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what is going on people of the internet welcome back to another special episode of the waveform podcast we're your hosts
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I'm arquez I'm Andrew and I'm David a little bit different this week a little bit out of schedule well it is actually our normal schedule but it's a different
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type of episode yeah so we've never done a rerun on this podcast before and this is kind of a rerun if you're watching
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our faces right now we've never spoken like this directly to you before we have never recorded this part of the episode before but the rest of the episode is an
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episode that we recorded before it is a rerun of an episode we did in April 2021 called boosted to busted the rise and
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fall of boosted boards very good episode it was audio only because we recorded it before we started doing a video podcast
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and because of that a lot of you probably haven't heard it before so we are hoping that you enjoy it and if you
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have heard it before it's a fun little rerun nice to take a look at it almost four years later our audience is
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probably like four to five times bigger than when this originally got posted it's Thanksgiving we didn't really have
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time to do a whole new episode so this is kind of we we think a lot of people should listen to this and they probably haven't seen it if you're a new audio or
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video listener yeah yeah I feel like this is one of our pillar episodes it's crazy that it happened before we were on
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video so I hope that the new audience who hasn't heard this episode yet will enjoy it enjoy the holiday as well take
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it away past selves [Music]
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welcome to the way for podcast we're your hosts I'm Marquez and I'm Andrew at least we're normally your hosts what do
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you mean by that am I fired no oh I know I know I know okay so
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we're actually doing a story time for this one and we're going to be doing it a bit more often because there's a lot of stories out there that deserve to be
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told think about this do you actually know what happened to boosted board that's the question for you the listener
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do you actually know yeah this is one of those stories that I think a lot of people know the loose details of including me I mean I watched a lot of
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videos with boosted boards in them but if I try to remember and explain what actually happened you know I know they
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had a massive rise to success they were everywhere for a while and then they just kind of disappeared just kind of
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died of course there's got to be way more to it so MKBHD team researcher David and waveform producer Adam went
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down that rabbit hole talked to some people and found out what actually happened to boosted so they're going to
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tell us what they found David Adam take it away
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what's up y'all I'm David Mel and this is wait for today's episode boosted to busted rise and fall of boosted boards
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how comp he skated a little too close to the sun burned up and vanished let's get
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it all right guys so you might remember randomly on the internet on Twitter on
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boosted's website boosted just very suddenly shut their doors right it was very sudden everyone was like that's
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strange cuz they seemed to be this giant monolithic company they were probably the most popular electric skateboard and
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of course we've got the global pandemic and everything but that had like just started and it seemed like most
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companies were at least trying to you know get through the pandemic and it was it was very very early on that was kind
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of an excuse that a lot of people were using for them shutting down but it just seemed so ridiculously sudden and they
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didn't really give a lot of explanation for it I wanted to dig a little bit deeper to try to figure out what exactly
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was going on here do you guys have any like specific memories of boosted that you you want to share before we get
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started I just remember they were they were the Benchmark I might have called them at one point basically the Tesla of
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electric vehicles like motor like little personal electric vehicles because everything gets compared to them anytime
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a new electric skateboard came out it was should you get this over the boosted or not right or like boosted killer like
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exactly and they sort of got so dominant in that space that I I guess they sort of started to Branch out and they did
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the scooter and they started doing other stuff but I they were the default for as long as I can remember them right so
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anyway like I said before they're this giant monolith they're like you said like almost the Tesla of electric skateboards they shut down really
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suddenly so I figured let's just start from the very beginning of the company
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so about 10 years ago a decade ago if you can believe that there's this guy so my name is Sanjay dor uh I was one of
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the co-founders of boosted sanj dor um I was always a fan of vehicles in transportation I thought about doing a
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lot of transportation engineering type of work in college and grad school mechanical engineer at Stanford he's
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working on projects in a lab as mechanical engineers do but of course being a college student he didn't have a
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ton of expendable income so he had to stay in the cheaper graduate parking and
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another friend of ours John you know he had this similar problem but actually getting around Stanford's campus so we
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had to park pretty far away to get the cheap grad student parking passes uh in his research we were moving around
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between buildings A lot and so getting you know half a mile away to one building coming back could easily turn
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into a you know 20 30-minute round trip when it could have been a few minutes just to check on something that we were building it's a problem for multiple
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reasons one it just takes a lot of time to it like if you're in the zone in your project and then you just get a notification ah crap I have to check the
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meter that sucks every couple hours they had to do that and one of his labmates
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was also having to do that and they just got started getting really frustrated for it so Sanjay was like really in to
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kind of like different types of vehicles he had a motorcycle but he didn't really feel like it made sense to bring his
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motorcycle just to go like a mile like it's it's this weird Zone where it's too
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long to walk if you need to just go somewhere really quickly but it's too short for something like an actual
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vehicle like a motorcycle because you have to store that outside he's going to have to figure out where to park the motorcycle it's just it's just not
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efficient a lot of people say just use your bike but you know Stanford in particular or any college like your
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bikes get stolen like all the time my friends at Stanford used to tell me like they couldn't you couldn't have a bike
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on campus and if you bought a new bike you would paint it to look as shitty as possible so that people wouldn't steal
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it oh no which is so sad but yeah so they they start getting frustrated he's
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got this friend Matthew Tran and they kind of get into this conversation they're having the same issue they have
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this problem where walking can take so long and cars create such a hassle and Matt lived in San Francisco and he'd
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been thinking about this a ton too uh so I don't know if you guys know this but San Francisco is actually only 7 by7
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square miles so small yeah it's this weird thing where it's very tiny for
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like a city but it's like definitely too far to just like if you want to get from one end to the other so it's the same
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kind of issue where it's like a few miles and only then did we kind of discover that there was a much bigger uh
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problem here called Last Mile transportation that we wanted to you know try to address in our own way do you guys know what last mile vehicles
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are the you know the term Last Mile vehicle yeah where you you go you know
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100 200 miles in a car and then you get dropped off a mile from your destination and you need to get to that place
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whether it's with a portable thing or a bike or some skateboard or something right that's the type of personal Last
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Mile vehicle I guess I've never heard of that term before no never it it actually came from like Logistics and shipping
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because if you think about Amazon they have all these big trucks that are just
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hauling tons of but they Dro them off at these distribu and then really the
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distance between a distribution CER and people's homes should only be a couple of miles but that is the most
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complicated part of the logistics is just getting it that last mile efficiently right because you have to
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use a bunch of different vehicles to get them there there hadn't really been Last Mile vehicles for personal use uh there
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were some startups like the one wheel and then there was this point in San Francisco and other places in the world
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where like scooters you've probably seen these scooters and bikes that are parked places and you can park them you go like
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a mile you park them again that wasn't really a thing at the time so the problem hadn't really been solved so
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Sanjay did what any good engineer does and he decided to solve the problem himself kind of as a side project you
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know they're still doing their graduate school stuff uh they're but they're mechanical engineers so they might as well try to figure out how to do it
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themselves and maybe it could turn into something bigger because of course in Silicon Valley any idea you have is like
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a potential company just going to say this is like the perfect setup we're like all right he's got a problem he
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needs an engineering solution he happens to be an engineer at Stanford there is a very specific need and a very specific
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group of people who all have the same problem and if you could solve it you'd solve it for everyone and he just needs a rundown garage and that's a billion
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dollar company and this is the story of Silicon Valley right just people who have like all these resources and they
