What Happened to Boosted?
Riding through the unpaved road of New York City, accelerating to a top speed of 24 mph….on a skateboard. This last mile vehicle changed the entire game of electric rideables, paving the way for future technologies and inspiration to innovate. This company brought together a high-quality innovative product and community of riders, dedicated to supporting and helping each other. But what happened, this is the story of the rise and fall of Boosted.
The Beginning
Boosted was founded in 2011 by 3 individuals from Stanford University. These 3 friends, Sanjay, John, and Matthew sought a solution to the dreadful experience of walking through their college campus. This solution needed to take the form of a last-mile vehicle that was both functional and enjoyable. With this idea in mind, Boosted Boards was born.
By combining the zippy, smooth ride of a skateboard, and then adding high powered motors and a battery, these 3 friends created a prototype of the boosted board we all love today. Tweaking, fixing, improving, the 3 friends finally created an item that satisfied their goals. It was now time to reveal it to the world.
The Next Step
Of course with all businesses, capital is key especially in the hardware space where Boosted was operating. Luckily Boosted was backed by Stanford’s accelerator called StartX and also graduated from the infamous Y Combinator accelerator program. With all this, Boosted launched their Kickstarter campaign to gauge interest. To their surprise, the 100 thousand dollar goal was reached in less than 24 hours and ended at 470 thousand dollars in pledged money. It was finally time and Boosted released their first generation electric longboard. The board was an immediate success, and dubbed the “Apple of E-Boards”.
Awareness 📈
Boosted was on track to an amazing year generating a loyal following, ranging from Reddit/Facebook groups, and youtube channels all dedicated to the boosted community. It was also during this time that another $10m was raised.
It was also during this time that boosted was pinned on the map by none other than Casey Neistat. Neistat skyrocketed Boosted’s sales by showing the product off in his videos and even making videos centered around his everyday New York commute with the board. However, the one video that took off was a video directed by Casey called “Alladin Magic Carpet Prank”. This video put Boosted on the map, as Alladin cruised on his magic carpet throughout the streets of New York, in-person and online viewers alike wondered, what in the world is this man riding.
Overdrive wrote an article on how Casey boosted searches by 300%
Check out this article — HERE
RECALL
In 2016 an enthusiastic Boosted user named Rick Bross reported an issue with his battery. While he was out, his roommate noticed that his board was emanating smoke inferring what would happen next. He texted Rick and when he read the news, rushed backed and found that the battery was overheating producing chemical smoke all around his room. He then put on a task mask and reported his issue on the Boosted Reddit page.
Boosted reached out to Bross offering to replace his board with new parts. However it didn’t just stop there, many other avid boosted users also reported similar issues with batteries overheating. This forced Boosted to announce a recall on their products and told users to stop using the boards altogether. Boosted later found out that the problem stemmed from their quality control channel, stopping production in their peak season of Nov-Dec.
Tough Times ??
Though Boosted was planning to restart manufacturing in early 2017, they took a big hit to their sales. Times weren’t looking good as Sanjay the CEO of Boosted wanted to see the company bloom past skateboards and emerge into new markets. This prompted Sanjay to step down as CEO and another Stanford graduate came into the picture.
A New Beginning
Jeff Rusakov new CEO of Boosted immediately started injecting resources into expanding the team, improving benefits, and developing new products. This included a new line of smaller more affordable boards, a new line of improved classic longboards, and developing the new electric scooter, the Rev.
Things were looking good for Boosted, going into 2018 it was going to be a year of sustainability and raising capital. Boosted did just that, raising 60 million dollars which would go towards the Rev and company operations.
Tensions between China and the US impacted Boosted directly. Since Boosted products were all manufactured in China, they would be signed by the trade war. Boosted then applied for exclusion on products and was approved. However, the government wasn’t paying distributions, and Boosted wouldn’t see this money in the short-term. Word also got out that Boosted wasn’t paying vendors on time owing up to 100k as the Boosted Rev was delayed further.
The END
In addition, competition ate up market share as consumers flocked to cheaper options that delivered similar features at a cheaper price point. Things weren’t looking good for Boosted as they cut costs further by requiring employees to bring lunch and cutting other employee benefits. Furthermore, since Boosted had grown significantly in the past year, many of its 150 employees were engineers demanding high salaries which meant payroll itself took a hefty chunk of revenue.
In 2019-early 2020 Boosted started to loose members of the management team including CMO, VP of Engineering, VP of Quality, VP of Operations, and the Customer Service Manager.
Then it finally happened, CEO Rusakov and Co-Founder John Ulmen announced the end of Boosted and the announcement that Boosted would be continuing operations under Lime Scooters. Boosted’s IP now belonged to Lime and the remaining stock of boards/accessories were sold to a company based in SF that is now selling them — You can check out the site here
In the end, Boosted’s end was inevitable. Tariffs, competition, and a niche market drove the company into extinction. Competition from China incentivized the already niche market to stray away from the high priced Boosted Board and drive them to more affordable boards further lowering Boosted’s revenue. Maintaining, manufacturing, and growing was just too much for Boosted. They strived to expand to different markets and produce boards that were unattainable for the average consumer. As an owner of a Boosted Board, I would like to say RIP and I hope that the Boosted community can continue to prosper despite the loss.
THANKS FOR READING⚡️
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— Tristian Xu
