Hill Climbers

Send us Fan Mail It's so gratifying to see a plan come together! Last year I began chatting with Bay Area VC Nate Williams about doing a SXSW event together around “Innovation,” the perfect panel buzzword. We asked the Hill Climbers network to produce a product company and an athlete that could speak with expertise on the subject along with Nate. If we’re being honest, we had Lucas Bourgoyne,...

Send us Fan Mail In January I texted Charlie Tames, an Austin businessman with ties to Rapha, asking if he could put me in touch with someone at corporate ahead of my London visit. His response read, “Fran will be in Austin in February.” He’s referring to Fran Millar, Rapha CEO. A few days later Charlie texted, “If I can get you an interview with Fran Millar, would you be interested?”  Does a fat...

Send us Fan Mail At this point Kate Veronneau, Director of Women’s Strategy at Zwift, needs little introduction because she’s omnipresent in cycling media around the world including the Tour de France  Femmes Avec Zwift, a partnership which has been the culmination of her career on bikes.  I met Kate and her husband Mike on the NOW ride when we lived in LA, and we hit it off pretty quickly because...

Send us Fan Mail We’ve been excited about expanding the Hill Climbers audience beyond Austin, TX and one day back in October a juicy opportunity presented itself. Doug Zell from the Meteor texted me about hosting a group ride in honor of Max Davis, cofounder of Rubber N Road, the NYC kit maker. Doug was excited to add Rubber N' Road product to his retail mix, and the partnership was going to...

Send us Fan Mail A couple of months ago Michelle Kopplow, a new friend and triathlon devotee, reached out to me and suggested an introduction with Mathias Ihlendfeld, the previous CEO of Woom bikes. I was immediately fired up for a couple of reasons - A Woom is the authority on children’s bikes as far as I’m concerned and B here was an example of the Hill Climbers community showing up and adding a...

Send us Fan Mail Having three Hill Climbers team members do a show without Sam is a statement in and of itself. That's to say the squad is growing quickly. Stephen Cunningham is a data team lead at EF Education so he gets away with rocking their kit. He’s bored of conventional cycling content and wants to make a mark on the media landscape. Mark Duroy is the friendliest cyclist among a group...

Send us Fan Mail Noah Kagan was one of the first people I met when I moved to Austin, TX 5 years ago. He immediately invited me to his annual AppSumo ride and also put me in touch with Jeffrey Nolte, who became one of my closest friends in Austin. This is the kind of guy Noah is - he loves Austin and knows that newcomers will get the most out of it by meeting great people. We reconnected meaningfu...

Send us Fan Mail One year ago, Franco Martins, a friend and collaborator, told me that the CTO at his place of work, Icon, is a cyclist and was going to ride bikes with us. Here’s why this is a big deal:  Icon is one of Austin’s more buzzy unicorns because they 3D print housing communities using massive robots that lay down concrete walls in the same way you squeeze toothpaste from the tube. If th...

Send us Fan Mail Jason Codianne from Chasing Watts was put on my radar by Scott Barger, a Zwift cofounder I used to ride with in LA. Scott has been super supportive of Hill Climbers by keeping me posted on interesting cycling and tech happenings in his world, and Chasing Watts fits the bill. Jason has been a career software engineer in Houston’s energy sector and he’s also an avid bike racer. Like...

Send us Fan Mail A couple of years ago I witnessed Amos Schwartzfarb in action with his T echstars ATX cohort at my coworking space in east Austin. He led the program with an electric energy that was both intense but also genial and fun. This guy was a leader with style, and it was to my DELIGHT that I discovered he’s a cyclist before I had actually met him. Fast forward to Techstars Demo Day 2023...

Send us Fan Mail Let's cut to the chase - this panel features a story in which Tolley harasses and attacks World Champion, Peter Sagan at Unbound...and hilarity ensues. Anyway, this show was a culmination of two years worth of Hill Climbers work. We featured not one but three guests, and the panel kicked off the SXSW celebration at the Meteor bike shop, our second home. What’s more, we suppor...

Send us Fan Mail Elliott Teller introduced himself at our first live event, and told me he was about to launch his Austin-based cycling and running apparel brand, People’s Endurance. I liked Elliott’s understated and laid back vibe, and we quickly made plans to exchange more info about our respective worlds. What unfolded was a three hour hang in my backyard which covered way more than bikes and b...