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find holes in people's lives and they try to solve them for them or you know find tooles that don't exist and say
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that you need to solve them even though they're not problems yep so they go to the toy store and they actually bought
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some Hardware to make model airplanes and sanj actually did a TED talk later on where he talks about how they made
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the first prototype and it's kind of wild but the best part about these components is that we bought them at a
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toy store these are from remote control airplanes and the performance of these things has gotten so good that if you
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think about Vehicles a little bit differently you can really change things they strapped them to a skateboard kind
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of just as like a a proof of concept um you know they they got a motor and they
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got a remote and all these little things obviously it sounds a little bit dangerous um but what good project
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doesn't start a little bit dangerous you know you got to test the limits of like what you can do before you reel it back in and figure out what the actual use
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case would be so the skateboard makes a lot of sense cuz it's small it can fit in their car you know they can drive to campus they can drive to that cheaper
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graduate parking and then just ride the skateboard the rest of the way the last mile it's kind of like the ultimate
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Solution on top of that it's cool it's fun right like skateboards have this really deep-seated community that has
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not really changed since the 90s like at all like if you look at skater kids now they wear the same clothes they listen
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to the same music they make the same videos like it's this cool deeply rooted community and if you build a product
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around that that's kind of like an extension of that Community you don't have to find a community it's kind of already built in right so this point
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they didn't really know that they were just kind of focused on like what makes the most sense and then they kind of
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started lightly pitching to some startup accelerators as you do when you live in Silicon Valley you're just like hey we
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have this product you should give us money y so that's what happened and they ended up getting into Y combinator and
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stardex which is a really big deal I don't think they were expecting to get into any of these programs but the
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people at these companies actually saw potential in what they were doing they gave them money and once you get into
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one of these you're it becomes your full-time thing right so you just have to like drop everything that you're
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doing and try to make a company out of this they take what they made it white combinator and they decided to make a
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Kickstarter campaign and at the time you know this was really early Kickstarter it had only been around for a couple
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years so it wasn't this company where like Founders would create things that they never shipped or it was scams or
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you know that kind of stuff or big companies like the already sold phones or whatever just using it as a jump
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starter for a single thing yeah yeah like give us funding even though you're going to buy this product anyway and we're going to make this product anyway
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but at this point it kind of blew up I don't think they were really expecting it to blow up on Kickstarter like it did
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they were looking for $100,000 and they were selling the boards for about $1,200 so you know they
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just had to sell a decent amount but not a ton they ended up making $467,000 so they like almost quintupled
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their goal and it was way more than they were expecting they got 1,110 backers so
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this kind of accelerated the idea that this could be a way bigger thing than they thought I mean they got over a
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thousand people that were willing to not only that wanted to ride the thing but were willing to throw down over a grand
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yeah on this random idea sight on scene yes yeah it was it was pretty major wait
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do you guys remember the kickstarter that's Adam our producer I don't remember the kickstarter no I only
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remember finding boosted as a full-fledged company so I didn't I actually don't think I knew that they
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were ever a Kickstarter project and there's so kickstarters that go the exact opposite direction so that's
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impressive that they got that much this was a weird period of time it was like very early in Kickstarter and I don't know if you guys remember but like a
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popular YouTube format at the time was like top kickstarters of the week yeah yep you don't do that anymore like now
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the YouTube videos are what is the dumbest thing on Kickstarter I can find and will this actually go to market yeah
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exactly but anyway they got so many orders and they wanted to hire a bunch of their friends it was one of the
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reasons we first took investor money from the outside uh and didn't just kind of bootstrap it off of Kickstarter
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because we could afford to hire some of our smartest friends to come join us who otherwise you know could get really well
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paying jobs at pretty much any other tech company in the Bay Area so that was like the birth of the company as we know
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[Music]
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it I love shark tank it's one of my favorite TV shows I feel like I've learned so much from it we interviewed
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Kevin o already and every time I see like one of these new Shark Tank type
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like new company ideas I immediately think like if they showed up on Shark Tank how would it go and when I hear
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this story I think like this would have gone really well they'd go how much money did you make and they'd go we
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haven't made any products but we've sold half a million dollars of them and Kevin would go whoa that's a lot of money all
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right tell me about your customers and they go it's a very specific very dedicated niche of people that needs an
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issue solv and they're in a wealthy California suburb and it's it's a very very uh
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strong like potential customer base and they go okay this is a good idea uh do you have anything proprietary and they'd
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go yeah we've just made this skateboard with batteries and motors on it we can patent all this stuff I think this would
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have gone really well on Shark Tank so that's my reaction to their birth and
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I'm kind of hindsight 2020 but I'm not shocked they had a pretty great start it's similar to how Tesla started though
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right like they're one of the first big major EV companies like you have the upper hand when you were the first a lot
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of people are just going to as long as you make it and become that staple then people have to compare to you for a
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while I think I think we're still in that phase with Tesla right now like everyone's comparing to Tesla whether it's a reasonable comparison or not I
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still think even with boosted board dead I probably would still consider every single electric skateboard from now I
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would compare it to how boosted was when it was popular I think that's the interesting thing is it's not even just their technology but it's also the
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quality which is something I don't think Tesla had at the beginning right like obviously they're still having issues but they're getting a lot better but
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boosted like from the beginning they had this like amazing bamboo board they had the best Motors uh something that people
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site all the time is like how good their brake systems were the acceleration curve is like really smooth and it's got
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a good controller and they've got those like bright wheels that like everyone knows right it's recognizable which is
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which is very rare for like a version one of a gen one product that hadn't
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existed on the market before it's the thing Apple does that everyone strives to do Apple has branding you can tell
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what an Apple phone is what an Apple Watch is what almost anything apple is from just looking at it and they hit
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that everything you would ever want in starting a company yeah would you be interested like currently in Electric
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Board like pretend you'd never rode on one before and you'd never seen it today yeah today if you saw the kickstarter
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yeah it's really interesting today in 2021 one we've seen the explosive rise
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and fall of electric scooters not even fall we just saw them just appear everywhere and so electric scooters are
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the same solution to the same problem it's like this last mile vehicle it's sort of somewhat personal and they kind
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of got commoditized where companies would just have them all over the streets and you'd see them on the sidewalk in San Jose but like if I yeah
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so I think if I saw a company like boosted have that same initial response starting today I think oh they're
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differentiating themselves from the scooters by being a by being a skater oriented thing where oh a smaller group
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of people will probably like this more than scooters but they'll love the thing but that's that's because I've already
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seen what happened to the scooters yeah and I feel like before the scooters this would appear to have a much wider total
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demographic I mean as someone who skated when they were young like I think I think it would be super interesting and
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I think the price point would be my biggest worry just because that is an an
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expensive product $1,200 is not cheap like you said this is this is more of you're paying for a solution so if you
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don't have this last mile problem like $1,200 is probably not something you would want and as to me it would be
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really interesting I think an electric skateboard would sound super fun um obviously I know it's super fun because
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we've rode them since but going back to before then I think I would have been super interested and never would have
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put $1,200 down but but at the same time if you have a Kickstarter where a thousand people are back it at that
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price point right who who am I to say there are obviously people willing to pay those prices I have one other tidbit
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yeah San Francisco reminds me a lot of Hoboken I went to school for four years in Hoboken lived there for all four years uh it's a one M Square City and
