Rob Rast - Co-Founder & CEO of FLX Bike and Miles Board

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Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host, Neal Bloom, San Diego's tech ambassador. And together you're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle.

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And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host, Neil Bloom. I'm here at the Nest coworking podcast studio. Thanks for having us. And I'm joined by founder and CEO Rob Rast of FLX Bike and Miles Board.

What's going on, Neil? Huge pleasure to be here. Thanks for having me on. Can't wait to chat.

We're so happy to have you here and glad we got to connect recently as well.

Oh, yeah, absolutely. Let's get right into it.

Yeah. Give us a quick little one little sound bite on what you're up to.

Yeah. So I'm the founder of Flex Bike and Miles Board. Our biggest project right now has to do with cleaning up the air we breathe. And we make a product called the FLX Baby Maker, which is kind of a crossover bike between a traditional bike and an electric bike. It's super cool. You can't even tell it's electric. But it's going to allow people to commute further distances to work, take it out to the store, things like that. And we're getting ready to launch that super pump for the crowdfunding launch.

Oh, that's exciting. Do you have a date that we can throw out there?

It's going to be about February actually. If anybody's interested in finding out more about it, they can go to FLX Bike Babymaker and reserve their baby maker for like $1,000 off right now for just $1.

Oh, cool. All right, we'll throw that in the show notes too.

Awesome. Thank you.

Well, we're really pumped about that. We're going to dive into the deep of the founding story of that.

Great.

But want to get to know you. You have an interesting story geographically, where, where you've roamed. Uh huh. So I want to, want to get there. But tell us, where'd you grow up?

So I grew up in Sacramento, California as a kid. I would say I did most of my actual growing up though, in China. I moved there at age 19, dropped out of college, bought a one way ticket and just went over there with the hopes of learning the language, maybe doing a business someday. And it wasn't until I got to China that I realized how stupid I really was.

Really?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, growing up in America, we've got a very, very, I guess, self centered kind of education system where America is the only one. You know, we're the world power, America this, that, and you kind of lose sight that there's so many different cultures and backgrounds and nations out there and we're really just a, you know, grain of rice in, in terms of the world. So did a lot of growing up and learning there and realizing I'm not the center of the universe, nor is America.

Okay, well take us through. What time frame was that that you landed in China?

I was 19. That was 2009 at the time.

Okay.

I'm 30 years old, by the way. Got it.

And so just post Olympics in China.

Just post Olympics, Yeah. The reason I went over is just I had a mentor. He was telling me every day in high school, he's like, dude, if you want to be successful someday, you got to learn Chinese and go to China.

Okay.

And I thought he was crazy because he wasn't Chinese and he didn't speak, he didn't speak Chinese, had never been either. But then I started seeing it in the newspaper every day, you know, China this, China that. The Beijing Olympics were coming out. Went to school with a bunch of Chinese people and I started, started learning it. And then the opportunity came, I went over and the rest is history. I kind of never, never came back until just recently.

Oh, wow. That's pretty cool. I was there right before the Olympics in 2008 in Beijing.

No way.

It was a trip. Seeing all the construction going on, I got to wonder what it was like just post Olympics. Was it just. Were there any even remnants of the Olympics around?

Oh yeah, the Olympics. They've got huge stadiums and everything there. And post Olympics it was really hot. Everybody wanted to go to the stadium, so it was super packed. And I bet the city got even more crowded after the Olympics than before.

Okay, that's cool. So you were in Beijing the whole time or do you travel throughout China while you're there?

I did travel around. I started in Zhuhai, China, which is a city next to Macau and Hong Kong. That's a really cool place. And it's right next to the border. Border. If anybody's looking to do a long term stay in China, you can get a tourist visa which allows you 60 days, and then you can just cross the border on foot to Macau, come back in, and you get another 60 days. So that's a great place to do it. That's one of the reasons I went, and I went to Beijing, Shanghai, an island. I had like this motorcycle trip where I did 10,000 kilometers, 3,000 by motorcycle, and then the police got the motorcycle. So I started hitchhiking and did the remaining 7,000km by hitch, hitchhiking until I got to an island.

Wow, that's incredible. Great way to see a country.

That was good fun and, and that was also responsible for teaching me most of my Chinese because I'd be sitting in a car for 8, 10 hours with people asking the same questions. What kind of food do you eat? What do you do? Where are you from? Are you married? Things like that. And it teaches you so much.

