The Rich Robinson Show - Season 1 - At the Speed of China

Take a look at how Nathan Siy's enthusiasm drove Evoke Electric Motorcycles to success

• Rich Robinson

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Nathan Siy is the founder and CEO of Evoke Electric Motorcycles which designs, manufactures, and leads development in smart mobility with safer, faster-charging, sustainable, and environmentally-friendly powertrains and components.

In this episode, Nathan shares his journey on how he sold his first start-up company to bootstrap and grow Evoke Electric Motorcycles.


Key takeaways:
•China doesn’t have the garage start up business stories
•Foxconn Precision Manufacturing is a multinational electronic manufacturer based in China.
•Chinese workers strictly follow the 996 working culture.

Best Moments:
- Nathan shares that the reason he was stuck in China was because of a girl.
oIt was like, "Hey, I got a one year contract, gonna do something completely unrelated to like, manufacturing right now," but supposed to be a one year stints, get some experience head back to HQ in Vancouver, and then kind of grow from there. But yeah, I'm sure you hear this all the time. It's a girl. It's a girl that gets you, that kind of loops you in here and you get stuck in a way. Yeah. Good, good. Stuck, not bad. Stuck, but stuck.
(00:04:11.3-00:04:31.6)

• Rich predicts a Chinese establishment owner's reaction as Nathan inquires about renting a small space for his start-up.
oWow. And he'd be like, Hey, get back behind your line. Your toes over the line.
(00:08:55.0-00:08:59.4)

- Nathan recalls how a businessperson on the other side abruptly ended a technical call to go home.
oObviously, we're facing like European time and China time, but there's times that I'm running through like a technical call or I'm helping, one of our teammates run through a technical call and they're like, okay, so this, you disassemble this section, take a couple screws out, and then what you wanna do is you wanna unplug this.
And he is like, oh, hold on. It's like five o'clock here. And I'm like, okay. And he is like, well, I'm gonna go home. I'm like, we're in the middle of like, yeah, we're like disassembling half your mic. And he is like, yeah, no problem. No problem. We'll pick it up tomorrow. And I'm like, how do you just leave? A bike, like half disassembled, like it's a customer's bike. Like, is he not gonna care? Is he not gonna like, want it done quickly? But he's like, no, that, that's how you do it in Europe. Like five o'clock on the dot, I'm clocked out, I'm going home.
(00:40:33.8-00:41:17.1)

XCD: Post-production, transcript & show notes

Rich Robinson:

Showtime.

Nathan Siy:

All right. That's it. Starting to kick off the recording here.

Rich Robinson:

Nathan, my friend, from his factory in southern Beijing, welcome to the pod, my old friend. Great to see you.

Nathan Siy:

It's awesome to be here, and yeah, I miss you, man. You're not here anymore.

Rich Robinson:

Miss you too, buddy. I know, but you know what? I will be...

Nathan Siy:

Floating away somewhere on a beach or something, right?

Rich Robinson:

Oh, my goodness. I'm really optimizing for lifestyle here in Bali. And some people are looking to maybe come here because now COVID, as the ultimate accelerant, has freed up friends in New York, in Shanghai, in Silicon Valley, and Singapore, right? And I tell them, "Don't really think about coming to Bali because it's really not as good as people make it out to be." Well, I mean, except for the nature, the weather, the culture, the people, and the prices, and Yeah. But other than that, no, it's great.

Nathan Siy:

No. It's small stuff, man. Small stuff. But you know, it's good.

Rich Robinson:

I love Beijing. Thank you so much. I love Beijing. And I'll be back and forth, six-hour direct flight, and I love the grittiness and edginess of Beijing, and your factory in southern Beijing kind of personifies that. It's like, where "Shit's happening," right? I write right in it. But before we dig into your just phantasmagorical awesome journey with electric motorcycles, Evoke motorcycles down in the outskirts of Beijing. I want to dig into hero's journey. Take us back to yesteryear, my friend, to where you were born and raised and your sort of Chinese history all the way back.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. Like, dark and stormy night sort of story, or like general stuff.

Rich Robinson:

I want it all. When you were bitten by a radioactive electric motorcycle when you were a child and became this superhero electric mobility entrepreneur in China.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. Okay. I'll give you like the brief recap of everything. But yeah, I mean, I'm sure you know, like, I was born in Canada, and over there it's vastly different from where we're sitting at right now today. Night and day with a whole thing but it's never been-- I love my upbringing, and I think that's the journey as to what kind of led me here. But, ethnically...

Rich Robinson:

What city was that that you grew up in?

Nathan Siy:

Vancouver. Yeah. Vancouver-born and raised lots and lots of Chinese out there, and I never actually thought it was like a thing. Grew up around the Chinese culture, but sort of westernized. But I was kind of on the outlier of the whole thing. I was pretty whitewashed, and I think I still am. So if you go back and talk to, like, any of my friends, you'd be like, "Yeah, man, where will you end up in 20 years?" Nobody ever think China. I didn't speak the language. I had a couple of friends who actually spoke Cantonese and, I guess, different dialects and stuff, but I never got into that circle. So this is like the farthest place I ever would've thought.

Rich Robinson:

What generation are you? How many generations back?

Nathan Siy:

We're family fourth-generation already. So my great grandparents left China, so we're really far from the whole Chinese thing. But I mean, it feels like that's a lifetime ago, like back in Canada. Now I just kind of feel this is like home, you know? So it's definitely been a transformational journey on my end too, internally, of like going from this whitewashed Chinese kid to I guess, the opposite of it. Like a Chinese inner sort of white outer. It's weird. I went through like a whole, like 180 flip. Actually, I was really kind of anti-China and that stereotype to it, and now, you know, they're doing so much stuff when it comes to at least my industry, like new energy manufacturing. Lots of cool stuff happening. So now, like, last 20 years or whatever was kind of anti-China, next 20 years you're going to be super pro-China. Like, look at all the cool stuff coming out.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah, you're like an Italian gladiator that was born in one of the hinterlands, and then you go into the arena in Rome.

