Bikes and copy machines: an investment-worthy combo

Bozeman is well-known for its epic mountain biking and tight-knit community of bikers. Two years ago, a small group of those community members came together to solve common frustrations they had with their bikes. Now, those same engineers and their company Telepathy Bikes, are set to compete to win up to $18,000 in the MSU’s $75k Venture Competition.

The Venture Competition is put on by the Jake Jabs College of Business and is a chance for entrepreneurs to go head-to-head in front of a group of judges.. Participants will be able to access experienced entrepreneurs, investors and other resources and win cash for their ideas, according to the competition’s website. The first-place team in the competition will win $18,000.

This year, the Venture Competition will occur on Thursday, April 20, in Inspiration Hall. During the competition, finalists will pitch their ideas to a panel of four judges and then answer questions regarding their idea. Telepathy is competing against seven other teams to win big and expand their company.

The group has been regularly meeting and practicing its presentation to prepare for the competition. If they win, the company plans to use the money to expand its operations and produce up to eight prototypes on top of the three current models, said co-founder and engineering student Matt Lessmeier.

Telepathy Bikes thinks its idea and design for a “mind-reading mountain bike” will be strong enough to bring home the gold. The idea behind the company is an improved linkage on the bike. A bike linkage connects the front and rear frames of a mountain bike, and it defines how the rear wheel moves when the suspension is compressed, said mechanical engineering student Kari Perry, one of the co-founders of Telepathy. The improvement makes the suspension top tier, causing the bike to be more reliable and “do exactly what you think it will do when doing around turns and down hills,” Perry said.

Telepathy was founded in February 2021 by five MSU engineering students. These engineers all had specific reasons why they were dissatisfied with mountain biking, leading to numerous meetings after class where they brainstormed what they could fix and how they could accomplish their dreams.

Perry said the idea of creating a company and trying to solve a problem was daunting at first. “As students, we think we don’t know anything. It was a lot of brainstorming, a lot of spitballing, and lots of whiteboard markers we went through,” she said.

However, she said that after over a hundred hours of analyzing issues with mountain bikes and trying to solve them, they found a way to build a better bike.

The answer was in the suspension system, she said. Typically when riding a mountain bike, the front and rear wheels of the bike move separately, causing the bike to shrink when rounding corners and a change in cornering radius due to the bike compressing as it absorbs impact. Perry and her co-founders had the idea to create a new type of linkage that does not allow the tires to move separately so that the bike's length never changes and allows the rider's center of gravity to stay confident.

“Avoiding this shift in gravity makes the bike more reliable, especially in corners,” Perry said.

This seemingly simple idea to change the linkage was easy to think of, Lessmeier said. “It was finding a linkage that would accomplish our goal [that] was not easy,” he said.

At first, the team looked at what was being done with the current bikes, but no one had been producing what they were looking for. After almost settling for a pre-existing mountain bike linkage, Lessmeier said that the co-founders and students in their capstone team decided to look outside the biking world for a linkage that worked how they wanted.

The answer came from a student who saw a mechanism used on copy machines that allowed two pieces to move simultaneously in the same direction, Lessmeier said — exactly what they hoped to accomplish with the mountain bike tires. After taking this inspiration from copy machines, the team furthered the linkage design until they had an idea that was implemented in the first prototype.

The company now includes a team of undergraduate and graduate students at MSU. Mechanical engineering students can choose to join the team for their capstone project and help create prototype bikes. According to Perry, these capstones have been vital to the young company. “The first and third prototypes were built entirely by students during capstones,” she said.

She also credits capstone students for their current linkage design. “The final designs for the current linkage we're using were actually brainstormed during the capstone by a student leader,” Perry said.

Lessmeier expanded on the impact of students in capstone programs. “Students have been doing the work. Everyone participated, giving ideas and working as a team,” he said. For example, one student used their welding skills to assemble a bike prototype in the MSU ‘capstone shop.’

“Using students' perspectives and specific talents was integral in creating the design and prototype we have today,” Perry said.

Those ideas and prototypes will go head-to-head with six other entrepreneurial ventures during the upcoming competition on April 20. Although the team hopes to win big, they are excited about the company's future regardless of the competition's outcome, Lessmeier said. The next step for Telepathy is finalizing the design and getting riders out to test and critique the product.

To keep up with the company and see what the team is up to, visit https://www.telepathybikes.com/ and keep an eye out for a biking movie they are also producing soon.