Building The Future Show - Radio / TV / Podcast

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Kevin Horek: I'll come back to the show today. We have Daniel tan co-PI he's the CEO and founder at Dell fast bikes, Daniel. Welcome to the show.

Daniel Tonkopi: Hi, thank you for having me here.

Kevin Horek: Yeah, I'm excited to have you on the show. I think what you guys are doing at Del Fest bikes is actually really innovative and cool, but maybe before we dive into that, let's get to know you better and start off with where you grew up.

Daniel Tonkopi: Oh, of course. I grew up in Kazakhstan. I wonder if you have been there.

Kevin Horek: I have not. I would like to get to that part of the world one day. The closest I've been, I guess has Madrid, but that's not really that close.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. Seven more hours. Bye. Yeah, I grew up actually I was born in Moscow.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Very cool.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah, but I was two years old and my parents moved to Kazakhstan because my father is from Kazakhstan. So I grew up in Almaty Kazakhstan. It's a larger city. My school, my first university, my first worker were in Kazakhstan.

Kevin Horek: Okay. So you went to university. What did you take and why?

Daniel Tonkopi: That's a good question. I, I started math in school and do my first university was international economic relations in, Amata why that's a good question. Because the main reason is because my father was a professor in this university.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. Okay. Yeah.

Daniel Tonkopi: After that, I, I passed my exams into another Moscow university international law department. The reason for that was because my mother was a lawyer. So.

Kevin Horek: Interesting.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. I have two degrees like economic and law.

Kevin Horek: Very cool. You get out of university, walk us through your career, maybe some highlights along the way because you've done a ton of stuff.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, sir. Like when I finished my university economic relations, I went to Moscow and I traveled a lot through Kazakhstan or Russia and ex Soviet union countries working in real estate and oil industry. I was working for, I was in oil and gas industry now working for huge oil and gas corporation. Corporation. It's the largest employee in Kazakhstan.

Kevin Horek: Interesting.

Daniel Tonkopi: I probably do to start to become an environmentalist. You have to know the other side of it. I had to work in the oil company.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Interesting. Walk us through the rest of your career, up into coming up with the idea and then let's dive into Belfast.

Daniel Tonkopi: Oh yeah. After 2009, you remember that was a year of the global economic crisis and yeah. And our real estate industry just collapsed. I thought, okay, now I don't have a job and do what I'm going to do. I had some money. I had a lot of experience working for corporation, but I realized that I want to be an entrepreneur. I want to change the world with my efforts to do something for the world. I traveled a lot by that time and decided to stay in Keith. Keith is one of the most beautiful place in the world. I love GIF. I love Ukraine. So I decided to live in Ukraine. Interesting. Yes. In 2009, that was a time when our part of the world, our it, part of the world, we're trying to clone some successful American startups. For example, mark Zuckerberg created Facebook in 2007, I guess.

Daniel Tonkopi: There was a successful clone in Russia. In Kazakhstan Facebook, there was, there were clones of Groupon and other huge companies. I thought, okay, there is no Yelp for Ukraine. I had a problem because I was traveling a lot. I didn't know where to stay, where to eat, which genes are good and which are not. I decided to solve my own problem to establish a company called best docu, which was Yelp for Ukraine was reviews about places. And that was my first startup. That's how I became an entrepreneur and a start-stop guy. I raised a lot of money know, like half a million dollars and I lost this money. I made all the possible mistakes. Start, stop, start, stop. Keep going. Sorry. That's okay. After that they had the, another startup R it was, I sold it. I sold was a huge loss or okay. I said, let's start another company.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. I created a game and augmented reality game. It was 2011, 2012. Of course you remember this Google glass. I remember that we had some, yeah, it was interesting. Yes. Yes. That was huge hype in that time. Totally. Yes. I saw, okay. We can create an augmented reality mobile game, like a Counter-Strike, but in the real world. Oh yeah. I I'm a gamer and my two sons are gamers. So I liked gaming. I saw why B I can like point my smartphone to my son or to another player. I will see his, hell's bar and we can unite against monsters, which are in augmented reality. We can just shoot and play outside in augmented reality in the real world, not the computer. That was really great. We received a lot of media attention. We won a lot of contest start-up contest. That was the first time when I came to Silicon valley and saw how it's really going on.

Daniel Tonkopi: Again, I sought that I won't have any business model because yeah. That was a mistake, which I realized later, but I thought, okay, is there a such companies like Twitter or Instagram, they don't earn any single penny. So why can't I do the same? I will be having millions of customers. I will create some business model. That was a mistake. That was a huge mistake. That was one of the main reasons why we couldn't move on and why we, why I closed this project as a prototype stage. But that was a cool idea. And I received tons of experience again. In 2013, I established Dell fast. Considering a lot of, I just told you about two starters, but I had like maybe 15 failed projects. So in 2013, 14, sorry. I came with the idea of Belfast company. And now last, how many? Eight years I, I run this company.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Before we dive into that and how you came up with the idea, you just mentioned, you basically had 15 failed startups. What kept you going and keep trying, because majority of people give up after, one or two, but like, how did you keep going until you found something that was working?

Daniel Tonkopi: That's a good question. I think the, my area CP is a passion is the willingness to change something. I really, when I see a problem that could be solved, I am such kind of a person that won't just deal with it. I will try to change something, to improve something. For example, this is a story of Del foster, how it appeared. I ordered a smartphone, my smartphone was broken. Yeah. I ordered an online store and the lady called me back to confirm the order. I asked her when they will deliver this smartphone. She said, okay, well usually takes two days. I said, I am, I don't have a smartphone. I need to try it now, do you have like one hour delivery? Or like, can you deliver it right now? Yeah. She said, no, sorry. We can, I was ready to pay like any amount of money, but I needed smartphone.

Daniel Tonkopi: Can you imagine you without smartphone?

Kevin Horek: Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's non-negotiable.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. Yes. So I did it now. I asked her and she said, there is, there are no options. So, okay. After, right after that, I ordered a pizza and it was delivered within like 40 minutes or something. They saw why this pizza could be delivered within one hour. You still have to prepare to cook this pizza and smartphone. It takes like two days and substance. I decided to create delivery of smartphones with the speed of pizza delivered.

Kevin Horek: Interesting.

Daniel Tonkopi: Like this is answering your question, how to keep going. I was trying to make this world better to change something. I saw the problems that I met with, and I tried to find a solution and suddenly some other people are also meeting this problems and they were also looking for solutions. So sometimes it became two businesses.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. Okay. How did it evolve over the last eight years into what it is today?

Daniel Tonkopi: That's a good question. I created the delivery service one hour delivery company and called it Belfast, which stands for we deliver fast. So,

Kevin Horek: Okay, cool.

Daniel Tonkopi: From the very beginning, we had a problem at transportation. We created an outstanding one hour delivery and like that was disrupting delivery service. Nobody could make one hour deliveries, even Amazon. By that time, I realized to create one hour delivery. I hit, I have to use some disruptive transportation, but what it could be, as I mentioned, I grew up in Kazakhstan and Almaty, which is the largest city is a beautiful city here, but it has an ecological problem do surrounded by mountains. And, and this is the reason why is there is no wind in the CG which causes the smoke, huge smoke and alls or emission scars, emissions, plants, power, plants, emissions. They just stay above the CJ and not going anywhere. And this is huge psychological problem. My father was a professor of ecology and I grew up as an environmentalist and I thought, okay, I can do something for our motive, for the air, not only in this city, but in all watch teachers.

Daniel Tonkopi: When I came up with a delivery idea, one hour delivery, I thought, okay, maybe I can use electric transportation, maybe. Yeah, we can try electric bicycles. That was an idea, just a hypothesis. I never tried the electric bike 2014, actually. I never see before. I just heard about it. With my partner with Sergei, we bought the first electric bicycle from one Chinese manufacturer and seller promised us 50 miles on a single charge range. I mean, okay. Without, well, that's not enough for the work of a career, like, because they make 120, 130 miles or during the day, but that would be good. Enough was the beginning. Let's start that. So we bought it. I charged it. I saw that could be a good ride, 25 miles, one way and 20 miles back R that was great day, summer day. And I'm bike lover. I love motorcycles, bicycles.

Daniel Tonkopi: I wrote, but after about 15 miles, the bike just stopped. Okay. Wow. Yeah. I, I picked my phone and called to cellar and said, buddy, something's wrong with this bike? She said, no, everything is okay. I said, no, you promised me 50 miles, but it went just 15. I don't know, maybe batteries broken or I don't know what's happening right now. 15 is okay. I said, no, you promise 50. He goes, he, if she, if you help, we sped off. I said, seriously, if I help with pedals, I can go for a thousand miles. Yeah. It doesn't make any sense. Right. This is how I realized that the old, like 99.99% of e-bike manufacturers have, are indicating the range. There is there a small font that if you use pedals, so the real range is much smaller. Interesting. Okay. Me and Sergey, we had to develop e-bikes for our careers to achieve not even 50, but at least hundred and 20 miles on a single charge.

Daniel Tonkopi: We had a lot of experiments with betters, with motors, with frames, with all the controllers and like all the spare parts, like thousands of experiments. Were just solving our problem step by step. Or we created the best solution, the best bike for careers, for hetero heavy riders, hardcore right riders, and to like answering your questions, how we evolved to electric bike company in 2017, after two or three years of a period. We realized, okay, we have what kind of a product were successful as a delivery service. We had branches in TF, in Odessa, in Kazakhstan, in Poland, we've signed like hundreds of B2B clients. We were a number one fastest delivery in Ukraine. Two as a parallel way, were developing this. E-bikes just to solve our problem. To in 2017, we thought maybe we can try to sell these bikes because people were often, they asked us, Hey guys, how much are they?

Daniel Tonkopi: Were just refused to sell these bikes because we, our careers, we're not selling bikes. One day we launched our Kickstarter campaign just to test the hypothesis. If anybody needs this bike, or we created just some stuff that nobody needs, and it was successful, we collected $165,000 in November, 2017. We realized, okay, people need just bikes and adapt from that moment, we had two business units in our company. One was a career part division, and another was a bike manufacturer company. In 2020, when's the COVID lockdown started. We sold our career part of the business. We wanted to focus on e-bikes because we saw global perspectives and we sold this career business. So now we became an e-bike manufacturer. So this is a short story.

Kevin Horek: Interesting. No, that's really cool, man. I want to dive or step back for a second. You and Sergei were iterating on these bikes, but does he have a background in anything related to like engineering or building bikes or you both just kind of hobbyists or how did you guys build these first early versions? Because like they're complicated, right?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. Well, short answer is no, we, both of us, we didn't have any experience with e-bikes. Okay. That was crazy because we created a disruptive one hour delivery and the people were laughing at us. Hey guys, where are you going? Like deliver it. Come on. Do you have any experience? Know what they're thinking about? E-bikes Hey guys, I engineers are Samsung. Now what they're trying to create here, everything is already invented, et cetera. So were just keep going. We were just to keep trying, were just solving our own problem because we had to provide e-bikes was huge range, highly reliable, robust bikes to our careers so they can make deliveries. Right. Right. So we hired engineers. Like I found one engineer in the knee procedure, which is so west of east of Ukraine. Sorry. Yeah. It was, this engineer had a lot of experience in production.

Daniel Tonkopi: He's just like he was making e-bike or for himself or his friends. He was making like for, for leaving. Yeah. I said, can you make me an e-bike was 150 miles range. He said, nobody needs it. I said, I needed, can you do it or not? She said, okay, let's see what we can do. We started to develop a lot of solutions, which have many patents for all solutions after that, like for battery management system, for controller, for components and the endeavors for personal computer. We create a step-by-step you bike, which exceeded all the limits in the world, literally.

Kevin Horek: Wow.

Daniel Tonkopi: Without any background, we had just a lot of passion and a lot of desire to change the situation then to solve the problem.

Kevin Horek: No, that's very cool. I also think that's inspiring to people, right. That if, just because they, like, just because they don't have a background in something doesn't mean they can't figure out how to do it. In your case, you guys brought somebody on board to help you with that. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Right. I think just because you don't have a background doesn't mean you can't do it.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, absolutely.

Kevin Horek: I'm curious then what, give us kind of the specs of, the Dell fast bike today, because like you said, you're basically the fastest bike in the world and you have crazy range and let's talk about that.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, sure. It was my pleasure. Yes. We, as a fastest bike in the world, if you open forbes.com and just try to search your fastest e-bike you will see Belfast, bike, or model top 3.0. We as a Forbes announced us the fastest e-bike for the second year in a row. Wow,

Kevin Horek: Man.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. Thank you. We also, it is indeed.

Kevin Horek: Not mean, sorry to cut you off. What does fast mean? Like w how many kilometers miles per hour is that?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah, if you buy our stock model, you will have 50 miles per hour speed, 80 kilometers per hour.

Kevin Horek: Fast.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. We also have, our developments are, and last August we established a Bonneville speed record, which was hundred and seven miles per hour on an electric bicycle. This is an official.

Kevin Horek: Okay, interesting.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. 107, yeah. Is fast. And we are also there. Guinness world record holder was the longest range, Gerald on a single charge, which was 236 miles on a single charge. With no pedal using that was principle. Without any pedals, just on the electric power.

Kevin Horek: Okay. So, but if I use the pedals and how does it cause you guys regenerate energy, how does that work with pedals and breaking and whatnot?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. We have a throttle bar, like a usual motorcycles. You can just push the throttle and go without using pedals. Okay. Yeah. There is another mode, like according to California laws, I'm in California now, where are you? Where are you? By the way?

Kevin Horek: I'm actually up in Canada. In Edmonton, Alberta.

Daniel Tonkopi: Great. Yeah. Canada has a more street legislation, but California is legislation says that on the throttle bar, you can ride up to 20 miles per hour. Yeah. There is another mode which called pedal assist mode. You paddle like with less efforts and most of the work takes on electric power in this mode, in Pelosi's mode, you can ride up to 28 miles per hour.

Kevin Horek: Okay.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. Yeah. We have just a off-road mode. If a customer will go to off-road or to private theaters. He or she can unlock full power and drive 50 miles per hour.

Kevin Horek: Got it. That's cool. Okay. Very cool. I want to talk about just like some of the security stuff, some of the kind of environmental stuff, because this stuff's really actually important. Right. Obviously for obvious reasons.

Daniel Tonkopi: Of course. Yes. I know. Like, I, I don't know how many, but maybe 70 or 80% of bike owners has ever met with since their bikes were stolen.

Kevin Horek: Right.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. And we also met with these problems. That's why our bikes are always connected, like 24, 7 GPS tracking telemetry. We have our own computer on both PC and we, if you buy other bikes, they're all good. Like super seventies, motorcycles and others. They do really good job. Even Harley-Davidsons, they are great, but they don't have, smart features. They don't, you cannot control these bikes with a mobile app. You won't have any mobile app in most cases. Or if you will have, then you will just see, okay, charge, you have battery and some minor stuff. We have created a smart bike, like not just a bicycle with a motor, but full gadget. Right. Almost, I don't know, Tesla on two wheels, if you wish, I don't know smartphone on two wheels. So this is a smart gadget. For example, if someone will try to steal it, then you will receive push notification on your mobile phone.

Daniel Tonkopi: Okay. Please check it out. Or you can use where's my bike location. You can arm. These alarm signals, you can lock in a lock, your bike, plan your route and save you three tips. Many other features like this is fully connected, smart bike. This is how we differ from other competitors. Not only being number one in the world in terms of speed and number one in terms of a range, but being the smartest, the bike as well.

Kevin Horek: Very cool. Okay. I know like, obviously this is audio only, and it's hard to describe, but how do you describe, or how would you describe, visually and people obviously go to the Dell fast bikes.com and actually have a look at it, but how do you describe it? Because it has a unique look. The tires are like, do you want to maybe talk about that quickly?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah, sure. I would describe it like a hybrid between the bicycle and the motorcycle.

Kevin Horek: It's.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. It's larger than the pedal bicycle and more heavier, but it's smaller than a common motorcycle. The closest description would be like a moped with electric motor in the rear wheel. It was a battery in the triangle was in the frame. It has it has a steering bar is common bicycle mirrors, full light packs, like a running lights and everything. Yeah, it's the closest to the description would be like a moped motorized, but they're like,

Kevin Horek: Got it. Okay. Very cool. So you mentioned like it's always connected. Do you want to talk about the app experience and what you get from that?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. Or we asked our people what they want from, from a bike, generally, not just our customers, but the generally bike users. Yeah. And yeah. We ask them, we hear their problems, their issues like do most popular features or which they asked for were check-ins air bike, like security features.

Kevin Horek: Like,

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. They should be sure that bike wouldn't be stolen or if it will be stolen, then they will be able to find it. It was, that was the first question. And we implemented that. Second question was just to make a route to plans it three, to save it three, to seize the history of their trips, like to see what is the Weyerhaeuser, what is the best path? There are a lot of features like engaging disengage alarm, for example. Basically we are asking our clients and our potential clients, what they want to see and trying to implement this. And, and this is not just for this mobile app. This is our general approach. We use this approach when we develop new models. For example, as I mentioned, this bike looks like a heavy bicycle. It is pretty heavy. It's like 170 pounds or 60 kilograms or something.

Daniel Tonkopi: Many people says that they want Samson lighter, sorry. People ask, yeah, they don't need 220 miles range. Right. A hundred miles would be good enough. Yes. 50 miles per hour is something which they not use every day. Right. People ask for 28 miles per hour speed. We've analyzed a lot of their requests and wishes and developed a new model or which we didn't announce that, which we didn't present it to the market yet, but we will launch it within the next few months. This model will be based upon more than 50,000 interviews with potential customers. Yes. We hope it will meet their expectations. We called this model Delpha's California bike.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Can I, I basically can like cherry pick the features that I want and then you build it or is it too kind of early to mention the customizations or what I can or what it's about.

Daniel Tonkopi: If I understand you're right. We, we have our R and D center in Ukraine. We can hardware and software engineers. In house we make prototypes in our factor in GIF.

Kevin Horek: Right.

Daniel Tonkopi: Unfortunately these days it's not. Yeah. In 2021, we moved our headquarters to Los Angeles area.

Kevin Horek: Okay.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. Me as your and our chief revenue officer, we moved here with several sales managers, several engineers. We found chief marketing officer here in California. So now we have two offices. Our headquarters are in Los Angeles and our R and D center and support center QI. So yes, we are developing everything. In-house we can, we are speaking with our clients, customers, dealers, every day. And we implement these features. Like if we can make minor upgrade of, I don't know, kickstand, for example, people says, okay, kickstand could better. Okay. We will develop new extent and produce it and supply extend since the next bunch of it's our own development.

Kevin Horek: Okay. Can I like, say like, I want this range or I want less range, more range, a lighter one, a heavier one. Like, does that work or not yet?

Daniel Tonkopi: That's a good question. Previously, we had several different models with several different, options. Like two years ago, we had first long range model was that called Belfast prime with a 370 kilometers range. We had a fraud version. We had crossroad version. We had three wheels model. We had a cheaper version for career center for us, the guys who cares about the price. We had speed diversion they'll first stop. We had a full drive for version like two motors. We had seven or eight different models and each of them had different options. At one moment we said, okay, wait a minute. What are we selling? What is our main product actually, and then asked us, what are you focused on? I said, we are focused on e-bikes. He said, okay, e-bikes what is your product? Like if you were Coke, what you were selling coax plant of Sprite, Fanta, or what is your main core brand?

Daniel Tonkopi: I said, well, we don't know. We have seven different models. We sell, we sell them. He said, Hey guys, listen, you have, you are a startup. You have very limited budget, very limited resources team. If you have seven models, that means that you have seven different target audiences, which means you have to pay seven different advertising campaigns for absolutely different clients. You have for restricted resources, limited resources, and you even cut them like divide by seven, you have to find what's your focus. That was, yeah, that was really good advice from an investor. We followed this advice, not because he was going to invest to us, but because that was really wise. We just sat with our team and analyzed our sales volume. We saw that one model, which was speed diversion. The first stop makes about 80% of our sales volume. As a six models makes just 20% of sales.

Daniel Tonkopi: That was hard decision, but we decided just to cut off all other products and to focus one model that, yeah, that was a relief really for everyone, for marketing for sales department, because they didn't have bunch of four different complication. Now they had just one model that was really for engineers because they had the bomb leased for just one model so they can improve it, make it perfect for marketing campaign for advertising. Now we could focus on an audience. We could speak to one audience and we didn't, spread our efforts. That was really one of the best decisions that we made to focus.

Kevin Horek: No, I, I think that's actually really good advice. I'm curious then you've obviously been doing this a long time now, and you're really taking in your customer feedback to help you build the next version, add features to the app, but how do which feedback to actually execute on? Because you can really easily chase your tail and never really get anywhere or just keep launching features or take these requests that actually don't really sell more bikes.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, absolutely. Yes. You, how it's working and yeah, you're absolutely right. We can always chasing the tail. We, I created the rule for myself, always to check the report. I remember nine years ago when I used to do run best UAE, which were spoken already about that was Yelp for Ukraine, just reviews about restaurants and other places. I decided like people asked us actually, Hey guys, can you make a reservation button? Like other table book, a table at a restaurant? I thought, yeah, that makes sense. Like everybody knows that about open table really service in America, but there were no such services in Ukraine. So I decided let's do it. I found several developers for this bot, and this is not just a button. This is, this means when you push this button on the other side, at the restaurant side, someone's receiving a message.

Daniel Tonkopi: He, or she will have a system which shows that this particular table is available at this particular time. This means that he or she has a table management system, right? There will be text message confirmation to your smartphone. So is there is another feature. We had to develop not just the button, but the entire table management system. It took us about four to five months to develop then another two months to implement these two restaurants. That was hard because all the restaurants, they just get used to accept bookings by phone. Nobody was pushing buttons, these buttons, because there were no such buttons that was new product. And were trying to teach this administrators. We were trying to persuade the restaurant owners. So we had a lot of challenges. It took us like seven or eight months for entire development and implementation. At the end of the day, we received like four orders per week.

Daniel Tonkopi: Our business model was a $1 pill pushing the button $1 per push. Yeah. So a restaurant could easily understand. If we will give him a lead a client, he will pay us $1 and then he will, whatever he will sell it to him. Or so we received $4 a week. That wasn't what were expected for. We invest it into advertising, into promotion. Okay. We increased it up to $10 per week of revenue. Okay. Is this is not this wasn't working. Right. After 12 months of the entire project, we just started to stop it just because I realized that we are wasting time and money and deficit, we lost a lot of money. People just didn't push the button. Right. Because probably the reason was because there are no use in Ukrainian restaurants. You can just come and see you. You don't wait. Yeah. Not, not like in America.

Daniel Tonkopi: It was, that was one of my fails. After that, after several years, I spoke to another investor in Berlin and he said, why didn't you use a fake button? I said, I said, what do you mean fake bottle? She said, you didn't have to spend 12 months for the development implementation advertising. You could just create a button with nothing behind and just count how many people will be clicking on it.

Kevin Horek: Interesting.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. I thought, wait a minute, but this is like a pig. She said, this is just for test your hypothesis. Just you could have received your answer. Or if people are willing to push such button or not within a week, not waiting for a year, not spending this huge bunch of money. And I was like, speechless. I thought, would I do this? Try this really? I remember all these thousands, tens of thousands of dollars, all the sleepless nights, all this arid use with restaurant owners, et cetera. I could just save one year of work. A lot of money was testing this hypothesis, just putting this fake button. She's the answer was in the week. So that was a good lesson.

Kevin Horek: No fair. Well, and I guess worst case scenario, you could have just manually called the restaurant to make a reservation, right? Like you just get it to send you a quick email or something. Yeah.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. It's just the worst things that can happen to you. From that time I, I told to myself, okay, I'm going always check the hypothesis if I have a brilliant idea. Yeah. I will always check it. If, if anyone else think it's really brilliant or not. Coming back to your question, how we decide if we, if someone needs new models of bikes or not. So we are always testing the hypothesis. For example, when we found, when we received a feedback, Hey guys, I need like folding bike. I need heavy motorcycle or whatever, or any part of it. We just make a landing page or, and she, how many people will push the button? How many people will click? I want to buy it for example, or all we can make a field like subscribe on use on this model. For example, at the CES consumer electronics show, which was in January, we presented two different new models, new designs.

Daniel Tonkopi: We asked people to just to click which ones they like more. And yes. Were checking the hypothesis and based on this data, how many people push the button? We are making our next decision and it works. It works like a few months ago. We, we tried to like, we decided to implement heavy motorcycle and we announced about it, but we received just 60 Greeks. From potential people who might be interested in this heavy motorcycle. We decided, okay, this means 60 clicks. Or if we will produce this heavy motorcycle, like in fact, so this 60 interested people will convert into six others. This is not sexy. So we decided to postpone this project.