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during the height of boosted they were everywhere because people would get off the people would get off the train and
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they lived 14 blocks north of the train station and instead of walking through Hoboken they would boosted and I would
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pass people on One wheels and boosted and scooters all the time for a couple years I'm just imagining all those
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Cobblestone roads having to skip those that's a great Point Hoboken does not have the quality of roads but there are
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plenty of like back roads and if you find a good road you can know and you kind of memorize the potholes after a
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while much more I'm much more willing to skip or go an extra block if I'm on an electric skateboard where I'm not
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putting in more for exactly so if you live on you know the train stations on 1 and you live on 14th and you go to
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school on 7th like that that whole M became seconds instead of minutes because you have that sort of speed so
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it was really popular for a while all right act two key the music all right so they start hiring
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people really fast you know they start with like friends they have all these talented people that are in their program at Stanford and mechanical
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engineering and all that kind of stuff but they're pretty quickly expanding to try to hire more Talent throughout
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Silicon Valley you you got to grow fast right if you get seed funding what those investors want are just it's just growth
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as fast as phally possible but in Sila Valley it's pretty easy to develop like a bit of a toxic work environment at
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these places I mean it's pretty fun at first you know you have like catered lunches you've got group activities uh
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my sister's company in Silicon Valley they have like surfing and like all this stuff that they just do together it's like it's fun but it can it can very
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quickly develop into this weird kind of toxic relationship so I wanted to know what it was actually like to work there
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so I got into contact with a couple former employees my name is is Mike m yeah um I'm Stefan Reinhardt I was in
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Customer Support at boosted Stefan and Mike had almost nothing negative to say
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about the company and they had their own little Loft it was a pretty massive warehouse and there was a little upstairs loft where they got to like you
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know mess around with other customer relations people and just like they didn't really have to deal with like the
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engineers and but they said it was just it was fun customer support loved it having this little Loft to ourselves
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where we could sort of be cooky or you know customer Stoke as we were called we we loved it up there we loved having
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that freedom to sort of say whatever the hell you want and have that like privacy to sort of run our department however we
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felt fit and they hired guys that they knew were passionate about skating so Mike grew up in Australia in like deep
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skate culture so I am a have been a keen Surfer skateboarder for you know my my
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entire life and and uh my my teenage son as well when we talked to him on the
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phone you you could tell that he was like a skater himself I saw an electric
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skateboard ripping down the street where we lived in Mountain View and I was like Wow uh what is that thing it looks
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really amazing it was a generation one board I still don't know who was writing it uh to this day and I went home and I
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said to my wife I just saw this thing uh ripping down the straight I want one of
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those that looks just sick and Stefan wasn't exactly a nous skateboarder
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either so I had been in skateboarding for most of my life when I was 18 I skateboarded Across America yeah it was
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awesome um but these guys are hardcore so when you called to talk to a customer service representative you talk to
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someone who won knew what they were talking about because they were really into the product and then two like they
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were just enthusiasts for skating so whether or not you were in the vend diagram of like I just want my boosted
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to be fixed or I'm a skater and I just like want to know more about the like they were your guys yeah Mike told me a
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story about this kid uh there was there was so many awesome you know so many
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awesome things that that happen their area you know I used to sit right in amongst all of those guys and if any any
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form of boosted customers are are listening you know they will know the names you know Angelo and Hank and and
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Carrie and Stefan you would have Hank was the most patient um patient of them
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all and he had a you know I think he was about 12 or 14y old boy Joey verone call
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in every week and talk to for about an hour about how he was saving boosted Bo Joey would call in we
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we'd switch it over to Hank say okay there you go Hank Did they just called the chat to
00:22:14
each other or he did he actually need help yeah no he just called a chat yeah yeah if you if you're listening Joe and
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you will be he's a legend shout out I'm sure Hank would love to say hello and then they would just call in just to
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talk about skating like have you seen this video like on YouTube about this skating like it just it just cool it
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just became like this this love lovely community that sounds fun and then if
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you're out really busy one day and you know he's going to call in that sounds like a nightmare but uh so the community
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aspect of the company grew really freaking fast and it kind of became like a Hallmark part of boosted right like
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not only did you already have the hardcore people who just love skating and so you already grabbed that audience
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but like they their community was nuts they started holding uh group rides
00:23:01
which I went to a couple in San Francisco and they're so fun and it's weird because it's it's one of those
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things that is really just enabled by the internet and like by the future where no matter what your Niche is if
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you get together with people who are really into the same thing as you it becomes like not even about the thing
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that you're getting together about it's just an excuse to hang out with like-minded people and it just becomes
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this really fun event you know they so they just skated around San Francisco like I did a couple these and we're just
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moving in packs of like hundred up the streets of SF we look scary sharks at this point I mean it's like motorcycles
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do that all the time exactly I remember Sam sheffer's done a couple videos on like group skates in New York and it
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looked really fun yeah so funny so many parallels to Tesla that I see this so
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many every car meet like a lot of car yeah one is like you when you work for Tesla in certain departments you are a
00:23:52
car Enthusiast not necessarily a Tesla or an electric Enthusiast so when people discuss like driving Dynamics or
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sportiness or like how different parts that you could buy could affect your ride like they can talk to you about
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that when you're a customer and the other thing is you mention group rides and people who will like advocate for the product and hang out with people who
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are like-minded like that is 100% a thing that happens in the Telsa Community all the time there's forums
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there's group drives there's meetups there's all kinds of stuff like that and I feel like that's just what happens
00:24:20
when you love a product enough right have you ever done one before I've never done one I've never I'm not social
00:24:25
enough to want to go out of my way but I make videos about the products just like lots of other Tesla owners so right yeah
00:24:31
and I I think that's just like a Hallmark of these tight-knit communities like there's already like you don't have
00:24:37
to organize meetups in skate culture because you already are meeting at the skate park yeah right and you're not
00:24:43
necessarily skating the whole time but when you have this weird Niche that you're really interested in you post on forums like crazy you're just obsessed
00:24:49
with the product and you just want to hang out with like-minded people but boosted in particular they're directly
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communicating with their customers it's almost like they're all friends you know like they host these meetups but like
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the boosted team members are like getting phone numbers from people so like the reason I actually uh no Stefan
00:25:07
is because I met him at at a Meetup and I got a notification on my phone that he joined telegram like the week that we
00:25:13
started this uh this episode and so I just messaged him I was like do you want to be on the podcast he's like sure so
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it worked out right like that's the kind of thing like you meet friends at these places okay and so there's this famous
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story about where this customers board started smoking that was the most awesome thing that sanj did it was
00:25:33
legendary you know that's Mike again jumped on a plane and flew out to New York to solve a you know a battery issue
00:25:40
that was there there was two battery faults um that sort of triggered a a recall that was my first day in the
00:25:48
office wow oh man that's that's a tone yeah yeah yeah
00:25:54
it's not exactly the best thing to happen to your skateboard I we've seen like similar cases with like Samsung phones will start smoking and then you
00:26:02
know the way that they handle that is kind of shaky okay they have a weird PR
00:26:08
response or like they say that they're using it wrong or something like that it's it's not exactly the kind of like
00:26:13
customer to business relationship that customers are going to like but the way that they handled this is Sanjay who you
00:26:19
know is the founder of the company physically just like flew out to the person's house to go check it out and I
00:26:25
was on a Reddit Forum a couple days ago from when the company closed and this
00:26:31
person Shar the person whose board was smoking like shared memory he's like I've still got like a signed like napkin
00:26:37
with your signature on it for when you come came to help me out which is like kind of how people act around like Elon
00:26:44
Musk like he was sort of this Elon Musk of boosted yeah uh where they just like really looked up to him as like this
00:26:50
leader which is very interesting um but yeah that just shows like the company's always got your back with this product
00:26:56
which I think made people more comfortable about buying the product they knew they were going to get like really good customer service they knew
00:27:03
that they were never going to you know buy something and then just like not have a warranty never be able to talk to
00:27:09
these people uh they were fixing every possible problem that customers had so they they started out right so they've
00:27:15
got this excitement the community is growing but they're still kind of small and even if you think something is big
00:27:21
in real life because you see a lot of them yeah doesn't mean they're really big it could just be the communities you
