going to feel great in others. And we all have to work tirelessly to achieve this vision because it's a big one. We're going up against big auto, big oil. We have big opponents and we got a lot of work cut out for us.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, well, I just say keep in mind it's not just me leading this company, I run the company, but I have frankly an amazing set of executives who have bought into the culture and they see the same vision I do. And so I think that has been a big part of this mission that we got into it really early. I was right there kind of the dawn of the e-bike revolution. And I think that's been a big part of it. But the bigger part has been around identifying areas that I need support as a young entrepreneur.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was a month where Seattle was completely shut down, right? There were very few cars on the road. It was a devastating time. And it was also remarkable to see how livable streets could become without cars everywhere. And so there was a month there where I was going to the grocery store to get essential stuff. I mean, it was, frankly, I was riding in the middle of the road. It was amazing. It was just the safest I've ever felt out there. And that's the future that I want to see. I want to see a future where everyone can feel that. Everyone can feel safe going from point A to point B and do it without. Carbon emissions.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah, we estimate we have about 25 or more of the North American market. Wow. And the other 75% is, I think, made up of about 100 other companies. And we think that what we're building can become the Ford, the Toyota, the Volkswagen, all combined into one of this whole new mobility movement. And so we're not focused on building a couple hundred million dollar business, but we have a lot bigger aspirations is that I think e-bikes are the next thing to be the solution for the future of mobility.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We found that our customers were really eager to try our bikes before they buy them. And some customers obviously are getting referred by their friends and they're buying online and shipping direct to door. But we found a whole other set of customers that really wanted to try before and see which bike fit them the best, which model was really for them. And so that's why we opened our first retail store back in 2016 and had a lot of success with that. And so we actually did have plan to launch more retail stores this year. That's on pause. But next year you'll start to see some more stuff come out where we're going to experiment with different formats and kind of the new world we're in.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so now it's not so much about just keeping up with this demand that has spiked from COVID-19 people working from home, shopping from home, looking for social distance, ways to get around. But this is a switch that was flipped on and it's not turning off for years to come. And so the work we're doing now is just all about planning for that future demand. It's not about planning for next summer's orders. It's about planning for the orders 10 years from now, frankly.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Waitlist varies by model, but for some of our more popular models, right, there's long as four months. And this is not a small business or a small supply chain that we're running anymore, right? Bikes are being built across factories, across four different countries, and we're spending a huge amount of time on supply chain innovation. We think a switch was flipped on the light has been shed on e-bikes as a tool for the masses.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And take it for context, we're a business that has grown more than 100% per year for the last five years. And we're planning for another year like that. Take a business like that, right? Triple it again. And so you can imagine just it's been a lot of work. It's hard work. It's fun work. But we're just in the business of delighting our customers and that's been really hard since demand has, frankly, spiked.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Initially, when Seattle was the epicenter, right? We went into total cost control mode, actually. We ended up cutting our forecast for the year and a half. And as each week went by, sales kept picking up, right? And it was really fortunate for the company because we didn't need to lay anybody off. And it went the opposite. Since then, we've actually, I think we have over 100 open roles right now. And those are across supply chains, sourcing, right? Customer service focused roles. It's really, we ramped our customer service team from 40 people to 140 now or something like that. And we've been ramping teams as fast as we can to keep up with customer inquiries”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We've always been a pretty hardcore office culture. Frankly, it's fun. We all bike into the office together. We have really huge bike parking lots outside versus a car parking lot. And this is something we had a lot of pride in that we came together as a team each day. And so, yeah, you're right. The first days, I think there was a nursing home where there was the first case of COVID-19. This horrible event happened. And we started to see it spread wider and wider. And we immediately had to transition, right? We had to pivot our whole plan for the year. I mean, it was really like bam, out of nowhere, came straight to home. Like Seattle's where we have hundreds of employees. This is our headquarters location. It was epicenter number one in the U.S.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Rad power bikes COVID 19 the impact started to hit us right in January so basically all of our employees across our factories in Taiwan and China and Southeast Asia they were impacted first So we really just focused in like what could we control and what could work on there? So we just focused on caring for those teams and still trying to make sure they're safe, healthy And still able to produce bikes in the cases where that was a possibility. And so it was like batting down the hatches on supply chain.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so our diversification efforts mean that less and less of our bikes have been subject to the tariffs, but at the same time, our production in mainland China has also been increasing. So on a percentage basis, it's fewer, but on a total unit, it's actually more. The supply chains for electric bikes, they don't exist in America. They're not going to exist.