So you didn't go to like a formal language school. You learned pretty much just out of necessity.

I did take about one year of language school at two different schools, and then the rest was hitchhiking. And the other part was watching Chinese soap operas. That was a huge, huge way. Anybody trying to learn a language, find a soap opera in that language. You get like a hundred episodes, 45 minutes each, and you'll be smoking by the end of it.

Okay, that's good. Good bite. I'm gonna try to do that for.

Spanish oh, hell yeah. I can recommend you some good ones for Spanish.

All right, good. So what were you doing for work wise while you were traveling throughout China?

So in the beginning, I was just living off savings for the first year and a half, two years. Did a tiny bit of English teaching just to pay the bills. And China is so cheap that you don't need much to survive. You know, meals cost you a dollar. So 20, 15, 20 grand of savings from the U.S. you can live for two, three years on that.

Okay.

So I was doing that. And then about a year and a half in, I linked up with a guy who was selling rice liquor. It's like hard liquor made from rice, just disgusting. Tastes like bleach and gasoline. But the dude was selling it for 60 bucks a bottle and making it for maybe 80 cents. And I'm thinking, if you could, if you can make that kind of profit on this disgusting, disgusting liquor, I'm sure some people like it. How about some real good California wine? And I started importing. It was a very long process to get to the importing California wine into China.

Okay, what was your first label that you had?

It was called Lamplighter.

Okay.

And it's, it's kind of a more budget wine. And I had no clue what I was doing, to be honest. I didn't know anything about wine. I didn't know anybody in the wine industry. I didn't know how to do E commerce. And I was just taking it one step at a time thinking, who can I meet? How can I sell this? That was the biggest lesson I learned there is not to do something for money. Don't chase money, chase your passions. I was not passionate about it. I don't even drink now, if that's any indication of how much I like wine. So biggest slap in the face. And that was a big growing up lesson.

Okay.

Don't chase the money. Chase. Chase what you love.

Okay, so post wine, did you find what you loved?

Post wine. My mentor actually introduced me to an aviation company that's trying to break into China. Got involved with them. They were doing some tech and I got. I was training people, airports all over the state, and they were trying to break into the Chinese market. So I came back to China with them, but because the government regulations there, they were not having a US fuel company in China. So we were kind of spinning our wheels. And one day, I think it was the end of 2014, I just went for it. I quit my job, broke up with my girlfriend on the same day and started my first two Real companies. Companies which I still run today. That was the electric bike company and the nutrition company.

Okay.

I mean, I'm big into fitness, and you couldn't get good protein out in China. It was always. It was either fake or overpriced. So I just started developing my own. Took six months to do that and launch that product. More of a passion product, something I love, and it was successful.

And that was in. You did that all in China.

That was all in China. Correct.

So what was it? I mean, you've started quite a few businesses in China. You've also started here in the US we'll get into that side. But, like, what's it like to actually start a business in China? Is there so much regulation to even get off the ground?

Absolutely. Just to have a business license, just the ability to do business. You've got to have a registered address. And to get the business license, especially as a foreigner, it can take six months. So you need to be able to pay rent for six months without doing business there, which is just insane. So the amount of red tape that you've got to go through, I don't recommend it for anybody. For the faint of heart, if you want to do it as a project and use that to kind of learn some Chinese, that's great. Or if you got somebody to do it for you, even better. But it's very, very, very difficult. You know, In America, it's five minutes, 100 bucks, and you got your company.

Got it. Interesting. Okay, so started the company. Did you need funding at all, local funding or kind of bootstrapped everything?

Bootstrapped everything. Okay. Have never taken investment in any of the businesses.

Okay. And I mean, China is obviously a much bigger company than the US Potential for much bigger total addressable market. Does it feel like that? Is there. Feel like there's a. Like a much bigger population to sell to?

Absolutely. Yeah. I'm not sure about now. I haven't been back in two years, but when I was there, it felt like it was just always something happening, especially in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing, the major cities. Everybody is hustling hard. Everybody's trying to carve out their piece. There's a lot more pressure there, especially due to the housing market. And culturally is really fascinating. So here in America, let's say, are you married?

I am.

You are. And when you were married, did you have a house?

No.

What age were you?

I was just a year ago.

Just a year ago? Yeah.

Yeah. So 33.

33. Okay, nice. Are you a homeowner now?

Yep.

