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

“Yeah, I started out by gauging what it would cost to build a normal electric bike if you were to actually find a factory, build them on an assembly line. That's something I just never gotten a taste of because I had been building all of our bikes. Like I said, one at a time. And so this was a new exploration for me. So that's how it started.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I remember immediately just getting online and trying to search out where I could kind of have these things made. And a vast majority of bikes were manufactured across Asia. And so that's where I started looking. I started reaching out to vendors, reaching out to factories. And I was using my RAD power bikes email address to reach out to them, which no one had ever heard of. So I'm surprised any of them even got back to me. But sure enough, a few of them did.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But the fat tires were just so eye catching. And so I thought maybe this would help propel the popularity of electric bikes, like something that really gets you out there, kind of like a silent version of a Harley Davidson. Yeah. It's bodacious, right? Everyone looks at you and it's like they're fun. And so when you combine this fat tire, the comfort, the durability with an electric motor, you kind of have the best of both worlds. And that was kind of this special kind of launch point for the brand.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“All the early customers that have been coming to me all wanted bigger and bigger tires. And so they would all say they'd almost like start off. They'd say, I want really big, comfortable tires because the roads are rough. So it was a theme I kept hearing time and time again. And then there was something else about the big tires that I really liked, which was that e-bikes normally you don't even know they're e-bikes because they're silent. It just looks like someone riding a bike just going a little bit faster”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They're a dog to pedal, right? They're these big, huge tires and they're super comfortable and they're really cool looking, but they're really hard to pedal. And so that's when I thought like. Would be a great platform to combine everything that I've learned about e bikes to make a flagship product that's commercialized. I think I spent the whole morning asking my uncle and aunt questions. Like I sketched it on a pad and I was asking them, what do you think of this? Would you ride it? What color would you want it to be if you had one? I think my aunt said Candy Apple red and sorry Aunt Jackie, we have never built a candy apple red bike, but maybe one day we'll build you a special one. But no, that was the moment right then was kind of, you know, I learned that lesson pretty early on is like getting out of your normal zone, traveling, visiting factories, visiting customers. That's when we've had a lot of our best ideas.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And so sleeping on their living room floor, I wake up in the morning, and for some reason I just had this, like I said, light bulb moment, I had seen a fat tire bike. It's a bike that you pedal. It's got really big tires on it. And those started to become popular in like 2012, 2013. Yeah, I remember.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think this really was when the light bulb moment happened for me. I had always been riding e-bikes through this whole time and I was riding e-bikes and building e-bikes and it really was my true and deepest passion. I was visiting my aunt and uncle for I think Thanksgiving or something.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was a major shareholder out of the gate, and we were fortunate that we didn't raise a lot of money for that company from day one. So I did learn the value of being careful with equity from there and like making sure we could maintain the vision of the company and kind of protect the mission. But as we brought in more and more senior people into the company, it did start to become more and more like, you know, I was a minority voice within the organization. And so that was part of the reason why I ended up leaving golf board is I had less say in the direction of the company. And my love for golf board is still alive to this day. I think it's an amazing product and frankly a great team, but I was controlling less and less of the destiny of that company, even the direction of product development started to kind of shift more towards management.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So I was one of the founders, and I ran product development. So I was really from day one, I was helping with a lot of stuff, but then I kind of, as the business grew, we started bringing on a management team. And so we hired a president, we hired a CEO. So I was starting to get surrounded by people that have been there done that in ways that I hadn't, but I was able to go really deep on the product development and the commercialization part of the project.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, Don Wildman funded us right out of the gate. We found a manufacturer in New Jersey to start kind of commercializing the product. And this was my first kind of real taste of building a real business with a team and first entrepreneurial experience.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was great for use on turf And we started a business together, like me, a couple buddies from my hometown, and then Laird and Don Wildman.