 This is Start-to-Store Front. You probably don't have to think too hard to recall the early days of the coronavirus lockdowns. When all we wanted was an excuse to get out of our homes, bikes became that excuse. You could head out your front door and get some exercise while maintaining your social distance. It was the perfect pandemic escape. And so it was no big surprise when bike sales skyrocketed. One would think that it would be a great time to be in the cycling business. Instead, a global economy dealing with supply chain delays, factory shutdowns, and parts shortages meant that there was no supply to meet the demand. Not exactly what any business owner would call ideal. Our guest today is Dianor, founder of Ventum, a direct-to-consumer bike brand out of Heber City, Utah. Ventum first burst onto the scene with their triathlon bike, turning heads with its signature Z-shaped frame. From there, they quickly expanded their lineup to include road and gravel bikes to mirror national trends. Dian has big plans on the horizon for Ventum, but before he can accomplish those goals, he's got to maneuver around the global supply chain backup just like the rest of us. So listen in to recover everything from why starting a bike company was way more difficult than he initially assumed, why he prioritized sponsoring female triathletes in an effort to level the gender wage gap between men and women, and why he chose to partner the brand with perhaps the most polarizing figure in cycling, Lance Armstrong. Now, on to the episode. Welcome to the podcast on today's show. We're talking to Dian, founder of Ventum. For people who don't know, tell us what it is. Yeah, thanks guys, thanks for having me. Of course. What do we do? We play with bikes. We make high-end carbon fiber bikes on then the tri-space, the road space, and the gravel space. We have one of the bikes here, which is looking pretty amazing. How did you get into bikes? Like for me, like I've been someone who dabbles in a bunch of sports, whether it's like surfing or cycling, and then you make the leap of like, I think I can do this better. I think I can create this better. What was it like for you to make the first step? It's interesting you say that. So I came from actually the telecom background, a tech background. So I had nothing to do with bikes, but I was surrounded by bikes. So my brother's a former professional triathlete. Tons of my friends were pros. The Olympians, right? Didn't make it, but tried, tried. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But high level, super high level. Yeah, super high level, right? And coming from like a pretty efficient tech background and tech industry, I'm looking at the bike industry and it didn't make sense to me, right? And I'll tell you a little bit more about that. I'm looking at these machines, 12, 13, $15,000. And I'm looking at the service that you were receiving, right? And the price tag did not match the experience, whatsoever, right? And so that's really what was the first trigger to start a bike company. It was because of that. It wasn't really the technology. It wasn't, you know, I mean, because there are big companies that are doing great things, right? I mean, we're not gonna knock them. You know them all. So like there's nothing a billion dollar company that can't figure out that startup could, right? So looking at the experience is where I really fell in love with the idea. At the end of the day, these are the Ferraris and the Lamborghinis. I was gonna say, it's like F1 of the athletic road world. Yeah, 100%. I mean, these are not $800 machines, right? I mean, there's a lot of designing and R&D that goes into creation. 100%. 100%. I mean, we started about 4,000 bucks and the sky's the limit. We made a couple bikes that were $32,000 each. They went to some sheikhs in the UAE. But, but my point is this, this is equivalent of Ferraris and Lamborghinis. If you had the pleasure to go shop for a Ferrari Lamborghini, good for you. But I suspect that the salesperson is quite knowledgeable and kind of represents the brand well, right? You know, it's not a summer intern from college who's just decided to have a job. And that's what I was finding a lot at independent bike shops, right? And I'm not here to knock them. I think there are some terrific independent bike shops. I think there are some less than terrific ones. But I would go in and I would point out a, call it a Trek Madone, right? 16 grand, Envy Carbon Wheels. And I'm no, I mean, I know what it is. I'm just, you know, I'm like, hey, tell me about this bike. And the 16 year old kid or 18 year old kid in front of me was like, oh yeah, oh, this bike's so fast. I'm like, okay, okay. What else? Yeah, exactly. And then so I pointed then a tri bike. I forgot what it was at the time. Call it a specialized shift. Who knows? And I said, what about this bike? What's the difference? He's like, oh, that one? That one is so, so fast. And so like, the experience didn't- That's such an interesting insight. Right? You're so right. And so you look at it and again, this is not like, I'm not gonna generalize on every bike shop. But in a lot of- You recognize that problem. Yeah. Repeatedly enough to know it was probably more normal than that. Precisely. Precisely. And so I looked at it and I decided like, you know what, this doesn't make sense. You need to have a better customer experience, right? Now, the other thing I figured is these brands probably wouldn't want to be represented that way either. Totally. Right? Yeah. And they don't know essentially what's happening. The relationship with the big brands, the brick and mortar ones, is from them to the dealer, right? With a buyer, whoever. And that's it. That's where the relationship ends. And they relinquish all control once that bike leaves their factory. That's correct. It's like coffee beans. Yeah. Is it? Similar, yeah, but continue. Yeah, so I realized right away, I was like, we gotta control the whole sales cycle, right? So from pre-sales, sales, service, everything, we gotta control it so that we can have a standard that matches that price tag. So that's kind of how it came about, right? That's fascinating. I'm thinking about my experience. It was very much the same thing. Like I walked into a bike shop being like, hey, I'm doing this charity bike ride. Yeah. I don't want to be sore every day. And they're like, what are you doing? Where are you going? And the guy luckily was the owner. And so he put me on the speed plates when they first came out. It was a carbon fiber bike. He was like, and this is 2008. And so he was like, we're giving you carbon fiber. Gave me 20% off everything. And I'm like, I know nothing. Like pick all of it. Yeah, right? And he did. And he knew. And he would explain it to me. He's like, this is this. This is this. This is what you're gonna want. It doesn't matter at the 50 mile mark, but at 70 miles, this is what you're gonna. And I was like, oh man. And you got lucky. You got lucky. Yeah. And but if at the same time, I think about it like, if he didn't do that, I probably wouldn't have bought a bike. I probably think if this guy knows the same thing that I know, or they're just talking about speed, I'm out and I'm going to like the next shop wherever that may be. Yeah. And