00:27:27
hang out around are are similar to you so you you see things but at this point
00:27:32
even though boosted is not like maybe a major brand that everyone's like that's a boosted board people can still
00:27:38
recognize them because they've got these like popular they've got these orange wheels and they've got these decks and
00:27:43
like when people are riding a boosted board almost everyone knows what it is after the break boosted hits its stride
00:27:50
stick with us we'll be right [Music]
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o.com so if you guys were to guess what was the big break moment for boosted's
00:30:25
brand no no idea absolutely absolutely is rhyme with Lacy Bry as as a as
00:30:34
someone who's seen a lot of products arrive in the public eye thanks to an obsession by a public figure uh
00:30:41
particularly Youtubers with a strong following uh I'm very confident that Casey is said had something to do 100%
00:30:48
the reason I know about boosted board I decided to talk to all these people that I had chatted with about what the
00:30:55
inflection point was where boosted went from nobody knowing it to everybody knowing it Casey neistat drove a lot of
00:31:03
sales my name is Casey neistat and I'm a I guess I'm a YouTuber so naturally we
00:31:08
had to get in touch with Casey so Casey neistat had started this daily Vlog project around New York City nothing
00:31:15
specific he was just doing fun stuff around New York and kind of showing what it was like to live here I started my
00:31:21
daily Vlog in I'm going to screw this timeline up but you can probably find it on YouTube if you wanted to I started my
00:31:28
daily Vlog March 25th I think 2015 I checked he's right like if you just he was one of the first vloggers at least
00:31:35
the first vloggers to like do it of this in this type and so like everyone started to know who he was even in those early Vlogs he would leave his apartment
00:31:43
and what's up guys just it was crazy around New York in particular it's hard to overstate how much of an impact his
00:31:50
Vlogs had on YouTube like the like lots of parts of YouTube you mention Vlogs but it's like the daily aspect the Drone
00:31:57
cinematography aspect the like Community Building location specific aspect of his
00:32:03
videos like so much of it was The Perfect Storm uh and so I can't imagine
00:32:08
being Casey walking outside and like zipping around the city on a boosted board how many people would be like
00:32:14
that's the guy from the videos cuz it's such a recognizable repeatable image so I I imagine that was yeah no he I mean
00:32:21
he was a part in everything like even the Cinematic unboxings of products you know he kind of like Forefront that in
00:32:28
his Vlogs too just like so many different things you know I I only now
00:32:33
in retrospect you know like I stopped my daily Vlog two years ago or whatever and only now do I realize like what it means
00:32:39
to effectively have a daily show that was going out to a million plus people s days a week when the central character
00:32:45
was not even me the central character was New York City which was I think a really interesting way to put it and he's kind of just like this narrator
00:32:52
showing what the city could be and the people and the situations and his films
00:32:57
really the me of the Vlogs and he's trying all these different Transportation mediums right he's got a car him and Candace have a car he's got
00:33:04
a bike he tries an electric bike but there's nothing that can compete with the boosted board there's nothing and
00:33:10
I've ridden every device from a segue to an electric bike to like really good
00:33:15
high quality electric bikes like my wife had a car in the city so we actually had a car Uber taxis bus Subway nothing
00:33:25
works as well as a boosted board yeah that how Bo for a while that was a thing he wrote everywhere I remember that put
00:33:31
those L brackets on the side so he could like hop up on the curve I think that was the first ever Casey Vlog I ever watched and then watched every single
00:33:38
day in his Vlog where he opens the boosted board it's like a Q&A he's like I used to use this like janky hoverboard
00:33:44
thing but now I have this and he's just like super excited about it right and pretty much from the moment he opens
00:33:51
that up on camera [ __ ] just goes nuts for this company uh at this point it
00:33:57
became a total necessity for his Vlogs he started using it in every single Vlog because he said it was like the most
00:34:03
convenient way to get around the city in New York City it's such transportation is such a specific narrow thing where
00:34:10
it's like this vend diagram of like practicality speed and convenience
00:34:16
Safety and Security so uh an electric bike's amazing in New York City until you have to go into an office building
00:34:22
and then no matter how many locks you put on that bike it's going to be stolen when you come out and then on top of the
00:34:27
fact I've always have a camera in my hand so having two hands on the handlebars didn't work enter this skateboard that has
00:34:34
brakes where I could just mob around that City and I had brakes and acceleration in one hand and my camera
00:34:40
in the other I wasn't attached to this thing so if I were to fall I could jump off unlike a bicycle and then as far as
00:34:46
security I could just pick it up and walk into any business in the city and
00:34:51
no questions asked I could carry it on a subway so it was that boosted board became my key to New York City even
00:34:59
though I had lived there for for 15 years at the time I mean New York City if you think about it it wasn't originally built for cars right it's
00:35:05
this old city that really was like a walking City and then they kind of just stuffed streets and cars into it and
00:35:13
that's the reason like the streets are so narrow and like it's just very hard you have to navigate around everything and it's hard to get around people it's
00:35:20
not that big so that is kind of the perfect use case for a Last Mile vehicle
00:35:25
right it's like it's hard to use other medium so you might as well use this like I'm walking but very fast and less
00:35:31
effort one of Casey's most viral videos ever is all about bike lanes and how
00:35:36
there are constantly obstructions there's always stuff parked in the bike lanes and if you want to zip
00:35:42
around New York City and any sort of versatile way you've got to be in the streets in the bike Lanes on the
00:35:48
sidewalk this needed a solution yeah yeah and the Boost board could go 24 miles per hour yep could be in the
00:35:54
street exactly so you could you could ride in the streets and you're probably going to be faster than most cars right at this point you're basically a
00:35:59
motorcycle that's weaving between cars but Slimmer and you know probably more safe and you can walk it up to your
00:36:05
apartment and not exactly it is like the perfect thing like bikes don't really work in this case scooters are annoying
00:36:12
this is basically his solution so boosted gets a ton of attention and traction just from his Vlogs and they
00:36:18
didn't expect this to happen at all I don't think they even expected him to open it up I think that one of the uh
00:36:23
challenges for the marketing team was sort of matching the sales that he was bringing that's Stefan again for those
00:36:29
wondering but it became so essential he bought he buys multiple boards for when
00:36:34
some of them start breaking or like if one's dead and he forgets to charge it he wants to have one just ready to go
00:36:40
like he is the let's go type of guy you know no obstructions nothing slowing me down yeah um I mean you guys did the
00:36:47
studio tour studio so like how was that that's that's the thing about Casey is he's a guy who just wants the thing to
00:36:55
work so if he has a camera and a lens he's not going to baby that thing he's going to use it absolutely every way he
00:37:00
can sticking on a a curb sticking on a fire hydrant whatever he needs to do to get the shot and so you saw in the
00:37:05
videos the way he treated those boards is like throw it on the ground jump on and go like he's not going to baby that
00:37:10
thing and the thing you notice even if I was never going to get one of my videos I would always notice those boards are
00:37:16
getting manhandled and they were just working all the time so I was never shocked when he bought when he broke one
00:37:21
I'd never go oh man I can't believe that boosted board broke I would go wow I can't believe it lasted that long and he
00:37:27
goes on next one and he gets another boosted board I'm like this guy could get any other board he wants so it must be pretty good he had four or five of
00:37:33
them on the wall when we went there and they were just they were absolutely destroyed but all of them were always
00:37:38
there charging and yeah like you said one runs out of battery you forget to charge he just grabbed a different one
00:37:44
one breaks he just grabs another one he always had them for everything and the funny thing is like like I said earlier
00:37:51
this is like one of the first electric skateboards in the category but yet it became it was already one of the like
00:37:57
best ones Not only was it one of the fastest it had the best deck had the best wheels and it just became kind of
00:38:04
the electric skateboard that you'd get uh most people attribute the acceleration curve and the breakes in
00:38:10
particular as being the most important thing on those boards Casey said like the brakes in New York City like you
00:38:17
need to be able to go 20 miles per hour and when you break not just get thrown off if you can't accelerate your way out
00:38:23
of trouble you're going head to-head with a taxi cab the taxi is slowing down if you don't have the power pull in front of that Taxi Driver you're in a
00:38:29
very compromised position so acceleration was vital and then the other thing was breaking um the braking
00:38:36
was so robust on a boosted board that like at full speed if you were to hit that break 100% and really not know how
00:38:42
to brace yourself You' get thrown off the board like there's an argument that says the braking was too powerful on
00:38:48
those devices but once you learned how to navigate that that became instrumental to its um it's yielding a
00:38:56
kind of confidence and it users that said you know what this I can use this to get around this isn't just a fun
00:39:01
thing to ride around in a parking lot when no one's here right like and a lot of other electric skateboards the brake system was just like but this one had a
00:39:08
belt on the motor so that was actually the thing that would make the acceleration curve the best and also the
00:39:14
breaks the best but of course that actually that would also break so it was kind of a trade-off but it was worth it
00:39:20
so boo head's basically having trouble keeping up with demand uh which Mike says no I think that's that's an awesome
00:39:27
problem it's another shark tank thing like so why do you need the money well we can't make enough
00:39:32
perfect answer just need to scale up yeah so Mike told me the story that every single time Casey Would release a
00:39:39
vlog so Casey would post a video they'd be in their little like customer service Loft basically yell out down the stairs
00:39:46
get ready to ship fellas they'd like call down to the rest of the team and they'd be like all right boys let's get
00:39:52
ready that is so funny you could see the direct correlation between you know is ripping through New York and a whole
00:39:59
bunch of boards flying out the door it was it was insane I'll just drop this in here I I hate the word influencer but
00:40:06
there is no more perfect like storm for like a bunch of new people finding a
00:40:13
product than someone that they love and follow every day becoming obsessed with it when I think of a Casey nead Vlog
00:40:19
from back in those days I think of probably about four things I think of Casey I think of New York City I think
00:40:25
of the camera he's holding on either a gorilla pod or some sort of tripod and I think of a booster board right and that
00:40:32
was perfect gorilla pods even yeah drones yeah drones good one but like gorilla pods even g popular thing they
00:40:38
blew up because of him too for sure yeah because vlogging blew up because of him it's just insane they couldn't pay for a
00:40:43
better ad than that yeah they could not pay for a better ad yeah no and I asked him I was like did you did you ever set
00:40:49
up any sort of like sponsorship thing he like no he yeah that's true if there was an affiliate program with boosted Casey
00:40:56
would be like the order of magnitude highest by a lot yeah wow like you've
00:41:01
you've inadvertently sold a bunch of Teslas oh yeah but they you know they added in a referral program but there's lots of other products that I know have
00:41:08
seen an impact from videos that I don't get a cut of but I'm just curious like wow yeah no they had a referral program
00:41:13
and Casey would be like hundreds of thousands probably okay so obviously things are going pretty well I mean they
00:41:18
released the V2 the stealth the mini like they started expanding their product line because that's what you do
00:41:24
they took seed money for investors they needed to grow they need to expand uh and you even did a video with Casey on
00:41:30
the mini yep uh what was that like oh it was fun I mean I was never a skater so
00:41:35
this was me coming at the tech angle from something I'm unfamiliar with as I do often like I love my handhelds and my
00:41:41
iPads and TVs and stuff but like I was never a car guy until the electric cars and I was never a you know skater until
00:41:48
the electric skateboards and I just was trying something new because it was high tech and I learned a lot about it from casy and I really liked it and it was
00:41:54
clearly a very good product so I think that was a win for for them too yeah yeah what was like did you feel like he
00:42:01