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And one of those guys had taken this prototype with them that we had built. They brought it on a vacation with them in Hawaii. And they were riding it, like going to the beach or something, right? And he ended up crashing on this prototype. And it was just because they hit a pothole. And he ended up crashing in this gravel lot. And he was all cut up and bleeding. And he like gets up and he looks up. And famous surfer Laird Hamilton is like running over to help him out. So this really odd grouping of things that happened in a row, but Laird had been playing golf on electric skateboards in Hawaii with a good friend of his who was a really famous entrepreneur's guy named Don Wildman, who's the founder of Bally's Total Fitness. And so these two guys that lived in Hawaii together had been riding electric-powered skateboards on golf courses there. But our electric skateboard prototype was better for that. It was four-wheel drive, right? So like.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I had started building off-road electric skateboards with some friends in town who were also electric vehicle nuts like myself.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was always very entrepreneurial, and so I had started another company in the electric vehicle space in my junior of undergrad, actually And so I was running this other company, and this company is called Golf Board. And it sounds pretty literal, but it's literally an electric skateboard that you use on golf courses.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was just really eager to be part of the electric vehicle revolution. I just felt like this was, there was really no other outcome. Like I thought electric vehicles were going to become king. I just felt like from a society environment, like all these reasons why we're going to need electric vehicles, why we needed them desperately then and why we need them just as desperately now. That's where I wanted to take my career.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I was working nights and weekends doing conversions. The business, it was still very small. It was just me building bikes one at a time, right? But it was. Was a good income. It wasn't six figures, but I was one of the reasons I went to Humboldt State was because I got a partial track scholarship as well. And so that was important. So I was running the 800 meter at Humboldt State as well at the same time. So it was a mixture of scholarship, mixture of the income from early days Rad Power bikes.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so I had to pay my own way through undergrad. And no, it was totally sufficient for me to pay rent and kind of go on my own. I didn't even move into dorms. I moved right into a house when I first started in college.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and other times they didn't even know where to start. And so oftentimes I was guiding the customer through the process. So they'd reach out to me and they'd say, I love this idea of an electric bike, but I have this application for it. Like, can you build anyone that will do these things? Like they were like, I need to carry stuff. Like if they were on a farm, they worked on a farm. They need to carry stuff for. Or they wanted to pull a trailer with their dock in it behind them. Like, this is really what fueled me, this, you know, building e bikes one at a time for people.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, yeah. So I was just hanging out and late into the night each night in my basically a parent's woodshed where I had kind of like a soldering table set up and a little stand for the bikes. And so I was just kind of cranking away on bikes there kind of one at a time and I ended up posting an ad in the local newspaper that I think they ended up cutting me quite a deal on it because they just knew that I didn't have a dime to my name and just started getting flooded with increase and was mostly word of mouth though like the newspaper ad wasn't really doing much. It was a lot more just like the last person I built a bike for told their friends and then they would contact me.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Really grew organically and slowly. And so the tepee trade happened, right? And then the next thing was another guy that was local. He was really creative and really active guy, but he was also, you know, he had late stage Lyme's disease. And so his mobility was a little bit impeded. And he also lived up a really steep hill. And so this was my second customer with somebody that had actual physical mobility needs. So that was a really great exploration and a great experience for me and I think for the customer too, which was like we kind of went to town together figuring out the right configuration of like a comfortable seat, a more laid back geometry for the bike and more power to get up the hills. And so that build, that project was really. Influential to the future of kind of Rad Power Bike specifications like other bikes.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I lived in that teepee for a year. I lived in the end of the winter, and you realized pretty quickly that you have to be pretty hardened to live in a tepee in the winter in Northern California. So I moved back in with my parents pretty quickly.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This woman came by that was selling teepees, and she took a liking to the e bike. And I was like, Is that your teepee booth over there? Because I saw that where it came from. And I was like, that thing's really cool, right? I love it.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the first customer I had actually ended up trading the bike for a tepee, like an actual teepee that I lived in for a summer on my parents' property. Trading stuff back then, that was pretty typical where I grew up. I wanted mobility freedom. And I also, you know, at that age, I was really in love with the idea of like, I could live in the backyard and like, I don't have to live with my parents this summer. And so I think I was showing one of the first prototypes off at a local fair in town. And it was like partly a farmer's market and partly a craft fair. And I was kind of at a little booth set up kind of showing off my bike.