In this episode, we dive into the inspiring journey of Seb Inglis-Jones, co-founder of Maeving, as he shares how he built Britain’s first electric motorcycle company from the ground up.
Seb reveals the challenges of entrepreneurship, from navigating the ups and downs of a nascent market to overcoming funding struggles during the COVID pandemic.
He highlights the power of partnerships and the importance of surrounding yourself with the right people.
Discover how Maeving’s commitment to quality and their innovative approach to urban mobility, like their removable battery technology, have helped them grow.
Seb also shares his vision for the future, including plans for expansion and their direct-to-consumer model that has built strong customer loyalty.
If you’re an aspiring entrepreneur or just curious about the future of electric transport, this episode is packed with valuable insights and actionable advice.
Tune in to hear Seb’s story and gain practical tips for growing a business in today’s world!
Resources Mentioned In This Episode:
>> Seb Inglis-Jones [LinkedIn]
Next Steps On Your Wealth Building Journey:
>> Join the WealthBuilders Facebook Community
>> Schedule a 1:1 call with one of our team
>> Become a member of WealthBuilders
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Christian Rodwell (00:01.816)
The purpose of Wealth Talk is to educate, inform and hopefully entertain you on the subject of building your wealth. Wealth Builders recommends you should always take independent financial, tax or legal advice before making any decisions around your finances. Today's episode is brought to you by Wealth Builders Membership, a proven step-by-step process that helps you achieve financial security within two to three years. find out more, head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash membership.
Welcome to this week's episode of Wealth Talk. My name is Christian Rodwell, the membership director for Wealth Builders, joined today by our founder, Mr. Kevin Whelan. Hi, Kevin. Hello, Chris. Good to be with you again. How was your little jaunt to Ibiza? It was wonderful. Thank you. Yes, I was best man at my friend's wedding and it's a magical place. I've been to Ibiza many times before and never fails to disappoint. So, yeah, it was great. Thank you. How did the speech go?
Yeah, went really good. Very well received. Got some laughs, got some tears. So I think it did the job. that's that's the best combination, isn't it? Really? Bit of humor, bit of pathos. Good on you. It was good. And you were out and about, you yesterday? A couple of weeks ago, of course, we interviewed Nick James, the CEO of Expert Empires. And this weekend is his big event in London. Yes, that was it was I went for a day just to really experience what the event was all about. They sent me a
ticket, was kind of them. it was a packed audience in London, maybe 400 people, maybe more. I didn't count them, there were so many, but packed full of good information, some really powerful other speakers, actually some overlapping with well-building, like buying a business. And it was just a really interesting event to see so many people desperately trying to do better.
And I think that, and it does it well. So I was pleased with the invitation and I would encourage people to go check out Expert Empires. Absolutely. And whilst we're talking about events, we've got our own events coming up. So I'll quickly mention those. 10th of October, I'll be back in London hosting the Cashflow 101 event, the game created by Robert Kiyosaki. So come along.
Christian Rodwell (02:21.4)
grab a ticket and in Bournemouth, my local town now, on the 24th, I will also be hosting a cash-flow event and you can come along, play the game or you can just come along and say hello, network, meet some like-minded people. So both of those events are on the Wealthbuilders website, wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash events. And whilst you're there, why not register for our next webinar, which will be on the 22nd of October. And that one's all about.
how to create a clear path towards financial security. And we'll be showing our members and anyone wanting to find out more about wealth building membership, exactly what our process is to help people to generate multiple streams of recurring income from assets. And I mean, the way I look at it, the fundamental ethos of creating recurring income from assets, which is such at odds with the traditional teaching in schools and universities.
which is get the education, get the job and then save your way to retirement, which is a long old journey, 30 years probably. We can teach people how to do that in three to five. So wouldn't you rather be set for life after three to five years than 35 years? If you're interested in that, come along, see what it's all about. Absolutely. Okay, so let's move on to our main event today, which is our...
conversation with Seb Inglis-Jones and Seb is the co-founder of a company called Maving and they're Britain's first electric motorbike company. So innovators, Kevin, and today's story is really a good one. We wanted to feature this because it's one about resilience, because we know business can give you so much and in terms of asset, it can build wonderful recurring income. It can give you that freedom eventually, but as we'll hear from Seb today, those early years as a startup can be challenging.
Well, we've seen this before. I remember we interviewed Louise Hale, didn't we, from Go Henry, and she was saying, you know, she worked so many hours and had heard so many, did so many pitches to raise funding and that resilience was her number one lesson and that, you know, that in the end, the business will create substantial wealth for her. But the effort you have to put in...
Christian Rodwell (04:40.054)
if you're trying to make the business the primary source of your wealth building is monumental. And so it is, you know, today. So we don't always advocate you put all your eggs in your business basket to build your wealth alongside your business. So create recurring income inside your business and recurring income outside of your business to sort of build the stepping stone in case the business doesn't sell because only a handful of businesses
Statistically, 0.1 % of businesses sell for life-changing money, and I mean a million plus. And that's probably not life-changing anymore, a million quid, it? Especially not with taxes, and we'll be signposting a bit more in future podcasts about the budget, because I think it's the most feared budget I've seen in my 30-odd years of being around finance, I'm just seeing people nervous as anything about the impending changes.
that will touch all aspects of life from personal tax, business tax, investments, pensions, inheritance in particular. So lots of people who work very, very hard to build their assets are fearful about what will be taken from them or at least taken from the next generation. So we'll be doing some notifications, some events probably online and offline. So keep an eye on what we're doing and we'll share that information with you.
Okay, so lots of good nuggets to be taken from our conversation with Seb today. So let's head on over to today's conversation with Seb English Jones.
Hey, I'm pleased to welcome Seb Inglis-Jones, the co-founder of Maving, Britain's first electric motorbike company. Seb, it's great to have you on the Wealth Talk podcast. How are you today? I'm very good, thank you. Pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me on. Whereabouts in the world are you today? I am speaking from my London flat where I live with my wife. just in the process of moving, as I mentioned, and this is where I live when I'm not in Coventry at the factory, at the flat that I share with my co-founder.
Christian Rodwell (06:51.096)
which is quite intense. But we're going to hear all about the story today. And it was actually one of my colleagues, our senior consultant, Gary Whelan, who sent me your interview, which he did on the BBC, The You and Yours. it was a very inspiring story, Seb. you didn't really know, you had this idea, you didn't know how you're going to achieve it, but you have, right? And so many people have ideas, but many never do anything about it. What makes you different, Seb?
gosh, that's a good question. Look, I think that there are certain traits that every entrepreneur has that are key to get, you know, starting a business. So high risk tolerance, a bit of a bit of stupidity when it comes to assessing, you know, your life and I guess stepping away from serious jobs. I think we didn't, as I said on that interview, we didn't set out to start an automotive business. My co-founder and I met at university.
And we both wanted to start a business. We decided to start a business together because we became close mates. But at that stage, all we knew was it was going to be in some way contributing to the fight against climate change. And it was only later on as we sort of, you know, ideated and eventually got into the world of electric motorbikes that through the process of just putting one step in front of the other, we ended up with a British automotive company making bikes and exporting them around the world. I think if I'd have told my sort 16 year old self, that's what I'd be doing. I'd be, I'd be worried.
and shocks. Yeah. So for any listeners who might not know about Maving, can you tell us a little bit more about the company and the vision that you had at the beginning there? Sure. So we are Britain's first electric motorcycle manufacturer. We've got a team of 46, it is at the moment. We've got a factory in Coventry, which is really the kind of the beating heart of the British automotive industry. It's where all the original players were making bikes right from the end of the 19th century.
We make electric motorbikes that are geared towards primarily urban riding and the key things that they have removable batteries, batteries that you take out of the vehicle, charge it a standard socket so that you overcome that huge barrier to electric adoption, which is essentially poor charging infrastructure and the range anxiety it induces. And I guess the final thing I'll say is that all our bikes are really, they really sort of lean into the British heritage and motorcycle designs. So they're quite kind of classic or retro.
Christian Rodwell (09:17.006)
And I'd like to think that they would make you think of the kind of greatest eras of British motorcycle design. And is this a passion of yours from a young age, motorbikes? Yeah, definitely. Actually, more, you know, cars was the first one and then bikes came a little bit later. But yeah, I've always, you know, I've grown up with posters of cars and bikes all over the place. But, know, fanatic watcher of Top Gear and Chris Harris before he joined later Top Gear. yeah, but actually bikes.
As I said, was more cars. I loved driving, but bikes was slightly more of practical consideration. It was the realization later in my life that if you were to switch crappy public transport, I had a job that I got in Slough and I had to commute on a bicycle to Paddington, train from Paddington to Slough, company shuttle bus. took about an hour and a half. I worked out that if I swapped that for a motorbike, I'd save 26 days a year in commuting time. Then I guess when I got on the bike,
You just you can't go back. It's so much fun. It's such a way of getting around town. So I think I developed that bug a little bit later, even though I had posters up of the bikes on my walls. They say obviously entrepreneurs are, know, always identifying problems, right, and trying to come up with a solution. So would you say almost that was, you know, the first steps in saying, well, hang on here, I'm working out how I can make saving and then the perfect storm of obviously the move towards electric.
And you thought, hang on, you know, we could actually do something with this. Yes, I think sort of getting on a bike and realizing how much fun it was and affordable and manageable versus a car was definitely the catalyst to having bikes on the mind as it were. The key thing that we, know, sort of the gap, the problem we were solving was just that there was no such thing as an electric motorcycle or scooter, certainly in the West, absolutely was in Asia.
when we started the business and we were sort of captivated by why that was the case. At that stage, there was a lot of discussion around EVs. had countries like Norway that had just got 50 % electric in car sales for new vehicles registered that year, and yet no one was saying anything about bikes. So that was what sort of got us interested. Why was that the case? And then what we discovered was that China had completely leapfrogged the rest of the world in
Christian Rodwell (11:39.118)
in birthing an industry of sort of low capacity removal battery two wheelers. I mean, to the extent they were selling over 20 million a year. It's crazy. When we started the business, there was just 297 electric motorbikes and scooters sold in the UK in total. So yeah, quite a disparity. And we thought, you know, why is that the case? And what can we do to address that over here, you know, with a kind of more of a UK European mindset? Yeah. And what year are we talking about there,
So it's interesting, it's 2018 that we incorporated the company, but was only just over four years ago that we brought on the first members of the team. So there was a sort of preamble to the business as it looks like today, where we considered importing a Chinese bike, we considered all sorts of things that didn't ultimately work out before going, right, we'll do this ourselves. We'll raise money, we'll build a team and we'll develop our own products.
And as I said, mean, you someone asked your initial question, it took us sort of a year and a half to get to the point where we could, where we had the confidence and the kind of determination, I guess, to respond in that way versus like an import business, for example. So I guess it's in that year and a half that almost that wilderness phase, right, where many people, never actually make it right, they die with weeds. you know, you're not paying yourself for the business.
You're waking up every day and probably barely getting any sleep during those years as well. mean, what kept you going? To some extent, yes, to all of the first bits. Actually, on the sleep front, that was when we were getting sleep. That was the golden era of sleep because we had a bunch of gig jobs that we were doing to pay the bills. We got it down to a fine art. So we were only doing about one day a week of earning work. mean, we were paying ourselves like 18 grand.
a year. but, but, and then we devoted, you know, four to five days a week to sort of start in business. But back then, when you don't have the pressures of investment, you don't have, you know, mouths to feed in the form of a team, you know, you're, you're, kind of on your own time. And so that was actually a less pro. mean, of course you've got the, burden of having quit your job and told all your mates that you're going to do this. So there's definitely an expectation. But, but, but that was a lot less stressful than, than, you know, the scenario where you're kind of.