Nathan Siy:

What? What's with the Italian man?

Rich Robinson:

You're in the arena, right? So you're kind of back in the ultimate fighting arena, which is the entrepreneurial arena of Beijing.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, there you go. Yeah, it definitely feels like that, man. Every day it's a battle. Every day it's a fight, but at the end of it you get a little bit of a win, a small win or something, so it feels good.

Rich Robinson:

Sure.

Nathan Siy:

It's like getting punched a hundred times, but you get, one or two good hits and you're like, yeah, that's awesome. I don't know good. You know, season trade off, Season trade off.

Rich Robinson:

That's great. And what about that path from Vancouver, to the Middle Kingdom? How did that happen?

Nathan Siy:

Oh man, that was, yeah, I was like, it was supposed to be a one year thing, man. I'm sure you hit this all the time, but you're like, yeah, I'm totally gonna get like a one year. Do some, like some decent work, get some experience, head back home, get a better job. But yeah, that was totally the initial thought process. It was like, "Hey, I got a one year contract, gonna do something completely unrelated to like, manufacturing right now," but supposed to be a one year stints, get some experience head back to HQ in Vancouver, and then kind of grow from there. But yeah, I'm sure you hear this all the time. It's a girl. It's a girl that gets you, that kind of loops you in here and you get stuck in a way. Yeah. Good, good. Stuck, not bad. Stuck, but stuck.

Rich Robinson:

Nonetheless. Yeah. Good stuck.

Nathan Siy:

So I guess that was like, I met her like 2008 or so. Yeah. Yeah. Just around the Olympics. So I was here in 2006, moved here. I was supposed to be here for a year. You, it was kind of like a pondering after the first year. I was kinda like pondering back and forth and I was like, "Yeah, you know what? I think it's time to go home. I really can't speak Chinese. It's really difficult." Like I'm sure you were here at the time as well and you know how many Western food restaurants were there? It was like McDonald's and KFC. So you had two choices, and yeah, it was super limited, but actually the interesting thing, man, like back, I guess it was 2007 when I got kind of like my contract kind of just ran up and I was like at the cusp of like, do I go or do I stay or try it another year or head back home. And that's kinda like the year that I just, we were seeing all these like little electric scooters flying by and I was like, you know what, as my going away gift, I'm just gonna buy myself one. It was like 400 bucks or something, like ridiculously cheap. I was gonna buy it, ride it around for like a week and then just literally throw it. And just go back home. So I kind of bought that. And to be honest, man, that's kind of why electrification has really shifted. Yeah this, completely shifted my life because if I didn't buy that electric scooter, I never would've started exploring Beijing. I never would've fell in love with it to try another year. And the following year I met my wife. So yeah, if I didn't have that electric scooter, I would've been back home in Vancouver. I would've never met her and my whole life would. Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

And you were already in manufacturing and so did you like disassemble it and take a look at it? Or was there

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, that was a whole thing, like, coming from a car background, it was always like, everybody wants to go faster. They want to go faster, they want to go kind of like longer, especially for electrics. But yeah, it kind of kickstarted the whole like interest into like, tinkering into mobility, like electric mobility. So I was able to rip that apart. I was able to like, make, I was able to hack it pretty quick and that's kinda, That's the whole premise of like what got started into electric motorcycling. Cause I kind of took that little electric scooter and took it to its max. Like I was doing a hundred kilometers an hour on that thing. And imagine like these tiny little wheels and it was kinda like, it was flickering and kinda, yeah, exactly. Brakes were super small. The whole frame was kind of shaking, so it was really sketchy. But that was the whole thing, like, you wanna go a hundred kilometers an hour, or you wanna go above a hundred, you need a more stable platform. So that was kinda like the point, the tipping point where I was like, okay, you know what? We gotta shift. We gotta get into something that's, better built, stronger breaks overall, more, stability. And it kind of got us into the whole motorcycle. So, yeah, it's still growing thing, it's still, we're still r and ding and developing things every day. But yeah, that was kinda like the kickoff point for it. It was really like, "Hey, I wanna do, I wanna ride something myself. It's gotta meet my own sort of specifications." And from there we started finding out like, "Hey, other people kind of wanna buy it as well." So yeah, it was

Rich Robinson:

Amazing. Yeah. It's very much like a Elon Musk kind of thing that I'm gonna have to, I'm gonna have to make it happen, right? Nobody else make it happen. I guess I'll just have to build it. And you built something so goddamn sexy. I mean, that thing is as far from a shitty little scooter with a governor on it. I mean, that that is like a world class vehicle that it just looks great and it has sick torque, right? I mean, like that thing is just it's amazing, right? So it's like you've been, you've really like created something definitely, world class and just, groundbreaking. But tell tell us how in podcast land about that sort of early, early days when you were trying to get this whole thing Yeah. Kick stuff off. Yeah.

Nathan Siy:

I like. You know what's super weird about China is like they, for some reason they don't have this like garage culture sort of thing. Like you take a look at what, like Harley Disney, all these, like, you see these memes and stuff where they all kind of started in this like, two by two sort of shack. And then, coming from like the West, that's also kind of how we start. Like we want to build it on our garage. We wanna make sure it kind of works and you got a little bit of space, but China doesn't. It's really weird. But like when we were first kicking off, I was actually renting a one by one, like literally one square meter by one square meter outside and okay, so it's not,

Rich Robinson:

rent something. That

Nathan Siy:

yeah, it was really weird.

Rich Robinson:

It's like mine.

Nathan Siy:

it like from another guy. I have never played man, but I like imagine like it was just not. Like, we just had the bike there. It was literally for storage and we would like kind of tinker around. The weird thing is though, but you know, I had to go around to like maybe 50 or 60 different shops and just ask them, can I rent a one square meter by one.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. And he'd be like, Hey, get back behind your line. Your toes over the line.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, exactly. It was like he sectioned it off. He put tape and everything. But the weird thing is Rich like he gave us a space, but he gave it to us. So when we first started this, Beijing, man it's, like negative ten.