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just to get it to work, I think I probably blew up a few fuses and just to get a functioning bike out for that hurst customer.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I just think the first person, it was like a friend of the family. I was at the bank and I walked outside and they were looking at the bike and like, oh, hey, Mike, how's it going? I was like, oh, you know, hey, man. And I think he said, what's this all about? How cool is this? He's like, well, can you build me one? And I was taken aback. I remember just kind of being dumbfounded in the moment and like, yeah, I guess so. Like, I guess I could build you one.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it was so much fun because it was people were stopping me when I was in town to ask me about the bike. And yeah, the local newspaper did a little story on us. And I think I got some fun nicknames kind of early on. The e-bike guy, I think different things like that people came to know me pretty quickly.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I was sinking every dollar I had into parts. So I had meaningful financial skin in the game, I think, back then. But keep in mind that that's probably $500 or $1,000 worth of investment between parts and the airshipping cost to kind of import some of this stuff.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I've got some scars. I've got some remnants still from a lot of those early prototypes. But I think as each iteration went on, they got a little less sharp around the edges and a little bit more tied together.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first bike did about 30 miles an hour. Wow. Yeah, and it shouldn't have gone that fast considering a lot of the parts were held on with zip ties and duct tape.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the first couple versions didn't help that much. I think you'd make it a mile or two before you'd blow a sensor or fry something. And I remember a couple times having to hitchhike back to my house, throwing my bike in the back of a neighbor's truck or something that was driving by. But each iteration, it started to become more and more effective. And frankly, like the first time I really was able to ride that whole way to school, it was an overwhelming sensation of freedom. Like I think that was just something I was so excited about. Was this feeling as a young person looking for mobility freedom, like this ability to go and do what you want to do and learn and feel life for yourself? I just really captivate by that from day one with e-bikes.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think it was really equal parts obsession because I was so in love with this idea of building electric bike so I was just spending like every night late into the night before my parents would like yelling at me out in the shop basically like you got to get to bed kid and it was and the other part of it really was just growing up building stuff you know it was just always doing stuff with my hands and you know I had some good guidance from online forums like some of the early DIY like you know community stuff so I was kind of just really sponging off of this forum community online that we're building electric bikes that were affordable and high power finding ways to get parts off the shelf and finding ways to import parts from countries where you know electric two-wheelers were more common back then.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was not so glamorous. That's what I'd say, this process. I think it was about nine months and probably 12 failed prototypes later. And I had an e-bike that I could actually get to school with, but I couldn't get back. So I'd have to get to school and then kind of sneak around and try to find a place to plug my bike in and charge it up while I'm in classroom during the day.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so it would be a settle scooter, him. Okay. And a motor controller from some kind of DIY kind of hacker in Canada. So I had imported it and shipped that to myself. And then I found lead acid batteries that are used as starter batteries on motorcycles. And so I strung three of those together to make 36 volts. And that was really the power point for the first prototype.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so the motor was designed for a scooter, like a scooter that you would see hauling 100 pounds of cargo in Asia, as an example.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I just started with off the shelf stuff. You know, I like searched online, kind of figured out what it would take. So that was a little bit of stuff from Radio Shacks and stuff I ordered on eBay. I had an old mountain bike. So it was like it was the mountain bike that I'd used for my previous racing season. So it was pretty beat up and scratched up. And so it was a really great donor bike for the first project. I found the electric motor that I put on it. I found that on a website. I was able to buy one and airship it by DHL Express. And this is by”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I really wanted a little bit of both. I wanted a hybrid because I needed to be training, but I wanted to be able to go further and like, you know, get to school.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I kind of went to kind of researching online and kind of poking ground a little bit. And I started to see some people doing conversion kits so they'd find electric motors and batteries and they'd figure out a way to attach them to a bike. And I also found there were actually some e-bikes that you could buy then too. The problem was just like today, most e-bikes are really expensive.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, just like pneumatic tires, but definitely a small kind of child-size electric scooter. So I had this experience where I'd saved up for this thing. I got it. And I just wrote it nonstop for a couple years. And I just kind of fell in love with electric vehicles from that goofy little scooter. It's just the simplicity, I think, of just a battery and a motor and a control system. And it's just almost like magic, right?”