SRAM is credited with having three co-founders, but Stan Day is the man who planted the seed. And you could very well argue he is the man where the brand’s culture and values stem from. At least that’s what I got out of speaking with him in this episode while listening to his polite, humble and understated approach when sharing his story.

SRAM all started with Stan taking on a triathlon challenge back in the 80’s and thinking that there has to be a better way than the current down-tube shifting method. Twist-shift was his answer and he was able to convince a few friends to leave their good jobs, move across the country and start a business in Chicago and sell their better way. But as successful as the company is now, it certainly didn’t start out that way. If it weren’t for one pivotal moment, SRAM might have been only a side-note in our cycling history books.

Josh Poertner isn’t your typical cycling industry personality. In fact, he’s not ‘typical’ of much at all. He’s one of those people that when you meet him, you’re taken back by a man who is filled with enthusiasm, curiosity, positive energy, and intelligence that really makes him stand out from most human beings.

These days, you may associate Josh’s name as the man who reinvented Silca, the Italian tyre pump brand founded over a hundred years ago. But as with most of these stories, it was far from a straight path, and anything but easy. He started out as a keen and talented bike racer, who later became a brilliant engineer who got his feet wet in motorsport and later went on to be an enormous influence in making the Zipp wheels the brand what it is today.

The story of how a humble man played a major part in disrupting the cycling industry.

Not only is Tom Ritchey one of the founding fathers of mountain biking, but he’s also a master frame and component builder, innovator, and entrepreneur.

Researching this episode and trying to put a timeline together to extract the major business milestones that Tom has been through was a bit of a daunting task. There’s so much there. He’s been in business for 50 years and as modest a business as he’s intentionally kept it, it hasn’t always been a straightforward journey.

So much of Tom’s story has already been documented and I didn’t want to just do that again. In fact, I can’t do justice to telling Tom’s intertwined life and business journey in a podcast of any reasonable length. But as it turned out, what came out of Tom during our interview ended up being so much better. At this point in Tom’s life I found him incredibly reflective on his experiences, with the benefit of years of hindsight and perspective.

Most businesses we’ve spoken to in this podcast have had a relatively straightforward journey, but Wahoo Fitness does not fit that mould. Chip Hawkins is the company’s founder and believe it or not, the Wahoo business started off in boat docks. That’s right, floating boat docks. But it was a good business with interesting problems that Chip loved to solve.

Chip is an engineer, an entrepreneur, a tinkerer, and most importantly, someone who loves to throw himself neck deep into fixing problems to make something better. And it usually starts with him and his own needs.

Chip’s story is one that proves that if you see a problem and you care enough to solve it for yourself and maybe a few friends, there’s likely a market out there for a business to take shape. And as Chip points out, the most important thing is that you have to try.

Escape Collective is entirely member-funded. If you like this podcast please consider supporting us by becoming a member: https://escapecollective.com/member/

---

Strava has become ubiquitous in the lives of over 50 million athletes and is arguably the most relevant social network to anyone who loves to sweat.

The co-founders of Strava, Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey, have been lifelong friends and have quite literally changed how we interact with our cycling in both real life and with each other online.

The reason I was so interested in hearing Michael and Mark’s story was not only because they’ve created an amazing brand and product that most of us use, but because they went about it in a very different way than most of the companies you’ll hear about in this podcast.

Creating Strava wasn’t their first trip to the rodeo. They were experienced, successful, and knowledgeable entrepreneurs that made some very deliberate decisions early on about the foundations of the company. Those decisions have taken Strava to where it is today and should help take it into the next 20 years.

Strava started from nothing but a single idea with only passion fuelling the fire, and as you’ll discover, creating Strava hasn’t been the straightforward journey that you might think about when you log on every day.

Rocket Espresso is not a cycling brand per se, but it’s arguably the best known coffee brand who are part of the orbit in our own little cycling world. 

It’s only a recent phenomenon that cycling and coffee have gone hand in hand, and most cyclists have an appreciation for beautiful, mechanical, craftsmanship which Rocket does so wonderfully.

New Zealander Andrew Meo is the co-founder of Rocket Espresso and it’s no coincidence that the brand found its way into cycling. Andrew is a lifelong avid cyclist and  his passion for coffee didn’t come until a bit later in his life...

Coverart photo by Augustus Farmer (augustusfarmer.com)

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

But what many people don’t know is that as wildly successful Cervelo was up until 2011, it was a pressure cooker of constant financial challenges which ultimately led to Cervelo needing to sell the business to Dutch holding company, PON. 2008-2011 saw the perfect storm for Cervelo with the global financial crisis, setting up a professional team that was far more successful than ever imagined, and a private lender which led to the company’s turn of events.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Indoor training has been around for longer than I can remember, but it was in 2014 when Zwift came along that it changed this market forever. It came into the world with bold ambitions, reimagined the space and what it could become, and has grown the market to a size that nobody could have imagined.

As far back as I can recall the earliest pioneers in the indoor virtual world space were the likes of Computrainer and Tacx - that would have been  in the late 90’s, early 2000’s. But they never really delivered on the promise making indoor training much more enjoyable. They can’t be blamed for lack of vision or not trying - the technology wasn’t even there at the time. Social networks didn’t exist, multi player online games weren’t around, broadband speeds were slow and wireless protocols such as ANT+ and BTLE hadn’t been invented yet. 

But, in 2010 when a gaming software developer in Southern California named Jon Mayfield began tinkering with his kinetic trainer and finding ways for it to communicate with a virtual world he built, he had no idea how big this would become.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

There’s so much to Castelli’s checkered history but most recently an American by the name of Steve Smith came onto the scene in 2000. He had no Italian heritage, no real cycling industry experience, but he did have a love cycling. By his own admission, he wasn’t an amazing cyclist, technical innovation was where his interest always strayed so he could stay competitive. 

Steve’s email signature says ‘Castelli Brand Manager’, but I always got the feeling from speaking with him over the years that he did far more than that. As I dug into his story deeper, he’s part owner of the business, steers the ship, and is ultimately the man who turned Castelli around into what we know it as today.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.