Okay, great. So In China, it's culturally very, very frowned upon to get married without having a house. And the man's got to have a house to get married. If you don't have that.

Okay.

Yeah. What the mother in law is not going to.

Really? Interesting.

Absolutely. That's 99% of the time.

Okay.

And in China, house prices are insane.

Really.

Especially if you compare it to the average salary. There is just an insane amount of pressure for guys to be able to make money, to afford a house, to. To be able to get married and have their family.

Okay.

And so everybody's hustling really hard to make that happen.

Got it. See, I have this sense that you like, live multi generational within a house, but is that maybe it's the in laws that move in with you once you've bought your house already and move the wife in.

That's true. Yeah. So typically the male's parents may help to put a down payment on a new house and then they'll come and move in or the in laws will move in. It is very multi generational.

Interesting. So that's why they're pushing to make sure you got a house, because they want to come house us too.

Yep, yep. And I've heard some terms that are funny, not calling it a son in law, but my retirement son in law. This is my retirement son in law. They say this in the TV shows. This is my retirement. So it's hilarious.

Yeah.

That's my retirement plan right there. That's the guy.

Yeah. You know, it's kind of come back around in the US too. You know, like people are moving back into the family, even being married and living with their family, you know.

Okay. Yeah.

You know, I think it's. I think there's something to it. Living multi generational.

I mean, it's a great way to save money, put those resources into a business.

Totally. Yeah. So you're in China, you're building businesses. Did you always know you'd come back to the US and do something here or do you think you're in China for life?

I'd always thought that I would be back and forth. I do love China. It's got a special place in my heart. It's just, it's just a totally different place. It's wild. It's a place where everything is possible and nothing is possible. Everybody will tell you you can't do this, you can't do that. But also at the same time, there's not a lot of enforcement on many things. So kind of you think like Silicon Valley you know, kind of uber style where there are maybe laws there, but a lot of gray areas and, you know, let's just do it and hope for the best. There's a lot of that going on there. And so there's a lot of. A lot more freedoms in some ways to being there than there are in the States. For example, you can walk on the streets drinking beers if you gotta go be on the streets. That's. That's a thing there. But, yeah, really, really interesting place. Kind of like the wild, wild west.

Yeah, fascinating. All right, so you came back to the States two years ago and with already with some businesses in mind, or you were coming with kind of clean slate, working on something new.

So I had the bike company, we started that in China, actually met my co founder on airbnb.

Okay.

We launched that, put it on indiegogo and raised $2 million in 60 days on our first product launch.

Awesome.

And after that, we just felt invincible. It was nuts. We could not make a mistake. Little did we know. But yeah, after that, 2018 or end of 2017, I came back to the U.S. my partner was in the U.S. and we actually swapped places. So who went to China? And I came to the US to kind of start our operations here.

Okay.

So we had that business. And then a little bit into that, we launched our skateboard business here.

Okay.

And I got to tell you, after. After dealing with the challenges of starting a business in China, it was a breeze. Breeze in the US like, okay, business registered. You can actually get on Facebook, YouTube, Google, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Let's make a video.

Yeah.

Let's get our target customers on. The product is. It was just. It was just a breeze.

Yeah. That's awesome. So as manufacturing and kind of production done back in China, correct?

Yeah, we manufacture everything done in. In China. We've got a design and manufacturing office still there, which my partner, Pete Levis, he's running that. And they're doing some amazing work with the. The models they're coming up with. Now the bike I brought today, the baby maker, they designed that over the last year, year and a half. It's really cool. So it's still. All the bicycle infrastructure is in Asia or China specifically. All the major brands are making their stuff there. So that's a place to do it for now. Hopefully in the future we'll be able to do it in the U.S. okay.

That's pretty cool. So are you. So you're not having to go back and forth because your partners are pretty much. Are they right? There at the. Where productions happen?

Absolutely, yeah, they're right there.

Is that, I mean, is that a major thing? You have to be kind of like watch over manufacturing production?

Yeah, unfortunately, if you, if you don't, it really does depend on your partners. You get really good ones and really bad ones. The biggest thing is just surprises. You get surprises all the time. We recently launched a new skateboard rampage off road. Electric skateboard people. We took pre orders on it. We were expecting to get them in August. And it just stretched on and on and on. And it was this, this excuse and then that excuse. And we finally get these boards ship out. We got 100 in. It was half of our first order. We shipped out the first 80. And after board 80, the first guy that got one, he came in and said, hey, this thing's falling apart. Like the battery box is coming off. We investigated it in the deck manufacturer. They traded out basically the nuts on the board that hold the battery box. They swapped those for something made out of like Play Doh and glitter and they just snap on the first, first ride. It was, it was infuriating. But to save 20 cents, they completely fucked our product.