Rich Robinson:

Freezing.

Nathan Siy:

it's, like negative 10.

Rich Robinson:

Or scorching.

Nathan Siy:

exactly. But it

Rich Robinson:

dusty or windy

Nathan Siy:

But it was covered. So it's this weird thing. It's outside, but it was covered, and I've never kind of seen this, but it was the closest thing to like a garage that I could find. Because they don't have these, like, you wanna rent a warehouse, it's like, 5,000 square feet, like, 500 square meters to start, but you want like a tiny ass warehouse. Nobody has that here, right? So it was really quite like that.

Rich Robinson:

Wow, so that, that's amazing. So a lot of like software companies start in the garage, but you are so like cost conscious that you should have started in a garage, but you're actually outside of a garage. So it's actually .Wow. I never heard that story either. That's a great origin story. You, you have a picture of that. When you come and you've graciously agreed to guest lecture at my picking university MBA class on entrepreneurship and that that's gotta, that's like the picture of

Nathan Siy:

Sure.

Rich Robinson:

sitting on his table with the spray paint at Amazon in the

Nathan Siy:

Oh, I love that photo. Yeah. I've seen that man. And that it totally kicks me back to like, when we first started, I remember I was actually like, I got, the picture that I have is me in this like super thick down jacket with gloves trying to like put a screw in and I've ever tried to like put a screw in with gloves. It's really difficult. So yeah, it's like, I

Rich Robinson:

Oh

Nathan Siy:

But yeah, it worked. It worked.

Rich Robinson:

That's terrific. And what year was that?

Nathan Siy:

Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

Rented that?

Nathan Siy:

That was probably 2000, 2011 or so. I can't remember specifically, but it was, I remember it was winter time because when we first kicked off I was like, I was already in quite a lot of gear. So yeah, winter of, I guess 2010 or 2011, but at that point it was still like tinkering around. I still had another startup at that time and kind of doing that like on the weekends, doing it at night time.

Rich Robinson:

Tell us about that.

Nathan Siy:

Education, straight up education. Like that year education was so hot, like English learning, trades learning, any sort of stuff that was related to like education. It was like, that was the place to be. So I was actually running that startup was really weird. I was doing language training, but that year or that, era, I was trying to push the limits and I did everything off of like a tablet. So back, well 10 years ago, nine years ago tablets were just kind of kicking off and everything. So I bought like hundreds of these super cheap tablets like Android 4.0 and it was really difficult, like the technical side of stuff. I set up my own little server. It could download off, from, directly from our server, from our content, but the touch screen was like resistive. It was really hard to like click on small icons. It was really poorly done, but at the end of the day, the company that bought my other company was in it just for the. So they didn't really care about the application and stuff. So I built out, over like two, three years hundreds of hours of video content, PTs, all for use on this tablet. So now I guess kind of moving forward it's, in hindsight you never know, right? You don't know, oh, is this gonna work? This is, it's tablets, the really the way you're gonna learn. But yeah, I guess nowadays it's all online. So I guess he's using the content for some good. But yeah, that, that kind of like kicked off the whole, like after I sold that I was able to like get a little bit of like seed cash and then start this full time. So for a period Maybe two, three years. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. The first couple years of r and d was really bootstrapping and like I said, trying to cut costs cause you know, like whatever you can save here is essentially your own money. So that's kind of what the whole like one by one meter start off was. It's just, Hey, I wanna pay a, just to try to test this out. Leave the bike there, work on it at nighttime.

Rich Robinson:

Wow. Fascinating. And then from there, how did you end up then more professionalizing the company and next milestones a long the way.

Nathan Siy:

We still had, yeah. We still had like, like the whole, like we, we say it's like a long rhythmic growth with this whole thing. Like I did start from a one by one, then we moved to a four by four, which was like literally it wasn't that much bigger, but we actually spent quite a lot of time there. We spent maybe a year and a half, and it was really interesting because we started off with like four square meters there and we actually invested in building a second roof second floor sort of, 'cause it was like a high ceiling warehouse. So we got four by four, but we ended up making that eight by eight sort of. So we did electronics and PCB design on the top, and then we did builds on the bottom. We had, I think most the most we have for crowded in, it was like six or seven builds that we were doing. So literally you were like wandering around bikes to go through it. So it was really weird. But yeah we got the build stub, surprisingly, in a decent amount of time.

Rich Robinson:

What about those frames? Like did you buy existing frames? Did you start to weld or like what were the...

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, so we actually started welding them. We took some, the first couple of prototypes we brought in and we kind of modified stuff, but then as we kind of built on, we're like, okay there's so much that we have to customize. We just gotta build it ourselves. So at that point we're able to just, it's welding and coming from like an automotive background, I got a lot of that stuff under my belt. So it was pretty easy in that sense. But again, China doesn't do that, which is really strange. You're like, you wanna buy. Like five frames, they're like five. That's nothing. This is China. Like where's you should buy 5,000? It's a huge problem with China where it's kind of like Texas. It's like, go big or go home. And they don't really I don't know, maybe in manufacturing I haven't really found this whole niche that kind of builds up organically. So, from my experience here, you either kind of raise investment and then buy 5,000, develop it, and then kind of go from there. Or you don't bother starting? I don't know, like that's just kind of my take on it.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah. Cause I guess down in gu, in Shenzhen and Guandong, like if you wanna do electronics manufacturing, then maybe they're like, okay, you know what? We'll prototype this with you and we'll spark it up. But yeah, I think that tinkering culture, like when I got to Beijing in 99, when I first moved there, splitting time between Hong Kong, there's 400,000 cars in the whole city, and most of them were owned by Dway, right? People didn't have individual cars. Right? So nobody ever grew up, like fixing cars like you needed to. Yeah, so I mean, they kind of think it as like low, right? industry. Yeah, indeed. Indeed.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. Like, oh, you're working on cars, you're fixing your own plumbing or something like that, or you're doing your own renovations like, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That's the whole thing. So I don't know, at least Beijing, coming from that circle, it's it's looked down upon. So a lot of people I feel, don't even start these things. They may have like, awesome ideas and they may not have, like, they don't wanna go a hundred percent into it, but like, how do you even tinker? How do you even it's a huge missing segmentation, I think in