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, at that point, I think three or four years earlier I had, as a 10 year old or an 11-year-old, I started saving up for something that I really, really wanted. And this thing just so happened to be an electric scooter that was for sale in the saw shop in town. So like the shop that sold chainsaws also had an electric scooter on display.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was definitely like an hour long ride because it was also really hilly where I grew up. So, you know, I'd show up sweaty to school. I have a teenage kid, a freshman, a sophomore in high school at that point. And I'm already struggling enough to not be the dork and showing up sweaty wasn't so cool.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Because I was riding to school and back each day. I was doing that for training because I was actually starting to race and it was very competitive. And so I needed to be putting on a lot of miles. But my parents did not like that. They gave me a lot of freedom, but they did not like that half of that distance was traveled on a freeway. You have 70 mile an hour logging trucks flying by. And I don't know why they gave me the thumbs up, but I think that does share with you kind of how dusty and kind of country my upbringing was.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I did. Yeah, so I was racing mountain bikes. And so where we grew up about four miles away from my house had this amazing community park that had a three-mile mountain bike loop in it. And so from a young age, I was biking over there and riding laps around this park. And yeah, I just totally fell in love with two wheels”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so in my freshman year, I had a couple options. I could try to bum a ride from friends, but that was challenging and inconsistent. We had a school bus, but same thing, challenging and inconsistent, like the school bus route took over an hour and a half just to get to school because It was 16 miles of country roads. I couldn't afford a car then. And eventually I did get a car, but I couldn't keep it running because the car that I could afford wasn't going to be very reliable. And sure enough, blew a head gasket. One thing after another. And so I was kind of a little bit stranded.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To fix your car or whatever. Yeah, definitely not. I remember one time my mom walked out of the house and it was like a winter morning and I would climbed up on the roof and my dad was watching me at the bottom and a shingle had broken off the roof from a tree branch that had fallen on the house. And so I'm like climbing up these slippery shingles, right? And my mom's kind of yelling at me like, you know, my dad's name's John. Like, John, why would you let him do that? That kind of thing. And so it was kind of just the way of life back then was just keeping things together.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, we would just, you know, where we grew up, it was oftentimes you needed to fix it. You weren't going to be going to town and buying a new version of it. And sometimes you have to dig out the well or fix the well pump, right? You're chopping firewood. You're fixing up the house. You name it. It's just kind of more the country lifestyle.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was hit or miss where we grew up, construction opportunities were off and on. And so he ended up actually, especially around in the early 2000s, he ended up transitioning to a full-time job at the local golf course, which is like kind of a rundown nine-hole course. He worked there as a maintenance person, fixing sprinklers, doing electrical maintenance jobs like that.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“My dad was really creative. He was featured in fine home building magazine for a couple of the places that he built. So he specialized in building really unusual homes. So he focused on roundhouses, like octagon-shaped houses. And I grew up building with him, right? You know, I mean, I would go to the job sites with him on the weekends when he was needing to finish up on stuff. So I just grew up building with him. So I learned how to work with my hands and how to do stuff in that way for my dad.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, my dad was a carpenter. My mom was a nurse. She was an ER nurse growing up. And then she transitioned to being the nurse at my high school, which was a bit of a coincidence, but made for an interesting four years of high school.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think it was the era. I think there was this, they were part of that kind of move back to the land, and that was during the back to the land era. And when my parents moved there, I think that that was really when the movement was starting. And luckily they taught me the value of hard work and career life. But I think there's this connection that was happening around music and spirituality. And I think connecting with nature. And so, yeah, they were in a Volkswagen van and they just moved up to Humble County.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, the first five years of my life, I lived in an airstream trailer on the property my parents bought on some sort of a lien. And as they slowly built the house up and that childhood home I grew up in is still not finished today, but it was a really great upbringing, organic garden on the property and just surrounding us everywhere. There was off-grid marijuana farms. The area was opportune for it just because it was so out there and out of touch from society.”
2020-09-07 · How I Built This with Guy Raz · Rad Power Bikes: Mike Radenbaugh · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT