Ciklet Cycle #1 or how to start a bicycle company
March 18, 2022 · Christian
This is the first post in a series about kick-starting my latest venture of building a marketplace that sells pre-owned bicycles. When I bumped into former Triathlon teammate Othmane Chouklati last autumn, I did not imagine starting a company and going full-time in no time. But that’s exactly what happened. Today we are both working enthusiastically on Ciklet, building a vélotech platform that aims at making the pre-owned bicycle market as transparent and obvious as those of other goods (e.g. mobile phones or cars).
Backed by experienced business angel and triathlete Pierre-Yves Tachon we have today:
- helpful hands in the world of design 🙌, marketing 🙌, SEO 🙌 & business 🙌
- over 150 bicycles on our store 🏪
- deals with 4 partnering bike shops 🚲🚲🚲🏬🚲🚲🚲
- a developer 👨💻️ who’s impatient to start his internship in 2 weeks
- precisely 2 desks with 🪑🪑, plus a standup desk
- fancy business cards (CEO only, we’re pretty lean) 👔
The picture has been taken by Rémy Guérin this morning, showing Othmane – tweaking and preparing some of our latest arrivals – and myself – tweaking our website (currently migrating from vanilla #reactjs to #nextjs). Our HQ is a huge, sunny flat with a beautiful view over Paris’ North-East. Incepted in November, I spent the first weeks setting up the technical foundations of Ciklet. It’s been a fun ride over the last months, but now we’re starting for real as a team. Exciting times. Stay tuned, there’s more to come.
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