Send us Fan Mail This episode is part two of our show with Mark Farmery, founder of Biotech Bikers and Chief Development Officer at Swedish biotech firm, Anocca . In part II Mark tells us about how his urge to apply scientific education led him from academia into pharma and biotech business development. Mark also explains biotech venture basics, as well as the T cell therapies his employer, Anocca...

Send us Fan Mail The key metric for measuring Hill Climbers success is engagement - but I’m not talking about likes, comments and shares. The show with Eric Min from Zwift was a big milestone for us because Eric’s a known quantity in our world, and deep down I was hoping for recognition in the form of connecting with NEW folks over a shared passion for bikes and business.  On January 9th I receive...

Send us Fan Mail To help spread the word about the show, my friend Rey Madolora put me on an email with a bunch of Austin cyclists that are also notable in the business community. One by one I was able to meet most of them, but Rob Taylor was elusive. When I followed his Strava I noticed that he was regularly climbing mountains in Europe…like really frequently and his trips had names like, “Epic T...

Send us Fan Mail We could have interviewed Allison Morrison fresh off her World’s debut in Olympic distance triathlon as a UT MBA student and full time Meta employee. However this podcast has a strong entrepreneurial theme (you, reader, are about to feel inadequate), and sure enough, Allison made room for her startup, Ralli , on top of 15hr weekly training blocks, coursework and the day job. Ralli...

Send us Fan Mail Zwift cofounder Eric Min was a tantalizing and wildly obvious guest candidate for a number of reasons that we'll enumerate, however, we did not think he'd join us so soon! Last year Eric turned up in the Breakfast Club slack, to our delight, and agreed to hop on a call to discuss an interview. We scheduled the interview for the fall, after the Zwift Ride bike launch, and...

Send us Fan Mail The legend of Masters World Champion Joe Wentzell loomed large because Joe was a Temple University lineman and my brother in law has been coached by him on the bike for some time. Various versions of, "Joe will tear your legs off" were bandied about for the last decade, and I only briefly met him in person once, with few words exchanged. Joe has been a person of interest...

Send us Fan Mail Earlier in the spring my buddy, Chas, told me that he trained with a guy named Scott Baldwin who was building a social media platform dedicated to endurance athletes. On top of that, Scott hails from the Philadelphia area, so I had to meet him. On the Meteor patio, Scott shared his vision for Front Pack Sports , a social hub where athletes can gather and do what they do - seek fri...

Send us Fan Mail A few months ago I introduced a Hill Climbers ride in Austin for folks to connect with each other over some soft pedaling, in addition to some hard pedaling. All of a sudden, our little Hill Climbers brand that had a digital presence, had a REAL WORLD presence! Crazy, I know. This brand extension is just as thrilling to me as shipping new episodes and he best part is providing an...

Send us Fan Mail Starting an American kit company in a sea of established competitors may seem like a daunting undertaking to some. Ryan Cady, however, became a bike shop owner at nineteen years old during college, raced bikes full time and then ran a sock company before he stepped up to the plate. Cady gravitates toward detail-oriented challenges and he met his match after launching Eliel Cycling...

Send us Fan Mail One of my lasting impressions of Will Bryant, the Austin-based artist and brand collaborator, is from a photo shoot in which he’s modeling his own endo customs collab with a few other models. The colors and patterns are true to Will’s artwork - colorful, outrageous and fun - think PeeWee’s Playhouse (more on that in the show). The other models mostly conjure the blase, indifferent...

Send us Fan Mail The Better Lab addresses a fascinating topic that is on the minds of most everyone on a weekly basis in this stressful world: sleep. In a sea of gadgets that track various bio metrics there are few products that have gained notoriety guiding users in incremental improvements on the key to life: sleep. Ex Strava executive Andrew Vontz and his cofounders have dug deep into research...

Send us Fan Mail The Austin meetup that started 4 years ago with 4 friends who mostly wanted to eat breakfast, has uncovered a need in this sport to encourage newcomers with a warm welcome and a bit of structure. The proof is in the monthly attendance, which has reached 800 riders of all skill levels, as well as the thriving online community and expansion to other cities. What outwardly appears to...

Send us Fan Mail Eric Schlange is one of the most well known Zwift riders on the platform, and he comes to the notoriety honestly. When Eric started Zwifting in 2015, the engineer and web master immediately identified a need for a Zwift knowledge base to address the nuances of riding in the brave new virtual world. Exponential traffic growth led to an official Zwift sponsorship, cementing Zwift In...