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In mid 2018, right? We were growing up really fast and we had a lot of bikes on order compared to our balance sheet. And all of a sudden, tariffs hit us really hard. Bikes were part of the Section 301 tariffs. So, like I said, we had all these bikes on order, and then all of a sudden, all of them were going to cost us 25% more. That's our whole margin. That's like, that's everything that we had to reinvest in the business. And it was almost overnight that this happened. It felt so unfair. The intent of the tariffs were to encourage domestic business and domestic hiring. And it had the totally opposite effect on us. We're growing headcount like crazy. And then all of a sudden, our administration, right, tells us that actually we're going to go ahead and take this pool of investable capital that you could use to fund more inventory and hire more people. We're just going to go and take all that, right? So it really did feel like a direct hit on our mission and our mission is to decrease emissions and make mobility zero emissions, right? And so it felt horrible.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's been a ton of sleepless nights. I mean, anyone that knows me knows that I don't really have a life outside the company, even still today. In this business, it's like the speed at which we're growing a huge piece of learning I've taken away is that you just need to get comfortable with things being different almost every day. I used to say things are changing a lot every month or every quarter, but really it's just getting comfortable with change. And that takes time. You're building out totally new departments or building new supply chain partnerships or bringing on new investors. Like all this stuff has a smaller you are, the more likely all this stuff is to sink your ship and you're less equipped to deal with it just because you haven't developed that muscle, like how to process some of these emotions or these changes.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's two big things that pushed me over the edge on enthusiastically like racing into this partnership with the founders of Zuli. They also built Blue Nile together. Two of the world's best e-commerce entrepreneurs. One, we got this taste early on in the business of having great advisors in the company. So that was one reason. The second reason every single summer we were out of stock. And for long periods of time, weeks on end. So we were cash constrained. Like we needed to be able to order more inventory near the tail end of each year to be prepared for the upcoming summer. And so it was those two things that just made this a total no-brainer for us.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I always felt it was really important for us to keep our heads down and just kind of keep building value and keep us on the track. We have a really bold mission as a business. And I didn't want anyone to kind of change that trajectory. And so we were careful for a long time as a business, but the frequency of people contacting us did increase a lot. And through that increased frequency, we started to see a lot of really special partnerships potential start to form people that were investing in our mission, not just investing in a kind of a short-term run at the bank. And that's when our conversations first started with potential investors.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Work, but it does. And so as co founders, I think you really do have commitment that you have to make to your employees that you'll like make sure that's a healthy relationship because with every relationship, especially co-founder relationship, it's important that that's healthy because it does trickle down to the rest of the company.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I was always way more on product innovation and manufacturing. And so it was actually, it was easy for us to break the workup because we had these complementary skill sets, but we're also totally opposites. And in many ways, opposites complement each other. But we've also learned in all the management training we've done together that it actually makes it really hard. It's a bit of push and pull because he is very thoughtful. And sometimes I'm very action-oriented and bridging into reckless in my speed at which I go at problems. And so it just has sometimes made decision making hard. And so one of the big learnings I've kind of taken away from the last awesome five years with Ty has been acknowledge the tension and address it head on. Don't let it build up pressure because you might think it's not creeping out into the rest of your team's work.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's so many factors impacting this e-bike revolution that's happening now. So bike share is a good example here. We actually saw bike share as being sort of an advertisement for our product because people were seeing thousands of bikes in the streets and maybe they were trying them. And if they tried them, we were hearing from our customers saying, you know, I tried one of these share bikes, but I'd really love to see what a real e-bike's all about. I think that's what we were hearing like almost at verbatim.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, exactly, kind of just different digital channels. But this is a people led movement. Like, I think the people have just been ready and eager for a solution like this.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's right. Yeah, it was a small angel investment, and the role that they played was so pivotal in those early days because they were kind of the first adults in the room. Thousand dollars a month? That's crazy. It's like you need to double that. And I remember Ty looking back at him dumbfounded, like double the budget? No way are we going to spend that much money on marketing. And so we doubled it. And sure enough, the amount of eyes on the site doubled.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had in the first year, so in 2015, we did a million and a half in sales. So we did 300,000 on crowdfunding and 1.5 for the year. We were a bootstrap business, right? For so long, but we did have two local guys in Seattle, these amazing entrepreneur slash angel investors that joined us in 2015 and started to function as kind of a quasi board of directors with me.