Ride AI 161: Building premium utility ebikes for families and more with Tern Team Captain Josh Hon
This week Oliver got to interview Josh Hon from Tern bikes. If you’ve not come across the Tern brand before, they’re now a mid-size bike company, but have really found a strong niche providing high quality utility bikes like their best selling mid-drive short tail compact cargo bike the GSD.
Tern is different from a lot of the other micromobility companies that we've had on the Micromobility Podcast in that it’s definitely more of a traditional bike company, using bike shops etc to sell and service their bikes in what has now grown to be 61 countries.
They also pass over it relatively quickly in this episode, but Tern is an amazing story in that Josh has raised only around 6m in funding to date.
We really valued Josh’s humility and perspective as someone who has been around the bike industry for a really long time, especially on his insights into Taiwan and what does/doesn’t work there. We are really looking forward to future discussions with him.
Specifically they tackle:
Josh's personal history and how he came to start Tern
The current range - what’s notable right now
How they’ve raised capital and built their team
Building in Taiwan - what should people know about what they’ve done
Also, if you haven’t already, please be sure to check out our Rider Choice Awards - the Oscars of the micromobility world. Voting is open now ahead of Micromobility World on the 19th of January. We’re excited to see which brands are considered the most popular whether it’s your favourite scooter, ebike, shared service or more - with tens of thousands of votes already in, be sure to not miss out. Check it out at Micromobility.io
To learn more about Tern Bikes, click here
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