CityRyde leaves for Cambridge: we “just did not fit the investment style of the investors in the region,” says CEO

This is Exit Interview, an occasional interview series with someone who has left Philadelphia, perhaps for another country or region or even just out of city limits and often taking talent, business and jobs with them. If you or someone you know left Philly for whatever reason, we want to hear from you. Contact us.

CityRyde leadership is making some big changes.

The bike sharing consulting practice is due to relaunch under a new brand and, as of next week, the startup’s co-founders will be leaving University City to make their headquarters elsewhere.

CEO Timothy Ericson and COO Jason Meinzer, the startup’s two co-founders, have decided that if their six-person startup is going to continue to grow traction, the Quaker City isn’t the place to do it.

“Philadelphia claims that they want to be the greenest city in America, however they are the only major city in the Northeast that does not have direct plans to launch a bike sharing initiative,” said CEO Ericson, 25, a native of Fair Lawn, N.J. who says he fell in love with his new city while studying at Drexel. Despite both having Drexel ties, he met his co-founder Meinzer, 28, while they were in London. The pair visited Paris to see the launch of that city’s bike-sharing program, which prompted their venture.

The departure of an entrepreneur named Meinzer may sound familiar, considering that just in September Jason’s brother Ryan, who was behind language learning tool PlaySay, told Technically Philly that he was leaving and taking his startup with him to D.C.

Next week, Dec, 1, CityRyde leadership, too, will officially move, setting up shop in Cambridge, Mass. — which is to Boston about what Conshohocken is to Philly, if Conshohocken was home to two of the most respected universities in the world.

Below, Ericson discusses why this is the right move and if there’s anything Philadelphia could do about it.

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Joanne Cheng Exit Interview: “I wasn’t satisfied with the direction the city was heading”

Google launches Maps biking directions with Bicycle Coalition data

Google Maps new biking directions feature shows safe-to-ride bike paths in green. It's not the path we'd take to Citizen's Bank Park, but hey, Google does no evil, right?

You could say we’ve been welcoming of spring and the onset of the 2010 Grapefruit League. A bike ride down to Citizen’s Bank Park in a few weeks? Count us in. But how best to get there?

Google has launched a beta and buggy version of its new bike-friendly Maps features, including directions that utilize Philly bike paths and landmarks of local biking facilities, the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reported this morning.

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TNT: Philly Electric Wheels to host opening reception, change transport in city

It was a yellow bicycle. That much Afshin Kaighobady remembers clearly.

On cool mornings in 1969, the 10-year-old would ride to the bakery near his home in Tehran to buy his mother fresh bread. Riding on the flat roads of Iran’s sprawling capital city at the foot of the Tochal mountains, Kaighobady can still remember his pride for riding his bike with just one hand, the other clutching a warm piece of naan fresh out of the bakery’s diesel-powered flames.

“The steam would pour off it, and so one bite and then another and soon I’d half finish the bread that was nearly as tall as I was, all the while steering this long, yellow treasure,” he says.

It is there, in Tehran in 1969, that Kaighobady first fell in love with bicycles. It is here, in the far hillier expanses of Mt. Airy in 2009, that Kaighobady, now 50, is hoping to create love for that transport’s next generation.

This Thursday, from 2 to 7 p.m., he’s hosting an opening reception for Philly Electric Wheels, his shop in this northwest Philadelphia neighborhood that he boasts is the first store in Pennsylvania, perhaps even the tri-state area, to exclusively sell and service electric-assist bicycles.

And he’s trying to convince the region that these bikes could be a large part of a greener, more comfortable, more practical way to commute.

THE BICYCLES

Philly Electric Wheels or, yes, PHEW, if pressed, came to mind after Kaighobady watched his wife Meenal Raval use an electric bike to commute to work and found a buzz around her method of transport. Since opening his store Oct. 1, he’s spending his days offering free test rides — also available at this Thursday’s reception — to show people just how practical his bikes are.

“They have everything that is good about regular bicycles,” he says. “But with the option to have someone gently push you in the back when you’re going up a hill or speeding in bad weather.”

He currently stocks 16 models from four bicycle lines — Currie Technologies, EcoBike, eZee, Ultra Motor — all of which cost roughly a penny a mile to operate, range up to 40 miles per charge, can cruise as fast as 20 miles per hour and require no license.

The cheapest model he currently stocks is $500 — the starting cost of a new traditional bicycle at many bike shops — and the most expensive is $2,700. A removable battery powers the bikes and are plugged into the wall, to be charged as easily as a cell phone battery, though it’ll take five to six hours for most bikes.

All bicycles come with warranties, many including a one-year maintenance guarantee from Kaighobady himself.

And Kaighobady, with an engineering degree from the University of Bridgeport and a background in tinkering, is probably someone from whom you want a warranty.

HIS BACKGROUND

After leaving Iran in 1979 — unrelated to that country’s Islamist Revolution, he says, though that year “something big happened there” — Kaighobady followed family to Oklahoma City. He built a computer consultancy firm on the East Coast, and then moved to Mount Airy in 2000 with wife Meenal, a native of India.

“This neighborhood has been very good to us,” he says.

He’s been involved in a half-dozen eco-ventures, though PHEW is his first swing at retail. Since 2006, the couple has tried to create a low-carbon household, which fits well into living down the block from his store. Also, the store is located in Green on Greene, a mixed-use building with a mission of sustainability. An environmentally friendly household-products manufacturer is also based there.

Kaighobady has used his mechanical mind for greener transport before.

In July 2007, he finished making a homemade electric-powered Volkswagen Vanagon, and says two men who claimed to be Chevron employees in March 2006 paid $3,900 for a 1979 Jetta he rigged to run on a biodiesel from used fryer oil.

“But these bikes,” Kaighobady says, in his stark corner storefront, a half dozen store models carefully arrayed on the hardwood floor, “are really going to be part of the future.”

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Every Monday, Technically Not Tech will feature people, projects, and businesses that are involved with Philly’s tech scene, but aren’t necessarily technology focused. See others here.

TicketLeap launches Anywhere, saves competitive biking

TicketLeap saved bicycle racing in Philadelphia.

Or at least the Center City-based event-planning ticketing service provider was one of many partners that helped make sure the 25th annual Philadelphia Cycling Championship was possible, even after a city budget hole left the international race short $500,000.

The company doubled their ticketing of VIP seating with merchandising and donation soliciting to help bring cash to the June 7th race, famed for its chase of the “Manayunk Wall”

While they were saving racing, TicketLeap was also introducing Anywhere, which just might be the first product allowing users to create a virtual box office out of an Internet-enabled computer.

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