From disrupting an industry with Cervelo, to empowering athletes with 4iiii * Simon Ward and Phil White

I love the concept of disrupting an industry.  Think PayPal or Monzo with banking, Netflix with streaming TV, Amazon with book sales, Tesla with cars, and in the bike industry think Cervelo. At a time when most bikes were Italian made with traditional round stainless steel or aluminium tubing, along came Cervelo with aero designs and carbon fibre.  If you want an example of their first design, look at the Barracchi concept bike which looks very similar to the P5x which came out a few years ago.

My guest today is one of the co-founders of Cervelo, Phil White.  Despite not being a bike geek, I thoroughly enjoyed this conversation.  Phil was a great guest and I learned a huge amount about what drove he and his partner Gerard Vroomen to make what have become the most popular triathlon bike brand.  Having sold Cervelo to PON bikes in 2012, Phil stayed on as a consultant to the company for another 5 years, leaving in 2017. Recently (as in the last 3 months), Phil joined 4iiii as acting president. You may know 4iiii for their range of power meters and heart rate monitors. Their goal is to empower athletes by providing them with the tools they need to get the most accurate results. With Phil White on board, you can bet that they’ll be able to deliver this and more going forward.

We cover a lot of topics including:

• Why triathlon was a good market for Cervelo
• To create good bikes you need to be an engineer and a designer
• "Who dares wins"
• Making cool bikes that are different and better
• Creating a strong company structure 
• Understanding what the customer wants
• On leaving the company that you founded, and the challenges of letting go
• City Bikes - Congestion, pollution, and solving the problem of moving large masses of people in cities
• Being afraid of not doing good work
• Tubeless tyres, carbon rims, disc brakes, and the future of bike wheels

LINKS

To find out more about 4iiii please visit their website 4iiii.com

To find out more about Cervelo

To Make Riders Faster The inside story of Cervelo and the Dan Empfield Review on SlowTwitch.com

We also talked about these books….

Will it Make the Boat Go Faster? Ben Hunt-Davies

Car Guys vs Bean Counters by Bob Lutz

Phil expressed admiration for the work done by Dan Bigham

That first Cervelo Bike - The Barrachi

The purists will like this page - Cervelo Engineering Field Notes

To find out more about Simon’s SWAT programme, please click HERE 

Visit Simon's website for more information about his coaching programmes

Links to all of Simon's social media channels can be found here

For any questions please email Beth@TheTriathlonCoach.com