was just like so much more experienced at the product that you had to like I mean there's definitely a learning curve
00:42:06
with skating in general about like getting your balance and starting to get comfortable carving a little bit and like how you steer and maneuver the
00:42:13
thing yeah and the benefit of the mini was obviously that it was smaller but it was also more Nimble that it had like
00:42:19
that back stand so you could get around tighter corners and stuff so I was just happy that there was like a lighter weight version I could hold with my arm
00:42:25
extended and not drag on the ground but he was so obsessed over like the Dynamics of like this smaller non-long
00:42:31
board where now you got like your feet closer together and you can carve a little tighter and your turning radius is better because you can lift the front
00:42:37
wheels off the ground all that stuff I wouldn't have appreciated that if he didn't tell me so that was all in one
00:42:43
place which is really good I remember at the event that I met Stefan at the the group ride it was right after the mini
00:42:49
and the stealth had launched and the thing that blew my mind was that he was doing like allies and kick flips on the
00:42:56
mini stupid it's how hard that is on something thaty but I was but either way
00:43:02
like the fact that you could was just crazy like you probably shouldn't cuz there's a battery in it but it was it
00:43:07
was it was still crazy um so so things seem good uh but as you remember the company doesn't exist anymore so back to
00:43:14
our original question yeah what exactly happened here right things seem to be going super well how did a company that
00:43:21
seemed so huge and was growing so fast crash just as quickly right to really
00:43:26
figure this out I needed to contact someone who's been covering this since the very beginning hi I'm Sean okain I'm
00:43:32
a senior reporter at The Verge and what is your main beat over there uh I cover Transportation everything that moves
00:43:39
pretty much Eevee startups Tesla he's covered all that stuff and he's covered boosted literally since they were first
00:43:46
founded so he knows a thing or two about this company so things seem to be going great on the outside they're going great with customer relations and the culture
00:43:53
but obviously startups aren't easy whatever money was coming in was going right back out the door and all that
00:43:59
money was being sort of reinvested and spent as they got it in right like it
00:44:04
seems like everything can go great but you need to make the product better you need to invest any earnings you get back
00:44:10
into the company you've got to grow the company as fast as possible and overall
00:44:15
if you take seed investor money you have to start seeing a return as quickly as possible right and this is even harder
00:44:22
with Hardware it's it's one thing to write you know really amazing code and and execute it and you you know see your
00:44:27
work pay off it's another thing to like work on a product like this and then be able to like ride it around in like Silicon Valley most of the companies are
00:44:33
software companies you don't have a lot of overhead it's pretty easy to you know make software make it better try to
00:44:39
reach more customers you're really your only overhead is like maybe your office and you've got your employees that's
00:44:45
kind of it but even even companies like Amazon had trouble doing this right like
00:44:51
they're not selling a they weren't selling a product at first they were just a logistics company but they lost money for so long that investors almost
00:44:58
pulled out multiple multiple times and Bezos had to be like don't worry we're going to be profitable eventually we're
00:45:03
going to be profitable eventually there's not a lot of Hardware companies in Silicon Valley that get seed investor
00:45:08
funding because it's just hard to grow that it's a lot harder to grow that and specifically boosted margins were like
00:45:15
incredibly low especially at the beginning right because they were already selling this product for like 1,200 bucks but that was like they
00:45:21
weren't making a lot of money on it if anything they were like barely scraping by from the beginning uh so it was going
00:45:27
to take them a lot longer to become profitable they had to get to a point in the product where it cost a lot less to
00:45:33
make the product than it cost to sell and they have the problem of their product is so good people are probably
00:45:39
not replacing them that often right like they have to keep finding more audience
00:45:45
um so boosted raised more money to reinvest into the product because they needed to start seeing you know they had
00:45:51
to make it better they had to hire more Engineers uh they had to keep getting The Catered lunches you know to like
00:45:57
actually get people to to come work at their company uh so they ended up once everything was said and done raising
00:46:03
about $75 million after all of the investment rounds so they've got all this money uh it's just that Sanjay and
00:46:11
the others that founded the company weren't exactly used to Growing companies right
00:46:16
they're they're engineers in 2017 you stepped down as the company CEO and
00:46:22
we're curious as to why you did that yeah so um so we had a bit of a disagreement M internally at the time
00:46:28
about which direction to go in as a company um and I won't get into like too much detail about that but basically we
00:46:34
decided uh you know both as a founding team and and with with the board with the major investors like okay let's go
00:46:40
find somebody um who has done this kind of work before but at a much bigger scale because neither of us uh John or I
00:46:47
who had been there at that time Matt had left at that point but John and I had never run a business before especially one that was growing as fast as that so
00:46:54
Sanjay decided to step down as CEO and move to the board so he just became like
00:46:59
on the board of directors kind of like helping oversee the company growth anyway they bring in this hot shot he
00:47:05
came from the same program as Sanjay at Stanford the pretty much the exact same track but he went the business route
00:47:11
instead of the engineering route yeah I feel like I I just saw an interview about this where uh I think it was
00:47:18
probably Elon but talking about like growing a company kind of has to come from inside the company and when you
00:47:26
take someone from some high-end program some hot shot maybe and he just parachutes in from the
00:47:32
top he doesn't necessarily he or she doesn't understand why the company grows
00:47:38
or how it specifically works and should grow and you can take time to learn that stuff but I feel like it's typically
00:47:46
better to have someone within the company familiar with the company who has grown with the company yeah knows
00:47:52
how it would best continue to improve but you know Sean told me that like it wasn't necessarily the worst thing you
00:47:59
know when the new CEO came in uh Jeff ruso that idea that started with sanj of
00:48:05
like you know we our sort of goal at some point is to help solve this sort of Last Mile Transportation problem really
00:48:11
got accelerated that sort of aspiration became like the sort of like marching
00:48:17
cry for ruso when he took over because that was the way that they could really
00:48:23
grow the business that's ultimately always the problem is that the investors just want to see a return as fast as
00:48:29
possible now obviously you've got this company that's got a super laid-back culture because they hired a bunch of
00:48:36
skaters right yeah yeah skaters business
00:48:41
they don't they don't match very well right I see and everyone was just really chill they had come from like the Santa
00:48:46
Cruz area or the San Francisco area and they were just like it doesn't mesh when you bring a business guy in that like
00:48:52
wants to grow something so there's already a little bit of tension Jeff wants to figure out how to scale the company and one of the solutions he has
00:48:59
is to expand the their like proprietary motor system into other form factors
00:49:05
there was a point in time over the last couple years where it seemed like a lot of options were on the table for them
00:49:10
where whether that was going to be the scooter that they eventually made in the Rev or something simpler and more
00:49:16
designed for sort of micro Mobility or just more generally affordable and lighter there was also some bikes in the
00:49:22
work that were more either standard bikes they also had a sort of seated scooter kind of thing like super 73 so
00:49:29
you know they definitely were evaluating a lot of different options uh usually you start with your core products and
00:49:34
then you realize like okay if we want to sell more stuff we want to expand our company we have to hit these audiences that are not being served right now so
00:49:41
the two main product categories that they were kind of toying with was an electric bike and an electric
00:49:47
scooter um they ultimately landed on the scooter because a bike is great uh and
00:49:53
people love biking but they still wanted to kind of fit that portability aspect that the electric skateboard had brought
00:50:00
uh like an electric skateboard you could just bring inside with you and they sort of wanted to maintain that also the
00:50:07
whole like electric scooter craze was the thing in Silicon Valley at that
00:50:13
point in like 2017 2018 which personally I think is a terrible idea I
00:50:19
don't think that you should just like if something is oversaturated you should just like inject yourself into the
00:50:25
market at the same time Clubhouse yeah yeah exactly that that
00:50:31
kind of thing um I mean you you would lime and you would bird and you had all these companies that were like jump bikes you all these companies are just
00:50:37
like showing up of the city out of nowhere uh I remember seeing these scooters like in the middle of the road because people would just pick them up
00:50:43
and throw them into the middle of the road and there was Instagram accounts that would pop up like bird graveyard with just people destroying birds like
00:50:51
as like a fun thing I don't know people hated them in San Francisco but anyways they ended up on the personal scooter
00:50:58
and most of the scooter startups were convenience-based Last Mile stuff right so you'd rent from from a charger
00:51:05
outside some business you'd ride it to a different place that you're were going you'd park it and then you'd walk the rest of the way to where you're going
00:51:12
but boosted wanted to offer something that you could actually own as opposed to something that you know you just rent
00:51:18
because they wanted to kind of like stick to their company ethos of like really powerful really fast and you
00:51:25
can't really do that when you want something to be like just a little Last Mile thing and also because they grew up
00:51:31
in San Francisco that's a very hilly City and they wanted something that you could like fly up the the streets with
00:51:39
right at the time xiaomi kind of owned the market of personal electric scooters
00:51:44
they still kind of do um they' done a really good job scaling that I think they offer like a a me scooter Pro now
00:51:51
that is supposed to be able to climb the Streets of San Francisco but at the time I remember I took the C train into San
00:51:57
Francisco from San Jose like every day and the amount of people that would get off the Cal train with the xiaomi scooters was like I don't think anyone
00:52:03
in the US really knew that jamy was a brand but they would still buy their scooters off of Amazon like it was crazy
00:52:09
um and those worked for like flat areas but they couldn't really do inclin so boosted saw this opportunity of like
00:52:15
what if we put our Motors and Engineering Tech into this like really powerful scooter and make it be able to
00:52:21
like fly up and down the streets of San Francisco uh and ultimately obviously the company was really divided about
00:52:28
this choice I wasn't super hyped on the scooter to be honest um as a as a
00:52:34
direction you know for the business um actually you know I stuck my hand in the
00:52:40
air uh at some of those product meetings and said hey you know what a bike is to go uh if we're going to do another
00:52:46
product um that would be that would be rad um but you know like any any good
00:52:54
team U there was differing opinions you before we went down that road everyone had a different uh opinion on it but
00:53:00
when uh when that final decision was made everyone got behind it you know as as best they could usually that's the
00:53:07
kiss of death yeah usually when a startup has a series of Founders that
00:53:13
are like pretty close to its core and its Mission and its purpose and then that company starts to expand and Branch
00:53:21
out and move on to other things and a Founder leaves usually that's a pretty big pivoting point for that company
00:53:27
where other people start to get the picture like oh it's not going to be like it was before I might want to leave too right there's plenty of examples of
00:53:33
that yeah Casey actually said the same thing yeah when they when sanj left
00:53:39
whenever a Founder leaves their startup that and that Vision that they brought to it um goes away with them and I I
00:53:47
think about like when Steve Jobs left Apple you know they brought in great leadership they had smart people there
00:53:53
but there's a very specific Vision that I believe sanj had that he took with him
00:53:59
when he left the company so I think Jeff brought tremendous business acument and
00:54:05
really intelligent practical thinking to the company but it felt like the romance behind the device itself
00:54:13
faded and in my business experience it's always like first you develop a mission
00:54:18
statement second you write it on the wall and then that becomes religion like everything you do has to be to promote
00:54:24