After 80 boards that had already done.

It to print, 100 boards we received with that problem, a hundred more were just about to load up on a container. So we had to recall those back to the factory. We had to get all these kits to go and swap out the ones we had already done. But you just never, never know what to expect. You know, we agree on something and then, you know, surprise. Oh, we changed this for you.

Yeah.

Thanks, dicks.

Well, it's good you get your partners there now.

Yeah.

Kind of watching over that.

Absolutely. So you got to have somebody on the ground in most place. If you go to, you know, like a Foxconn or something like that, you're not going to have that problem. Probably.

Yeah. But I'm guessing that's like enterprise level. That's. I mean, if Apple can handle that, a lot of startups cannot handle, cannot afford Foxconn.

I'm guessing you got to be running serious volume to be there.

Okay, got it. So there's kind of all these like little upstart manufacturing houses that want to ride the wave with you.

You. Yeah.

Which is kind of cool, that wild, wild west, but also the entrepreneurial side.

And that said, I don't want to just show the bad side of it. It's actually really good, you know, to be able to bring a product to market. Some of these places, you know, you can do one Prototype and for a very, very reasonable, Reasonable cost, and they're willing to grow with you. So that's. That's the good side of that dual edge sword.

Yeah.

As they say, is, you know, it's very flexible, and you can make stuff happen. The bad side is somebody that small, you got to really watch out.

Totally. All right, so you're coming back. You're back in the States now, Back in San Diego, or where'd you go immediately when you got back here?

Back to San Diego.

Okay.

Yeah.

You knew you're gonna. San Diego was gonna be home base.

Yeah. So my partner, he was actually here in San Diego already, and they had a little. A little house set up, so I didn't have to think or anything. I came out here, and I was lucky that my brother was out here studying at the time. He got a job out here in San Diego, so we ended up living like three minutes away. We still go surfing all the time.

Cool.

It's great. I love San Diego. It's an amazing, amazing place.

What part of town are you living in?

Pacific Beach.

Oh, nice.

I was in Pacific beach, but I recently moved out of my house into my sprinter van.

Oh, yeah.

Which I park at the office right now because I'm doing late nights. I could just go crash in the van, come back and hit in the morning.

Van life.

Yeah, Van life for sure.

I think I caught you while you were on the road up to the Bay Area last weekend, right?

Yeah. Yeah, you did.

How was that trip?

It was. It was both. Both a shit show and completely amazing. The reason is I. I'm the kind of guy that just goes, I didn't. I didn't plan it out completely beforehand. I was expecting, hit the road at night, I'll go on the Internet, plan out my next stop, things like that. I wasn't expecting one. It was the solar panels wouldn't charge because we were so far north, and the days are so short in winter is gloomy. So I didn't have power to charge my laptop or anything. Didn't have Internet. My. My phone carrier stopped my hotspot, so I couldn't do that either.

Wow.

And, yeah, it's just. It was just a nightmare trying to get stuff done, but it was definitely worth the trip. And it was kind of a test for my next long trip. So now I know what I need to change. Did it on a small scale. Now I know how to do it better.

Pretty typical entrepreneurial experience. You know, learn from failure iterate and.

Go, absolutely fail, fail, fail until you Succeed?

Yeah, absolutely. So tell us, kind of, what does base of operations in San Diego look like? I mean, you're on the road a bit, but is there a bit of a warehouse office or anything going on here?

Yeah, so we got a pretty sweet space originally, because we were in China, we were relying on third party fulfillment 3 PL, third party logistics. And they were not great. They were charging us a fortune. They would take weeks to ship bikes out. They would lose stuff. And we realized the money we're paying these guys, we can just get our own office and save money every month. So we rented a. I think it's a 4,000 square foot place on Moreno Boulevard in Claremont. Half of that is warehouse, 25% is office space and 25% is a showroom. So we got everything we need there. We got about 10 people there right now. Marketing, social media, customer support, shop tax, you name it, it's there. We do everything but the design and manufacturing there.