Kevin Horek: No, I actually think that's really good advice. And no, I, yeah. I've been down what you just outlined more times than I could probably remember at this point. I think that's actually really good advice is try to think of the quickest, simplest, cheapest way possible to test your hypothesis.

Daniel Tonkopi: It will save a lot of money and time and stress. Yes.

Kevin Horek: I want to just kind of go back to the bike quickly cause we're kind of coming to the end of the show, but what's the cost and to get one and where can people actually get their hands one? Can they, if they're in a city where you guys have a dealership, can they actually like test drive one?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, absolutely. As I mentioned last year, we opened our headquarters in Los Angeles and the main one of two main reasons was to be closer to our customers. That was probably the largest reason. Second reason is investment and closer to capital. But the first reason is clients. So we are building our dealership network. We have now a lot of dealers today in California, in Florida, in New York and Texas in other states, we have dealership in Canada, but not in all cities yet. Right. Currently we have our stock in Los Angeles. Last year we had some logistics issues too. Like, like the entire world. Yeah. Yes, yes, absolutely. Our lead time was a four to five months, which was not good. Nobody wants to wait for such a long time, but now today waiting time is just one to two weeks. Yeah. It's easy. If you are in the, so you will get it within one or two days or something.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. People can try to, can make tests right. With our dealer. With our representatives here in Whittier, California, and regarding the price, so it's starting from hundred and $40 per month using PayPal credit and Klarna and deferment and Samsung and the total price is $6,500.

Kevin Horek: Okay. I can pay monthly for how long, or I just can obviously pay the 65 and 99 or whatever. Yeah.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yeah. We, we have different installments blond plans. We have, we are working with several banks like PayPal credit Klarna, and et cetera. And we have our own installment plans. Yeah, we have, we are flexible in that. Also, as I already mentioned, we will launch a cheaper version soon, like within, maybe until the end of summer, we will launch our crowdfunding campaign for the California bike, which will be lighter, cheaper, more reliable, not such brutal, not such heavy. I think it will be more affordable for everyone.

Kevin Horek: Very cool. And, and you have different color options right now, like a black or white and orange or red and a blue. So very cool. How about, so how about we close the show with mentioning where people can get more information about yourself Del Fest and any other links you want to mention?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, sure. Everything. If you're interested in, e-bikes just visit our website. Delpha's bikes.com. You can always follow me on Twitter, on Facebook. It's easy. Daniel, Tom copy. I'm big fan of, for everything eco about the environment about clean energy, clean society. Like, we are from Ukraine, we stand for emissions free and dictators free society.

Kevin Horek: Sure. You're giving some proceeds of your sales to support Ukraine. Do you want to talk about that quickly?

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, you're absolutely. We, all of us, all 40 millions of Ukrainians, we all work in two shifts. Now. Like one shift is our usual seal life. Second shift, we are standing for Ukraine and Ukraine. We, I personally one of the leaders of four of the EU law movements movement, which stands for Ukrainian leaders against war. We speak to senators and Congress, people of the U S Congress, we ask them to provide military help, humanitarian help. Literally two hours ago, I had a meeting with Senator Feinstein's office, California. Yeah. We spoke about immigration issues because there are a lot of refugees and people who want to come to America, they have issues with visa, with communitarian, parole, and other problems. So we ask them to help Ukraine. And we, it works. It really works like in the beginning of the war, there were not as much support as we have now.

Daniel Tonkopi: We started to speak to Congress, people, and they immediately was signing petitions to buy them, to provide military help to Ukraine and communitarian help. Does it, and it came to Lindley's or law. Right? Yes, we do our job pretty good. We educate them. We give them our stories from the ground. We connect people from the middle of the war, from Kiev, from Carson and two, we are sharing our stories. As I mentioned, our team, they'll fast team. We work in QI and we have team members in Kharkiv in Kiersten and they just share their stories. They just showed how they work, how they lives are now like one yeah. One lady marketing manager can name is Daria. She lives in Kharkiv and yes. She was with her in zoom meeting with Senator and there was a window covered by black curtain behind her. And someone asked, what does it mean?