that mission statement and when I look at boosted board under sanj's guidance I see that I see that and when I look at
00:54:31
it um in the time after he left I saw something about you know that romance
00:54:38
faded and in its place came like how do we expand this company how do we scale this company how do we meet these insane
00:54:44
valuations that we raised money at and that's never a great recipe for for
00:54:49
success and that's a big reason why a lot of the employees started leaving they started finding a lot of different jobs around Silicon Valley and if you go
00:54:56
on there's like all these posts on the boosted subreddit of like bring back sanj # bringback sanj like you know
00:55:04
people started like thinking ahead like did he get outed like it just started because the community was so powerful
00:55:10
right like they were so invested in what was happening at the company it wasn't really like a corporation it was like it
00:55:17
was like their friends so it just felt weird to have Sanjay like leave the company when he built this thing I kind
00:55:22
of wonder if that guy that was calling every week was still calling every week just like so like what's going on guys
00:55:28
what's uh what's good with the skateboards yeah just like when's the next product coming out are you still making a skateboard yeah man um so there
00:55:34
was also this worry that the company had like leveraged a little too much on the scooter I don't know if you guys remember but the the boosted rev which
00:55:41
was the name of the scoter was not cheap it was like $2,000 right and like you could say the
00:55:47
skateboard was expensive at 1,200 but then you bring in 2,000 it's a it's a scooter so it's not as cool it's really
00:55:53
big it's heavy it's like 40 PB like and it was also entering in a market that already had competitors I
00:56:00
feel like when boosted showed up with an electric longboard I don't really know if anyone knew how much that should cost all they
00:56:07
knew is it solved an issue and there wasn't really any other version so they got the Boost it 1,200 bucks okay when
00:56:12
the scooter came around I remember immediately when I'm doing my research I'm like all right I got to compare it
00:56:17
to these six or seven other scooters that are out there and I'm like wow this is a this is a very different approach
00:56:23
it's much heavier and much bigger and bulkier and maybe that's a different demographic or maybe that's just diff just a different way of doing the same
00:56:29
thing solving the same problem so yeah they definitely got that comparison happening from every angle and again
00:56:35
like the xamis had already flooded the market they were only like 400 bucks like it was a big difference like you're
00:56:41
paying a lot more for this thing just because it could go faster and it could like go up the hills without as much of
00:56:47
an issue uh I think their kind of like idea was that people feel more comfortable on the scooters than they do
00:56:53
on skateboards because you use two feet on it you have two handlebars all of that kind of stuff but it just it just
00:56:59
wasn't the same as riding a skateboard it's totally different experience after the break and attempted pivot stick with
00:57:08
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your selling today that's shopify.com form do you guys remember your first
00:59:06
time seeing the Rev like what were your impressions I remember we got it out the box and just starting I think we just
00:59:13
like zipped it around the studio on the carpet for a little bit and the thing would like spin the wheel so fast it would sort of tear up the carpet and
00:59:19
we're like this thing is serious we need to go outside yeah and uh it was immediately very fun and very fast it it
00:59:26
again felt similar to like the boosted War like this felt like it was more a method of transportation less a toy less
00:59:34
just like something you would grab as a hobby it's like it kind of made sense that it was that expensive because it it
00:59:39
was built like a tank it went very fast it was super easy to pick up and I like
00:59:44
got it but then at the same time as someone who's just never had to deal with something like that like Last Mile Transportation I've I couldn't see I
00:59:52
couldn't tell if somebody was willing to pay two grand for something it's such a specific demographic because you need to
00:59:58
be living in a place that's hilly specifically like uh I did the briefing for the boosted rev in San Francisco and
01:00:04
they specifically brought me like Jeff he brought me to like one of the biggest hills in San Francisco because he was
01:00:10
like right up that hill that was like the briefing right nice yeah um I also
01:00:17
remember we got one and then it was
01:00:22
recalled and then we got another one to test and then took that one back too
01:00:27
right yeah they never told us what I mean I guess just it was a review unit but they let us keep the first they let
01:00:34
us keep all the past boosted boards right all the boosted boards are still around the studio I just remember they they said hey there's a problem with one
01:00:40
of them we're going to like just take it back and replace it and literally they showed up here at the studio he rode a
01:00:46
different one to the studio gave me that one and I gave him the other one and he rode that home and I was like all right
01:00:52
I guess they're just swapping it out maybe there's something new about the new one I don't think ever asked or
01:00:57
found out why yeah so I don't know if you guys remember this but the main problem was that there was someone at The Verge who was reviewing it and there
01:01:04
was a problem with the latch and the way that the like top half would fold oh I vely and if you were holding the board
01:01:12
uh if you were carrying the board without having folded it sometimes it would like close on its own and it broke
01:01:17
someone's finger at The Verge and this whole article like the boosted rev broke
01:01:22
my finger not mind my colleague cies yikes
01:01:27
which is not great PR not at all course they didn't want a bunch of reviewers with broken hands yeah I'm sure I'm sure the number one rule in in marketing is
01:01:34
don't hurt the reviewer that when you give it to them because that's a that's an easy headline like if the phone
01:01:39
explodes or something they should take it back probably got it right so so I asked like everybody I was like what
01:01:46
like why do you think do you think the Rev was the problem with the company fail because I was trying to figure out like why did the company just go under
01:01:53
and every single person was like I don't think it was the biggest problem
01:01:58
but the culture around boosted is a skater culture and as Casey said to me
01:02:03
skoo are like rollerblades no matter how popular they get they'll never really break through cuz there's no way to look
01:02:10
cool on a [ __ ] scooter I don't care how good you are at rollerblading why you rollerblading die
01:02:16
cuz you look like a you look like and I when I was a kid I like went to Woodward skate camp for rollerblading I was like
01:02:21
a really good rollerblader the whole the whole sport died out yeah cuz it doesn't matter how good you look you don't look
01:02:27
cool on roller blades and you don't look cool on scooters fair that is I think I
01:02:33
had a line kind of like that in the review I think we specifically had shots in the review that almost just like yeah
01:02:40
felt lame if that makes sense listen I get the scooter I get the scooter
01:02:46
completely like it is much easier to ride a scooter than a skateboard like when we had it here I brought my wife
01:02:53
out on the back and within one minute she was full speed on the boosted red just zipping around out here but you're
01:02:59
also like at this point uh Marquez gets up and pretends to ride a scooter and let's be real he looks uh he looks
01:03:06
pretty dumb no offense to your scooter riders out there I totally get how functional they are okay let's continue
01:03:13
yeah like it's not like you're skate if you're skating on a longboard you're like carving around and you like you
01:03:19
look pretty sick and when you're on a scooter you're like that's a scooter what do we associate scooters with children
01:03:26
RoR I don't I don't know why it is so deeply ingrained in our like body language that like doing this is so much
01:03:33
cooler than doing this this works great for an audio medium by the
01:03:39
way there's a there's a everyone knows what we're doing I think there's a meme I think it's a Tik Tok meme of like
01:03:44
things that are humiliating for no reason and like some of them is just
01:03:50
like I don't know like checking out this one weird thing at groceries or just
01:03:55
like having to stand up in front of a group of people like understandably humiliating things and then there's like
01:04:02
riding a scooter that's just humiliating for no reason as someone that owns a
01:04:07
scooter for my last mile ride to my apartment I'm feeling very hurt about this whole
01:04:12
conversation you should I think you just like you think of a scooter you think of like a guy in a business suit for some
01:04:18
reason if you're an adult writing a scooter you feel like you're you're lame and you're like in a business suit if
01:04:23
I'm being honest as someone who has SK and snowboarded for the majority of my life I would feel a thousand times safer
01:04:30
on a boosted rev in New York City than I would on a boosted board just because of how intense the city is I don't think
01:04:37
Casey was too concerned about the safety Casey was like a pro at doing that and I don't like I think a very big portion of
01:04:44
that comes from him being a skater but I think a very an even bigger portion of that comes from him being someone like
01:04:50
who knows the city so well and knows how to react in those circumstances I think that's why shefer can do it as well I
01:04:57
feel like I would die if I wrote there's a clip of um at the end of Caris swiers
01:05:03
interviewing Elon Musk let me let me see if I can find a clip real quick make a scooter make a scooter and I'll go for
01:05:08
it actually they are electric what am I talking about they're I don't know like there was like some people in the studio
01:05:13
wanted to make a scooter but I was like ah it's I love the scooter like dignity
01:05:18
no they do they don't like what are you talking I guess I do it all the time I
01:05:23
look fantastic you do not you are under laboring under delusion you lack
01:05:30
dignity like that clip I was dying okay by the way the rest of that interview is great so we'll link it in the show notes
01:05:36
Casey became like an icon on that boosted Board of New York City right like even in the new Tom and Jerry movie
01:05:42
there's that clip of J uh Tom the cat because it's Tom Cat I just learned
01:05:47
about that yesterday I know I know but uh he's
01:05:53
writing a boosted board throughout New York City and it's weird it's like they have a bunch of like product placement for boosted in the movie yeah that was
01:06:00
so I think they must have started the movie like a long time before they went out of business I don't know anyway uh I
01:06:06
don't think that Casey would have become an icon on a scooter that's all that's all I have to say about that Casey was
01:06:12
squarely in the middle of the Target demographic for the board and he was squarely out of the Target demographic
01:06:18
for the scooter yeah exactly cuz there's no way to look cool on a [ __ ] scooter
01:06:24
there's Casey again like he was cool yeah any anyway yeah okay we got to get back to why the company fell okay yeah
01:06:33
what happened so they're leveraging a lot on the scooter so uh investors are looking for a return pretty soon because
01:06:39
at this point it had been a while you know and they had done like all these products they did the mainline product
01:06:44
they did the V2 the V3 the mini the stealth and now they were trying to
01:06:50
launch the Rev uh and the Rev was really supposed to be a part of that like return right when Jeff came in he was
01:06:57
like we got to make the scooter it's going to be the Real Money Maker for us and like they they had done some things
01:07:02
to make more money like Jeff was able to get the skateboards into more markets whereas before they were only really serving the us but now they're in like a
01:07:09
bunch of different Global markets so that's good but still it wasn't great and right in the middle of all of this
01:07:15
there is the Trump China trade War tariffs are high they are the up
01:07:20
increasing tariffs on many Imports a reversal of the China tariff policy this made component being imported into the
01:07:26
US like from China way more expensive because there was like a 20 25 up to a 25% tariff right so it was just it it
01:07:35
was not great uh and you're either going to do one of two things you're going to pass those costs onto consumers and jack
01:07:42
up the price of your uh components I remember I was in comp I was at computex in Taiwan right as this was going on
01:07:48
there were computer companies that were like hey we announced this price but it's actually going to be 25% more now
01:07:53
right you can either pass on those prices to your consumers or you can eat the cost if you're a giant company and
01:07:59
you want to maintain a good relationship with your customers and you're okay with eating those margins but boosted was
01:08:04
already barely making money on their skateboards right they barely had any margins at this point they're basically
01:08:11
paying people to buy their skateboards because they're it's costing them more to sell them than it is than they're
01:08:17
actually making on them which is terrible cuz now you're just hemorrhaging Money In A Million Ways you have employees you have infrastructure
01:08:23
you have Engineers not great and it's not something that you can it's not like a phone where you can sell software you
01:08:28
you know you can do a plan over time a subscription service no way to make more
01:08:34
money um keep in mind this is all before the pandemic yeah so not a great situation
01:08:42
yeah um so it obviously starts to get around that the company's having some major issues at this point certain
01:08:49
employees started interviewing at other jobs they stopped doing catered lunches
01:08:54
because like they need to save money in some way and I know I keep bringing up the catered lunches but that's the thing
01:09:00
in Silicon Valley is like that's how you attract employees is by having like the most employee benefits like at your
01:09:06
workplace so whether it's a gym or lunches or any of that kind of stuff but funny enough the lunches are like a
01:09:12
Telltale sign that a company's having problems when the lunches go away oh wow okay yeah yeah huh so things aren't
01:09:18
looking great so the boosted rev lands uh and it's kind of a mixed response I mean it's like fast and powerful and
01:09:24
welld designed but it's $2,000 it's very expensive uh and it's a scooter there's no way to
01:09:31
look cool on a [ __ ] scooter the employees are not feeling great uh they're about to leave for Thanksgiving
01:09:37
break but a lot of them are like are we going to even have jobs when we come back from Thanksgiving break because things are like really going south and
01:09:44
everyone kind of knows it I think a lot of people saw the writing on the wall um
01:09:50
so you know you you would see a lot of your co-workers uh updating their link
01:09:56
ledin um trying to make connections with
01:10:01
people that were going to other companies so I think it was pretty clear what was happening it was just sort of
01:10:08
unspoken taking lunch breaks to go interview at other companies like openly W it feels it feels really weird um and
01:10:16
they just didn't know if they'd have jobs when they got back it it was pretty yikes so things are getting dense and a
01:10:22
little complicated bear with me here this is this is the the real reason that boosted kind of dropped off the face of
01:10:28
the Earth okay so at this point you've got the boosted rev scooters on ships waiting to come to the US to be sold but
01:10:35
the investors aren't giving boosted any more money so boosted's just kind of like please we need to stay afloat we
01:10:41
need to be able to keep paying our employees those scooters are on ships they're ready to come to the US uh but
01:10:49
they won't give them any more money they've completely like closed the pocketbooks so they have this like last
01:10:54
Stitch effort and they go to this company called structural Capital which is something called a venture debt fund
01:11:01
yeah it's big leg late stage capitalism Vibes and uh and so they took some money from this company not from a position of
01:11:07
strength right this is a kind of company that you take money from not when you have like a lot of uh you're not coming
01:11:14
from a a strong place but they didn't really care because like again they had like all these scooters like thousands of scooters on these ships they're just
01:11:20
waiting to come to the US and they're like okay it doesn't matter how much the margin of like what we're Bor is what we
01:11:25
need to return them we will sell these like scooters we had already taken pre-orders we'll be able to pay them
01:11:31
back we just need the money now so we can pay our employees and not actually just go out of business you know like I
01:11:37
said like taking money from a venture debt fund is very much a last ditch
01:11:42
effort the better end game here would just to get acquired by a company that maybe has some more resources and could
01:11:48
just give you money to stay afloat and they're okay that you're losing money for a little bit because their long-term goal is to grow you uh but they really
01:11:56
need the money so they ended up taking the loan from these guys so at this point everyone even the employees like
01:12:01
Mike who worked in customer relations are going out to lunch with their friends in Silicon Valley trying to get
01:12:07
acquired as a matter of fact um Cody Cody and I who I who I work with we just
01:12:12
got together and said you know what let's just see what we can do here just through our own networks it's just like oh you know well I met these guys and
01:12:19
they'll you know say oh we'll go and talk to them and they might be really interested in it yeah so around December
01:12:25
in 2019 boosted lightly started talking to Lime the scooter company and so they
01:12:30
were considering this deal where they would wind up with $30
01:12:37
million worth of stock in Lime in exchange for uh some employees and some
01:12:44
IP around the scooter it's not exactly clear if it was around the Rev or if it was the sort of more approachable
01:12:51
affordable scooter that they were also working on uh okay in just the scooter Tech not the scooter Tech and not
01:12:57
necessarily skateboard or bike or anything else because lime at the time was making scooters and lime scooters
01:13:03
are pretty weak you know their moves are weak they couldn't get up the hills that boosted was getting up so they're like
01:13:09
okay maybe we can like hire some of your engineers and also get some of your Tech
01:13:15
and then we'll give you $30 million in Lim stock uh but lime wanted to know what they were in for with a failing
01:13:21
company like boosted so they started coming into the boosted office and interviewing employees on
01:13:28
site to kind of like see if they really want to go through with this deal that
01:13:33
doesn't sound normal exactly uh that sounds kind of predatory TBH okay yeah
01:13:40
uh I think you're on to something uh so they're in interviewing employees on site like not all of the employees but just the ones they're interested in
01:13:47
which the other employees are like what is going on like imagine the F it
01:13:52
basically feels like the FBI is like swarming your head ERS and just interviewing people and you don't know what's happening it's cuz lime knows
01:13:58
they have all the leverage like boosted needs a deal and lime has everything that boosted needs and they can take
01:14:05
advantage of all that leverage yeah but at the same time if you have all the leverage if you're a company that has
01:14:11
all of the Leverage is that a good sign or a bad sign because if you have that much leverage what's going on in that
01:14:17
company well I'm like wants some extras from boosted like the tech from the scooters and things like that but as far
01:14:23
as like who needs who in this deal yeah boosted needs lime a lot more than lime needs boosted and remember lime wasn't
01:14:29
trying to like take they weren't trying to buy the company okay they were just trying to they were trying to buy Buy
01:14:35
employees which sounds weird I guess that's a confusing yeah part of this deal they get employees which sounds
01:14:41
very strange like you're selling people yeah it's very weird uh and then they also got tech for the the scooter yeah
01:14:48
so whatever um so lime's obviously interested but the company's already so short on money like people don't like
01:14:54
boosted so short of money they don't know if they're going to have a job after Christmas so they're they're starting to get really desperate so the
01:15:01
original investors in boosted that had given them money at the very beginning the Venture Capital firms uh
01:15:07
specifically this company called kasla Ventures while they had gotten a good amount of starting funding from Kos
01:15:13
Ventures which is sort of the biggest firm backing them there wasn't this really great relationship of sort of
01:15:18
building that it was sort of like here are the goals and hit them and so when they ran into trouble this wasn't
01:15:24
something where they could just turn back to uh sort of existing investors and you know get a little bit of help
01:15:31
which is why they want up turning to this debt firm at this point structural starts pretty much controlling boosted's
01:15:37
wallet like every payment that came out of boosted every decision was not really being made by the CEO it was being made
01:15:44
by this Venture Capital firm which sucks like this sounds terrible um they
01:15:50
couldn't make any deals or purchases or transactions without explicit approval pretty bad but then out of nowhere
01:15:56
Yamaha shows up MH and Yamaha is a
01:16:01
little bit interested in boosted like as a company no one really knows what that would look like like maybe they want to
01:16:08
start selling electric skateboards under the Yamaha brand because Yamaha sells a lot of stuff the more I think about it Yamaha sounds perfect because they
01:16:16
sell the most random assortment of things from motorcycles to keyboards
01:16:22
like like musical instruments yeah like it's just a very I still don't know
01:16:28
everythings speakers yeah it's kind of perfect because they sell motorized stuff and they sell electronic stuff and
01:16:35
boosted's like the weird merger of that um so they're a little bit interested in boosted no one really knows what that
01:16:42
looked like lime is also still kind of a startup so like if lime gave boosted 30 million in stock like boosted doesn't
01:16:49
actually know what that would do for them in the long term so Yamaha honest like obviously seem like the better option here but kasla who's one of the
01:16:56
biggest initial investors in boosted started to see potential once Yamaha got
01:17:01
interested so at this point they had already they totally closed off the pocketbooks but because Yamaha was now
01:17:07
interested they're like okay we want this deal to go through but you also have to like survive as a company and
01:17:13
stay open so we're going to give you a little bit more money because there is this potential Yamaha deal right so they
01:17:19
gave boosted a little more money just to stay float and this is where things start getting really interesting uh the
01:17:25
only reason we know about these details with like Yamaha and lime is because there's a lawsuit going on right now
01:17:32
between lime and Costa Ventures so the lawsuit which was first reported by the
01:17:38
information basically alleges this allegedly because boosted was sort of
01:17:44
looking into both deals like it had not signed anything concrete with either Yamaha or
01:17:50
with lime it was it was trying for both because at any minute one of them could just fall through right as the deal with
01:17:56
Yamaha started to fall apart and they walked away then some other people went to lime and it was very unclear on the
01:18:04
employee side of things like was this part of like a deal that was being struck or were people just sort of like
01:18:09
leaving cuz they were being poached and that's sort of at the core of that lawsuit you know lime says there was
01:18:17
nothing improper being done there was no uh you know the two sides lime and
01:18:22
boosted had not agreed to like not hire their each other's employees while they were working out this deal whereas Co
01:18:29
Ventures says you know lime knew it had a chance to like kill the amaha deal by like ripping out these like core people
01:18:37
and and then out of nowhere this guy who is a VP of engineering at boosted leaves
01:18:43
boosted and takes a job at lime before any sort of deal went through right so
01:18:49
that seems extremely sketchy and Not only was he a VP of engineering but he was also helping facilitate the
01:18:56
interviews between the boosted employees and lime so at this point it really seemed like lime is just like trying to
01:19:04
steal employees like and they had no interest in actually being part of this deal at all um and so he leaves and then
01:19:13
KLA starts getting really mad because no deal had been struck with either company
01:19:18
and then all of a sudden some more employees start leaving for line so now boosted's in this terrible position
01:19:24
where they didn't sign anything and lime had like taken their employees without striking a deal and Yamaha pulls out so
01:19:31
lime argues in the lawsuit that it was fair game to poach the employees because they never signed any pieces of legal
01:19:37
documentation which is ridiculous um so kasla is alleging that
01:19:42
lime never even wanted to go through with the deal they were just intentionally trying to get Yamaha the
01:19:49
Yamaha deal to fall through by hiring away the employees again this is just a
01:19:54
leged in the court case uh but basically at this point Boost's got no more money they're dead they own a ton of debt to
01:20:02
all these companies including that like Venture firm that is you don't want to
01:20:08
go to so you fast forward to March and boosted announces that they're dead on their blog all of us see that that's all
01:20:15
we know about all of this right we don't know about any of this crazy internal stuff that's happening they owe a ton of
01:20:20
money to structural Capital that company takes all of the company's IP as collateral for the loans so like
01:20:29
everything yeah so that company is a real shark that company probably signs
01:20:35
some of the worst contracts on planet Earth that's crazy it's like a last ditch wow kind of situation uh but now
01:20:42
boosted's kind of owned by a bunch of different investors right and all these companies have to get together and
01:20:48
decide how they're going to split up the assets of boosted those parties agreed to structural Capital being able to run
01:20:56
the Foreclosure sale and then like certain percentages were assigned to each of the parties as far as like what
01:21:03
was H you know what they got in return for the sale you know structural would get like 66% KLA would get whatever and
01:21:10
um you know the original investors and sort of uh boosted whoever was left over would get x% as well so they they set up
01:21:18
this sale but coal Ventures is trying to argue and the firm that like there was some trickery involved so this sale was
01:21:23
supposed to happen on March 17th do you guys have any guesses on what happened on March 16th Rudy goar
01:21:31
touches a bunch of microphones and test positive for covid and the NBA shuts down basically was it the NBA one I'm