Okay. Gotta come by and try out some boards.

Absolutely. Come swing on by. That'd be awesome.

Yeah, great. So tell us a little bit, like, you know, you're gonna have another crowdfunding coming up. What's 2020 look like and beyond?

Oh, man, we're super excited. We got all these new models dropping in the next year. I think in the next container alone we've got three new models coming, which is super excited. The biggest thing we're focusing on right now is the baby maker crowdfunding launch. So we're working around the clock just trying to get the word out about it and really focus on kind of the environmental impact of it. Both my co founder, Pete, and I are vegans. I've recently went vegan and I've been eating disgusting quantities of meat my whole life and never really thought about it. But the environmental impact of that is pretty bad, even though I really made the switch for personal performance reasons. But with these bikes and boards, we've got the opportunity to replace some car miles and get at least, you know, if not completely eliminate the problem, greatly reduce the amount of air pollution and emissions that are going into the sky and the air we breathe. And here in San Diego, you know, we got the wind blowing over the ocean, but you see it in China, in la, and we're just sick of breathing it. Pete, my co founder, he doesn't even want to be in China anymore because he's seriously concerned. I mean, he's probably taken years off his life just breathing the air there. Yeah, we got serious problems. There are 4.2 million people dying of air pollution every single year.

Wow.

And it's something we don't know about. You know, we're focused on banning plastic straws and stuff, which is great. You know, that's progress. Let's take that a step further and think about the people that are actually dying by the millions every year from this serious problem. And what can we do about that? What's one thing we can do to reduce that even just a little bit?

Yeah. That's incredible. I mean, it's great to have mission driven behind it as well too. San Diego, a lot of our companies are that. Right. We're trying to change the world in different ways. Curing cancer or changing the way we, you know, mobility and bettering our health. So not a great, not a bad place to land this company here in San Diego.

Totally.

And we're obviously super outdoorsy, so that helps too. Right. We can test the equipment every day of the year.

Yeah.

And this has been one of like the first places that all the scooter companies came and launched. So people are already a bit like forward thinking in micro mobility. That too. Have you already experienced that? Is San Diego kind of being like a hotbed for testing?

Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the biggest thing is the weather and the people the weather. You know, no other place can you go out in December in shorts and a T shirt, rip around a bike or a skateboard on the boardwalk, maybe even take a dip in the ocean and go home. Everybody else is socked in inside waiting for the snow to clear.

Yeah.

So it's just amazing. And then the people, the people you meet in San Diego are just incredible. We get people walking in the office all the time with all different stories. Super cool, super tight. A lot of surfers are down to get on the skateboards and I just love those interactions.

Yeah, that's really cool. Well, speaking of other favorite things about San Diego, now being new to vegan life, have you found a vegan taco place that you love yet?

I have not found specifically a vegan taco place that I love yet. I've actually just started this about a month ago. Not even a month. Most of those weeks were on the road. I do have two favorite taco places in San Diego. One is called Taco Real Los Ruiz.

Okay.

It's a hole in the wall place. It's in a strip mall in Pacific Beach.

All right. We love those.

But we went there and the owner just took care of us. He took us back into the kitchen. He's like, I'm going to show you how to make this. I'm going to teach you how to make a molita. Have you had those before? Oh, my God. It tastes. It was just insane. I really want to go back and try it. Try it vegan. I'm sure he'll hook it up, but it was just incredible. That's one. The other one is Machos Tacos in Pacific beach on Grand Avenue. Okay, that's a really good one. Taco Tuesday. It's like a buck fifty for these big tacos. Really, really good.

That's awesome. Well, people can. We'll send you taco vegan taco preferences now. They'll know to send you that. We'll get you. Got the crowd sending you. Where can they find you? Are you on Twitter? LinkedIn? What's the best place?

Instagram is the best place. OB Rast. We're also giving away a electric skateboard or a baby maker electric bike every month. If you go to my Instagram, the link is right there with all the details.

Awesome. Well, Rob, thanks so much for coming by. I'm excited to come by and check out a board and best of luck in 2020.

Hell yeah. Thank you so much for having me on and can't wait to have you in and shred a bit together.

Sweet. Thanks, dude.

All right, brother.

Thanks for joining us on the tacos and tech podcast with Neil Blum. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hook. You can find Neil Blum on Twitter eeal as well as fresh food, tech and tacos and tech pod on Twitter too.

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Hey, Sam.