Christian Rodwell (14:02.23)
exporting bikes around the world and there's, you know, financial pressures and all that. And were there moments throughout that phase when you looked at each other and said, you know, can we actually continue? Is this actually a viable idea here? Many times, many times. Absolutely. Yeah, we, I mean, we spent eight months putting together a plan for an import business that didn't work out. We went out to China, spent a month there, looking at the supply chain, looking at products.
basically coming to terms with the fact that the first iteration of the business wouldn't work. Spent all of our money, came back, tails between legs, broke, decided that we needed to earn some cash, did a bit of film production. That was incredibly stressful. It was not relaxing. Took a bit of a break from each other as co-founders, a bit of a breather, and then came back together and went, actually, the market opportunity here is too exciting to miss.
And so let's do this and let's start from scratch. Let's build a prototype. Let's concept our own design and eventually fundraising and so on. So yes, there were the graveyard of almost leaving it. So can we just fast forward to today and give some context then. obviously where you were back then, where things are today, and then we'll go back and we'll fill some of those gaps. There's lots and lots of questions I want to ask you about those steps.
Yes, so we're now the best selling player in the UK with a good market share. We just won the industry award from MCN for the best urban electric, know, beating the likes of Kawasaki and BMW. I think it's fair to say that our bikes are some of, if not the best reviewed bikes around the world. Just moved into a factory at the end of last year where we can produce up to about 11,500 units. So we're really kind of ramping up. I mean, in some ways that might sound like quite a small.
number of units, but it's quite a nascent market at this stage. Although in low power, the government has mandated that we switch fully to electric by 2023. So there will be a big seismic shift. Yeah, as I said, team of 46. And we've just expanded very recently into the US and France and Germany and have ambitions to expand beyond that next year.
Christian Rodwell (16:20.11)
and grown about 300 % in terms of revenue versus last year. So it's a good, know, we're in the growth stage now. And I think thanks to our incredibly experienced team, and we can come onto that, because that's really what's behind the business success. Yeah, I think we're well positioned to sort of, you know, lead the charge in other markets. was it 2033, the switch to electric? that the date?
2030 for 125cc and below, it's kind of a particular category within the motorcycle. Yeah. And who is your avatar, your market? So just talk us through the spec of the bikes. And obviously the key thing here, you said, is the removable battery. how does that actually affect people day to day in terms of cost and recharging? Yeah, sure. we have run through our bikes, we've got kind of...
Entry bike, which is geared entirely towards urban riding, top speed of 45 miles per hour, range of 80 miles. And yeah, you're great when you're in a city, but obviously not, doesn't make as much sense if you're in a kind of suburban or rural environment. Then we've got, and that price starts at around 5k. And then we have our latest bike, which has sort of twice the power, top speed of 70 miles per hour, 80 miles still of range. It's called the RM1S, sorry, first bike is called the RM1.
That was called the R1S. And they both come with lots of storage, both come with the ability to charge your batteries off the bike. So just to sort put that in context, the way that people tend to use them is that they'll be riding around sort of city all week. It'll give you about a week's worth of the average commute. And then on a Friday, you'll kind of take your batteries out and you'll charge them overnight in your flat or you'll charge them at the office or in a cafe. But most people just sort of charge them overnight at home.
And so you don't have that range anxiety thing where you're kind of worried about where you're going to find a charging station and trying to sort of plot that into your day. Because you can charge any 13 amp socket is a charging opportunity. So just as no one panics about the fact that an iPhone only gives you about two thirds of a day worth of charge versus, for example, a Nokia 3210, good old, you know, five days worth of charge. The thing that's changed is our charging habits.
Christian Rodwell (18:40.962)
And in a similar way, if you're able to turn every socket into a charging opportunity, you just reduce that wrench anxiety considerably. you know, storage is something that you mentioned where you've got the petrol tank, right? You now got lockable storage there. Absolutely. Yeah, it's one of the key things that sort of differentiates scooters and makes them so popular for commuters is that you've got that lockable storage under the seat and where we've got 10 litres of lockable storage in the tank. So you can put, you know, change of clothes.
Your charger your your chain your cover, know, what all of the sort of accoutrement of riding Which is just yeah, it just makes it really practical Yeah, and when when did you first launch the the bike first bike to the market? That was April 2022 was the RM1 and then we launched the RMS in September last year for delivery this year and in those two years or so based on
user feedback. Have there been any major changes, iterations that perhaps you didn't think of initially? Well, mean, suppose from the... Yes, we had a lot of people who... We're lucky that we have a really positive and engaged customer base. We've got the riders forums and we get some really nice comments, but we also had people who wrote in and said that we love what you're doing with the design and the ethos, I guess, on the first bike.
but please get back in touch with us when you make a bike that can achieve highway speeds. Because I live just outside of city center or I live in a rural area and I want to use the bike for going to the village shop. There are other use cases beyond the central city use case that we developed the first bike for. That's what fed into the RM1S. That's a completely different bike in terms of the...
the power and the feel that it gives you. Also with that bike, you've got the option of charging it on board as well. So you can plug the bike in directly. So if you have a garage or you have a sort of obvious opportunity to plug it in, it just gives you that optionality to make it easier for the consumer. Okay. Let's go back then to those early days. Funding is one of the big areas where many new businesses fail. How did you fund the initial early? Did you work with investors at all?
Christian Rodwell (20:51.436)
Yeah, so we did a tiny, and by tiny I mean like 25K, family and friends round just to give us the money to build the initial prototype. So we worked with a great industrial design company called Bank Creations, very small company, Hazelmere, to basically go from the concept sketches that I've done in a very basic form of the powertrain that my co-founder had specced, and a briefing document to a what they call a works like looks like prototype. So that's something that...
a kind of first stage concept bike. If you were to actually kind of pop the hood and look into it, you'd find a mess of wires, but from the outside, ostensibly it looks like the finished product. Or we thought it did. When I look at it now, I think it's a couple of steps behind where I felt it was at the time. You could ride it and you could get an impression for what we were trying to create. We then took that on a kind of road show to VCs and angel investors.
to pull together our first round, our first proper round. And we started that a month before COVID. We got about, we got about probably about a million pounds on the table. And then all of that was taken away when, you know, in March, when everyone kind of woke up to the reality of COVID and investors were just like, look, we're on pause until everyone works out how serious this is and what the implications are. And so I guess,
for the sort of second or 50th time in a row, we felt like everything had come to an end despite having built this great prototype. But the good thing about, well, I guess one of the things that happened in COVID is that people realized that there were some businesses that were gonna do incredibly well. And one of the sectors was personal mobility. E-Bikes sales went through the roof because no one wanted to be on a crowded tube. And so...
investors sort of came back to the table and we were able to get a deal done later that year. Which is obviously when, you know, when we had the capacity to make our first hires and when everything changed, ultimately. really is the entrepreneur roller coaster, isn't it? I mean, can you, if just thinking back to that moment when COVID struck, when that investment money disappeared, I mean, it probably gives you a funny feeling in your stomach now thinking. Well, luckily, I mean, well, not luckily, not luckily, I so many, you know, subsequent
Christian Rodwell (23:11.054)
painful things have happened that that one's wiped out. I mean, if you can imagine it, I would bicker with my co-founder about whether we had the cash to hire a van to drive a prototype to an investor and whether or not we should print out our investment deck. So when Kiva came, completely, I had certainly had no income. My co-founder had to go back to South Africa where he's from to go and be with his parents. It very much felt like it was all over. So the moment where you get
your first investment and you suddenly realize that you can properly fund this dream that you've had for a long time is magical. Let's talk about joint ventures then. That's one of our seven pillars, our model at Wealthbuilders, Seb, working with others so that you're pooling your resources, your knowledge, your funds, many, many things. The process of working together with Will, a co-founder, talks through that. Do you feel that
You know, you could have done this by yourself and you know, how have you both kind of fallen into different roles and taken different responsibilities along the way? Yeah, yeah, no, so absolutely not. I could not have done it on my own. think Will and I both feel that we each are half of a CEO and between us we make one reasonable CEO. I mean, I'll let other people be the judge of that, but no, we couldn't. So I think that there's a couple of elements to that. One is just the sort of resilience that you need to
to keep going when things are tough. And if you have someone that you can kind of bounce ideas off and who can pick you up when you're feeling low, it's really, really helpful. I wouldn't start a business on my own. I would instantly look for co-founders. I think the thing that's really, you know, a of people make the mistake and this is crazy because I'm talking about, I work with one of my close friends, but that's not a good premise for choosing a business partner. Ideally, you'd have someone that you've worked with before and you know that you can work with well. You've got a track record of
of working together so that you know each other's skill set and strengths and weaknesses. But it just so happened that we managed to survive despite that because we trust each other implicitly. has a background in finance. He worked at KPMG, then Greenhill Investment Bank. He worked as an accountant and then he went into &A. And I went in various sales and marketing roles across two tech startups and then in the world of fast moving consumer goods at bigger companies like record bank, etc.
Christian Rodwell (25:38.316)
We have this natural division of responsibility, me more on the kind of product vision and the sales and marketing side, him more on the finance and the kind of maybe the detailed operations. But we make all of our decisions together. The thing that unites us is an ability to sort of debate and arrive at a positive conclusion, know, irrespective of our biases and our thoughts going into the discussion.
And have you managed to maintain the business just between the two of you now in terms of ownership? Have there been, you know, discussions about sharing equity along the way? Well, we have a big cap table that's a great investor base. we also, all of our team at Equity and Centrifiers as well. So everyone is a business owner. And that contributes to the kind of the, you know, everyone pulling in the right direction for kind of mutual success. So I suppose the business is already, you know, shared.
amongst a good set of people. It's also a very capital intensive business, know, starting an automotive company. So it's unlikely that you would get very far without, without, you know, divvying up your equity. yeah, you give that, you know, some good advice there, I think for anyone listening. And I actually say the same thing, you know, I do believe working with others makes makes it lot easier and more enjoyable as well. Right. It's a pretty tough game running a business by yourself.
Let's talk about expanding into new territories then. You mentioned now launched in California and some European territories as well. So, you know, did you do any joint ventures with distribution companies like, you know, working with other people who understood those territories? How did that come about? As a small business, we need to partner with bigger business to develop bigger businesses, to develop the technology that we use in our bikes. So I guess I think of our suppliers as partners.
with this project because as a small business, need to partner with larger businesses to develop the technology. So for example, like Bosch, I think of as a partner, we went to them to develop the powertrain for our first bike. And that's crucial to achieving the kind of quality that we wanted. So yeah, as I said, there's a kind of partnership element to all of our supplier relations. We rely on them for their expertise as to how to manufacture.
Christian Rodwell (27:59.404)
individual components and they rely on us to ultimately be able to combine those components into a product that people will love. So that's the way in which I guess we've done joint ventures so far, but really further down the line, I think we built a product that makes sense in the UK and European market. But if we ever want to successfully enter the big Asian markets like China and India, so China's biggest market at the moment, is the biggest, China's biggest EV.
two-wheeler market. India is the fastest growing and is the biggest motorcycle market, but both of them have a much lower price ceiling. The average product over there, are paying $400, $1,000, not £7,000. So a joint venture with an Indian OEM, for example, to make a lower cost product, maving product, would be absolutely essential to be able to truly penetrate those markets.
So those are the two ways I think about JBs, but because we're a direct-to-consumer business, the international expansion piece, we've mainly been managing that ourselves. So we have general managers on the ground and we deliver and service bikes ourselves in the core markets in which we're operational. Focusing then on the financial growth, you were obviously developing, were you looking to achieve a certain margin with the product?
