Joseph Constanty on how Niu is establishing itself as a leader in the EV space

Joseph Constanty is the Global Strategy and Corporate Development Director at Niu, the largest smart-mobility firm in the world - leading the change to EV transportation. Joe is also the Co-Founder of NextStep Studio, UT.Lab, and Tangential Consulting.

In this episode, Joe Constanty talks about his interest in Southeast Asian countries and how he got to China. He also shared his story of how he went from working at a consulting business to launching a startup studio, a shoe brand, and an EV manufacturing firm.

Key Takeaways:
•Lab was the first business that Token and Joe founded together.
•NextStep started as an event for entrepreneurs in Shanghai before it became an accelerator for F&B in China.
•Niu started as sketches in 2014 and was founded in 2015.
•Niu is the top player in electric mopeds in China.
•Urban transportation is a bit broken globally.
•China is the breeding ground for the future of mobility devices.
•It's difficult to get a plate in China, but EVs get green plates.
•Asian and Chinese people were extremely entrepreneurial and hardworking.
•Circa 2010–2012, there was a proliferation of entrepreneurialism in China at a super rapid rate.
•In China, the birth of unicorn entrepreneurs occurred between 2011 and 2012.
•Beijing is the Silicon Valley of China.

Best Moments:

•Joe shares that he has had a hard time telling his mom about his profession.
oYeah, I'm really, to me it's a joke and I had to tell my mom, at different times, like at one point I was a miniature golf salesman. Next, I was selling flashcards, then I was selling coupons, then I was selling shoes, and now I'm selling scooters to the world. So it's... you have to have a bit of humility. [00:10:33.1-00:10:52.5]

•  Joe explains to Rich that Niu is the baby of Tesla and Vespa.
oYeah, I think the best way to think about what we make right now, we started with an electric scooter, or some people know it as a "moped." The best way to understand what we do is imagine if Tesla and Vespa had a baby, that would be us. [00:14:51.6-00:15:05.4]

•Rich shares a great lesson with listeners.
oSo, lessons for you out in podcast land. Don't listen to people when they tell you not to ask, because I couldn't tell them not to ask a question once he's already in there. So, good for him. [00:20:22.5-00:20:30.5]

•  Rich explains that it's a Chinese curse that it keeps blowing up everywhere.
oSort of, peace and pulse for better or worse. I mean, I had one guest on, in the EdTech space and he was saying, "A company like Duo Lingo, which went public recently. Like they had so much time to fully bake themselves into what they were. In some ways, it's a curse in China. Like, it's like, here, take this money now run," And it's just like, "What? What am I supposed to do?""Shut up and run."Right? And it's just like, what? And just there's things blowing up all over the place, right? [00:27:30.4-00:27:57.5]

•  Rich shares that a scooter is a minivan in Bali.
oActually, a scooter here in Bali is a minivan. As well too, you can transport five and all the pets and pets three weeks worth of groceries on one scooter, on a 125 cc scooter. So that's one thing I learned through. [00:40:52.8-00:41:05.9]


Post-production, transcript, and show notes by XCD Virtual Assistants

Transcript

[00:00:00] Rich Robinson: And Showtime. So as we were just discussing before I roll them, Joseph. This software, Riverside, auto-magically sows things together in the cloud and you were like, 

"Auto-magically?"

I'm co-opting that in the same way that I co-opted it and it's gonna help me to describe China in the way that a lot of the things happen auto-magically in the magical middle kingdom.

So, hey, welcome to the pod. I really, really appreciate you taking the time.

[00:02:13] Joe Constanty: And Rich, thanks for having me. Really appreciate for you reaching out. And happy to chat a little bit and give some background on what I've been up to in China and where I see things going as well.

[00:02:22] Rich Robinson: Great. Yeah. Just to start off real quick, just for those of you out in podcast land that don't know who Joseph is, just give him a little overview please, of what you're working on now and who you are.

[00:02:34] Joe Constanty: Yeah, sure. Well, I've spent the past 20 years, actually up until 2020, living in China in some format, whether it was with university, studying Mandarin, starting my own companies and most recently, over the past five, six years working with a really cool mobility company called "Niu," where we make electric mopeds.

And I've been responsible for bringing the company outside of China, expansion into Europe, in the Americas, and elsewhere. So it's been quite a ride. If I look back all the way to the year 2000, when I first got off a plane in Beijing to where I am now. And actually for the past two years, I've been living in Dubai.

So, kind of running our international project from here because we have a dislocated team in China, Europe, America, and elsewhere. So actually, Dubai, sitting in the Middle East is, it's quite convenient with managing different time zones and everything like that. And the weather. The weather's always beautiful.

[00:03:26] Rich Robinson: Indeed. Yeah, the weather and Dubai is a dynamic, fascinating place. I went there in '07 for the first time. I'll say that Dubai right now is a lot like Shanghai in 2005.

Hey, so I love you, you know, making the parallels, because I think that's a really interesting thing to do to help frame things about like where, you know. 

"The futurist year is just not evenly distributed,"

as Philip K. Dick famously said. And let's talk about the past, where we talk about the future. And like tell us about your origin story and your path to 2000.

[00:03:57] Joe Constanty: Ooh. Yeah. Starting back in 2000, I was just...