you got to remember too, the ones that aren't so great, they all get two buying seasons. So whether it's track or whatever, you go to those manufacturers and you get to order twice, spring and fall typically, right? And so what happens is you come in and you say that you have this race, you have this event, blah, blah. And you know what? You really have size 54. But I have a 56 on the showroom. I'm gonna make sure you walk away with that 56. So I can't tell you how many times we see people. That's annoying. Yeah, it's annoying. And it's a disservice to the whole industry, right? And I'll tell you what, because what happens is you actually generally believe that you're a 56. Right, of course you do. Right? And everyone wants to be taller anyway. So we're like, I don't think you got that. And so all of a sudden you think you're a 56 and then you decide to change bike. We size you on a 54, which is your right size. You're like, no, no, no, I'm a 56. Do you understand what I mean? So it's funny you say that this guy, so it was November. And so the new season, you know, and it was about to be 2009. And so he's like, I get you a really good deal on a 2008 because I'm about to switch seasons. Makes perfect sense, yeah. And I was like, sweet. And so I just, he gave me a tarmac expert and that was it. That's awesome. Specialized, which was a great bike. Yeah, yeah, oh, they make fantastic bikes. Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, that's so true. So that happened, I didn't realize that would happen. It sounds like so egregious. You know, I mean, look, again, these are some of the reasons why I started the company. Like you said, I saw the problem enough that it made me wonder. So it's your first step. So now you, you solve the problem or at least you identify the problem. You identify it, yeah. And now what do you do? What do you go from here? Honestly, you just, you throw caution to the wind and you just, you go for it. And I've always been entrepreneur. So this is my third, hopefully successful startup. Yeah. I know what it takes. I didn't realize how big this project was because my other companies were all in software. What did you underestimate in terms of the hard part? Oh, how expensive it was going to be. I still funded this. To get there, to like get to the point of, oh, I figured out the solution of the one. To even get to market. Like think about the R&D that you have to put in a bike. And there's different ways of making bikes. And you're fighting behemoths, which is another huge problem. Precisely, precisely, right? And so 2020 hindsight, I think I'm glad I didn't realize what I was up against. Cause if I knew, I don't know if I would have started this company, honestly. And it's still, you know, it's quite difficult, right? And the last two years have been, I mean, the hardest two years out of my life by miles. You know, if you're in the bike industry, you know what I'm talking about. But aren't they sold out everywhere? So, you know, it's an interesting thing. So I think one of the biggest misconceptions is that the bike industry got this huge uptick from COVID. Yeah. In some sense, it's true. People couldn't go to the gym and they're like, well, let me get a bike. Let me go bike around Central Park, right? Like let's have fun. You know, I don't want a city bike. Let me go get something. Well, those bikes that got sold out super quick are like $800 and below. Sure, we saw an uptick as well. There's no doubt about it. But the uptick was not nearly what it was for the entry level models, right? As you would expect, though. Right, exactly. But sometimes I get really... I got you, I got you. People are selling more training wheels than road bikes that require you to be clipped in. Yes. And so what happened is, the demand did increase. All the components, all the raw materials, everything comes from Asia, right? Shimano, SRAM, the big boys, they all come from Asia. Well, what did Asia have that we had? COVID. So did they have shutdowns? Absolutely. So they're stuck. So all of a sudden. They're not manufacturing. Exactly. And you can have everything else but one part and it's still on a complete bike. That is exactly right. We're dealing with that on the brewery. So we're opening a brewery and we're doing it. It's in a couple of weeks and basically what's happening is that the garage doors are glass. Yeah. There's a big little component in there that comes from China. Yeah. And that component is making a Toyota Ohio and has been since July of last year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which is crazy. But I hear that. But the whole door is there. The whole thing. Except this little fine little piece. I hear it over and over again. And I'm like, where's America on this? Can't we just copy and paste? Can't be that hard. But you gotta think about like, look at the supply chain and how it plays out, right? You've got a factory shutdown for months and months and months, right? And Shimano specifically. And then they got fires, which we won't even talk about. But they open up. They're not at 100%. Not even a 50%. So they're slowly ramping back up, right? And then there was a global material shortage. Think of any material. There was probably a shortage in it, right? And then there was a global container shortage. All the containers were in the US, right? Sitting empty. In fact, Walmart and Home Depot essentially chartered whole boats and brought empty containers to Asia to load up their stuff, to bring it back to the US. And so you're looking at delay after delay after delay after delay. And then there was a huge backlog of the ports. We used to clear our containers was coming to Long Beach, which I was here. So they come into Long Beach and they get cleared that day or the next day. Our last container sat there on the boat for 47 days. And did they charge you a lot more? Did they like four X the price? It was more like nine X the price on our last container. They basically, they haggle with you, right? They're like, take it or leave it. This is the price. Well, yeah, I mean, like, yeah, you have no option today. Do you want to wait? Right, you have no option. I mean, and what was happening is the queue was so long. And again, you know, Walmart did something also very interesting. They actually hired smaller boats that would sail out to the big freighters. Yeah, and unload containers and take them to other ports. That's hilarious. It's interesting, like, I am so in tune with how and why we got there, just because I have to be. So I quite understand it. But like as a consumer, I'd be getting really annoyed, right? You know, like, why could you get me my bike? Why could you do this? Why could you do that? It's a bad look for you, even though at a macro level, you understand it. It's in the news, but no one's reading it. And the funny thing, you know, to your point is, you know, what do we make? What does specialized make? What does Trek make? We make the frame, the fork, the seat post. We make the carbon parts. We don't make the crank. We don't make the chains. We don't make that. I'm actually perfectly fine on my inventory. We actually plan pretty well. We can air ship. We do, you know, expensive things to get it done. But so we're also at the end of the food