A US-based Hardware company?!?

Let’s start with the elephant in the room: Yes — Inboard is a hardware company. Yes — Inboard is based in Santa Cruz, which is arguably a long way from our European playground.

The TL;DR answer is that sometimes, you cross paths with truly extraordinary entrepreneurs, looking to redefine an industry, with an authentic connection to the problem they are solving, and just enough reality distortion field to have a real shot at it. That doesn’t happen often. You come out of those meetings with goose bumps. It feels obvious, and some of the mental constraints you constructed over the years temporarily fade away. This is how me and my colleagues felt after hearing Ryan talk about the company that they were building. Mark Suster compared his way of investing to falling in love. I could not agree more, and Inboard is a great example of that.

As for the slightly longer answer…

The future of mobility will largely be determined by cities

By 2050, two thirds of the world’s population will live in urban areas (from 54% today). Most of them in megacities of over 10m people. Hence, cities across the world are likely to directly shape the future of the mobility industry. What will the vehicles of tomorrow look like? How will they be powered? Who will own them? The answer to those questions largely depends on the agenda pushed by cities across the world. And cities all tend to face the same issues: congestion, pollution, accessibility to name only a few.

So what will that translate into? William Gibson elegantly wrote that “the future is already here — it’s just not evenly distributed”. Well I think that the first elements of answer to the questions above are already visible today. And one of them is that cities are slowly going car-free. That shift is already underway, starting with major city centers worldwide. Now that doesn’t mean that you won’t find any cars within cities, but rather that the vast majority of them is likely to belong to a car sharing network, be driven by a professional driver working with a ride-hailing company, or in a more distant future, belong to a fleet of autonomous taxis.

Inboard is not an “electric skateboard company”

Inboard is a short-range urban mobility company. They are building personal electric vehicles (PEVs), which are increasingly looking like a cornerstone of this new urban transportation paradigm. Why? Today over 50% of car trips in urban areas are under 8km. Over 20% are even under 3km! Like Ryan and Theo, we believe that this is about to change, that urban mobility will increasingly become intermodal, and that PEVs will be the vehicles of choice for distances ranging from 0.5 to 4km.

PEVs will be the vehicles of choice for distances ranging from 0.25 to 2 miles (0.5 to 4km)

The company released its first product the M1, the world’s most innovative electric longboard, just over a year ago and has already sold thousands of units worldwide. This video explains the amazing job that the team has done on the M1.

Again, Inboard is not an electric skateboard company. The team is on a mission to design, build and distribute a beautiful, functional, safe, and innovative ecosystem of personal electric rideables. The M1 is to Inboard what the Roadster was to Tesla: a beautifully designed and aspirational initial product, packed with innovative technology, still at a premium price-point and mostly catering to enthusiasts (most M1 owners are skaters). Yet, a vast majority of M1 owners already use it for mobility, not for fun, and they do so several days a week. I’m using the M1 on a daily basis to commute in Copenhagen, and it’s awesome. Not only is it an incredibly fun way to commute, but I also feel that it has extended my “natural range”. Places that I would not typically walk to now feel just around the corner.

With a major distribution deal with BestBuy across the US and new products in the works, 2018 will be an incredibly exciting year for the company. Stay tuned!