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Nathan Siy is the founder of Evoke, an electric motorcycle business company whose goal is to put more electric motorcycles on the road in Beijing.
Tell us your story and why you’re in China.
It’s been a long and interesting China story, and one that I feel is still mid-way through. Evoke has primarily come about due to my China experience; how it’s influenced my thought patterns, ideas for business and a resultant of the unique sets of problems that we face here.
I originally came to China back in 2003 for a year as a “pilot program” for myself, to see if working abroad would be something I’d be interested in. At the time, it was simply for a 1-year exchange program for the institution that I worked for. They had tourism and travel schools around Canada, and they were looking to expand into an ever growing Chinese market for education. I was brought in to help transition the Chinese partners and get them up to speed with the curriculum, teacher’s requirements and roll-out of the first programs.
It was supposed to be a short term, 1-year stint in Beijing. I’m not sure why I decided to take them up on the offer, but 9 months in, living in China took its toll on me. The lack of language skills put me at severe disadvantage in terms of transportation, ordering food, dealing with small daily issues outside of work. It was a tough period to survive here at that time, where Beijing wasn’t as “international” as we see it today. I didn’t make the full year contract and retreated home, where I thought that would be the end of any China discussions.
Back home, I ended up moving away from the education industry to kick off my first “startup”, or back then, we just called it a small business. I was able to merge my passion and hobby in automotive with an opportunity to distribute parts from China and other parts of the world around Canada. Our team ran our parts distribution business for a few years until the automotive customization scene took an unforeseen dive. At this point, I went back to my original job in education, only to presented with a similar opportunity in Beijing again. Maybe it was the post-business depression at the time, but I decided to try it once again. By late 2006, I was back onto a plane arriving at T2 with everything I owned, including my 1 year old puppy.
From 2006 on, it was a new life goal to localize myself to Beijing and China. Learning the language, connecting with locals and traveling via ebike, just like a Beijinger.
What was your inspiration for Evoke and how did it come about?
The inspiration for Evoke was born out of necessity and natural progression rather than any “Aha” moment. Having been riding around Beijing since 2006, I became very familiar with repairing e-bikes. Quality on those inexpensive e-bikes were pretty dismal and I was allotting a lot of time repairing my own bike, and indirectly, getting the experience I needed to move to actually building them.
But moving to building them was a big step, which led me to a few intermediary steps between Evoke. I realized that e-bikes were a pretty fun way to get around Beijing once they were in good working order. In 2008, I ended up building up a fleet of 250w electric scooters and opened up Beijing Electric Bike Tours & Rentals, which still runs every summer. By building inexpensive, but higher quality bikes, we were able to rent them out to expat tourists looking to zip around the city on guided tours and explore the city on their own.
After building the e-bikes for the tour company, and getting a lot of hands on experience with repairs, customization and building, I felt I had to knowledge to dive into prototyping Evoke’s. The earlier prototypes were a wide range of 2 wheeled EVs to get something to market quickly and gain very useful market and rider feedback. It was all about creating multiple MVPs to hone and improve, which eventually became the Urban and Urban S electric motorcycles we sell today.
There are a lot of different electric vehicles in China ranging from segway boards to mini electric cars, how does Evoke fit into that market and who are you targeting?
You’re absolutely right with a range of choices when it comes to urban transportation in the electric region. But they’re all so lame. The current flock of electric city vehicles are more of a fallback plan rather than something that you would yearn to ride.
Our mission at Evoke was to get more people riding and experiencing the fun and freedom of riding electrics around this megacity, and to do so we needed to develop a whole new electric riding lifestyle.We were able to do it by focusing on making the riding experience better;More powerful: for a thrilling sensation that makes you want to ride everyday,
Safer: with higher quality components, better engineering, brakes and suspension, along with the on-board computer to notify friends or family in the event of an accident, all so that you ride confidently, in control and make it safely to your destination, every time. Stylish: with a larger frame, FRP body, aggressive bodylines that will turn heads and be the envy of all your friends, and Convenient: with our on-board computer and touchscreen, it provides you the convenience of navigation and the confidence to get to where you need to go.
What problems are Evoke solving and what’s your plan for 2016?
Evoke bikes are solving the age old problem of transportation around urban environments. The current choices kind of sucks:
Cars: expensive, hard to park, can’t get a license plate in BJ and SH, traffic.
Taxis: waiting awhile, no control of your schedule, relatively expensive, traffic.
Subways: cramped, smelly, hot.
Buses: cramped, smelly, too hot or too cold, and traffic.
Electric scooter: poorly made, unsafe, slow and dangerous to ride.
Gas scooter: illegal without the right plates, right plates are super expensive.
Bicycle: limited range, tiring, makes you sweat, easily stolen.
There really isn’t a good way to get around the city yet, so we made one.
Where can people purchase Evoke products and in what cities/countries are your motorcycles available?
We’re currently in small scale production and sales at the moment. As a small start up in the hardware and manufacturing space, sales is an important area to focus on, but is also limited by production capacity.
With my experience in the electric vehicle space over the last few years, it’s been relatively easy to get contacts in the industry to help us sell. We currently have a few shops in Beijing and Shanghai that are pushing Evoke at the moment.
What has been your biggest challenge so far personally and professionally?
Personally, the biggest challenge that I have is the on-going 2nd guessing of myself and my decisions. Leading the team and supporters forward requires a beacon of confidence, and that’s what I have to show everyday. We also have our team’s goals and dreams of pioneering this new 2 wheeled electric vehicle lifestyle. But is the decision I just made going to get us there? Is it going to help or hurt the cause? Is it too expensive or should we be putting more resources into this channel? Is this the right partnership to get into? There’s a million questions rattling around in my head for every single decision.
Professionally, it’s been learning the cultural differences of doing business here. It’s the relationship building with suppliers, that is so closely linked with their pricing and level of support that they throw your way.
It’s the expectations that Chinese VCs have when we’re pitching to them. Sometimes, there are questions that pop up that seem like it comes out of nowhere. Questions like, VC: “How are we going to make the initial investment back in 3 months?” Answer: we’re not. Why would you think we could make the initial investment back in only 3 months? VC: “This is China!” Expectations for some VCs in China are like night and day.
It’s learning to sell in a market that you don’t understand, and that you have very little chance of ever understanding fully. But, it’s these professional challenges that have led us to find the right people to trust, and work with, that then take on those challenges and execute them far better than we could have ever imagined.
What advice do you have for people who’d like to join a start up team or become an entrepreneur themselves?
Don’t do it!
It’s incredibly challenging, tiring and thankless. You’ll lose sleep, lose money, lose friends and lose contact with family. You’ll gain stress and weight, and take on health problems. You’ll probably fail and have to start over again from scratch in a new job and new industry after your startup goes bust.
But, if you heed this advice, and charge on through anyways, then you know deep down that you’re driven by “something” so strong and so clear that you’re ready to risk everything, personally and professionally, to make that “something” a reality.
What do you find most rewarding about running your own business?
When I see someone riding on Evoke around town, having fun, getting to work, zipping by traffic, showing off to his friends; and I think to myself “I made that”.
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