“2015 is the year of Karmic Bikes”

It’s the start of something new.

I know it sounds boastful to say that, but I didn’t say it. My friend Jon did, and I would have to agree with him. More importantly, I have to live up to that expectation, of my friends, of my family, and of myself.

I started a car company 6 years ago, out of necessity more than anything else. I was driving to work and got a call from my boss. Long story short, he suggested I pull a u-turn and head home, they’d be sending my stuff back in a box (though that’s a whole different post for another time!). After getting over the shock of that abrupt dismissal, I started Prong Motors the next day. It was a crazy idea — a three wheeled car! — that ultimately no one wanted. So we sold the company and hoped someone else would figure out how to make them work. I’m not sure anyone has.

The biggest lesson learned was to not waste time building something no one wants. The corollary is that doing a startup in stealth-mode is silly for 99% of projects out there. And yet, these last few months I’ve been doing just that. A big reason was because I wasn’t sure it would actually work (it does!), and a small part is because I’m slightly embarrassed by the prototypes we’re hacking together. But that ends today, my ego be damned.

So I’d like to tell you about Karmic Bikes.

I’m a huge #bikenerd, and #bikeaddict — it’s the one thing I’ve done consistently for the last twenty years. Not necessarily riding everyday, but reading, wrenching, thinking and dreaming about bikes. (That’s not weird?) I don’t really know how it started, but everyone knows me as “the bike guy”, even when I was building cars. I love bikes, and I want more people to ride bikes so that they might possibly fall in love too. It’s really a wonderful sport for fun and exercise, and it’s also a great mode of transportation if you’ve got good infrastructure for it. Luckily for us, that’s improving in America.

I recently read this Open Letter to cyclists about ebikes and their place in American Cycling. I think it is a wonderful article, so go ahead and read it.

I think Padraig does a better job than I can to explain why I love ebikes. Like him, I tried a Specialized Turbo last year and it blew my mind. It was that Eureka moment every startup enthusiast is looking for. In an instant, I knew what I wanted to work on. I wanted to make ebikes for everyone. No wait, I want to make fun bikes for everyone. My good friend Penny tried an early prototype and she came off the bike saying, “I want one!” She describes the feeling of “wheeeee!” that you get on an ebike. It’s similar to that feeling the very first time you rode a bike all on your own. It’s the feeling of pure joy.

That’s what we want to give the world. And here’s how we’ll do it.

30 days — finish up a couple prototypes to have friends and family try them out. We’re also meeting with angel investors to see if we can get the right resources to make this a world-class effort. We’ve managed so far as a couple guys in a garage, but it would really help to get a little boost before…

60 days — our Kickstarter! We’ve seen some really cool projects on Kickstarter last year, and my eye for picking projects is pretty good (9 out of 10 funded!). We hope to have a successful campaign to fund our initial production of 200 bikes. That’s the minimum quantity we need to order just to get a spot on the production schedule of a top-tier manufacturing partner. If the project gets funded…

90 days — we’ll make a trip to Taiwan for the Taipei International Bike Show, it’s the big one for all bike brands, because 99% of bicycles sold in America are made in Asia. We’d love to build our bikes here in California, but the cost of an aluminum frame from our friend Paul Sadoff at Rock Lobster starts at $1500. We’re hoping to get a complete bike to you at not much more than that price.

So that’s the plan for the start of 2015. We’ll see how things go, and plan our next 3 months after that. If you’re a fellow cyclist, or a technophile, or you just wanna say Hi, please drop me a note at hong@karmicbikes.com

I’d love to hear from you, and we hope this is going to be a great year!