I think there's a sort of quite like an American growth model where you could use sort of people expect to be unprofitable for a much longer period of time. I think for us, it was really crucial that we had a good gross margin and the business we could see, you know, what our hurdle rate would be to profitability in the relatively near future. And I think the profitability of our bikes and particularly through our direct consumer model is one of the things that we're most proud of.
Yeah, talk to us a bit more about that then. obviously on the website, I see the banner at the top and from 92 pounds a month, you can own a wonderful moving motorbike. how did you come about with that model? Well, think, I think it's no it's not a surprise that the legacy model is one of dealers and distributors because in a kind of pre internet era, that provides suitable advertising and logistics. But you know, the reality is now that there's so many tools at your disposal to be able to offer
Christian Rodwell (30:21.504)
in our case, roadside delivery and servicing and to be able to communicate effectively with customers that it wouldn't make sense not to go down that route because the direct route gives you direct relationships with your customers and then they become much more brand loyal and you'll hopefully see them returning to repeat purchase further down the line. I certainly know as a consumer, if I order anything from a sofa to a...
to a car these days, would ideally like it to be delivered to my house and I wouldn't like to have to go to the outskirts of a city to find, you to a particular space to get it fixed. I would love it if someone could just come and do that at my house or my place at work, you at my discretion. So I think, and actually the inspiration for that for me was I think it was Simba, one of the companies that started delivering mattresses for the first time direct to consumer and I thought everyone would have thought to themselves, hang on a minute, surely you've got to go to a shop and lie on a...
a bed and a mattress to decide that you want it. But if someone offers you a service where they'll deliver it to your door, you can lie on it. And if you don't like it, you can send it home that day. It's amazing. And so we're lucky that we live in a in a kind tech enabled space where you can perform that kind of service. Let's look at, again, some of the challenges that you've had to take along the way. So some of the calculated risks.
Is there any in particular that come to mind? We've talked obviously some difficult times during COVID, as well with Ukraine and Russia, I believe, when we were talking, you said that was another pivotal moment. How have you overcome some of those? Well, mean, look, the first thing I say is that every decision that you make as a young business is a calculated risk, especially before you're profitable and can sort of fund your own mistakes.
So I think of the entrepreneurial journey as sort of littered with calculated risk. I mean, I think a big thing for us was having stepped away from the first year of thinking about importing Chinese bike. And one of the things that we found when we went out there was that the quality, because all those products are built to a much lower price ceiling, the quality was less good. Chinese manufacturers are incredible.
Christian Rodwell (32:41.966)
making high quality products. not so much that, it's just that the domestic market tends to require more affordable products that are less high quality. And we stepped away from that realizing it was really important for us to, by contrast, focus on quality and make that one of the of cornerstones of the business. And so the kind calculated risk that we took was to only hire very experienced engineers to not do the kind of classic startup thing of
hiring young, hungry, affordable, aspirational individuals, but instead people who have been there done that for decades and decades. And obviously by doing that, you're bringing on a very, know, quite a high cost base. Our first hire was the former head of product at Triumph. For a long time, the least experienced person on our team had 17 years of engineering experience. And so, yeah, so the risk that we took was bringing on relatively high
cost-based relatively soon. And then also, there are various ways in which you can kind of bootstrap an automotive product. You can use this facility called the MSBA, the single vehicle approval authority to basically approve each individual vehicle to make it road legal. Whereas we went down a very costly and extensive process called the homologation process where
You basically send vehicles off to a sort of center and you pay a lot of money for them to be bashed to pieces and undergo lots and lots of testing to assess that they are road legal. And then you get a kind of homologation quality stamp and all major European players, every car that you see on the road would have gone through that process. All those videos that you've seen of crash tests and all that kind of stuff. we invested in that because we wanted our product to be at a high enough quality that we could export it without any
concern or risk to the consumer. both, yeah, the experience hires and the monogatary, that was a very, that's a big step to take as a young company that's yet to prove the concept with, you know, sales volumes. But I think it's paid off because, whereas a lot of EV startups have failed because they've had product issues, they've had recalls, we haven't. And we have an incredibly low product fault rate as a result. And we've been commended on our product quality. So I think that that was a
Christian Rodwell (35:07.338)
a pretty, pretty big risk it could have been, but it's definitely paid off. terms of building the brand then, how important has building social media presence, building, you know, brand loyalty been to the growth and the success, would you say? And, you know, how much do you focus on on kind of the online presence? Well, I mean, it's been, it's been crucial. I mean, it's, I think there's a lot of strands to it. mean, particularly important in our
sector, maybe across all product sectors, is product reviews, is the PR space. It's really important that when you go on Google and you type in Maving or electric motorbike and you search for us that there are a plethora of good reviews from third party adjudicators who basically go, yes, this is a legit business, this is a good company, this is a good product, you'll love it. So that was a really important piece. no, online presence is crucial for us because as a direct business, we don't rely on
distributors in stores for our presence. Most people will find us through a Google search or through a meta campaign and then enter our universe and speak to one of our sales team or learn about us and make their decision over a contracted period of time. But absolutely crucial. I'd say that we're a very brand centric business and we're really, as I said, leaning into the British heritage. And so that's been very important.
It wasn't that long ago that if you ask the average person on the street, have you heard of these guys? They'd say no. now I feel like we're sort of cutting through a little bit more and people have heard of us, which is really nice. I love the story that I heard on your BBC interview where you said that you and Will were in the car together and someone pulled up alongside on one of the bikes. Yeah, that was one of the big, I'd always said that that was one of the things that I was most excited just in terms of things that you're proud of when you start a business.
people can talk about opening their first store, their first sale, know, first bit of investment. But one of the things for me was the idea that you would be at the traffic lights, you know, maybe on one of our bikes or not, and someone completely random who you've never met, you've had no interaction with. Because your first few customers, you you know them all by name. But when it got to the stage that it was a completely random person, they didn't know who I was, you know, pulling up next to me at the lights on one of our bikes, that was a very proud moment.