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Frankly, we've been just overwhelmed with demand as full paying customers that want to own their own bike. And so we never got pulled into the share economy conversation. And we just were hearing something very different from our customers. They wanted to own their bike. They wanted to customize it themselves. They wanted different features on their bikes than what was. Available on share bikes. And so, yeah, we never went down that path.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. This has been just the most compelling part of our story so far. And I think what really drives a lot of our team members, especially the customer-facing ones that see these stories all day long, every day from people that are adopting Rad Power Bikes and becoming part of the e-bike movement is like, it's not just transportation. It's health and wellness as well. I think you'll hear maybe people that ride e-bikes being called quote unquote cheaters because they're not peddling on their own. But actually nothing could be further from the truth because you're actually out there and you're going further and you can pedal as much as you want to. And our customers find that it just reduces the barrier to entry into cycling and they end up getting way more exercise. I think I've seen studies talking about how you actually get more exercise riding an e-bike than you do get a regular bike because you ride it more often.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was people just looking for mobility. We really were targeting people getting around their ranch or running to get in the mail or taking their dog for a walk or running to the store just to pick up groceries or the pharmacy. It was just a lot more about just mobility and under 20 mile, under 30 mile kind of trips.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Think one of the first things we ever copywrote was this term it's built for everything and priced for everyone. And this was kind of an early tenant within the business, which is that it's almost like a Swiss Army knife or leatherman of e-bikes. And at a price that allows for mass adoption.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really quickly, and then day two came around, and I think we sold three bikes, right? And like, wow, okay. Day three comes along, and I think we sold 15. And each day that went by, I remember having, I think my heart rate has never been faster than that week following our crowdfunding campaign transitioning to website sales.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First day, I think we got one order come through the site, and that was really exciting because one, we learned that the website was working, and two, we realized maybe someone out there is willing to, like that $14.99 price works for us. And it was a sustainable margin for us. And so we knew if we could sell bikes at that price, we could build a robust business. But if there wasn't any traction, then we didn't know what we were going to do.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's been just a huge component of the traction that our brand has gotten from day one is that because we're a direct-to-consumer and because Ty had this background in performance and brand, you got a digital marketing, we were able to just immediately get eyes on the site. And that was still complemented, right, with this word of mouth thing that was going on. It's like, it's like a ski doo. You know, you don't want to buy one ski do. You want to buy two so you can go with your friend. You see the same thing with e-bikes, which is it's a lot more fun to go ride with a pal”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Go from We had a Shopify already up and running by the time we launched Indiegogo. That was just a great tool for us because it was really easy to get it launched and it really eliminated this huge barrier to entry. We wanted to run the campaign on Indiegogo because it would get a lot of eyes on it. But then you're right. We needed to have revenue at a more sustainable margin right away. So right after the 30-day campaign ended on Indiegogo, we switched on our websites ability to accept orders We didn't know what was going to happen. We didn't know if raising the price from the crowdfunding price and going up to $14.99, which is the price that Rad Rover still sells for today, was going to work. We didn't know if we were going to see customers still excited to adopt one of our bikes.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it wasn't absent of a lot of long nights and blood, sweat, and tears, but we did. We think we got them all fulfilled on time, plus or minus a few weeks, I think. And it did quickly become, frankly, totally out of hand, like just being able to have timely responses to customers. And so we ended up posting our first job. And our first job was a customer service agent position.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's the standard in other countries, but not in North America. And so we had specified everything in the Bill of Materials and all the spec sheets and quality documentation. But that was the one thing we didn't spec because we just assumed everyone does it the same way. So we spent, I think, a week straight with three of us in the company at that point, like unboxing every bike, switching the brakes around. It was a doozy just to get those bikes shipped.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So we actually ran into a problem once the bikes arrived to Seattle, we unboxed some of the first bikes out of the containers and put them together, started doing quality checks. I went out for a test ride on one of the first bikes and it's like, something's wrong, something's off here. What's going on here? And I realized very quickly that the factory had installed the brakes backwards. And so the front brake was on the right and the rear brake was on the left.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I had placed the order before even visiting the factory. And so I quickly got on a plane and got my butt over there to try to oversee production and be a part of the production process to learn, digest, get a feel for this new partner we were building this relationship with.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That you're going to be like, where's my thing Oh man, yeah, I remember sweating constantly for every day running up to the campaign, and I thought that that was hard, just getting the campaign launched. But boy, oh boy, that's when the hard part really started.