Daniel Tonkopi: Why is there a black dress? She said, this is because if I'll show my lights in windows, so I will spot myself. I could become a target for Russian missiles.

Kevin Horek: Oh, wow.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes. This is so crazy. Like it's happening right now. As a man in Kiev, he is a very popular blogger on top to skin. He showed videos from Bouchet, from European, from Kiev to senators, to Congress, people. And that was really powerful. We provided them just to straight information, clear and honest information so they can make their why decisions after that. And as we can see, it works.

Kevin Horek: No, that's amazing. Like all, obviously nobody's really safe over there. So how are they? Like, how's it? How are they handling it? Cause that's gotta be like, awful. Just like, I don't know how, like, I don't even know what words to say. Like we all know how bad.

Daniel Tonkopi: It is bad. One week ago I had this speech in Dallas, Texas at earth X conference. I showed pictures of destroyed infrastructure and Ukraine. Yes, well, when people saw these pictures, they were like, wow, they couldn't even imagine it. Like Ukraine, Russian army Putin has destroyed close to 90% of oil infrastructure, like, oh, oil, deports, oil refineries, and even one or the refinery, if it is a bombed, so there will be a fire and air pollution and land pollution. It is a disaster. Right. If they attack hundreds of oil deposits, it's catastrophic. So yes, boudin was attacking nuclear plants. It was like crazy. He invaded to Chernobyl first and they Zen, he bombed zipper regia nuclear power plant, which is the largest European nuclear plant. Like it's six times lodges.

Kevin Horek: Wow.

Daniel Tonkopi: It is. Yeah. Since it gets hard to imagine. It's hard to understand. It's hard to believe that it's happening right now in 2022 in center central Europe.

Kevin Horek: Well, and that you, these people are still working to right. Is, you know, just, yeah. Wow,

Daniel Tonkopi: Wow. We stand a hundred.

Kevin Horek: Percent.

Daniel Tonkopi: Even workers of such nuclear plants are on duty. They have to run this power plant. Otherwise it will be stopped and catastrophic happen, or at least a power supply will be stopped. But, and there are millions of people who receives this electricity. So this just happens everywhere. Our team is working during the first week of war, were shocked. Of course we were trying to, to make sure that all the people are safe now, relatively safe,

Kevin Horek: Relatively.

Daniel Tonkopi: Yes, we did our best. And but now we continue our work. Well, almost normal. Two, this war didn't affect us as business because like our production wasn't affected. We have our production in China now, and we want to move it to the U S by the way, this is another big deal for us. We are raising capital for this, like to move our company or production facilities to America. We have, we have solved our logistics issues, as I mentioned. As a business, we are doing pretty good. We are growing up three X first quarter. This year, we made the sales revenues three times better than just quarter last year.

Kevin Horek: Oh, amazing. Man. That's really great. That's amazing. Considering all the stuff that you guys are dealing with as a team and a company and yeah, that's amazing. If people want to kind of help out or, buy a bike or invest again, maybe what URL can they get more information at as we close out the show?

Daniel Tonkopi: Oh yes, sure. Today we produce our bikes in China, but this is our decision and intention to move production to America. Again, to be closer to our clients, to faster react, to faster, provide new models to the market and to create a global company. This is our goal. Yes. To, to become a company, number one in the world. Last year we raised $3.4 million at crowdfunding can Ukraine, people believed in us. Now we are raising $20 million to establish the assembler plant, to expand our presence on the market. And to scale, we have great product. We have really great team and we have our uniqueness. The next step is just to scale to grow up. For that purpose, we are raising 20 million. If I know that you have a lot of audience among venture investors, private equity investors, so please join our venture around.

Kevin Horek: Very cool. They can go to Dell fast bikes.com, D E L F a S T B I K E s.com.

Daniel Tonkopi: Well,

Kevin Horek: Well, Daniel, I really appreciate you taking the time out of your day to be on the show. I look forward to keeping in touch with you and have a good rest of your day.

Daniel Tonkopi: Thank you very much for having me here. It was great pleasure to talk to you. I hope your listeners enjoyed our conversation.

Kevin Horek: No, I thought it was great, man. All right, we'll talk soon. Okay.

Daniel Tonkopi: Bye.

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