Christian Rodwell (37:33.134)
Yeah, we I think we said that the minute that happened, we had to go and buy a bottle of champagne and drink it there and then, which I'm not sure quite happened because I think it was an awkward moment. But we did we did subsequently have a bottle between us. I can imagine, you know, you talk there about the first few customers, you literally know them by name, you know, you're seeing those orders drop in and it's, you know, very special in those early days. But as a business grows, you need to
grow as an individual and learn to start letting go of things. And as you say, bringing in the team, expanding the team, becoming more that the CEO of the company, something that of course, you know, you're not taught at school. And you know, how do you find that you find sometimes you just want to get in the weeds and get stuck in and, and you got to stop yourself from doing that a little bit or do you still very hands on? that's a good question. It's a balance. I think you have to get good at saying no and understanding what you need to
we need to hand over to your team. I there's a reason why you hire experienced people. also, Will and I are the least experienced people in the company. So it's not suitable for us to be being two hands on with certain things. You've got to trust the people that you hire. But equally, I think it's important as you grow to not become so divorced from the day to day, you need to understand what the problems are on the ground. mean, our factory, basically our office is on a kind of mezzanine that runs around the factory floor.
And so it's really helpful to be able to walk down and understand what's going on on any given day in terms of production, to see the bikes being loaded up into the vans and understand the delivery and servicing schedules and so on and so forth. So I think you simultaneously have to let go and trust the people that you've hired to ultimately run their departments. But you also can't be too divorced from what's going on on the ground or it'll take you months to realize that you've got
particular customer service issue or whatever it might be, you need to understand. lot of people start a business because they want to escape the rat race. They want more freedom, they want more time, they obviously want more finance and income. It feels like that perhaps wasn't the driving force for you at beginning, Seb. There was a bigger mission, there was a passion and you got into it. But looking at now, being a business owner, do you feel like this now is giving you the opportunity to enjoy more?
Christian Rodwell (39:54.67)
further down in life now that you're building an asset and hopefully at one stage, know, that asset will be able to generate profits without you necessarily needing to be there. Yeah, I totally understand. You're right that it wasn't that actually it wasn't the key driver for me in starting the business. think creatively the idea of starting a business really appealed to me and definitely contributing positively to climate change. But of course,
financial freedom and personal freedom is something that becomes more more appealing to you, particularly if the business seems like it's going well. I really would say this is probably not what you or your business, your aspiring entrepreneurs want to hear. But starting business is a huge risk and statistically you will fail. So yes, it's true that if it goes well, well, there's no better way to generate considerable wealth and to give yourself financial freedom eventually. But the odds are not in your favor.
And the thing I can actually guarantee is that whilst you're in it, you're sort of in the weeds and whilst you're really growing it, you definitely will not have personal freedom. I think a lot of people equate being a boss, being your own boss to personal freedom. That's not the case at all. It gives you an overwhelming list of responsibilities that tie you to your desk at times when you wish that you could be spending time with the people that you love in your life and so on and so forth.
I think you need to go into starting a business with your eyes open. And it's a huge risk. But the reality is if you've got the blood of an entrepreneur in you, you will have a high risk tolerance and there'll be nothing that I nor anyone else can do to deter you. So it's self-selecting in that sense. You will have complete self-belief. And I know that if Mabin continues to be a success, in addition to personal and financial freedom, it will be.
I'll have a tremendous sense of achievement and fulfillment from it, know, building something from the ground up that I can be proud of and seeing products in customers' hands that they enjoy. sorry, a of an amble there, but I think that viewing it as a of a get-rich-quick or even get-rich-slow scheme is a risky business. I think going into it because you're passionate about the product
Christian Rodwell (42:14.636)
You want to build something you're up for the creative challenge and you can shoulder the risk, you know, possibly because you're young and you don't have five miles to feed and so on and so forth. But as I said, yeah, if you want to do it, you'll do it irrespective of what I say, for sure. No one can tell me not to do it. In terms of diversifying, you know, so a lot of business owners obviously it's all consuming, right? You're focused on your business day in, day out.
As you start to generate profits, you know, and you're able to start to pay yourself a bit more, are you thinking about diversifying, know, taking some profits, putting them into other areas, other assets at all at this stage? I think yes is the short answer. I mean, I guess I've been so focused on getting this business off the ground, you know, alongside my co-founder that I haven't, I'm nowhere near thinking about that. but, yes, eventually, certainly. think, I think.
as you get older and certainly as you develop more responsibilities for your kids and that kind of thing, don't want to become, you don't want all your eggs to be in the same basket. And I think that there's also a risk of thinking that a business, you know, it might be going well in years one to five or five to 10. Something terrible like COVID could come along and cause a problem in years 10 to 15. So I think diversification as you mature and as the business reaches a level of security is obviously a good idea. Sure.
Even within the business now diversification in terms of revenue streams and income, we talk a lot about, know, if you can have a high degree of recurring income in a business, you know, report customers, that's a great thing to have. Is that something you thought about at Maven? So yes, in terms of repeat income and kind of level. So, not in terms of diversification of different sort of products and verticals and categories, you know, we always want to be pretty
like my pick and I'll focus in who we're trying to make bikes for. But for example, introducing a stronger American market to iron out the seasonality of our products. And at the moment in Europe, know, bikers ride between March and October. And that, you don't want a seasonal business like that, particularly when a lot of other businesses really pick up over Christmas. And so having the, you know, Southern California, Florida, you know, places like that, sort of flattening that curve is really, helpful.