[00:04:01] Rich Robinson: Or leading up to 2000. I want to go like from zero to 2000 as it were. It's like,"Where'd you grow up?"

And like,

"How'd you end up in China bitten by thatradioactive?

Actually ending up in China. Yeah. I'll try my best to make this a quick story. So I grew up in the Philadelphia area, went to university. At the University of Pittsburgh, and it was because of the University of Pittsburgh that I ended up in China. So I was actually really interested in Southeast Asia while studying as an undergrad early on in 1998, 1999.

[00:04:27] Joe Constanty: And I wanted to go to Indonesia and Vietnam, where I thought really the future was gonna happen in Southeast Asia is now coming up to where it is. Unfortunately, there was no programs to go to Southeast Asia, but there was the China.

[00:04:39] Rich Robinson: Can we stop there though? Like, why Southeast Asia in the '90s? That was like, Ithink of it then. I'm here now in Bali, and I can feel it. And it's like Shanghai or Beijing, a long time ago, but what made you put that on your radar then? It's kind of interesting.

[00:04:51] Joe Constanty: I was fascinated by the multiplicity of governments throughout Southeast Asia. So you had communist Vietnam, you had some kind of democracy in Indonesia, Malaysia, a kingdom slash democracy in Thailand. And I was just fascinated by how small little part of the world was so diverse, and it had also been a powerhouse centuries before. And so, it had gone through a rise a fall and now it was kind of just, in turmoil of sorts, but it was on an upper trajectory. And so that's why I was interested in it. And I was like, it's a weird part of the world that no one's really paying attention to.

" Let me pay attention to it."

 But unfortunately, there was no no real good programs for university students at that time to get intoSoutheast Asia.

[00:05:33] Joe Constanty: Anyway, long story short, the University of Pittsburgh was a forward-thinking university back in the '90s, and actually had set up programs in China already. And we were part of like the guinea pig students to go there in the year 2000. And ended up at Beijing University in the summer of 2000 and just had a magical time.

And when I was there I saw... I remember being there and seeing the development happening right then and there I was like, 

"Wow, no one is talking about China."

At that time, China was a passing story in the New York Times or CNN.

[00:06:05] Rich Robinson: It was pre-WTO, it was like, no. 

[00:06:08] Joe Constanty: All of that. And they were already building all the ring roads.

Yeah. And long story short was I saw so many different opportunities as I was just as a student going around the city, seeing things that I had already lived in the future in the United States and come to China. I was like, 

"Wow, let's bring some of the future over here."

And that's kind of how the whole China fascination and project for me started. And yeah, I graduated university, took a job in the United States for about a year and realized that living in the US at that point in time, this is post 9/11, this is post dot-com boom.

And I'm like, 

"This is just not the place for me. Let's go to China where things are really happening."

And I decided to move to Greater China. So I moved to Taiwan to go study Mandarin. I figured learning the language be helpful, and shortly after that I jumped into Shanghai and started working at a law firm. And from that law firm, I developed my own consulting firm. And from that consulting firm started using it as like a startup studio back in 2005, we started a miniature golf course. We started online education for overseas. We started probably the coolest project, which is actually still around, which is called 

"NextStep,"

which started as an event for entrepreneurs in Shanghai because there are nothing had existed at that point. And we had a very simple tagline, which was,

"Entrepreneurs wanted."

We didn't think much of it at the time, because we didn't think the community was that large. But we had a following with... by the end of the first year, we had about 20,000 people offline.

 And NextStep continues on today, as a formal startup studio. Yep. And Greg Prudhommeaux is working on that, and I sit as a silent advisor and he's at a whole team and is really sitting at the intersection of technology and F&B. And so that's an awesome project that has gates back all the way to 2007.

And then, I went and decided to start a group buying coupon, "Groupon" copycat.

[00:08:02] Rich Robinson: You and 7,000 other companies.

[00:08:04] Joe Constanty: Yeah, it was a really great idea.

[00:08:06] Rich Robinson: I've been there. I've been there. No, no, no judgment.

[00:08:09] Joe Constanty: And yeah, and we started at it. We raised a bunch of money and lost a bunch of money. You know, We were competing against Meituan and DMing and Wootuan and all those at the time. So that was a rise in fall within two years.

Very interesting time in my life for sure. And after that I took kind of a seat back and really wanted to take a broader perspective on what I was doing in China that,

"I wanna stay, I wanna leave."

And so this is like circa 2012, and that's when I decide, I met a guy named "Token," who went on to become the founder of Niu, the company I'm now working for and running overseas. I met Token, and he and I decided to start a shoe company together and with one other guy named Sean. And we launched it on Kickstarter. It did wildly well. And for the next few years, we were selling shoes around the world.

I learned everything about sourcing, manufacturing of footwear distribution models around the world. We were selling in 60, 70 countries within like a year. It was pretty nuts but also...

 Talking about zagging, where the people are zigging, like you're going into like hardcore old school manufacturing, but everybody's gotta buy shoes. Like, how did that come about? You 

[00:09:12] Joe Constanty: yeah, 

[00:09:12] Rich Robinson: back a little bit. Like, what was the angle?

Like, why shoes? And like, what did you guys do differently to be able to like carve out this niche?