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Fascinating. Yeah, and I think a lot of the scooter market got kind of dominated by Japanese players and maybe Taiwanese with bicycles and maybe some scooters as well too, so, so maybe, yeah. So it was actually pretty bold to just say, you know what? Kind of Elon Musk, like, I'm gonna say it, I said it again for the second time. Like where you're just like, I, at least you had some automobile experience. He didn't have, he didn't have any, but, just like, hey let's go rethink this whole thing. And you guys built that from complete scratch. It's really fascinating.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, it was like, like again, it's build it for yourself, right? Build it for yourself. And if you start flipping it there's a market. But yeah, I don't know. Actually, I don't know the story of how we started. I know he just invested into Tesla, but, yeah, I actually don't know too much about, before we PayPal, the tesla transition.

Rich Robinson:

Well, I think his idea was that, he the car the planet is going to, basically, implode from global warming. So, Solar City and Tesla, and then let's have an exit option. He's like, I wanna, he wants to die on Mars. Just not an impact, he said, right? So, but I mean, he really brought a lot of interesting new, you know. I watched a video with him recently and he's like, prototyping is actually fun. And manufacturing is brutal. And,

Nathan Siy:

Oh, totally.

Rich Robinson:

Cash flow positive is just absolutely nightmarish and harrowing.

Nathan Siy:

Totally agree with him, man. That is such a headache right now that we're like smack in the middle. I guess, you know what he was, whatever, five years ago he was saying in manufacturing hell like, that's what we're doing on a daily

Rich Robinson:

So let's get to that. Let's get to that in a minute. Like, tell us about some of the strategic investment you got in this kick ass warehouse that you're in now, and like your great team. What were the milestones along the way and

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, so, so we eventually scalled up here to what we're actually on a foxconn's Incubator lab right now. So it's the guys that, do you know the iPhones everything like that. They got a massive, this is one of their smallest facilities, I think in Beijing, but they have four phases. This one's like, I don't know, it's huge, man. They got like, I think, 5 to 10,000 people just on this phase. So it's pretty big. But they got four other phases in this Beijing area, and this is the smallest one that they got. So, yeah, I mean, Fox's been super helpful at us and really as Musk was saying, manufacturing hell sort of thing. They got this down. They are able to, they got such a good team. They got such good engineers that they can kind of pick and choose exactly, this battery pack, this sort of PCB what issues are you gonna face at a hundred thousand or like 50,000 units where at this point,

Rich Robinson:

Invaluable.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, like two, three years ago when we first kicked this off, doing like, a couple hundred, couple thousand we're like, yeah, we're not, we're not gonna get the 50,000 yet. But it's always good to keep those in mind. Learn as much as you can, 'cause eventually that is kind of our goal. And they are so good in terms of like what to look for in terms of, just the precision that they have when it comes to manufacturing. A lot of people think it's just, like you just stick stuff on a board. You kind of build it hand. Whatever, weld it together and you're good to go. But they got a really good analogy that kind of really stuck with me over the last couple of years. There's kind of milestones when it comes to manufacturing. I guess this kinda applies to other stuff, but they say it's what is it, one 10,000, a hundred thousand. So you only build on manufacturing to those numbers, anything below, and you're in a category. So you build one prototyping, right? Like super easy. You can take four, you can take three months, five months, whatever, to build a single prototype. You can't take that mindset or the manufacturing method or the thought process or the engineering into the next skill, which is only. So they say 10 is kind of like the next step up when you're building 10. You call it like, test mules prototypes sort of stuff. I guess one would be concept then, so then 10 would kind of be test mules and like you're getting on the road, you're giving it to customer feedback and they say the whole process then changes. The precision that you need, the accuracy, the stability, the manufacturing kind of consistency you need is completely different. And going through that, a couple years ago I totally understand it now, doing 10, you could still get away with like, C parts. You can do kind of additive manufacturing, no problem. But then you're thinking, six hours to print a part doing 10. Yeah, that's not bad. Like six hours times 10, that's only 60 hours. You can't take that to the next state's next step, which is a thousand. How are you gonna do 6,000 hours to make a part by additive manufacturing? It doesn't work anymore. So they kinda give us this one 10 we're not in a hundred thousand yet, but so we're still under the 1000. So we're in that sort of mind space and that sort of manufacturing methods. We've had to shift a lot of our processes to, like faster sort of manufacturing processes. We used to do a lot of additive for prototyping, and we actually started getting into like additive manufacturing also for some cosmetic panels and stuff like that. But even at, you know, 10 plus units, it doesn't make time sense anymore. The amount that you're spending 3D printing something, the amount that you're doing, it doesn't work from just vacuum forming it or it's not the consistency and speed you need. So they've been super helpful, man, and it's stuck with me one 10,000, a hundred thousand and hopefully we get to the a hundred thousand mark where we're gonna have to shift our mindset once of how to be able to produce stuff at a hundred thousand, quantity, batch or whatever. And, we'll be doing quite successfully. We'll be quite successful. But

Rich Robinson:

Love it. Yeah.

Nathan Siy:

that's the goal we wanna shift to that next phase, that next milestone.

Rich Robinson:

Great way to frame it. That's really super insightful.

Nathan Siy:

Oh, totally. Not my mindset, man, but yeah, they were super insightful when they were build to only the phase that you need for manufacturing. Because at the next phase, the next jump, everything change.

Rich Robinson:

Love it. And how did you connect up with Foxcon? I mean, they're just a behemoth of a company.

Nathan Siy:

They are man, they're such a massive company. And it was such a like, Chinese, like they got this word that just like infant, it's like destiny. It's like, I don't know, fate. Yeah. Sort of fate I guess is the easiest translation. We were back in our previous facility, so I'm saying like we kind of scaled up on long scales. So we were at a different warehouse that we had. It's about 200, 300 square meters, about 2000 square feet. And it's on a golf course, well, it's like right next to a golf course. So it was this beautiful kind of like rustic warehouse that was just sitting right next to one of our investors actually owns the golf course. So he kind of gave us that space and just one day. Like these two people just kind of knocked on our door and they were like, "Hey, we're from Foxcon, Beijing, we'd like to talk to you about doing some new energy vehicle stuff." And at that point in time, like it was like, it's super random. Who does that? Who walks up to your door? Who finds you first on the internet? And then finds out you're in the same city, walks up to your door without a call or an email and just, from one of the largest, contract manufacturing companies in the world, and just kind of knocks on it and says like, Hey, you wanna do something? So, honestly, we actually signed the door, like it wasn't me, but it was somebody else, one of our other employees, and just like, they didn't believe it. So they just oh, the, Nathan's not here right now. Yeah. Like, the boss isn't here right now. Go away. Go away. Like that was it. So when he came back, he actually said, oh yeah, there's a couple people looking for you from Foxcon. I was like it doesn't, that sounds kind of scammy. So I said, fuck it as well. So I don't know. But again, two days later, like clockwork, two days later they came back and at that point they gave us, I guess, yeah, I don't know if they gave my employee the A card at that time, but, I was the one that, that kind of answered the door. Cause they were like, oh, these guys are back. They gave me a card that actually was like Foxcon Precision Manufacture. And I was like, holy shit, these guys really are like from Foxcom, Beijing. So yeah, then I kind of sat down. We had an actual sort of official meeting and everything like that. We came down to the facility to talk more, but it was super random, super like fatty I guess in that sense. But never thought to look out for them, never even thought of like doing this whole contract manufacturing process. But kind of going through it in hindsight, there's no way we would've been able to scale not being in China, not working with contract manufacturers like Foxcon, like some of the other guys. So, like a double head sore, right?

Rich Robinson:

don't have the Yeah. That's crazy. Sure.

Nathan Siy:

the assets, but like you have the ability to scale quickly,

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. And I think there's gonna be, I think that's a much more positive trend where, okay, I'm a startup. I don't have many resources and I don't have any users and, I don't have any reputation, right? But you know, I'm a large organization, tons of resources, tons of users and all this reputation and brands, right? But as a large player, I'm not so nimble. I'm not so good at innovating and I can't necessarily move, quite as fast. But then you're like, well, wait a second. We're nimble and innovative and we move really quickly, right? So it's like if you could really lock that together, and I think in China you can really see, like I had a startup doing mobile gaming, and we got approached by Alibaba. And Alibaba and Tencent, are like very prolific investors and acquirers, right? So they have these teams and the teams are like, right, you gotta go out, you gotta mandate, you gotta, scout these things out. And I think probably, Foxconn is seeing that too. They're like, oh wow, hardware is being democratized. Let's pick electric mobility. Who's doing something kick ass in that space? And because you are so bold and pioneering it, right? I mean, like it's pretty unusual for a non like local Chinese person to be able to really, do well, in that kind of space, right? But you were kind of ignored, like you said, right? Like that space was like not really as crowded because you were zagging when everybody else was zigging, right? And they were like, they show up at your, they show up at your door, right? Which I think is part of like the whole China speed thing where, there's so much competition and these large players are so kind of like paranoid and even also opportunistic that they're driving and moving ahead because they're like, we're gonna get disrupted. Well, why don't we go and invest in these companies and help them to grow and then we can do the manufacturing for them, and then we're gonna win, right? So

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, no, true man. It's really synergistic. It really is. I mean, they have so much like unused space, unused resources, people, machinery, facilities. It just makes sense that a lot of us are kind of starting up with slower quantities, but they want to see these customers. They call 'em customers. Like they call us a customer even though we haven't given them any money. But like, I mean, my feeling is that they feel as we grow, we're gonna be a huge contract player to them. Like they could just, we could just dish off hundreds of thousands of bikes in the future and it's win-win for everybody. So, yeah, I mean I don't know about their mandate. I've never actually asked them, but what you say is probably pretty accurate. When it comes to like, they're set out to like, find these innovative companies, bring them into the whole like supply chain sort of thing and then kind of give 'em a taste. That's essentially what it is. Like give 'em a taste of what we could do. And then as we kind of grow bigger, of course we're gonna be dishing off all of our manufacturing to them like we already are. So, yeah, I think totally win-win for everybody.

Rich Robinson:

Love it and tell me, like, it's now been about a decade and I did some hashing, I dunno if you've done that before, like hash House Harriers, where you go, they call themselves drinkers with a running problem. And so the way that it works is that it's a whole group of people. It's very social running, but people have all these different levels of skills. And what they do is they have a like a rabbit, a hair who goes out and they put all of these false paths when you're running because you're out, usually like in the mountains or the woods or something. So, all the faster people run and then they get led to the wrong, a dead end, and then they're like, oh, I have to turn back. And then they turn back. And if there's other people already running down the path, they're like no, this is the wrong one. We have to turn back, right? So then people find, that's how everybody ends up at the destination, kind of at the same time, right? And then, everybody drinks, right? But it's kind of like entrepreneurship where you're like, I gotta get on this path. I have male ju right? Is this gonna I have to go down this path. And I went down there and like, all right, that was actually a really big waste of time. But now I know that's not the way to go, right? Sometimes you go there and you're like, okay, wow, I learned something, but now I have to come back and like, what are some of your dead ends or something where if you go back to 2011 and you're like, okay, listen, I know it's weird that I'm from the future. I got two things to say to you. Pandemic and doge coin, but also

Nathan Siy:

that, yeah. Super deep question, man. We might have to come back to that one. I gotta put a little bit of time into that just to think, but like, I don't see it as mistakes, in terms of like, would I go back and tell myself, don't do it. Like, then how would that kind of mess stuff up along the pathway of learning? Then now we're getting a trip into like, the whole time travel thing. But like, I'm just saying like, if you actually went and said, don't do that, and how would you end up, I have no idea, but like everything's been... I'm not gonna say like, good, obviously there's been a lot of learning, there's been a lot of like, kind of mistakes made, but I think all those mistakes are super critical to like where we've ended up, but whether it's to like how to work with people. I think, okay, I got a good one because I think this is a huge area that I'm trying to like, kinda work on myself. In terms of like stress management, again, you tell somebody this, it's, I don't know if it's gonna actually help them. I go back 10 years ago and say, Hey dude, let be less controlling and manage your stress. Like, what's that gonna do? But yeah, I've been kind, I've been trying to work on that myself a lot. Like we've had quite a lot of employees and a lot of like just team members here. Where it's crunch time, I kind of get super, like, stressed out and then I start taking it out on them. Where it's like, Hey man, you're supposed to be reading my mind. Where's that report that I needed? How are we doing for like parts and inventory this month? I mean, I wouldn't even say that. I wouldn't go back to the future and tell myself that. I just kind of wanna work on that myself on a daily basis. Like, how can I try to manage that? How can I frame myself and other people's perspective and kind of understand it? Cause I think it'll, I mean, I hope it's gonna make me a better manager, a better team member in the future.

Rich Robinson:

I love that.

Nathan Siy:

I guess, I know it doesn't really answer your question, but

Rich Robinson:

no. That's great. That's great. And I have to rethink that question anyway, because that's that is kind of silly. The whole, butterfly flaps its wings and maybe you bump into it when you show up

Nathan Siy:

You

Rich Robinson:

and you're And then it causes, a different pandemic to happen because of that. Who knows, right?

Nathan Siy:

Think that's what, it's the butterfly.

Rich Robinson:

That's right. That's right. Exactly. Indeed. Indeed. But you know that, that's a terrific point and I think, that's a book that I intend to write in the future about the mindset of entrepreneurship, right? And really get and thanks for sharing, right? Because, we're not the best version of ourselves. As entrepreneurs all the time, 'cause there is so much stress and it is your baby, and it's like, and then it's easy to snap at people and it's easy to just be counterproductive because, you just want

Nathan Siy:

to win. Totally.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah.

Nathan Siy:

I mean, what, yeah, what do you do in that situation, man? Because sometimes we got so much stuff going on, Manufacturing r and d, you got sales, you got investment, all kind of creeping up on you, right behind you. Like how do you handle that?

Rich Robinson:

Well, I think there's two interesting things. I had Victor Ku, the founder of Yoku as a guest lecturer at our MBA class. And when they really were like, they're losing money in every video that they're serving, right? Because the content delivery network, their CDN is so expensive, right? And competition is high, and they're running out of cash, and he's just getting kind of stressed and he's unable to really even think clearly and he's staying up late. And then he had a mentor who was a very successful entrepreneur and he's like, no, he's like, When you feel that, then you need to like be decisive, but you have to give yourself the best opportunity to decide well, so what that means is at least seven hours of sleep, maybe eight hours of sleep, like even sleep extra. And think about it before you go to sleep, let your subconscious do some of the work. Wake up and don't do anything. Don't check your phone. Don't go to the bathroom, drink glass of water, but then think. And like, maybe let the dirt or the silt go to the bottom of the river, and then you'll see something. You never have enough information, but you'll have a clearer picture and then decide, and then go on with it, right? Because otherwise, if you're staying up late and you're stressing out, then you have like less patience and you're moodier and you're not thinking is clearly, right? So, that's one thing. And then, I just think meditation is something that's super,

Nathan Siy:

That. Yeah, definitely. I think that's a good suggestion too. But you know what's interesting? You said like, yeah, you said a key word there, which is moody. I think that's just a, I don't know the negative way of saying emotional, and I think that's like the whole double edged sword. It's like, yes, you are passionate about this. Yes, you do wanna succeed. You wanna see this, through and that kind of moodiness slash like emotionalness, is that a word? I don't know. But yeah, like that. That's definitely what kind of gets me. Like, Hey, we want to get this out to, we wanna get this out to our customers. Where the fuck is our inventory? Right? Like, that's kind of like how it is, and then it kind of builds up. But then, when you take a look from the flip side, you're like, yeah, dude, like that guy couldn't have under that guy, couldn't have read my mind. It's like, at that point in time, I want like the whole inventory list and find out where we are. Like, yeah, I Understand that, but it's tough to stop yourself. At least for me, like, yeah, like 10, 10

Rich Robinson:

it's tough for everybody.

Nathan Siy:

I shouldn't have. But like, 10 seconds prior, you're just, it's just kind of coming out like, I don't know.

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. So I actually, I think that's why, meditation for me, like that's something transcendental meditation is, an absolute superpower. Like it's something where, you're really investing in, I think of it as kind of like you're in this gnarled medieval forest and you take kind of this si and you clear out an area and it's got some nice grass and sunlight and maybe an old log and you can like sit inside there and then just be like, okay, I got the sun shining on me and like, I have some space.'Cause otherwise you're just like, Fuck this forest, and you're just like, kind of like battling it and you're in like the dark and like, you need, to clear it, clear that out and invest in it, because there's two battles that you're fighting, right? The battle is like, oh, I'm battling out there in against the market, against competitors, against whatever, external forces, right? Innovation and like, but then there's the other battle between your ear holes, right? And like that battle is something that people usually don't give themselves enough space and support and invest in that. And I think, it's really, I think, brave of you to even admit, right? That like, that's a shortcoming because everybody has it, but people rarely talk about us, right?

Nathan Siy:

Do you have any of my employee, any of the team here, they're like, yeah, dude, that guy's got, like when he is stressed out, he's got like a super to fuse. But like what do you do as you're hacking through the floors? When you hit that kind of like limit, do you then just start chopping down trees, make that zen section for you? Or do you do it kind of like before you set out.

Rich Robinson:

No, but I mean, I think me like meditating allows you to like step out of the forest and go into that clearing and just be like, because actually a fascinating thing that I learned 'cause I grew up in Boston. And I, and like, especially that bitter soil of Boston is like, everything's okay. Then like you are over the line, right? And it's like that challenge, right? And just like, go fuck yourself or whatever. Right? Well, no. No. Well, no. Maybe sure. No, but I think Boston has an even extra, like maybe you could go to California or you'd meet people from like the south or even, I think Canadians are pretty polite, right? I'm not, I'm just saying like, I think Boston,

Nathan Siy:

Polite. Until you hit that like limit, you're you knowing I get everybody

Rich Robinson:

But sure, everybody does have a limit, but then you can really reset that governor like where you can, where you want to be. And I did a seven day silent meditation co 10 day silent meditation course with my wife and it's called Vipassana and somebody who had done it previously, I was like, can you summarize it? He's like, I can summarize it in two.

Nathan Siy:

What is it?

Rich Robinson:

Appropriate response. He's like, that's what that gave me was the appropriate response. So this is what I learned from doing that 10 day silent meditation retreat and doing about almost eight years now of transcendental meditation, is that there's stimulus, there's emotion, and then usually I have response, right? And you can't control the stimulus. Stimulus is gonna happen. You can't control the emotion. The emotion is literally hardwired. It's like part of your firmware in there, right? You can't control your emotions. You're going to feel fear, anger, anxiety, excitement, whatever, like those emotions happen to you before you even register them consciously, right? Your body reacts to it. And that's what FAPAs is all about, is like just being hyper aware of what's happening in your body. Like, oh heart rate increasing, and my skin is starting to feel prickly and like, oh, I'm like sweating, or my temperature's changing and I'm breathing differently, and it's like, oh, I'm feeling, anger, which is like the public face of fear or whatever, right? And you can't do anything about that. But what happens is you can choose. So it's stimulus, emotion, space, and then response. So it's like, that's why I think of like that's what meditation does. It allows me to be like, oh fuck, are you kidding me? You don't even know what I'm doing. But then you can, like, it gives you to like, then choose what, how you want to react, right? So

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, it's interesting way of putting it, but I've always been kind of like on the whole on of like controlling your emotions. Everybody's talking about like, Hey, you gotta, as a manager, as a leader, you gotta control your emotions. What you're saying is you got no choice with that, but you can control the response, which, yeah, it kind of makes sense. You don't think there's any way to control the emotions? Like really, at some point in time, do you just wanna like pass off the fear? Do you wanna just pass off, the uncertainty, like is there a way to just turn that off? You see, that'd be the magical kind of like pill for

Rich Robinson:

I don't think so. There isn't, right? There is no, like, I think you're hardwired, some people are hardwired to feel more fear or feel more anxiety and I don't think there's really much that can be done about that. I do think that you have to offset it with sleep, diet, exercise, meditation, journaling, time with friends. Journaling is a superpower as well too, because journaling is something where I take all the butterflies fluttering on in my head and I pinned them down on paper. I write for two pages of like, oh my God, I'm worried about my son doing his remote learning because it's not working out for him, right? Or I really have, stress about this new venture that I'm launching because, I don't have the product market fit yet or whatever, right? And just writing about it and like consciously focusing on, like that's something that can make it. And then I think, the last thing I'll say is that, I think in the non-stress situations, it's really good to kind of, outsource your stress. Like, when things are not. In an emergency mode, like make some sort of artificial kind of emergencies or pressure with your staff, and allow them to feel that and kind of, become anti-fragile and make mistakes. And then, and so then because oftentimes it's like, it's only when it's an emergency and only now, and then you can't, you have no room to make a mistake. And then it's like, then let's all back off and then like, okay, three months later, like, all right now. And then they're just like, well, shit. Like I still haven't worked on that, right? So it's almost your job, just like, there's no bad pets, there's only bad owners, right? And there's no bad employees. There's only a bad, manager leader, right? And like, And it's really tough to like create that environment where they're becoming antifragile along the way because it's a lot of extra work. But then in the future, then that culture is created and my favorite definition of culture is that it's what people do when you're not there, right?

Nathan Siy:

Makes sense. Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

Then when you start going from a thousand to a hundred thousand, then it's able to like, kind of be a flywheel.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. True Scaling,

Rich Robinson:

Yeah.

Nathan Siy:

not there. Yeah, totally,

Rich Robinson:

Yeah. But yeah, so, anyway I enjoy talking about that, but that's another podcast and another book. I think that whole, like all that stuff between your ear holes as an entrepreneur, like that's like so

Nathan Siy:

It's a good mesh man. Yeah, exactly.

Rich Robinson:

a important thing. Right.

Nathan Siy:

It is, man. Like how do you get, how do you make people better, entrepreneurs, it's all about like, well either controlling your emotions or controlling your response. One of those two, figure out how to do either one. And I think everything will flow a lot. There's been tons of times where there's just arguments and like just pure, like straight up, almost fighting based off of either a bad response or like, Hey, you know what, 10 seconds ago, I probably shouldn't have said that, but hell, I'm neck deep into it already. Just continue to fight, Like, I don't know if that's ever happened to you, but yeah, like that happens all the time with us and we don't even, yeah, we don't mean to, it's like we're all on the same page. We know we're on the same page. We want to get these builds out. We want to, finish off this project but yet we're still yelling at each other like, I don't know. Doesn't make sense, but yeah, it happens all the

Rich Robinson:

No, It's very common. Right? It's very common. And then, read

Nathan Siy:

that book, man. When you get that book out, I'll send

Rich Robinson:

Okay.

Nathan Siy:

and then I'll through

Rich Robinson:

Excellent. Excellent. I'll bring you back on that podcast. I already know the name of it. It's called Impost Entrepreneur because there's like also 'cause everybody's got imposter syndrome anyway, right? And then if you're doing something that's never been done before, like make a fucking kick ass electric motorcycle in China. Like, then you're like, I don't, can this even be done? Am I the right one to take it to the next level? Like, oh my God. There's another part. It's like there's, of course, you're riddled with fear, uncertainty, and doubt.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

decided to do something that's so incredibly unknowable and risky and difficult that you're supposed to feel that way. Right?

Nathan Siy:

Yeah, I

Rich Robinson:

and like,

Nathan Siy:

neck deep thing. We're kind of neck deep into it already, so it's really hard to backwards or different direction or what.

Rich Robinson:

Of course. Yeah. I mean, the vibe I got in the factory when I was there is that it's, you the can do optimism and everything's possible, and everybody's so geeked out and into what you do, that's, of course, necessary to be able to drive.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. Like, I guess we're both, north American in that sense, so like mindset and, everything's kinda lined up, but man, coming out to China, it's like a whole different ballgame. Like you're dealing with every sort of different culture out there and on the planet. They all somehow find each other based on the project. So like, I'm working with like people from po Okay, cool. So anyways, yeah, we'll continue on. But like, yeah, I mean, working with like people from Europe and they've got such an interesting sort of like culture to the whole thing. Like they're super relaxed when it comes to, I guess comparatively to, from like North America. Like I don't know about you, like your experience here in China, but like talking to them, it's like, oh, I'm taking t he weekend off as an entrepreneur, like when do you ever take a weekend off? So like there's times that I'll just message him on like Saturday morning and then I won't get a response for like 48 hours. Which is like, it's insane when it comes to like, number one, entrepreneurship, number two, like north Americans. Yeah, I don't know if that's your take as well, but like, anytime, like 15 years ago, 20 years ago, back in Canada, you text somebody, like they should text you back within a couple of like hours. I don't know, like leaving it two straight days. That's crazy. And that happened like a lot of time and apparently it's like super normal. It's like, Hey, we don't work weekends or like, five o'clock, some of our dealers and distributors. We've actually had that exact same issue where it's like the time difference. Obviously, we're facing like European time and China time, but there's times that I'm running through like a technical call or I'm helping, one of our teammates run through a technical call and they're like, okay, so this, you disassemble this section, take a couple screws out, and then what you wanna do is you wanna unplug this. And he is like, oh, hold on. It's like five o'clock here. And I'm like, okay. And he is like, well, I'm gonna go home. I'm like, we're in the middle of like, yeah, we're like disassembling half your mic. And he is like, yeah, no problem. No problem. We'll pick it up tomorrow. And I'm like, how do you just leave? A bike, like half disassembled, like it's a customer's bike. Like, is he not gonna care? Is he not gonna like, want it done quickly? But he's like, no, that, that's how you do it in Europe. Like five o'clock on the dot, I'm clocked out, I'm going home. Like, that's it. And it's such a weird thing like these guys are. They're also running their business. It's like a small business to them. And if they're just, if they're super relaxed about it, I don't know how they're, they come across their customers, but apparently that's the norm. So it's been a big shift. Kinda like, reshifting from like the 99 6 here in China. Then you got the entrepreneur stuff, generally a worldwide that we're all kind of go. And then you got North Americans. I think we're kind of in the middle where they're accessible at any point in time, but they may not be working. And then you got Europeans who are just like, oh, totally taking the time off. So it's learning to manage that, learning to work with them and yeah, it's been interesting. It's a very broad range that we have to deal with.

Rich Robinson:

Fascinating. Yeah. And I think that's part of the purpose of the book is that okay, maybe you don't want to be in China. Maybe you don't actually even want to do any sort of manufacturing in China, but Chinese companies are now starting to be much more aggressive going global and they're gonna be competing with you, right? And like, that's the kind of new normal in a way. Every, the clock speed

Nathan Siy:

Yep.

Rich Robinson:

gonna be different. And you need to learn some of the tactics and, approaches around that to be able to remain competitive.

Nathan Siy:

I mean, even people coming into her trying to do business with China, it's just something that I think will be a whole shift, like especially with a whole new norm where everything, online base, everything is like video conference. Like, we have meetings all the time now, like 12 o'clock midnight, one o'clock in the morning talking to like, West East Coast N orth America. That's the norm, I think. Whether you're in entrepreneurship or not. Yeah. I mean, for better or worse, right? Like it's, yeah, It's connected now, right? Everybody's gone through this whole COVID thing. Everybody knows they're now connected with a device. Like, why couldn't you get ahold of somebody, right? So, I don't know. I don't know if it's a good thing. Maybe it's gonna like, maybe it's gonna crash the world or something. Like everybody is just so hyper connected that there's no privacy anymore. I don't know. But I'm just saying that's kind of how it is in China and that's kinda like the expectation. A lot of our suppliers and customers have, like, you can call up China anytime, any, of the day and then 9 outta 10,

Rich Robinson:

Into the response.

Nathan Siy:

Yeah. exactly. Yeah.

Rich Robinson:

Indeed, Nathan. Wow. Thanks so much for your time. It was really wonderful to catch up a bit, my friend. Maybe the Olympics. I took my oldest boy to the Olympics in'08 for the opening ceremony, and I would love to be able to do that if we can get back, for the Winter Olympics. But I'll be back and forth a lot in the future teaching and, the businesses that I have up there that I'm involved with. So I think that's a new normal and I'm gonna be a lot more about China and kind of channel learnings from China to the rest of Southeast Asia and the world.

Nathan Siy:

To the book, man. Yeah, send over It's all done and done.

Rich Robinson:

Will do. All right,

Nathan Siy:

right.

Rich Robinson:

All the

Nathan Siy:

Awesome.

Rich Robinson:

To be continued.

Nathan Siy:

For sure, man. We'll catch up another time. Okay? Grab beer next time you're in town.

Rich Robinson:

Great. Thanks.

Nathan Siy:

Okay. See ya.

Rich Robinson:

Deal.