chain, if you will, right? And so we're at the mercy of everybody else. So that adds. Does this make you rethink the whole industry in terms of like components? Like, are you now thinking like, okay, can we make a bike that you can pick and play? Oh, you know, well here, well, the SRA is we can't get into components manufacturing just because the giants are so big and they have a monopoly. I think what saved us during COVID is our business model, which is direct consumer. And it's everything is assembled, finished and ships out of Utah. So we have 60,000 different combinations across all our sizes, colors and specs at Bentham. Inventory nightmare, but that inventory, which was so valuable and so limited during COVID sits on a shelf. And so when you order the bike and you wanted that red 56 with this wheel, that's when that inventory gets allocated to that bill. So it was very efficient, as opposed to the big boys, they manufacture and assemble in Asia. So that component, yeah, exactly. And it's on that bike like, you know, oh, I wanted the blue, well, it's on the red one. So that's kind of what saved us. We were able to be very, very efficient with our inventory. How do you go about finding out like where to even produce the carbon fiber? The actual material, like most carbon fiber comes from Japan and Korea and every bike manufacturer is pretty much the same region in two different countries in Asia, in Taiwan and in China. We're all right next to each other. Can you reuse it? No. Okay, so that's still not figured out yet. No, we don't, no, you cannot recycle. I'm sure you can recycle scraps, yes, but like, we can't take a bike frame looking like that and reuse it. That would be an interesting though, huh? So a buddy of mine, we started a company a long time ago, he was an MIT guy and that became like, his obsession was, he was a cyclist also and his whole thing was, how do we get, like at scale, like size of cars, how do we get carbon fiber? How do we pick apart the sheet, bring them down to their molecular level, heat them somehow and then are able to put them back, like almost like wax. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then reuse it. And he was on that thing for two years, like really trying to figure this out. How did he do? Do you have his number? Can I get it? I have his number, I can introduce you. I want to introduce you after this. He started going into 3D printing and plastics instead, because I think that's an easier lift, but he was trying to figure that out for a long time. And I hate to say it doesn't seem possible because I think it is if you add like a certain something to it, but he couldn't figure it out. And if he got it to where it needed to be, it was also massively expensive. So he was thinking about it more for like car hoods, you know what I'm saying? Like the car lighter, a little bit easier, like this is hard, this is a game of millimeters, whereas on a car hood it's kind of less involved, it's a sheet. Right, no, absolutely. Yeah, so then you've got the problem identified and you know exactly what you need to do. But interestingly enough, you went into triathlon first, right? Yeah, it's because that's what we knew. And so we figured if we can go into a niche saturated market and do okay, there will be a theory, will be easier when we go to the other sectors like road and gravel and so on and so forth. And also the, our first model was, well is, the Ventum One, and I wish I had one of the bikes, but you can see it online. It looks very futuristic. The reason we started with that product, because we felt there was the least amount of innovation in that space, because if you think about it, triathlon didn't become a mass participation sport until quite recently, like in the last 10 years, if you will. Before that it was a very exotic sport. It's like, wait, do you swim, do you run for it? Like people were like, what is a triathlon, right? And now it's like mainstream, everybody knows what a triathlon is, right? And so back then there's not mass participation. And so instead of developing a bike strictly for triathlon, non-draft triathlon, they were just taking road bikes and putting it on TT front ends. And those were UCI legal, which has nothing to do with triathlon. So that wasn't the most aerodynamic fast bike possible. It was just, you didn't want to invest the capex and understand maybe why, because the market wasn't there. So when you have all those legacy systems and all those molds and you can't just drop and start something new. Since we came in, since I come from the telecom world, I'll give you a good idea of what we did. Bell Atlantic, Verizon, those are the big boys. They laid up landlines from New York to LA. They gave you a phone booth and you can call this booth to that booth. And then we didn't have any of that infrastructure. We came in like the cell phones, but a tower here, tower there. Hey, you can even walk and talk, right? And so because we didn't have that capex and all that history and then that heaviness, if you will, we were able to kind of leapfrog and started from the ground up in the wind tunnel saying, forget the UCI, that says nothing to do with triathlon. How can we make the fastest bike possible, right? And that's what we did for triathletes. And that's where the Ventum 1 came in. If you look at it again, it's got no downtubes, it's got new seed stays. It's got an integrated water bottle on the top tube. It's an integrated water bottle. Yeah, 1.4 liter water bottle integrated because you don't even have to take your hands off the yeah, you don't have to take your hands off. So here's a good example. Come on. Yeah. So smart. These bottles and bottle cages. Yeah, fuck them. They also make the shit look ugly. Yeah, and, and, and, and. Someone put cages on my shit? I'm like, what the fuck? This bike looks so much better without this plastic. And they slow you down, right? They cost you an aeroplane tea. So this, this, this way we did it. Yeah, I'm loving this. This is smart. So that's kind of how, that's why we started there. It's an industry that we knew, it's a sector that we knew, but we fully realized that that was just the starting block and that we were going to go into a road, we're going to go into gravel and we've got some fun stuff coming out. Did you have friends in the triathlete space that could like help you promote it too? Cause that's a, to your point, the marketing thing is ambitious. Yeah, so interestingly enough, man, we're going to get into all my things. So essentially like I, I was kind of politically upset that men were getting paid a lot more than women in the triathlon space and pretty much everywhere. Yeah. anywhere. Across the board. When I started this company, and I had made a couple of bucks in telecom and self-funding it. So figured I'd get to do what I want. I refused to sponsor men. I only sponsored women the first year and paid them. In no way. Yeah, so my- A little altruism, okay. Yeah, yeah. And so, we had a four-time world champion on our bike for a while and so- Was it difficult? Like I'm just trying to think about this. Are these people accessible? Are they down? Or is it like they have 14 other people trying to get them? You'd be surprised because the sport was smaller than time. And