ElliptiGO offers bikes for low-impact sport

Bryan Pate is co-founder and the inspiration behind ElliptiGO — an elliptical glider bike that can be used outdoors. Pate, 36, is a former triathlete and United States Marine.  ElliptiGO, a two-person company founded in 2008 by Pate and his former colleague Brent Teal, plans to keep its first set of bikes, currently in production in Taiwan, in San Diego County. They plan to take deposits in April via their Web site and deliver them in December, just in time for the holidays.  Currently, he and Teal are the only employees, with their office based out of Teal’s Solana Beach home. The pair wants to keep their first models in the area so they can have close contact with their customers and monitor the bike.

“Keeping them in a geographically limited area will allow us to keep better track of our initial customer models,” said Pate.

The former runner asked Teal to create the bike in 2005 as a way to let him exercise at a low-impact level outdoors, when his knees and hips couldn’t take the pounding of running any longer. He couldn’t get readjusted to the racing bike, so he hit the elliptical machine at the gym.

“I thought, ‘Hey, this is great, but I want to be outdoors,’” said Pate. He thought finding what he wanted would be simple, but soon discovered that no such gizmo existed.

That’s when he picked up the phone to call his buddy, Teal. Teal completed the first model by July 2006. In April of last year, Pate rode the ElliptiGo in the Rosarito to Ensenada bike ride, finishing with a ride time of three hours and 16 minutes at 15 miles per hour. He plans to follow this up by participating in the 129-mile Death Ride in the California Alps, a premier cycling event in Bear Valley.

ElliptiGo raised $375,000 in its first “friends and family” round of fund raising, which closed in January. It is currently going for the million-dollar round, focusing on raising funds from strategic investors in the biking, running and fitness industry. Pate said they expect to close this round in May.

“There are a zillion challenges,” said Pate, who quit his job with McKinsey & Co. Consulting in July of last year to devote himself full-time to ElliptiGo.

“We have to create a whole new industry with something that has never been done before. We have to identify our customers, close the deal with them and deliver a quality, safe product.”

San Diego News Network
May 15, 2009
By Sannon Rose Strybel

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