[00:09:19] Joe Constanty: There's two stories to "why shoes?"

Why I got in the shoes. 

So Token, had already come up with a handful of designs that he was already beginning to sell in China, and I came upon him through, he used to work at Frog Design and Microsoft, but I came upon him. I got introduced to him by his former manager at Frog Design, and he's like, 

"See if you can help this guy take his brand overseas."

I was like, 

"Alright, I'll give it a whirl."

And we sat down. Honestly, we just hit it off. The first meeting we went on was supposed to be a coffee for 30 minutes and went on for hours. At that time I was fascinated with Kickstarter, and CrowdFunding. And I was looking to understand Kickstarter a little bit better, and I wanted to start with a simple product.

Yeah, and it really started as an experiment that became a brand that became something larger. And that's why I got started in shoes and we were working with really cool materials like tyvec and cutting edge, like, microfibers and stuff like that. And so it was kind of bridging this gap between old school business and kind of this new school techy type of clientele and the millennial customer that was looking for something that was a bit different and also had a larger mission, as a part of the business.

[00:10:28] Rich Robinson: So you're also doing like smaller batches, like kind of taking advantage of newer technology.

And then, taking advantage of e-commerce and then new materials. And so that's usually like what Sequoia says, it's like, 

 "Not why, or if it's something's gonna work is why now?"

Right?

So all those things converging together and you're like,

"Wow, this is actually... let's reinvent a really solid category that makes a lot of money already,"

right?

And look at a great parallel, you look at the company "Allbirds," and what they pulled off, right? So they launched. They launched shortly after us on Kickstarter. And to be honest with you, our Kickstarter did much better than theirs. But what they did better than us was they were closer to the venture capital, investment, and the customer - the end customer.

[00:11:10] Rich Robinson: That that became like the uniform for Silicon Valley kind of, right? Patagonia vest and like, 

"Oh, you're Allbirds shoes, right? So, Yeah.

[00:11:18] Joe Constanty: And they really hit it out park, honestly. We were trying to aim to that same type of customer and they just owned it, and literally took it to where it is today. They just went IPO, right? So there is merit in where we were. I think our execution was inferior to their execution.

 And so by 2016, we had raised a bunch of money for that, but at the same time, my interest in footwear and where that space was going, for me personally, just wasn't there. And Token had already left two years before to go start "NIU." So this electric moped, electric motorcycle company started as a sketch in the spring of 2014, in the offices of our footwear company. And then, by 2015, Token and some of their other founders were talking to me. They're like, 

[00:12:04] Joe Constanty: "Hey, do you wanna look at what we're doing here at NIU?"

And I said,

"I'll give it a look."

And a couple months later, I was on the teamand starting interna-, made a huge pivot. Went from... 

[00:12:12] Rich Robinson: Whole nother category. You're just like, I love it.

[00:12:16] Joe Constanty: Yeah, I'm really, to me it's a joke and I had to tell my mom, at different times, like at one point I was a miniature golf salesman. Next, I was selling flashcards, then I was selling coupons, then I was selling shoes, and now I'm selling scooters to the world. So it's... you have to have a bit of humility.

[00:12:35] Rich Robinson: It's tough enough for moms to even keep up with what their kids do, right? My mom still couldn't succinctly describe what I do. But you're always like, just as she gets the elevator pitch down, then you switch it again, right? So, wow.

[00:12:46] Joe Constanty: I'm pretty sure my grandmother at the time had no idea what the heck I was so.

[00:12:50] Rich Robinson: Wow. but Fantastic 

[00:12:51] Joe Constanty: Yeah. So, I think the kind of the thread that goes through, all that is just a willingness to pivot and a willingness to reinvent, and a willingness to learn is the key mantra that I keep because it's not about losing an interest in any of those projects, which pushed me out of it. It was seeing that I had already learned everything that I possibly learn in that time and in that space, and now it was time for me to kind of apply it to the next project, the next thing. And that's where I'm at here today at NIU. And this is the longest running piece of my story in recent history, I've been here since the beginning of 2016, so it's almost six years now. And it's been quite a ride to bring a Chinese brand out of China and into the European markets, the Americas, and elsewhere. So happy to discuss. 

[00:13:36] Rich Robinson: Not been done so much a lot of Chinese products going abroad, but maybe they don't have a Chinese brand name on them. But they're made in China, right? Yeah. It's interesting. I turned 54 a few months ago, and one of the things that I've really learned is that one needs to unlearn things and relearn things and learn completely new things to sort of write new scripts and software to kind of slow time down in a way. Otherwise, you're just running the same scripts over and over, and then everything gets really, sped up and to go and do that is definitely painful. It hurts. Like, I'm learning Bahasa Indonesia after studying Chinese for 24 years, right? And it's much easier, but it's still makes my head hurt, right? And I went surfing this morning, and I didn't enjoy it. And I haven't enjoyed it the few times that I'm just not a good swimmer.

I'm not good in the ocean, but I'm making myself do it until I can get to the point where I'm like, it's kind of enjoyable. I live in Bali. Exactly, right? It's kind of redunculous. I say it's kind of like in my kids too. It's like, it's kind of them, growing up in Boston and not learning how to parallel pack while holding the donkey with the other hand and giving somebody the finger, and listening to the socks on the radio and telling somebody in the backseat that the goat is Bill Russell and not Bob Yoa, but any anyway.

But, yeah. And then now I'm in Web3.0. I'm on chain, blockchain gaming, and I am the oldest and by far the dumbest person in the room. I have all my skills and experience, yet I am a babe in the woods, and I am just the vocabulary, the way things are combined and I love it, and I seek it out.

I see. And now I know that I must seek it out, otherwise, I will wither and crumble, and you've already internalized that. Most people are like, by the age of 30 something, I've figured something out. It took me 10, 15 years to get there. Now I'm just gonna repeat that for the next 20, 30 years, and get maybe marginally better, or maybe get marginally worse even, right?

[00:15:37] Joe Constanty: I can't imagine. I mean... I think, one of my key values as an individual is change. And I immensely value that. That's very simple word. But it's a very powerful word because you can apply it to whatever it is that you're doing in life, whether it's personal or professional.

I think it's something that I really kind of stick very strongly to. It's not for everyone. Not everyone is, their cup of tea is to be in a turbulent changing environment, but for me it is. And it showcases itself through my personal and professional life of the past 20 years.

[00:16:08] Rich Robinson: Love it. That's great. And let's talk a little bit about this scooter, because when you say electric scooter. A lot of people might think of like bird or... but this is a scooter because you know I had William, the CEO come and speak to at my Peking University MBA class. And he talked about the whole story going public and the incredible integration with smartphones, and what you guys have done pushing out around the world.

Why don't you give us... paint a picture.

[00:16:34] Joe Constanty: Yeah, I think the best way to think about what we make right now, we started with an electric scooter, or some people know it as a "moped." The best way to understand what we do is imagine if Tesla and Vespa had a baby, that would be us.

[00:16:48] Rich Robinson: Boom. That is delicious. I love it.

[00:16:51] Joe Constanty: Easy to kind of conceptualize. So we make these smart electric mopeds. Think about them in Vespa format. And they're connected fully connected 24/7. You can see where your scooter is, you can see it's state of battery charge, all those types of things. And we are a massive player now in China where we have been growing since 2015, where we first launched, and we're definitely number one in almost all of the markets overseas as well in the electric moped space. And so we sell directly to consumers through a network of distributors and dealers. We also work with local entrepreneurs to set up flagship stores in premium stores in cities like Milan, in New York City, in Miami, in LA, and Bogota, and Mexico City, the list goes on. And we use those direct to consumer retail channels to allow customers to experience our brand, take test drives. These flagship stores look a lot like a Tesla store, to be honest with you. And we've been quite successful in our growth in taking the Chinese brand outside of China.

In addition to selling to end customers, you or whomever wants to own their own scooter. We also work with tons of sharing operators. So think like, Lime or Revel out of New York City, or Felix in Amsterdam. We supply them with all of their mopeds. And this is really quite cool because we're getting millions of trips in a month throughout this network of operators that are using our scooters.

So we have this huge network of users both in China and in Europe, and the United States, that are kind of have chosen to go to electric rather than using old school, petrol, gasoline mopeds or even moving down from a car into a moped. So it's quite exciting to see this and we're really hyper-focused on transforming urban mobility. So we're not trying to make a product for everyone and anyone, that's not really our core focus. We see that there are huge issues in cities, it's quite obvious. Urban transportation is a bit broken globally.

There is no perfect solution and our products are not the only solution. It's just a part of the solution. But to give you some kind of frame of reference as well is that, to move yourself one kilometer on an electric moped is give or take 60 to 70 times less energy intensive than moving yourself, that same one kilometer in a petrol car, it's 10 times less. 10 times less energy intensive than moving yourself one kilometer in a Tesla.

 So everyone thinks that we need to electrify. And it's true, we do need to electrify, but we also have to choose what we're electrifying to. Because if we want to be able to sustain global growth and global mobility, especially as we all move to cities as something like 60%, I think according to the UN right now is about 62% of the world's population is now living in an urban center. We can't be doing it all in cars.

[00:19:39] Joe Constanty: There needs to be alternative modes of transportation. You live in Bali and the main mode of transportation down there is a gasoline powered scooter, moped. And so you'll see transformations happening in Indonesia as we speak. And so I think the main kind of mission behind what we're trying to do right now at NIU, both in China and overseas, is to redefine urban mobility, and showcase to people that there are alternative forms of mobility like mopeds, like electric bikes, like kick scooter, electric kick scooters that can actually help you do those short transportation that you may have in a day, 1, 2, 3 kilometers, right? And so that's why, in addition, to the mopeds, we've just recently launched like an electric kick scooter because in certain markets, electric kick scooters are more adopted, and kind of a mainstream product.

So there's many cities throughout Europe that kick scooter is much more popular than a moped. And then, of course, the rise of electric bikes. We've been seeing it long before the mainstream media picked it up. And we've been developing our own electric bikes that we're releasing right now.

So, it's kind of also choosing markets, products for what markets. It's kind of an exciting time to be a part of mobility because it's evolving very rapidly. And it was accelerated, obviously, like everyone says, 

"because of COVID."

[00:20:49] Rich Robinson: Yeah, and I think a lot of people do think Tesla. So you know that Tesla Vespa combo is very evocative, but electric mobility, I think is really being defined in China, it seems. Like, there's really so much innovation and investment in that space. And now you're taking that sort of KungFu ball of power and then pushing it out to the rest of the world. How many markets are you guys in now?

[00:21:15] Joe Constanty: Yeah. I think, officially we're in 48, but I think we just closed a couple more markets as well.

[00:21:21] Rich Robinson: Indonesia, yet? Possible to get one of these in Jakarta? 

[00:21:23] Joe Constanty: Yeah. You can actually buy one in Bali.

[00:21:25] Rich Robinson: Can you? Oh my goodness. That's lame that I didn't know that. I have to go...

[00:21:30] Joe Constanty: Yeah. I should have told you before the call. You could have, you can been like riding on the set.

[00:21:34] Rich Robinson: And you guys... I alsoheard like, Columbia, like, Jesus Bautista. So he's a Peking University student, not in my class, but he's like, 

"Hey, I heard that NIU's gonna come and present."

and I said, 

"Okay, you can come to the class but you can just audit it and don't ask any questions because I grade all the other students on questions."

He sits in the front row and he asks William, two questions. And then he gets an internship. And now I think he helped to like open you guys up in ...

[00:21:59] Joe Constanty: Yeah, he helped. He was an intern for us for pre-Covid and he helped us open up a couple markets in, in, in Latin-America.

 So, lessons for you out in podcast land. Don't listen to people when they tell you not to ask, because I couldn't tell them not to ask a question once he's already in there. So, good for him.

[00:22:13] Joe Constanty: Yeah.

[00:22:13] Rich Robinson: It actually worked, but, yeah.

[00:22:15] Joe Constanty: Jesus was great. What a small world full circle on that one.

 But you were saying about how China is kind of taking over the space. Let me add some commentary to that, which is if you go back a decade, a little bit more than a decade. If you would've asked a lot of people in Europe and the United States, if China would rule the mobile phone market in a decade's time, it probably would've scoffed at you.

[00:22:34] Joe Constanty: But, I was sitting in a conference in California in 2008, where the CEO of Newsoft at the time got up on stage. Newsoft is like an outsource software company from China. And he got up on stage and said, 

"I guarantee you that in the next 10 years, China rule mobile phones, and here's why. You have the largest market for mobile phones. You have the supply chain for mobile phones, and you have the final manufacturing for mobile phones. All being done in a very small network of urban areas in China."

[00:23:02] Rich Robinson: And then, spread some of that entrepreneurial pixie dust on top of that, and then it's just, yes

And then, magically, auto-magically, you have like a huge customer base that also wants to have new evolving products. Where in the West they were very okay with just the standardized from app brick phone. And he said,

[00:23:21] Joe Constanty: "This is going to be our breeding ground for the future of mobility devices." 

And I see a huge parallel between that time period and what's happening now in EV space, both four wheels and two wheels in China. You have the backbone of the supply chain. You have the largest market for EV. And you have customers that are not locked into kind of the legacy products that are petrol. You have so many more customers coming online right now for the very first time buying cars, and for them it might as well be electric. And so, this is why you see the EV space developing so quickly in China is because you have such fertile ground from the supply chain to the customer base.

And from that, when you have a huge home market, just look at Honda, 60 years ago, right? Look at Yamaha, 60 years ago, both in four and two wheels, they were able to dominate their home market and then go overseas. And then you just look at Hyundai and Kia 35 years ago, they dominate their home market and then went overseas.

And the Chinese are copying the same exact script and now doing it in EV. So, this is why China is able to succeed right now in the EV space, both four and two wheels. I'm not writing the obituary for what's happening in four and two wheels in Europe, and the United States, but this is what they have to be ready for.

This is what they're competing against the reality.

[00:24:40] Rich Robinson: And I think, typically also, I think the government does have a hand in this. Like, a lot of times, I think entrepreneurial ecosystems will crop up, almost inspite of governments around the world, right? And they'll just innovate around some problems, but I think also in the public transportation with buses, as I understand it, there's just single digit thousands of electric buses in the US, but there's hundreds of thousands in China and they're mandated by the government and subsidized.

And there's also the government subsidies in Beijing, getting a license plate is really difficult. I think you have a better chance of getting into Harvard than you do of getting a new license plate. But then, if you have a electric vehicle, they'll give you a green plate, and off you go, right? 

So there's all kinds of mechanisms in place there. So there's so many multivariate reasons that are fueling this and accelerating it. 

[00:25:29] Joe Constanty: Yeah, I mean, and yeah, I think the advantage that China has is that it's a single party governing system, right? And it has its advantages and disadvantages. Where in the US, and Europe you have competing interests in government and in business, because of that, you have different policies that get rolled out.

That's just a matter of governing systems.

[00:25:47] Rich Robinson: Yeah, indeed. So, one of the things that I am gonna talk about in the book, "At the Speed of China," is high speed rail and how incredibly dominant it is around China. But, the fact is, 

"Okay, that's great. Let's just take a lot of land by eminent domain and just throw hundreds of billions of renminbi at this problem."

And, that's something that's not so replicable by other countries, necessarily. But there are still some nuggets to be extracted from that about what can be learned from that, and everything about the speed of China is not positive.

There's lots of the JoJo Leo culture and other things. But I think, just as there's multi-variate reasons for the rise of EV industry sector, I think, the speed of China has many different contributing factors that are just accelerating it for better or worse, right? 

[00:26:30] Joe Constanty: I wanna ask you a question. I just thought of something as we were talking here. Do you think the speed of China... China looks fast because it's in comparison to where America and Europe are today? If we were to look at China in its current stage against United States, let's say 1890 to 1930. I think, we're moving at the exact same speed. We're just at different points in our lifespans, right? Couldn't you agree with that?

[00:26:56] Rich Robinson: So interesting. So there's a number of different ways to look at it. I had one guest on who said,

"I feel, like my rough thesis is that it's a four to one ratio of China to the rest of the world."

But he said, 

"Maybe with Silicon Valley it could be one-to-one, but with like general US, it might be four-to-one, but with maybe like, France it could be 10-to-1 compared to... so different geographies it's a little bit of a varying ratio and different eras in the US. I mean, that era in the 1850s, I mean, there was like dozens of Elon Musks, Westinghouse, and Edison, and there were so many, you know, the flights and telephone and electricity and yeah.

There was a lot of acceleration and innovation. However, I don't believe that it was so widely distributed across US, US society. I think that there is something, you know, inherent within the lifestyle of China. And there's one chart that I have that shows the lived experience of people over the last few decades and how fast they subjectively feel that things have gone, and China is far and away. 

The one nation in this global survey that is the estimate is 32X. And then, most other places are below 10 and the vast majority are below 5, right? I think that there are definitely some parallels to different times, different eras...

[00:28:25] Joe Constanty: Eras.

[00:28:26] Rich Robinson: And that's one of multi-variate reasons. 

"Oh wow. It's kind of a blue ocean, a blank slate," 

right? 

Like,

"Go West young man, and let's create things. Let's leverage technology. Now that the Industrial Revolution is kind of kicked in, now we can do things like Telegram, you know, telegraph and telephone and other you know, electricity, et cetera.

And I think China's kind of, alright, we got our infrastructure in place. We've been through a few kind of mini boom and bus cycles and internet and like, 

"Okay, now, man, we have electric mobility and we have e-commerce, and we have iOT, and we have this sort of hardware sort of hub revolution down in Shenzhen, and we have AR/VR, and we have blockchain, and we have robotics. 

[00:29:08] Joe Constanty: We got everything. We have a billion people. You can build it all, right? That's the thing.

[00:29:13] Rich Robinson: Sort of, peace and pulse for better or worse. I mean, I had one guest on, in the EdTech space and he was saying, 

"A company like Duo Lingo, which went public recently. Like they had so much time to fully bake themselves into what they were. In some ways, it's a curse in China. Like, it's like, here, take this money now run," 

And it's just like, 

"What? What am I supposed to do?"

"Shut up and run."

Right? And it's just like, what? And just there's things blowing up all over the place, right? So,  definitely, it's not all like, 

"Hey, everybody should emulate this. And this is great and awesome."

It's like, 

"Wow. Like there's just like, you know, sanrin with Confucius, right? Walk down the road with one person, you're like, 

"Oh, I should definitely do that."

And the other person, you're like, 

"Oh my God, I should definitely not do that,"

right? Tell me some of your experiences because I think you and I are similar in that our entire careers more or less are in China, and kind of bridging China. So there's that old, joke like, 

"Hey older fish."

" Morning boys."

And the young fish are like, 

"Morning, sir. How's the water?"

"Pretty good."

And he swims away like, 

"What's water?" 

Right? So, I mean, I think we're kind of indoctrinated or built up into this whole pace and pulse, but what are some of the things that you experienced, as this kind of cartilage between two bones, so to speak?

Doing the international with all the different stuff that you've done.

 Yeah. I think the, I mean, to go back to the early days, let's say circa 2005, I think that China might as well have been the moon to most people not living in China at that time. Okay. And I think that was always very surprising to me as I spoke to colleagues, friends and family back in the United States at that time.

[00:30:47] Joe Constanty: At just their complete misunderstanding or no understanding of what was happening in China, both culturally and economically. And because when I was sitting inside the borders of China, what I could see was a country that was rising and a country of normal people. Not much different than Americans, except for some cultural nuances that are different.

To be really honest with you. I mean, everyone wanted to support their family, get a good job, grow wealthy. The typical American dream, I think is very parallel to what the China dream is. And I think some interesting insights, back in that time as well, was that as an American, we always looked at those from Asia, and especially China, is extremely entrepreneurial and hardworking people. It's a kind of a very strange stereotype that was kind of abound in the United States and still is very prevalent in the United States. 

When I got to China, what I realized though was the entrepreneurial spirit wasn't quite strong in, in the mid aughts 2000 to 2010 of the local community, especially in Shanghai. And the reason I learned later, because we were trying to build this community of entrepreneurs at the time, and the reason I learned later is becausetheir minds had been zapped by their families their parents and grandparents, that they had to go build some version of the American dream in Shanghai, which was wild to me.

They had to go get a job, get married, get a house, have a kid, buy a car, play it safe. And then what you see is circa 2010, 2011, 2012, those men and women who had followed that mantra kind of got tired of working for larger organizations. And that's when you begin to see this proliferation of entrepreneurialism in China grow at a super rapid rate.

At the same time, you have incredible amount of capital coming into the China market at that time from overseas and domestically. And I think it's then, it was when you really saw the birth of like the unicorn entrepreneurs coming out of China. It was like 2011, 2012. But I can tell you before that the scene on the streets with, working with local Chinese, Shanghai, Beijing entrepreneurs was very limited.

It was all a bunch of like, wild, wild West cowboys of Americans and Europeans trying to make their way in China at that time. And it's from that period onwards that things began to change. So that's a kind of an insight that I always find quite interesting because everyone thinks that it's just this long legacy of entrepreneurs like just plowing out new things.

And there weren't too many, I mean, you had a, yeah, obviously you had your Jack MAs of the world building Alibaba very early, and your Pony MAs building stuff. But kind of homegrown small entrepreneur very limited at that time. So I think that's kind of one interesting insight that I can take away. But let me think a little bit more maybe you have couple few other questions for me.

[00:33:30] Rich Robinson: Well, it's interesting. You say that you were based in Shanghai during that time.

Yeah, so I, in Beijing, just because Beijing, many people don't know that Beijing's really the Silicon Valley of China. And I would contend all of Asia. And in Shanghai is much more like, LAs and New York combined in some ways, right?

[00:33:47] Joe Constanty: Maybe. We know that Beijing and Shanghai ren that we don't like each other very much, but continue on. Continue. I digress.

[00:33:55] Rich Robinson: Well, sure, sure. But I meant that LA and New York and that they're like, it's like two gigantic like cosmopolitan cities in one, in a way, right? And not necessarilythe shallowness of LA but compared to Beijing, it's definitely true. But anyway...

[00:34:09] Joe Constanty: You digress. We digress. Keep going.

[00:34:12] Rich Robinson: Wo sho shing Beijing, wo sho shing Shanghai. So it's all good. I love Shanghai and I love Beijing. And it's you know. I too. I do as well. I felt like Beijing was attracting, because I just felt like Shanghai was a little bit more like, all the MNCs wanted to be in Shanghai. So maybe that was determining it. But there was a lot more. The seat of government is there and the telecoms are there, and the universities are there. And the other startups that were there in the dot-com boom, Sina, Sohu, NetEase. I mean, of course, yeah, Jack Ma, Hung Joe, and then Pony Ma down in Shenzhen. But the vast majority of all the other, Meituan and Baidu, and all these other TikTok, it's all in the jingling, right?

Butfor sure Shanghai has it's extreme like, buzz and juice right there. But it's just a little bit of a different kind of breed of entrepreneur in a way, right? But then also Shanghai and Beijing, it's just they're both such large places with more than 20 million population, that they're almost like their own countries.

[00:35:13] Joe Constanty: Indeed. 

 Just tell me a little bit aboutwhen you first started getting stuff going with NIU, and like, being able to... like, when was it when you guys started to do international sales? Was it baked in from the get-go or was it some, was there like, did you get China?

[00:35:28] Joe Constanty: I think the, yeah, that's a good question. So I think from the beginning they always envisioned the brand to go overseas. But they knew they had to win, like I said earlier, they had to win the China market to make that a reality, right?

And so, it was early funded startup in late 2014, and by summer 2015, full-blown factory, producing thousands of scooters every single month.

So in a very short period, it went from a concept to full-blown manufacturing and not just like an outsource manufacturing, owning their own manufacturing, in 2015. And it was in that time period where they saw that they had the initial scale in China where there they began to turn on the lights for beginning the plan for overseas.

And that's where I really got involved and the strategy for going overseas was very simple. We were a Chinese company and in 2015, 2016, at that period in time, China kind of sat in a very kind of strange place in the mind of overseas customers. And especially when it came to mobility because maybe in five years before that circa 2010, lots of kind of opportunistic importers in Europe and the America started bringing in very low quality electric bikes and electric mopeds into Europe and into Americas. And customers were hugely dissatisfied with that first kind of onslaught of Chinese products coming in.

And so we had a double duty. We were the first EV maker going into Europe of two and four wheels kind of very traumatic period where it failed. So we had to go reestablish that Chinese companies could make good products, and more importantly, we had to establish ourself as a brand.

So we had to do double duty. And now a lot of these other companies that are coming both from overseas Asia and from Europe, are kind of riding our coattails in introducing an industry of electric two wheels, which is fine. And so from the get-go, I knew this was gonna be the problem that we had to solve.

And that problem would be solved with just methodical work with getting the right media influencers to basically verify our product as legitimate quality products and build that level of trust with the community. And it would take years to be able to really satisfy that consumer.

And that's where we still are very much focused in on until this day, continuing to build that level of trust. That is our number one goal, is build good product, allow the customers to tell other customers that we have a great product in especially allow the media to amplify that message as well.

And that's kind of a huge takeaway, I think for all Chinese brands, especially that are in consumer electronics and in EV mobility is that putting your billboard out there and doing all that type of work looks sexy and you know, you might hit a couple KPIs very early on, but the long battle is won through just methodical delivery of good product and methodical work with media to build trust over time.

And that's what we do. So if you go and search NIU in German, or French, or in Spanish, you'll literally have thousands of articles that have been in YouTube reviews that have been done about our product. And that was a very specific strategy that we executed starting in 2016. Even a full year before our products really landed in the market and we still execute on to this day.

[00:38:44] Rich Robinson: Yeah. And that's so important in China that Wong Hong influencer economy, just last month, then this Lipstick king 2 billion dollars worth of product, and influencer becomes so incredibly core, and I think people in the West can understand that.

But maybe they look at like, 

"Oh, it's kind of a joke."

If you are a Instagram influencer, right? It's not necessarily taken seriously, but in China it's really serious business. And in some ways China was already so much farther ahead in that space, you were able to sort of understand, internalize, and leverage that and kind of bring that out to other markets.

 It seems they almost like didn't even know what hit them in a way because you were already so advanced and effective that you could like, really make a big impact with that. Is that fair to say?

[00:39:31] Joe Constanty: Absolutely. Yeah. I think it's pretty fair to say, I think the idea is to take it to utilize the resources of the markets that you're going into. Whether that be through social media or through traditional media, but then it also comes down to a very strategic choice of all your global partners, right?

And we didn't have the legacy of like a large two-wheel manufacturer like Honda, or Yamaha, or whomever else coming in from Asia. We were the new kids on the street. And we were looking for other entrepreneurial-minded distributors and dealers at the same time, who understood our product, who understood the market, and would allow us to kind of do a, let's call it "Ground warfare," to basically methodically go in city by city, dealer by dealer, to get our product out there. And a few years later we're in thousands of dealers around the world. And that didn't happen by accident, that happened by choosing the right partners, and then also choosing the right communications of the brand into the marketplaces.

And the influencer market in Europe is not nearly as dynamic or in the United States, is not nearly as dynamic as it is in China right now. And so that's not something that we push on too heavily. We focus more on the real validated sources of authorization, of knowledge about cars and motorcycles to really gain trust around the product.

[00:40:45] Joe Constanty: I think that's where we're at right now at this stage.

[00:40:48] Rich Robinson: Interesting. And as far as the brand promise goes, is it the same in each market or is there a different message in Latin America versus Europe? 

[00:40:56] Joe Constanty: I mean, the mission globally is a very simple one. It's basically a redefine urban mobility and make people's lives and cities better. And that's the global mission. I think the the promise that we provide to a lot of these customers, again, is fairly universal and that promises that we create vehicles that you can feel proud of, and in your mobility choice, right?

In a lot of parts of the world in Europe, to be honest with you, a moped, a 50 cc moped, 150- 125 cc, scooter moped is actually looked at as like a lower class of citizens mobility. It is. It really is. It's crazy, but it is. You have to own a car, which doesn't make much sense, but that's just the reality of the world we live in.

[00:41:35] Joe Constanty: And so we want to kind of change that concept and say, 

"Actually, it's cool to ride a moped. It's fun, it's free, it's exciting and you have the wind in your hair. You get to experience life in a completely different way as you're moving through your city."

So, and we carry that universally through each of our markets.

I think where we go market by market in terms of definition not of the brand, but of the product. And that it's kind of a good product market fit. And that's really why we've evolved our product range, not because we wanted to expand, but just out of pure design, design desire but it's actually observing really what each market needs.

And so you look down in Indonesia, Indonesia has a very different kind of... so it has a very different moped need than what say New York City does or Paris does. And so then we have to adapt our products to those markets and also adapt the messaging ever so slightly to the end user of that product.

Because in Indonesia, a moped scooter is something that's it's like a car in the United States of America. Basically everyone owns one and it is the choice.

[00:42:35] Rich Robinson: Actually, a scooter here in Bali is a minivan. As well too, you can transport five and all the pets and pets three weeks worth of groceries on one scooter, on a 125 cc scooter. So that's one thing I learned through. 

 I don't condone that type of use of a scooter, but in some needs, in some places, that is just the way it is.

[00:42:54] Rich Robinson: Indeed. Wow. Great. Excellent. Hey, Joseph, I really appreciate you taking the time, talking about your path to China, your China journey, and what you're working on right now. What a excellent story. I really really enjoyed it.

[00:43:07] Joe Constanty: Thanks, Rich. I appreciate it and I enjoyed having the ED combo with you. I enjoyed it as well. And yeah, if anyone you know that's listening to this wants to reach out to me, please put 'em in touch. Happy to chat. Whether it's about NIU or any other things I've done in my days back in China.

[00:43:20] Rich Robinson: What's the best way to get in touch you? Would you say?

[00:43:23] Joe Constanty: Just send me an email, josephconstanty@gmail.com. That's my personal, give it out if you want it. You find me on LinkedIn. I'm the only Joseph Constanty, I on LinkedIn, so it's pretty easy to find. So reach out. I'm an open book. One of my other mantras is connecting people, so I'm happy...

[00:43:38] Rich Robinson: Terrific. Terrific.

[00:43:39] Joe Constanty: To help where I can.

[00:43:41] Rich Robinson: Wonderful. Excellent. Thank you and all the best.

[00:43:44] Joe Constanty: Yeah.

[00:43:44] Rich Robinson: Thanks. 

[00:43:45] Joe Constanty: Rich, thank you for having me. We'll catch up soon, okay?

[00:43:48] Rich Robinson: Sounds good.