theoretically- I would imagine everyone's approachable. So you have to get someone who's willing to take a risk on a brand new bike. That's true. And you're absolutely right. But the integrated water bottle thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right, great. Dude, I want to do a triathlon just to try this bike out. I'll get you a bike. That's crazy. I know a guy. All right, so you go after women first and how many do you sign? First year, I think we signed three. And then the next year, we started signing men just because, you know, I mean, the point was- We're only going to the weeds of this just because for people listening that have never sponsored an athlete, we talked to their body. They had just gotten into it. And that ended up working out for them. It's really hard. And what were your expectations going into it, if any? Or were you like, let's just see how this goes? Okay, so triathlon is a very interesting sport because the top top, like I'm talking top two to three triathletes, they have a team around them. They have agents. They have managers. And they're making good money. You could be the ninth best triathlete in the world and you've got none of those resources. It's a huge drop. And so I didn't realize that. And so, and this is not knocking any of my pros, I love our pros, but there was a fair level, at least at the time of coaching, right? From media training to how to promote the brand and to, and that's something actually I overlooked. I just didn't realize. I was like, oh, well, you're a professional. You should know how to do this, but no, you should know how to swim, bike and run and transition fast. You shouldn't really know like the business etiquette of customer acquisition costs and what's your most effective way of promoting our brand, right? And so, so that's why- So you spend a lot of time with them? We did. Yeah, initially we did, we did. If I had more resources, I would have done a lot more of the coaching. What would you have done? What would you have done? Like content-wise or just? Well, I mean, content we did as much as we can as a first moment. I'm talking more about like media training. Okay. Media training. What's the biggest thing that you saw the weaknesses? Like if someone asked them about the bike, they couldn't answer the right question or what was- It was perfectly fine. It was just very cut and dry. Oh, they would just give the answer. Boom, yeah. Yeah, no exposition or anything like that. Yeah, you know, and like- Versus me being like, it's got an integrated, broader bottle of America, are you hearing this? Right? And this is exactly it. It's exactly it. Like, you know, give me a little sizzle. Add some sex to it. Let's go. And so it was just very matter of fact. Well, what you're saying is essentially like where the sport of triathlon is going right now is, yeah, you have the top like one to three athletes who are getting all the money. And then the rest of them, you see them taking to YouTube and getting that part of their salary comes from YouTube ad revenue as they're talking about their training and like they're finding creative ways nowadays. But five years ago, that was not the case at all. And so like you see these athletes supporting themselves in any way possible because you're right, they barely have enough money for the entry fees. Do you know like in 2013 and 14, most of them had a full-time job, right? So can you imagine you're trying to train for let's call it a nine hour race, nine to 10 hours or eight to 10, depending on the course and conditions. But you've got to put in so much training and then you have a 40 hour week day job. Impossible. And I don't know how to solve that problem. Like to a degree, that is still there, right? And like you said, there are outlets. There's YouTube, there Instagram, you can become an influencer. There are more outlets than there were in the past, but I still think like there's so much more, like there's ways to go, ways to go. He got to start a company really young and then exit and then now you have some cash to try. There you go. Otherwise I don't see, it's difficult. It is. Too many people pull. And especially if the kids and stuff, it's very, it's almost impossible. Yeah, no, I mean, I look at the sacrifices that these people make, it's unreal. I couldn't do it, honestly. Yeah, same. I have the easy job. So do you think that the measure there for you then, like there wasn't such a straightforward path from the athletes that you were endorsing? Was it then more straightforward to become the title sponsor for Ironman? So Ironman was interesting. Again, I looked at the Ironman contracts and they were very segmented. So a bike brand was like the North American bike brand and then, but in Europe was a different bike brand and so forth. So what we were able to do with Ironman is essentially consolidate all that and it brought us to the global stage, right? So a tiny little company out of Miami Beach, all of a sudden was pretty mainstream by the end of the contract, right? Six years. It was pretty mainstream everywhere and Ironman has 300 plus races. So I could go to Estonia and they might know what Ventimese and Turkey and Greece and Egypt and Malaysia. And so it did what we needed to do, which is kind of bring us to the kind of the global stage, places that we would have never been able to reach with our own resources. It sounds like F1. It does. It really does. Like that's so fascinating. So then what happens once you're at the global stage? Is it you got to hammer down more marketing, right? Cause it's like the signal. You got one signal. And then how do you keep those things going? So, you know, at that point, so we get to the global stage and then I think this is where the business mentality switches from, hey, we got to be heard. We got to be seen. People got to know who we are to, we got to fulfill and deliver on what we're talking about. And I think operationally, I'll be the first to admit it, we were quite weak and there's still room for improvement probably now, but we were not quite ready to fulfill on the promise that we were making, right? And it was ambitious. And again, let's go back to the big boys, right? With billion dollar R&Ds and pockets, it's very difficult to be as polished as they were on our first model. But a lot of people like the underdog. A lot of people like something different, right? And they didn't look. Yeah. And so that helped quite a bit. And at this time, are you raising capital or are you just using all the money that you're making? I'm always raising capital. I'm always raising capital. How do you raise capital as a, is it three to five X? Your revenue like? You mean like when we do a valuation? Oh man, this is interesting. So this has become my life, right? And in fact, we're in the middle of a really intense round right now. What round are you? This will be like a quasi-series B, but we're gonna do a probably, well, not probably because it's but a debt play mixed with some equity. So we'll probably take on about five million of equity. So that's the thing too is like, you got to remember like, I want to make sure I hold as much equity as possible, right? I don't want to dilute myself ever, right? Yeah. I mean, put in eight years. I think this is smart too. A lot of entrepreneurs don't understand the value of this and they want to give their early investors so much equity, which in the end means they've given themselves a job. Correct. Not a company. 