Epic Experience Found on Common Ground

Entrepreneurs are a different breed. They wake up in the morning with a mission, with fears, with faith, with resolve. The difference between them and most people is they confront their inner demons. They use the chip on their shoulders to push past those who would limit them, deride them, hold them down. They don’t believe in failure.

In our travels, I find many of them. All have experienced setbacks, failures. They’ve lost businesses, been betrayed, lost homes; everything. Yet, as the five balls of life prove, they bounce back. In one way or another they start over, either doing what that did before or, more often than not, something completely new. The good ones have a common thread through their endeavors; it’s their zest, their commitment to excellence, their zeal for life. They have an enthusiasm you can’t keep down.

Take Andrew Davidge. The 30-ish son of an architect is a one-time mountain bike racer, whose idea of a bedtime story as a toddler was a thorough going over of the latest Harley-Davidson catalog. You might say he was smitten at an early age. All the more surprising because neither of his parents were gear heads.

His love of bicycles turned into a teenage downhill mountain racing gig with the Santa Cruz Syndicate junior team. Folding in high school auto shop with a love of design, speed, and a fetish for early twentieth century board track racing motorcycles, he combined that seeming mishmash of interests with a stroke of inspiration and a serendipitous meeting into a business.

Vintage Electric Bikes was born after Andrew built himself an electric bike for getting around the back paddocks of Sears Point Raceway, which he frequented as a go-kart racer. People wanted to buy one. It made him think he might be on to something. So much for going to Art Center School of Design to study automotive design. We’re going to build stuff!

With an introduction to Gordon McCall, fledgling Vintage Electric Bikes presented two prototypes at McCall’s Motorworks Revival, a highly exclusive annual event that kicks off Monterey Car Week and the Pebble Beach Concours D’Elegance. The well-heeled clientele were so taken with the bike’s vintage looks and high-performance, they began plunking down credit cards faster than the startled Andrew and his friend/sales director Eddie Johnson could handle. A quick download and registration for a PayPal account resulted in the sale of 40 bikes that very evening. They were off and running.

Some ten years later they are still going great guns. Of course, there were setbacks; COVID, for one, nearly sank them. They’re still recovering.

I visited the Vintage home office and showroom in Santa Clara this week. The bikes are full of well-designed and highly integrated components fastidiously assembled into beautiful rolling works of art. Wonderful details abound. They’re expensive, but they’re worth it. I bought two, one for myself and one, of course, for my wife. She wasn’t about to let me have one without getting in on the fun, too.

Vintage’s next challenge is to try and scale the company; production, sales and service. Even with investors and the good connections Andrew has developed, it won’t be easy. Scaling never is. I wish him luck. It’s a great product. They deserve to win.

Though I love his skill, dedication and enthusiasm, the wary side of me painfully alights on other conversations earlier in the week with several older gentlemen (shall we say, more my vintage). These men all experienced the euphoric highs and success of entrepreneurial escapades. They also were victims of the downside, the hidden betrayals, the sudden market crashes, the loss of fortunes and homes.

It’s a very fickle game, this entrepreneurship thing. There are certainly more failures than successes. Sometimes the losses are complete and total. Sometimes it involves starting all over again, from the bottom. All the way from boarding with family or friends, driving a crummy old car, taking lousy jobs, rebuilding your credit – everything. Like you were just getting out of school and starting a new life. Truth be told, that’s what these people did; they rebuilt themselves.

So, when you see someone who owns a successful business, remember nothing is set in stone. It can all vanish through no fault of their own. Life is fickle that way. It has no feeling. Things happen. When they do, you pick up the pieces and start again.

That spirit you started with is still kindling inside, ready to surface once more. It’s who you are, who you’ve always been, who you always will be. Let it see the light of day, because if it extinguishes, you might as well, too.

Photo showing the Vintage Shelby Roadster model e-bike is courtesy of Vintage Electric Bike Company, Santa Cruz, CA.