San Francisco Bike Blog

‘An idea at least as exciting as it is astonishing’ — that is what I would call Portlander Joe Doebele’s decision to create a bicycle business incubator:

Joe Doebele’s big idea is to help other Portlanders with theirs.

The 44-year-old Doebele, who grew up in Chicago and moved to Portland in 2000, has rented a building near the corner of SE 20th and Belmont and is setting up Portland’s first-ever bicycle industry incubator — Stumpworks.

As he led me around the building, Doebele shared his plans to convert the run-down property into a haven for bicycle businesses; “I envision this as being a very active space…with of retail, assembly, light manufacturing, and offices.”

With the recent passage of the bike commuter benefit law, it is conceivable that we could see even more rapid growth in the bike industry. This got me thinking, again, that those of us who are intrigued by the bicycle industry and the livable streets movement should really consider ‘just doing it’ - attempt to start our bike-related businesses. Borrowing a phrase from a very famous speech, I have said before that ‘Now is the time’ (a phrase often used by a guy that many San Franciscans are fond of) - to put into action our inspired thoughts. The ‘fierce urgency of Now’ is upon us - let’s work together and change society for the better.

Over the past few months I’ve had lots of conversations with folks - in person, over email - about our desires to ’start a bike business’. Many of us want to do honest work for honest pay, and we want to make a difference for a cause we care deeply about. At some point, we’re going to have to make that leap into action.

If you need some inspiration, check out this cool video on the Flying Pigeon bicycle that BikePorland.org pointed us to:

Many of us are familiar with the idea of the business incubator, but often that term is restricted to connote ‘high tech’. Despite the elegance of the bicycle, most of us would probably not consider it to be high tech. Yet, the growing business of bicycles in the U.S. is helping us to change how we think about them. Portland’s bike economy is currently worth $90 million, and employs over 1,000 people. And technology does not have to be ‘high technology’ - it can be using using existing tools in new and different ways.

Since cars came to dominate in the United States, we considered bicycles to be only for sport and recreation. Then some suggested they could be used for transport. Then the idea of ‘work bikes‘ started to infiltrate the mainstream. At this point, it seems only our collective imagination can stop us from further exploiting the vast potential of the bicycle. We have people using bicycles now to generate power, clean water, sharpen knives, you name it. You can consider them novelties, or you can consider them job-producing inventions that can save lives.

The Bay Area has a healthy bike industry. We’ve got services, manufacturing, retail - you name it. How much further can we go; how much further can we grow? How much of our automobile industry can we replace with our bike industry? How many car dealerships can we replace with bike rental shops? The sheer monetary numbers will be hard to match, but people will need jobs - can we help to provide them?

Many in Silicon Valley are excited about ‘cleantech‘ - one aspect of which is electric vehicles. There is lots of money to made, and investors suggest they like the idea of helping to make the world a better place. Tens of millions of dollars are being poured into new automobile ventures by the venture capitalists of Sand Hill Road and elsewhere. One of our most famous venture capitalists says he is ’scared’ about ‘global warming,’ suggesting “we’re not gonna make it.” While I applaud all the efforts to make energy generation more efficient and sustainable, the funding of electric cars seems bizarre to me. It is part of why us bicycle advocates need to not rely too heavily on the purely environmental reasons to oppose automobile production. We need to get the message to these folks that we do not object to automobiles only because they choke us with smog, but for the myriad reasons they appear to be anti-human - injuring and killing not just the people who drive them, but the people they drive into - pedestrians and cyclists. With our advocacy efforts, knowledge of the various and vast social ills caused by automobiles continues to seep into the mainstream - let’s continue that.

But if investors can’t make money off of electric cars, where can they make money? How about the bicycle industry? How about high-tech bike-sharing programs that are so desperate for funding that they have to rely on massive advertising companies (e.g. Clear Channel) to fund them? As Robin Chase of ZipCar has pointed out, car-sharing could only have taken off because of the use of advanced technology.

The funder behind StreetsBlog and StreetFilms is high-tech entrepreneur Mark Gorton. Can we convince others to follow his lead?

New York City-based tech investor Fred Wilson seems fond of bicycles, recently riding Velib bikes all over Paris. Can he be convinced to invest in New York City’s burgeoning bicycle scene?

Not to suggest that outside investment is strictly necessary for creating new bicycle-based businesses - far from it. But I won’t pretend that large capital infusions can’t be a boon for kick-starting businesses.

If you’ve had an idea for a bike-related business that you’ve been sitting on, maybe now is the time to have a go. Float it to your friends and family, to the Ideas forum, to the sfbike email list.

Where are the pressure points in a city like San Francisco, where bicycle ridership is growing - and probably set to explode in popularity - despite a hostile bicycling environment? Those are some opportunities. What about a crack team of ‘Bicycle Program Consultants’ who take on the job of moving companies into the 21st Century by providing concrete assistance with setting up a bike-sharing program? What about convincing ZipCar and CityCarShare that they need to start their own bike-sharing program, with secure bike parking lockers installed at the same locations as their cars? What about setting up a bicycle rental program in an underserved part of town, as someone just suggested to me? Can we pool our resources to start a bike business incubator of our own?

Crisis can create opportunity.

What’s your idea?

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