100%. Now I got, I was lucky enough that I did this in a very untraditional way where I was my seed investment, series A investment, whatever you want to call it, right? I mean, I put millions into this and that's why I was able to hold on so much of my equity, right? As opposed to have an ID and go get money outside, I would be a minority investor. I want to ask you something specific about this. Okay, so when you're in that mindset of, okay, I have a couple of million dollars. I'm going to go throw it at my new project. You know the power of capital though. And so there's a part of you that's saying to yourself, I could go raise five million tomorrow. Yes and no. And you're buying time. Yes and no. Did you struggle with it? Oh, big time. Okay. Big time. When we talk about raising capital, my series A actually was quite easy. This round was doing great until COVID really highlighted the supply chain constraints, right? Yeah. And I mean, I'll be pretty open. We had a $6 million deal that was supposed to close last May. It was perfectly on track. And then at the 11th hour, the investor got spooked because, you know, again, what we talked about global container shortages, global distance, all these shortages, like, whoa, I don't want to fund your inventory and I don't want to fund your losses right now while you wait for components, right? Yeah. That's a short-term view though. It's down there. Well, you know, I would agree. I would agree. I would have been like, cool, thanks. Right. But I mean, so this time it definitely was a hard to go around. It's a hard to go around. But we're doing pretty well. And you know what? I've just learned to kind of just change my mindset. Like I thought what a CEO of a bike company was earlier and it was for a long time was played with bikes, right? I mean, a little simplistic. But you know, my point, like, oversee R&D, oversee this and create and it's fun and community engagement. And today my job has nothing to do with that, right? It is all private equity firms, investors, returns, and it's just all on the business side. I feel like I went to business school in the last two years. And it's not necessarily what you think of when you start a company, right? You're dreaming about your bike being in the Tour de France, you know, written by Lance Armstrong or this or that, but like, you don't dream of like beating down a warrant percentage coverage from your new private equity firm. It's like, yes, we got it down to 4%. No, you don't think about these things. You have a CFO, right? I have a great CFO. Shout out to your CFO. Shout out to Barrett Brandon, who was a little bit. Great CFO name, by the way. Barrett Brandon. Barrett Brandon. And it's two first names. Yeah, so good. You made a segue there to Lance. How did you? Yeah, how did that come about? Because you actually do sponsor him. So part of your dream was realized, right? Yeah, well, we actually don't technically sponsor him. He adopted the brand organically. Did you conflicted about that at all? Not really. And I'll tell you why. Oh, man, a lot of people are gonna hate this podcast. Let me tell you. Maybe not. So here's the thing. Lance didn't get to where he got, and I've been talking after his wins. I'm talking like in the hot waters. He didn't get in hot waters because of his doping, right? Because everybody was doping. And if you know anything about cycling, especially that time and the time before that. Well documented. It's been well documented from like cocaine in the 50s, right? Right, right. Even before that, taking trains in the 30s, right? And so like, that's been part of the sport. Great work. So that's not why, you know? Others doped, they're on TV. They're having great careers. So that's not why. It's the destruction of the denial that, in the aftermath of that, that really caused him to fall out of grace. That being said, he is still the best of all times. Whether without the doping. Like, you know, take everybody on the even playing field. He was still the best. You know, and also we're a country of second chances and third chances and fourth chances. And so it's time to move on. It's time to move on. And I'll tell you why it's time to move on. Cause that guy did more for cancer research and cure and possible future cures and drug development than any single human in the world. Yeah. You can't mention his legacy without including that. And so. This is such a big part. You know, I'm not perfect. Far from it. But still, but then the part to have him representing your brand in some way. To me, I would be like, oh, yeah. No, man. And it's not, you know, I'm not saying it's a hard pill to swallow or anything. I'm just saying like, there's a part of me that's got to go, let me do some calculus here. Let me, let me figure this out. I mean, cause I agree with everything you said, right? I totally agree. Here's what I'll say. The haters are a lot louder than the lovers. Always, always. Always, you know, and he is so well loved and so well supported. Do I agree with some of the decisions he's made? No, not at all. But like, that doesn't mean like you throw out the baby with the bath water, right? Like, like this is like, look, it's always going to be a contentious point. You know, and I'm happy to engage it. I'll tell you a really funny story though. This guy came at me real hard about having any affiliation with Lance. And I have a personal relationship with Lance. And I actually, I enjoy hanging out with him and you know, I go to Aspen and we have a bit of fun. Love at Aspen. Hold on a second, Aspen or Park City? Which one? Oh, Aspen. Let's go! Let's go! Sorry PC, sorry. I can't believe that. Sorry PC, yeah, yeah. In fact, I'm- By a lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. See how you fucking Park City- No, but hold on. Time out though. Time out though. Maybe the summer is different? The reason I like Park City, I'm sorry, Aspen, is because I'm pretty bougie and I love the little knell and eating at Casa Tua. Who doesn't? But the riding is- Cycling. Yeah, the cycling is actually better in Park City. Snowboarding crushes in Aspen. Ajax is what it's at. Really? So much better, wider. Yeah. All right anyway, so you guys hang out in Aspen? Yeah, and so, but some guy was crushing me. He's like, you know, I can't believe you're doing it. I would never buy one of your bikes. You're a disgrace to sight. And you know, like the typical things that you hear. And I engaged with him and it turns out that his aunt had cancer and was cured. And like indirectly, it had something to do with the funds and the initiatives and the programs of Livestrong. I'm like, do you understand what you're saying here? You are hating the guy that may have saved your aunt's life. Yeah, I have a story, my buddy of mine had tested cancer and this was in Boston in the Livestrong Foundation. Like he would show me all the paperwork and all of the sessions and the support group and then he'd have all these events and we would go and he ended up beating it. And when all this bad stuff about Lance came out, he was his biggest fan. He was like, oh, where am I Livestrong bracelet until I die? Because it's the one thing that kept me alive. And he was a good friend of mine until I got to see that. And I thought it was the coolest thing. The coolest thing, the level of, it's just detail, help, full on. Like everything was thought through when it came to this cancer. Yeah, and I love it. And I love it. And that's the thing, like you gotta look at the whole picture. Do you blame cycling? Oh, absolutely. Yeah, more to more of a cycling issue. Oh, absolutely, yeah. Absolutely. They really had to clean it up after that. But by the way, guys, the tour, the tour the year after all this shit went down was the most boring tour ever because no one was doping. They all like were just huddled up, tired, barely moving, right? And I was just like, why am I watching this? You know, there was no excitement, no looking bag, none of the, you know, the classic stuff. And so, I don't know. I like it. So when it comes to valuation, how do you achieve that? Like, what is it for a biking company? So what is like my desired valuation? Or just like the normal. Like what are the multiples? So right now. If we say tech is 10, CPG is 2 to 5. Well, I can tell you, Canyon just traded hands over the summer for a billion dollars at a 15X EBITDA. Wow. 15. Who acquired them? It was just one private equity firm selling their stake to another. Gotcha. So TSG exited, I forgot who bought them. Are they trying to make them public? Are they, is it a SPAC play? I think they'll go public for sure. Yeah. That makes sense. 15 times. That's a SPAC appeal. So it's in the teens right now. As soon as, Can and Dale traded hand, that's 10X. Good for you. Yeah. Why? Is it like the longevity of the customer? Is it, it's a $4,000 initial investment? That's a good question, you know? That I don't know why, but like I'm seeing it right now. 10 is the lowest, 18 is the highest that I've seen so far. Incredible. It's pretty good. What is your customer journey? So if I buy one bike, is it that I buy two, three later? 50% of our customers have two bikes. Okay. We have a 50% returning customer. And then they spread it to their friends. Are you seeing like two of the same or are they jumping from gravel to road to tri? So just because by the nature of how we brought our bikes to market, a lot of triathlon was first and was there only for a couple of years by on its own. So a lot of the tri folks bought road bikes, but then a lot of the road cyclists also bought a gravel bike. And you know, obviously we went from having 100% of our sales being in triathlon to today triathlon is our smallest segment. It sits at 15%. And 85% is road and gravel. And gravel has only been around for us since December 2020. So we only had it for 14 months. Gravel will outpace roads soon and obviously triathlon. So the sales makes us totally different. And that's the thing too is we developed the gravel bike, which is this one right here, the GS1. So you can tell it's not your typical gravel bike. Super integrated, no cables showing. It's flashy. Yup, it's all about also aerodynamics because all these huge races that we go to like Unbound, which is a dirty canza. Yeah, it's a gravel race. It's a, you know, 200 miles. Actually, Barrett Brenn finished 21st. BB's. Shout out to BB. Nice. Yeah. But the point is... BB, step it up. He's got a day job too. So the point is there are countless miles where you're by yourself. So you're not hiding behind anyone. You're not drafting. So aerodynamics take a play. Come at play, I mean. So that's when we developed the GS1, we were getting pushback from all the engineers, our design firm and our factories. They're like, what is this? This is ridiculous. You don't need to spend this much money. This is gravel. Cause gravel at the time was still the wild wild west. People are using aluminum frames, cyclocross bikes, hardtail mountain bike. Like there was no standard, right? And we're like, no, no, no, no, no. We want to take the technology that we've done on the Ventimone and the NS1, the road bike and put it in the GS1 and it doubled our costs, right? And again, everybody's like, this is the dumbest thing ever. Now we got absolutely lucky. There's nothing good about COVID. I would say, but if there's a sliver of good news from it was that it really brought people into gravel. And it's really important to see where the demand came from. It wasn't mountain bikes, well, it wasn't mountain bikers moving into gravel. It was road cyclists that are moving into gravel. And that's important to know. Southern stone. It was that, well, and also because, yeah, because the thing is all the group rides because of COVID got canceled. And a lot of road cyclists didn't want to ride by themselves, they don't feel safe from cars. So they looked for the next best thing, which is these fire roads and amazing. So what's a road cyclist looking for? Lightweight, snappy, zippy, speedy bike. Not a mountain bike. Not a mountain bike. And so that's exactly what this is. So it was like a performance gravel. So it was exactly the right product at the right time. You like the Tesla. You start with the roadster, then you go to the S and now you have like the Y and you go in that direction. What are the price points for gravel? Where do they start? They start at four. Four thousand. So, you know, first time ever we had to do price hike. Put it this way. You sound like it's not a good thing. Well, I just, you know, I like the performance for all is definitely one of my internal taglines. And we try to lower the barrier of entry to cycling, right? And we do, you know, we have financing available and stuff like I want more people to ride bikes because I love bikes, right? But our competitors have like raised prices like two or three times in one year. But again, the supply chain prices, inflation, raw material, I mean, it's just, it's gotten to a point. You have a financing arm? Yeah. It's not ours. We use a third party called Klarna. But yeah, so you can essentially... That could be a play. Oh, it's pretty awesome. Oh, doing our own financing arm. I looked at leasing, I shouldn't give you all my secrets. No, I mean, that's a no brainer. These multiples are 10 to 15. You start your own financing arm, which any, I mean, you have a debt play in mind so that you get some debt. I guess it's not a bad idea. But yeah, no, at least... Free money. So much to do, so little time, you know? Okay, so Ford, what's the road bike start at? So both the road and gravel start at four. Pretty similar. Yeah, they used to start a little bit less than that. What is the track? What is like the... The Ventimune disc. I want to win the next track. It starts at like six. Six. Oh, that's not bad. No, no, no. And that's a brand new model. It just came out during COVID and we always start with our Halo product and then we'll start doing some trickle down technology. So the price point will go down with different specs. Also, I will say that both big component manufacturers have indicated that they will be making entry-level or more entry-level price points component soon. Which is obviously gonna... If percentage-wise, how much of the bike is component cost? Is it like 20, 30? It depends what the component is. So are you a Shimano or are you a SRAM guy? I have a Shimano. Shimano, so let's play with Durace and Ultegra. I would say Durace and let's play only Di2. Let's not talk about mechanical. I would say when you look at a bike, if it's a Durace, it would be roughly 30% or 40%. And Ultegra is like 20? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, one of the biggest actually price points, the biggest is the wheels, right? I mean, obviously the frame, but the frame I make, I think it's... A lot of spread on wheels, a lot of range also. That's one of the first things I learned when I bought a bike. People swap them out like crazy as well. For sure. This is shifting gears a little bit, but I'm curious. Unintended? I know, right? Just all sorts of puns today. You mentioned in another podcast interview that building Ventum as a company cost you a relationship. And I know that you just got engaged. I did. Congratulations. Congrats a lot on your Instagram. Thank you. Congrats on the engagement. Audrey, if you hear this. I'm curious about what you learned from the cost of building the company and losing that first relationship that you were then able to change and apply to this current one. Sounds like you gained a relationship. I know, yeah. So just a slight correction. I lost a relationship during this company, right? And so I think what ended up happening there is when you're... And this person was a professional triathlete, right? And so you're working all day and then you come home to work and now your significant other is in your work. And I think... I mean, I need to answer your question and to answer your question, I'll say what I've learned from that is to separate, right? It's to separate. And it's still very hard for me. I am such an emotional guy, guys. Like, you could probably tell a little bit. And so I put all my heart in it. I put everything into it. But then sometimes I get the blinders and I don't see anything else, right? And I was actually thinking about this because when you're in a startup, especially, I guess we've been in an eight year startup, but you're always two months away from bankruptcy, right? Or less. And if anybody tells you otherwise in a product-based service and maybe they figure out something, I don't. But so it's always the stress. And I just needed to separate and understand that the stress will always be there. In fact, it's a lot more than when that relationship, like I look back at those days and I'm like, oh, dear, that was child's play. That was your problem, that's nothing. I could solve that tomorrow. And so the stress is always gonna be there. In fact, it's gonna keep increasing and you gotta separate and deal with it. And then the other thing too is a little bit of a, maybe a morbid exercise, but I'm like, hey, what if Ventum dies tomorrow? That's a great exercise by the way. Yeah, Ventum dies tomorrow. Worst case scenario. You know what? I had tied my identity with Ventum because I'm passionate, because 90% of my net worth is invested in here and because of, I tied my identity to Ventum that if Ventum died, I die. And to separate that was one of the, and I'm still working at it, right? I think if Ventum died, I am like very wounded now, right? And I'd like to get to a place where I can move on if Ventum dies and understand that, look, it's been eight years, done some great things. Businesses fail all the time. Two years are the hardest years of our lives have just happened. Certainly the hardest year in the bike industry. So to separate your identity from your company, I think is actually very smart if you wanna keep a sane head. Speaking of, by the way, Audrey, you know, or one thing I didn't know is I thought getting engaged was like the milestone, right? Like getting, I did it. I got engaged. Now let me just cruise for the next couple of years, right? Yeah, oh yeah, see, nobody told me. It's my first engagement, all right? Nobody told me. And what I realized is immediately minutes after people find out. Yeah, they're like, when are you getting married? Everyone wants to know. When are you getting married? Yeah. And I'm not starting. The post-pandemic world is gonna be on a Wednesday or Thursday. Yeah, right, right? And so then we're like, I guess I have to talk about it. You know, I was like, I thought I had a lot of time. And so then, you know, I was talking with Audrey. I'm like, Audrey, what about next summer, which is summer 2023? And by the way, our leading venue is Aspen at the Little Nell on top of Ajax. Yeah, so we'll see, I mean, you know. And we got with the wedding planner, which again, I feel like it's so early. And you're like, oh, well, these are the weekends left for summer 2023. These are your choices. Gotta put a deposit down. Make up your mind, really. I got engaged two weeks ago, guys. You're basically starting a company. It's crazy. A little mini company. Yeah. Yeah. During those next two years. Is Little Nell special to you for any particular reason? I love the Little Nell. Well, Me too. I'm just curious. Really? Yeah. So Jonathan Filman, shout out to him, he's the general manager of The Little Nell as a good friend of mine. We do, we have a partnership with The Little Nell. So we do a camp called Clip In with Christian, Christian Vendaveltz. Okay, yeah. We're on the U.S. Postal Team and also Rise Ventum. And so we do this high-end experience and it's hosted at The Little Nell. When is it? It's in August. You should come. I'm gonna come. Oh, it's incredible. We've been talking about doing a podcast trip to Aspen. I've never been. So I can't join this argument of Park City versus Aspen. Yeah, you can. You don't need to join it. Yeah. You have to. It's professional. Indians here. But yeah, yeah. We've been talking about it. It's one of our goals coming up in the next year or two. It's beautiful. So I was raised in Switzerland. I don't know if you guys know this or not, but in Lausanne, Switzerland. And in fact, I'm going there on Thursday. Nice. Yeah. I'll be there for a couple of weeks. For the ring tour. You're doing the ring tour now. Yeah, right. Exactly. Me and my brother and his fiance, a whole bunch of friends go skiing in Zermatt. Oh, nice. Yeah. Aspen feels a lot like Switzerland. It's perfectly manicured. Park City is amazing, but it's rugged. You know, like if I see somebody coming down with a cowboy hat and a horse, I wouldn't be surprised, right? Yeah. But like, Aspen, it's like... It's bougie, bro. Yeah, Aspen's Formula One and Park City's NASCAR. Ooh. Yeah. I'm going to toe-ho-ho-ho-ho. I don't think I can go home now. Yeah, it's over. It's over. Yeah. I'm sure you can edit that out, right? Yeah, of course. Of course, yeah. You know, it's funny. Park City, people love Park City. I think it's because they grew up skiing in like New England on ice and not used to having food options. When you go to Aspen, you're at the top. You can get a nice glass of champagne, which my wife loves. Yeah. You can get a protein bowl. You can get a gluten-free pizza. Little Nell Kitchen serves you at the top, which is like an extraordinary level of food while you're just having a good time. And the Park City, you cannot do that. And you know what? You're absolutely right. It's like a cantina style. Like, for example, when I just said zeal mat in Switzerland, there are several Mission Star restaurants on the slope. Yeah. Yeah, you stop and you have a Mission Star meal. Yeah, it's the best. And Aspen is the closest thing to that, right? And again, like in terms of natural beauty, summer, Park City and Utah in general is just absolutely gorgeous. Like we've got 14 hours of sunlight. We start with a century ride in the morning. We end up on the boat. Do you provide the bikes? Is that part of the thing? Yeah, yeah, 100%. Road and gravel. But Aspen's got like Casa Tuo, which is one of my favorite restaurants. It's started in Miami Beach. I like Matsu Hisa there. Yeah, Matsu Hisa. We crushed that. My wife loves that. I'm going to go on this trip. This is going to be an easy setup. We were setting up yesterday and Diego was like looking at the bikes. He doesn't ride much anymore and he told me he's he's afraid of falling in love with it again. Yeah. The problem I have is like, I just go all in on things. And so I picked up tennis four years ago, was doing coaching three times a week, joined a tennis club. Cause it's just you versus you. And so it's like a game. It's like, how good can you get at this thing? And how good can your technique get? And I just go fully in on that. And so it used to be golf at one time. It was cycling at one time. And so the thought of like getting on a bike again, just to experience the same. Yeah. Like I just get pulled in that direction. Just start a bike company. You get free bikes. Yeah. I already found one. I like so much. I got the Ventor. Yeah. I appreciate that. What else should we know? What else should we know before we? Yeah. What else is in the future? What's the future? So I got to be careful. Guys, I get in trouble all the time. You're going to go public. Yeah. Let's go BB. Bebe is going to kill me. Not going public, I can promise you that. We still have ways to go before we could even consider that. We got to fund products. I would imagine you go something more lightweight on the dollar, on the budget maybe. We would like that. I mean, again, just to get like early access, like the Model Y. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, eventually, look, once the supply chain normalizes again, and by the way, we're about a couple of years away. That's not a joke. Yeah. You think two years, right? I think two years from now, things will have calmed down. We may even have an oversupply. Who knows? But right now it's very hard. Like we're pivoting all the time, right? Like a good example. I think I can say this. We have an E. You can say it. Yeah. We have an E gravel bike. So this bike. Oh, cool. But with a 504 watt motor, that Shimano is going to be, I hope I can say this, releasing in Q3 of this year. Okay. So it's a whole new platform. So that E-bike for us, and it's gonna range over 100 miles an hour. It tops speeds at 28 miles an hour. It's gonna be a beast. This thing, you'll be able to jump on it. You could ride from here to Santa Barbara, have lunch, charge and come back. Like, and that's what I plan on doing with it. It's like, I cannot wait. That's awesome. That's a good day. You can have drop bars or flat bars. It's gonna be amazing. But we weren't planning to come out with that model for another year or two. However, because Shimano is making this new systems called the 801 platform, they dedicate line space for those new components, right? And so we were like, wait a minute, we had the opportunity to enter and get in line in that line space. So because we can get it, we moved up the release and production of our e-gravel based on the supply chain, right? Taking advantage. Yeah, yeah. So that's how you have to think. And by the way, that's just the tip of the iceberg of pivoting of what we've had to do. But that's a good example of what dictated our next moves was the supply chain, but I cannot wait for that bike. Is there a metaverse play, you think? I don't know. People have been talking about that a lot recently. Yeah, depends on you talking. Zwift is almost a good intermediary. Guys, we wanna hear a heartbreaking story about Zwift. Somebody reminded me of that. In fact, her name is Sara. Reminded me of that maybe a week ago. I was approached to be one of the first outside investors in Zwift in 2014. And she pulled up the email and sent it to me recently and was like, hey, I've got a buddy of mine who's starting this thing. It's gonna revolutionize the cycling industry, indoor training. You guys should really, I'm investing. Do you wanna meet him? And I was like, ignore it right now. And now I'm like on Zwift every day in the winter. But yeah, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you the minute. Yeah, no, it hurts. It's one of my biggest regrets. That's my biggest fear. It's my biggest regret. It's getting that email. I get decks all the time. We invest in some stuff. Yeah. How do I put in what they want me to put in? It's also a function of timing. It's like, you have to be in a state where you have both time and money. But it's like, if you don't have the time, you're gonna miss out and you know that. And so it's like, but it's a shitty when you miss out on something that came across your desk. It came across in such a hard, it wasn't like, oh, I heard about, it's like, please invest. And I was like, no, you just said something that's so, so accurate. You have to be time, money, and the right frame of mind. The reason I passed, I had just exited my telecom company in May, May 31st, 2014. It's probably like, you know, the wealthiest I've ever been, right? And then June 1st, dude, I just started getting hit up. Invest in this, invest in that, invest in real estate now. And so I had the time and I had the money, but my headspace wasn't in it because I was being attacked by so many. You got to learn different games, a lot of evaluations, what's the real estate play? And I knew nothing at that point, right? And I literally jumped on the first three opportunities that were presented to me. You could have said hello to me, and I'd be like, yes, I invest, right? And then I started realizing, whoa, whoa, whoa, you gotta be careful. And that's when Zwift came around, in a place where I was trying to be a little bit more conservative and risk-averse. And if it was the first play, I would have thrown millions at it. Yeah, that's how it is. But then I wouldn't be sitting here with you, fine, gentlemen. I know, right? You'd be an ass with me. Thanks for coming on the podcast, brother. Thanks so much, dude. Thank you guys. This was awesome. I hope to come back and join you again. That was our conversation with Dianne Noor of Ventum. Keep an eye out this week because on Thursday, we're releasing a brand new segment of the show that will only be available on YouTube. I won't give too much away, but I can say that we really pushed Dia to his limits. We can't wait for you all to see it. So head on over to our YouTube channel and hit the subscribe button. We are found at Startup Storefront on every social media platform, except for Twitter, where you can find us at STS Podcast LA. The team consists of Diego Torres Palma, Natalia Capolini, Lexie Jameson, Owen Capolini, and me, Nick Conrad. Our music is by DoubleTouch. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next time.