01:21:38
guessing that's like right around New York City Lockdown San Francisco went into lockdown oh San Francisco the day before
01:21:45
the sale wow wow yeah that's so March 17th was supposed to be the sale where
01:21:51
they where they all met up and divvied up and sold off stuff so they could like fairly divide the company and get the
01:21:57
money and they had told uh structural Capital that they could run the sale and then the day before San Francisco goes
01:22:03
into lockdown okay yeah so now everyone's Lo everything's in lockdown
01:22:09
Kasa doesn't attend the sale in person because they're like can we even attend a sale in person like it's it's
01:22:15
lockedown like who goes to these things and then they tried to argue that uh
01:22:21
lime and structural didn't provide like conference call details for like the phone in part of the auction it only
01:22:28
lasted 20 minutes and they sold all the IP to Lime for really cheap much less
01:22:37
than the $30 million that lime was originally going to pay them wow like really really really cheap so okay let's
01:22:43
do a quick recap on what happened here the United States engages in a trade war
01:22:48
with China which made things shipping out of China have a really big tariff on them like 25 % huge and boosted had so
01:22:57
much inventory coming out of China they had already paid about $5 million to the government but they applied for an
01:23:03
exemption to those tariffs and they did get approved the problem here though is well the US government isn't exactly
01:23:10
quick to give people their money back so boosted is temporarily $5 million down
01:23:16
and in some pretty hot water at this point so in the original boosted board blog post announcing they were pretty
01:23:22
much shutting down they put a lot of blame on the China tariffs which is for sure a huge part of it but it's not the
01:23:29
whole story so the federal government ow boosted $5 million wow yeah and they
01:23:36
would have probably survived if the tariffs had not happened but now because all of these companies these vental
01:23:42
Capital companies owned boosted they also owned the refund from the
01:23:49
government so they've got this $5 million refund from the government that still hasn't come in yet but it's a
01:23:55
thing apparently it's a thing that you can own like you can own the refund as part
01:24:00
of the company basically a debt to the company a debt to the company so this is where things get really crazy
01:24:06
um basically wait this is where things get really crazy my God I know uh yeah
01:24:13
so they had sold the IP to Lime for super cheap and then structural Capital ended up selling that $5 million refund
01:24:21
for $400,000 but guess who they sold it to structural
01:24:28
Capital to themselves structural got the the tariffs on the cheap uh through this
01:24:34
new like LLC that they set up and so they tried to make it seem like it was somebody else buying it but it was
01:24:41
really them whoa so then that 400,000 I'm guessing is they're saying is part of everybody's no they they just like
01:24:47
siphoned it off from the from the rest of yeah but so they sold the assets to the company to start paying off the all
01:24:55
the different people that owned it right but then they so am I getting this right
01:25:00
yeah so they they s they sold it and that 400,000 would be distributed to all
01:25:06
of the investors in a in whatever way that they wanted and then they're taking their LLC which is structural Capital
01:25:13
ends up getting the 5 million so not only did they get the 5 million they get their portion of the 400,000 too these
01:25:18
are some some sharks man yeah wow yeah how do you in good conscience work at
01:25:25
sorry company like that that you're literally just swimming around looking for like almost dead fish and when you
01:25:32
find one you slowly kill it do you think most methodical way do you think sharks
01:25:38
give a damn about the noting that's why the I guess yeah that is true you just
01:25:44
kind of do it to survive and they make their money wow yeah um so I should remind everyone this is an ongoing
01:25:50
lawsuit actually two lawsuits uh there's one against lime from KLA and one
01:25:55
against structural from KLA uh but yeah if I could sum it all up yeah let's get
01:26:00
a let's get a tldd version of this chaos TLD DL to
01:26:06
long can I attempt one yeah go for it all right the rise and fall of boosted yeah so boosted has like a perfect Shark
01:26:13
Tank story in the beginning they're a crowdfunded project with a core of
01:26:19
skaters and a really obvious solution to a really clear clearly defined problem
01:26:24
they make a product they engineer it because they're Engineers from Stanford and they do pretty much everything they
01:26:31
could possibly do right minus the one debatable thing which is taking a ton of money from investors this is I have my
01:26:37
own feelings about taking money from investors but this is the this is the way they need to build the company they
01:26:42
build it they start it they have a core product of a longboard with an electric motor and a battery and they're killing
01:26:49
it and they get picked up by a handful of mildly important people like Casey IAT who blow up the company and the
01:26:57
product and it becomes a household name at least in this Niche now it gets to
01:27:04
this peak and they realize that they need to continue growing to please these investors and making more money and at
01:27:11
that same time a couple small dings like extra tariffs and small you know inter
01:27:17
you know people at the company interviewing with others start to creep up as they start to shift their focus to
01:27:23
maybe other products like a like a scooter uh a Founder leaves and slowly
01:27:30
yeah this is this is where things start to get wild which is the trajectory of the company is now Down Casey moved to
01:27:38
LA like you don't have I think that's number one and this is actually we we talked to him about this and he was like
01:27:44
I can't I don't use this here like it's not it's not the type of city that is made for this type of thing yeah so they
01:27:51
they have secured their stronghold on this niche and they do not have a way to continue
01:27:57
to sell products to that Niche because the products are so damn good that they need to start selling to other people
01:28:03
and this is where they start to lose the culture and the core and they start to Branch out into other things which is a
01:28:09
good business move to appease the investors but turned out to be the kiss of death as things started to spiral
01:28:17
financially and other companies we'll call them sharks vultures whatever you want started to see what was going on
01:28:23
and take take advantage of it in their own ways until the the final Kiss of Death came in the form of a venture
01:28:29
capital firm that basically said let's uh let's reinvest let's let's completely
01:28:36
end this company and take what we can from it and then that was the end of boosted so I think this is really
01:28:43
depressingly classic Silicon Valley story you've got a bunch of smart people at a good school they make a cool side
01:28:49
project and there's just so many investors in Silicon Valley that just want to pump and dump right they just
01:28:54
want like put money in grow it real quick and get it out and like they're
01:29:00
all looking for these unicorns that can make them a crapload of money in the shortest amount of time but like like
01:29:05
you said you said you have your own thoughts about investing and like taking money from investors that it seems like this was
01:29:13
their issue now uh if you look at a company like onewheel they're in Santa
01:29:18
Cruz they're nearby uh San Francisco they haven't really taken a lot of investor capital
01:29:24
and they're still going right they're way smaller obviously they never got to the scale of boosted because boosted had
01:29:30
all this you know growth trajectory from not only the niche not only the skater Community but also just all this money
01:29:37
and they were able to have a cool office in San Francisco and cool cool cool they can like get all this talent but all the
01:29:43
benefit that you get from that is equal or greater in negatives at the end of the day fully agree you know what it
01:29:49
reminds me of I've said this before but I feel like the
01:29:55
greatest thing that never happened to me was having a video go really viral on
01:30:00
YouTube because while it seems really desirable and you make a bunch of money
01:30:05
and you immediately are like kind of famous and your name is out there what that immediately does is it it puts you
01:30:11
on this hamster wheel of chasing that again and it's almost impossible to ever hit that again and then you create this
01:30:17
triangle graph of like you never really try to expand and organically do new things you're just chasing the same
01:30:23
thing you got that one time and it really reminds me of like starting a company with a really good idea if you
01:30:30
get a huge influx of capital investing which I guess happens a lot in certain parts of the country but when you get
01:30:36
that huge shoot up at the beginning it almost feels inevitable that you will
01:30:43
never maintain that trajectory you will either Flatline and die or get Acquired
01:30:50
and boosted hindsight 2020 probably should have been looking get acquired somewhere in the middle of the boosted
01:30:56
board exploding yeah and they didn't and they crashed just as hard as they Rose and yeah you know we can all look back
01:31:03
and say yeah we told you it would have happened we knew this was going to happen to you but we didn't know nobody really knew and it kind of fell apart in
01:31:09
an ugly way but that's the way I think about it is if you can do things organically and slowly I would take that
01:31:14
over quickly every single time hindsight yeah no I mean like the companies that do maintain that trajectory are called
01:31:21
unicorns for a reason right and like everyone's looking for the next unicorn but it never happens because they are so
01:31:27
rare and the amount of companies that the amount of startups that go out of business in Silicon Valley is so ridiculously high and they're all
01:31:34
software startups right that the their only problem is that they can't acquire enough customers boosters boosted's
01:31:40
problem was its margins were just not ever going to really be there and then the other thing was like again how do
01:31:46
you keep acquiring customers because you sell some someone something once and they're not going to buy anything from
01:31:51
you anymore no matter how devoted they are and unless their board breaks and they're out of warranty they're probably
01:31:57
not going to buy another board from you yeah and that's just it's it's sad it's
01:32:02
I think it hurts a little more to us specifically and probably people listening to this because of like you
01:32:07
said they built this insane Community who felt very close to them so when we see you know you hear about PE Silicon
01:32:13
Valley startups dying all the time we don't have that personal connection with it but boosted mostly through Casey and
01:32:20
just through their Community Building like in this Tech YouTube world world we built a relationship with them and it
01:32:26
felt it was something we all knew and something we all followed and you we kind of got to live that rise with them
01:32:32
and then watch them just fall out of the sky it's interesting to now know what actually happened because like you said
01:32:38
it's super easy to blame the pic allegedly happen um I mean we still know
01:32:43
more behind the scenes than like just assuming pandemic killed them but I think that was what everyone kind of
01:32:49
assumed and it was just so weird to have them you know know be the Tesla of you
01:32:56
know electric transportation and all of a sudden just like they're gone but that's the short version of the story
01:33:03
but Hey listen if you listen to this episode and you're thinking well crap I really want a boosted board now there is
01:33:09
this guy named Brian Schwarz in San Francisco who bought all of boosted's remaining stock he bought the boosted
01:33:15
website and he started a new company called boosted USA so you can find all of the remaining stock over on boosted
01:33:21
usa.com I did try to get in contact with him for the story but they didn't reply to my request for
01:33:27
comment so maybe they'll hear the story and reach out for a follow-up I'd love to chat with you please email me anyways
01:33:33
y'all thanks a million per to everyone that contributed to the story Steven Reinhardt and Mike McHugh are actually
01:33:38
now working for another electric skateboard company called dot boards based out of Australia and hopefully
01:33:44
they're bringing a lot of what they learned at boosted to that company thanks to sanj D store for talking to us
01:33:49
he's actually working on something new again so stay tuned for when he announces that thank the Shan oain who's
01:33:54
been following the boosted story since the beginning and for explaining all that confusing legal stuff to us that
01:34:00
was very helpful and he told me he's actually working on some more boosted board stories based on this lawsuit that
01:34:06
just came out so follow him over at The Verge to make sure you don't miss that that trial is actually set to take place
01:34:11
in October so it should be pretty spicy when it happens oh and also thanks to Casey neistat for talking to me
01:34:17
literally the day I messaged him to get a big chunk of the story done I really appreciate that anyways y'all well we're
01:34:24
working on a few more of these long form style stories so if you liked this one tweeted us at wvfrm on Twitter or at
01:34:31
myself at derl Adam Adam luucas 17 if you got any ideas for more stories like
01:34:37
this that you'd like to hear today's episode was written in research by David AML and Adam Molina it was produced by
01:34:43
Adam Molina we are partnered with Studio 71 and our intro outro music was created by Cameron Barlo