Christian Rodwell (44:38.062)
As I said, the direct-to-consumer model enables encourage repeat purchase because you have that direct relationship with your customer. So your sort of lifetime value goes up, which is really, really helpful. Servicing for us is a profit center. So again, being direct-to-consumer, manufacturer means that we have a servicing model, which again will become more and more of a kind of revenue generator as we grow. But yeah, so I think it's more, yeah, that's the way in which I think about that.
diversification as opposed to adjacent moves. In terms of cars, electric cars, you could say Tesla obviously being one of the leaders at the forefront there. Did you look at them? Did you look at the way they use apps to control things to be able to contact you for servicing and any ideas that were brought across, not just from them, but from obviously? Totally. So yes, I think the first distinction I would make is that we very specifically
made our bikes sort of simple and not too techy. think for me, I think the reason that people like bikes is because of the simplicity and the engagement with your surroundings, unlike being in a, you know, a Model Y with sort of seats or cooled seats and climate control and all, you know, sort of things like that. And so all of our tech is quite kind of background. We do have an app for GPS for theft recovery, for example, it also gives you telematic data and that kind of stuff. And we're looking to
to move our sort of service and communications and our customer interaction into that space eventually. And that's where the inspiration comes for sure from the likes of Tesla and there's lots of other companies as well that doing that well, but not in a sort of high tech, tech intrusive way, I think more in terms of facilitating good customer relationships for sure. Yeah, and that's reflected in the design to some degree, isn't it? You you've got the...
old school retro style to the bikes. Yeah, it's interesting though. think the old school aesthetic, we're not allergic to tech. Whether it's things like the sort of dropping connector that makes the batteries really easy to use, or as I say, that app or the way in which we interact with customers, I think that's all quite tech enabled. And there's certainly bits of tech that we're going to introduce in the future in order to do some interesting kind of innovative things.
Christian Rodwell (47:02.542)
with our products, but I think it's just more that, yeah, it's slightly more sort of background approach. So I think you said at the beginning, there were 297 electric bikes sold in around 2017, 2018. the UK, yeah. What was the figure last year, So last year, so now I think it's about 4,000. Yeah, about 4,000. It's kind of at 4,000. mean, France has broken through the 10,000.
India is growing at an outrageous rate. Basically, there's two stories. There's the Asian story and there's the UK and European story. Unfortunately, the UK is dragging its heels within that. The way I look at it is there's a huge amount of headroom for growth, which is encouraging. Absolutely. Being the first always puts you in good place. Do you constantly looking around at who else is creeping into the market? How do you...
do you focus on that or do you just focus on being the best that you can be? What we focus on in terms of market research for informing products going forward, you know, it's always interesting to see what competitors are doing. it's also you've got to be careful not to get too scared by other startups, you know, particularly in the hardware space. When we start in the first two years of our starting the business, we'd be terrified every time we saw a new electric motorcycle startup rear its head. And the reality is, it's so hard starting a business and starting a hardware business and, you know,
getting a good team together and making products that can pass a lot of homologation and so on and so forth, that almost all of those players have disappeared. mean, literally, you can count on your fingers now the number of certainly European and UK, know, EV startups that have succeeded. And a lot of them have failed for the same reasons. So you've got to, at some point, be careful not to become too distracted by what's going on around you. I think it's always interesting thinking about what the incumbent...
OEMs will do eventually. They've been pretty slow in the space. Obviously, you've seen the likes of Tesla, but also Chinese companies like Yedir and Ola in India. These are companies that are now some of the biggest two-wheeler companies in the world, and you haven't heard of them. There is absolutely the space to completely take share from the existing numbers.
Christian Rodwell (49:23.832)
So final thoughts then, Seb, would you class yourself as a visionary? are you looking into the future now? Are you looking 12 months ahead, five years ahead, 20 years ahead? God, it feels very, I don't think I'm too British to say that I'm a visionary. I think you have to, in order to start a successful business, you've got to have, you've got to sort of nail your colors to a mass in terms of a vision of what you think.
is going to happen. I believe that two wheelers will play a huge role in the future of urban travel. And that's why we've started this business. And that's why we've geared our bikes towards urban travel and champion removal batteries. I certainly have a view as to what I think the next 10, 20 years of kind of EV development in the space will look like, what will and will not happen. And we have a product pipeline that is geared towards riding that transformation.
so yeah, I know. I'll say, yes, I'll say, yes, I am a visionary. but I would also say that, that one of the things that happens when you're kind of in the weeds of stalling in business is that as a risk that you, the way that Will and I call it is you forget to look up. You're so focused on the kind of day to day, you know, how's the factory running? What are the expenses? You know, what's happening with this individual that you, can.
you've got to make sure that you keep on kind of replenishing your vision and that it keeps on growing and that you don't kind of get to the end of it. You know, don't get to the end of a five-year plan and then realize that you don't have a plan for the next five years. And we're definitely at that kind of inflection point now where growth is good. We feel like we've established ourselves in the market and it's now really important for us to actually build on that and continue to make market-leading products, not just to sort of rest on your laurels and assume that you can expect.
you 300 % growth year on year for the foreseeable. for someone listening now, Seb, who's embarking on a similar journey, starting a business, if you're looking back now to give yourself some advice at the beginning, what would be a key piece of advice for someone? gosh, definitely surround yourself with good people. You the old old adage of people, you know, make good businesses, good people make good businesses is completely true. All of our success has been
Christian Rodwell (51:45.944)
due to good advice from good advisors, amazingly experienced professionals. So yeah, get a co-founder as a first step and then surround yourself with good people at every stage of the business. And then also, everything will take twice as long, cost twice as much and be twice as hard as you expected. So yeah, make sure you've got the cash and the energy to get you through.
So thank you so much for sharing your journey with us today. If listeners want to learn more about maving or get in touch, where can they find you? It's an absolute pleasure. just pop online, maving.com or mavingelectricmodecycles, if you want to go on Instagram and check us out.
Christian Rodwell (52:34.798)
All right. I hope you enjoyed listening to Seb there. before we dive in, Kevin, let's just head to Trustpilot and say thanks to those that have left a review this week. And I'm going to scroll through and pull out one from a Bishoy. And Bishoy says, Wealthbuilders has been a great part of my wealth building journey. I particularly like their cashflow board game events.