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We were essentially giving the bikes away. I think it's a good way to look at it we needed to get the fund that first production run. We were selling them for $1,200 or $1,300 each, I think, something like that. And yeah, we had this conservative goal of $40,000, which would have gotten us going. And we also ran the campaign for 30 days rather than the normal 45 or 60 days for a campaign. Because frankly, we wanted to just quickly get a taste if this was. What customers are really looking for? We had no idea what kind of legs this would have, and within 30 days, right? We had done, I think, over 300 people had signed up. So we did 320,000 dollars in pre-orders.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I got to give credit to Ty on this one because he's an amazing brand marketer. And so that was a big piece from day one is like we launched that campaign fast. We were like, we're doing this. We're going to go live. And I think we got the Indiegogo campaign up within 90 days or 100 days or something like that. But it was also... Has always been a word of mouth business. And so that was always kind of win beneath the wings for the brand, even from right when we launched the campaign. It was like we were seeing comments on the Indiegogo campaign, friends telling friends to come look at the campaign. Like, you got to get one of these so we can ride together. And so that's been a big piece of the growth from that Indigo campaign forward.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah. And what we've always seen, we've always called it, at least from their early days, is the e-bike grin. And that's what you see on someone's face when they come back from their first test ride, because it is unbelievably freeing feeling. And it's frankly a little bit shocking.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Get it out there in the world. But the other thing we found was really important was to make it really simple too because we couldn't afford to have 10 different versions. And so we just had one size fits all and we made a white one and a black one. And the bike was a little bit absurd in the sense that these huge tires on it, it also had a throttle on it, which was super unusual back then. Most e-bikes are only assistive. So as you're pedaling, it helps you out a little bit. Yeah.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Exactly. You don't need a license. You don't need registration. You don't need a driver. Yeah. So that was our target. Our target was to build this 750 watt e-bike with big tires on it.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolutely. We knew going out of the gate, we wanted to be more powerful than it's in the name, right? Rad power bike. So we wanted it to be 750 watts. 750 watts is the federal legal limit for e-bikes to be treated like a regular bike, so you can still ride them.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Had a minimum of about $40,000. So that was kind of our target because if we had done that, we could have filled about a half a container of e-bikes and done a less than container load shipment. We didn't know what the campaign was going to do and we wanted at least to be able to just fund some initial units and get a production run going to get a sense of if there really was a market there.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I had emails going back and forth with probably a dozen different factories. And we had a good sense then of what the minimum units were going to be for an order and the pricing. There was frankly no other way for us to get it off the ground except for crowdfunding.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Most of the e-bikes that were out there in the market were built for European standards, actually, right in around 2014. And so they were 250 watts of power. They didn't have throttles. They had really skinny tires. So we saw this path to build a bike that was a lot more. It was just built for these Western world where you have rough roads and high traffic speeds and people want power. And that's kind of what we went to go build.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Ty and I have really aligned values, but we're also polar opposites. So, Ty's generally very careful, and I'm really action-oriented, and sometimes I go too fast. And so when I called Ty, I thought he was going to say yes, but I thought he was going to be a careful yes. Like, I'm into it. Let's do this. But let's ease into it, right? And it was actually the complete opposite. He was like, I'm in. Tell me when you want to start. Let's get this thing going. And it was because he had seen what the corporate world was like. He wasn't tapped out, but he had seen how fun this would be to be entrepreneurial and like take these skills to his own business. That was a huge accelerant. Like I was committed. I was like, I'm doing this. But then when he was that excited and eager to get going, I was like, this is a really thoughtful, cautious guy normally. And if he's that excited, we better get going.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“After college, he went to San Francisco and underwent kind of this like six or seven years of blossoming and becoming a great performance marketer. And when I first had this light bulb moment, I figured he's the guy to call. He can run the marketing and sales side of the business.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so Ty Collins came on as my co founder in 2015. He's just this brilliant guy. And I mean, to give you a sense, we have really aligned values and we have really aligned values because we both went to the same monastery preschool. And so we grew up in the same hometown. And he's a polar opposite to me when it comes to work skills. He's a marketer, a digital marketer by training, by background, by career. And I was really a product guy, right? A product CEO. And so we had grown up together, went to preschool together. I live with him in college. In college, he was helping with some branding, some of our website stuff. And so he was there with me all along, supporting me. And he believed in e-bikes all along. And I think we had even talked about during our college days together, like, God, it'd be cool to really go big with this thing one day when it was the right time.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT