Building Rocket Espresso
From The Top
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......
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Building Ritchey
From The Top
So much of Tom Richey'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 reasonable length of podcast. But as it turned out, what came out of Tom during our interview ended up being so much better. At this point of Tom’s life I found him incredibly reflective on his experiences, with the benefit of years of hindsight and perspective.
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Building Cervelo
From The Top
The genesis of Cervelo started in 1995 when two young engineering students named Phil White and Gerard Vroomen met in the composites lab at McGill University in Canada. Over a span of 15 years they went from building a crazy aerodynamic time trial bike as a university project to creating one of the most disruptive and loved bike brands in the world.
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Building Zwift
From The Top
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.
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Building Castelli
From The Top
You’ll be hard pressed to find a more iconic brand in cycling than Castelli. The company dates back to the late 1800’s.
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Building 'Life in the Peloton' with Mitch Docker
From The Top
When pro cyclist Mitch Docker announced his retirement I was in the middle of producing Christian Meier’s story, much of the background I got from Mitch’s podcast, Life in the Peloton. So it got me thinking about Life in the Peloton. Is it a business for Mitch? How did he start this? What makes him tick? Where might it go? Mitch is clearly a smart, talented and hard working guy, so why not document his story now at this point of his journey rather than 10 years from now?
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Building The Service Course
From The Top
If you follow professional cycling and are attracted to specialty coffee, beautiful custom bikes, and boutique travel, then there’s no doubt you haven’t already come across Christian and Amber Meier’s businesses. The couple from Canada embarked on a professional cycling career for Christian and settled in the once sleepy Catalan town of Girona. The two of them are the founders of La Fabrica, Espresso Mafia and Service Course which have now become institutions of Girona that people seek out.
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Building 7mesh
From The Top
7Mesh are an apparel brand based in Squamish, Canada who make top quality clothing made for the demands of mountain biking, gravel and road.
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Building Curve Cycling
From The Top
It all started in around 2010 when Curve’s earliest founder, Steve was working in a bike shop and got asked all the time for wheel upgrades. At that time the only thing available for after market carbon wheels were basically ENVE, Zipp, and a few others which were a major price leap from high end alloy wheels. Steve started asking himself why a more accessible carbon wheelset wasn’t available, so he did it himself.
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Building LIV/Giant Bicycles
From The Top
You could very well argue that Bonnie Tu is the most powerful woman in cycling, although she wouldn’t think of describing herself that way. She’s best known as the face of the LIV brand she created back in 2008, but more than that she’s the Chairman of the largest bike brand in the world: The Giant Bicycle Group. What does that mean? Quite simply – she runs the entire show.
info_outlineStrava has become ubiquitous in over 50 million athlete’s lives and is arguably the most relevant social network to anyone who loves to sweat.
Michael Horvath and Mark Gainey are the co-founders of Strava who have been lifelong friends who 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 the went about it in a very different way than most of the companies you’ll near in this podcast. Creating Strava wasn’t their first trip to the rodeo. Were experienced successful knowledgable entrepenuaers, they made some very deliberate decisions early on about the foundations of the company that have taken Strava to where it is today, and into the next 20 years.
But there are many similarities too. It started from nothing but a single idea and 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.
A full transcript of this interview can be found at: https://cyclingtips.com/2020/05/from-the-top-building-strava/