As far as I'm aware, they are the only organization that run these events on a regular basis. Not only is it great fun, but you get to meet and network with a lot of like-minded people from beginners to seasoned investors. Highly recommend wealth builders as a whole. Very nice. I love events. We talked about the Nick James event. We've talked about, in many cases, historically, Chris, that
wealth building, whether in business like Seb or other assets can be quite isolating. Almost, I mean, it's good if you've got a business partner and that's great in his case, but can be quite a lonely journey because in the main, you're the pioneer and pioneers are cutting a path forward. And when you're doing that, you're often at the sharp end all of the time and you get so little time to
I suppose really get a sounding board, second opinions, good guidance, lessons and mentorship. So I think it's critical in my view that you surround yourself with like-minded people just as the review has indicated there, because that's the best way to keep you accountable. It's the best way to keep you motivated. It's the best way for you to realize that this is possible because other people are doing it. So, yeah, so keep the events going.
Chris on the cash flow that seems to be going down great guns and we hope to widen the cash flow game. So if you're somewhere in the UK or even around the world and you're interested in hosting a cash flow event together with us, that would be great to know because at some point Chris, we would hope to be hosting these all around the UK. We sure would. Yeah. And you can actually head to wealthbuilders.co.uk forward slash cash flow.
Christian Rodwell (54:53.086)
And if you're interested in being a host, can fill out a form and submit that to us right there. Okay, so let's stick on that theme then talking about working with others. So Seb, of course, is co-founder with Will for Maven and taking it back to the beginning, I asked him, you know, what was the vision? And he said, really, all they wanted to do was be involved in some way towards tackling, you know, climate change. And then they kind of fused that with a love.
and a passion of motor vehicles and then bikes and then spotting an opportunity. So every entrepreneur, he sees a problem, things hang on, we could do something about that. And obviously he was traveling, commuting in London, know, busy city and seeing the opportunity that there were no electric bikes available in the UK. And it just kind of merged all of these things that they wanted to do. And there was the business idea. Well, I think the other lesson I'm picking up from entrepreneurs Chris is go to pubs a lot.
because the best ideas often get stimulated from a pub. And I believe that was a pub in Durham at university. And I think when we spoke to Louise, there was some drinks involved. So the more you go to pubs, the better it is. Yeah. moving on from that, they then decided, OK, start the business. And I think there's lots of good lessons here and how long it takes in that initial
proof of concept stage. started the business 2018, you know, was 2022 before they actually launched to market. And they talked about the tough times having to sort of do those gig jobs just to bring in some money. And, know, I think you have to be prepared for that, don't you, when you embark on starting a new business? And also to the resilience to go through COVID. You remember, talked about raising funding and then the funding kind of got pulled because of the fear and the reaction.
to the pandemic and I'm so pleased that the story ends up with a happy ending that money did come through. it's just so interesting when you look at the difference in the size of the market between, you talked about China, India, other warmer countries where you don't have this huge seasonality like we have in this country. So, you know, a very interesting one.
Christian Rodwell (57:16.088)
But I do love the idea that they've really found a home. I think it's Coventry is where they make their vehicles. And that's the true historical home of all the major bike manufacturers, BSA, Triumph, Norton. Anybody who follows bikes will know that so many engineers and experts are in that Coventry area. And that tradition, I love the idea of the modern, know, working towards
climate change and making vehicles that typically deal with an average commute for a week, which is somewhere around about the 12 miles a day, I think, if I remember the stats. you know, can, that sort of means you've got a weeks with the charge. But to take the battery and be able to plug it in and charge it reminds me of, you know, I'm an older man now, so when I play golf, I've got a powered trolley.
and I take the battery out and I charge it and then you go again. But to think about that as a commuter travel I think is genius and I just love the idea, the combination of that together with something that looks great. We're not talking about low cost products here, we're about premium products and that's reflected I think in the design and the history and fair play to them. But the thing that impressed me more than anything else.
other than that resilience and all the things we've talked about, is there is a recurring income business in there. It's not just the sale of the motor vehicles, the bikes themselves, but the fact that they deliver them really where you are. They don't have the cost of a network of branches of showrooms and they bring the bike to you and they service the bike where you are, means who wouldn't take that up? I mean, the conversion rate.
of the number of people who buy the bike compared to the number of people who would want to be serviced where they are, I would expect that to be so high and therefore has a very strong recurring income. And if you can do that in a business, then your business is worth infinitely more when you come to sell it. So, you know, good luck to Seb with that one. It's just a combination of brilliant ideas all wrapped into one, which is why I think it was a good one for you, to have found and to pull out.
Christian Rodwell (59:40.598)
and share the wealth lessons that are still to be made by them, but they're definitely on the right track. Yeah. And what I liked was that whilst of course, Seth and Will, they're building an asset for the long term, it was also the feeling of personal achievement of building something from the ground up. that's something obviously that you can't get from.
necessarily just being in a job. Of course, you can have loyalty and, you know, be rewarded and recognized. But when it's something you've created, when you've turned it from an idea in your head to something that is actually impacting hundreds or thousands or even millions of people in the world, then that's something pretty special. yes. Fair play to Serban and the rest of his team. Yeah, well done. I hope you enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you know someone, perhaps they're a bike enthusiast, they'd like to hear that story.
hit the share button and send that to somebody else. We'd really appreciate that as we continue to build our brand and spread the name of Wealth Talk across the globe, Kevin. And on that note, we should sign out for today, but we'll be back same time, same place next week. We will indeed until then. As long as you don't go to Ibiza again. I'll see you.
Christian Rodwell (01:00:56.024)
We hope you enjoy today's episode. Don't forget that we are constantly updating our resources inside the WealthBuilders membership site to help you create, build and protect your wealth. Head over to wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership right now for free access. That's wealthbuilders.co.uk slash membership.