Knock Software founder William Henderson with a matchbox-sized device similar to the one he’s developed that could sell for $50, last for two years and count every bike that passes by.
(Photos: M.Andersen and J.Maus/BikePortland)

Do bikes count?

A three-person Portland startup that hit a jackpot with its first mobile app is plowing profits into a new venture: a cheap, tiny device that could reinvent the science of measuring bike traffic — and help see, for the first time, thousands of people that even the bike-friendliest American cities ignore.

Tomorrow, Portland’s city council will consider a proposal to become their first client.

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Street Books founder Laura Maulton talks last week with patrons Jonathan and Bam.

After four summers loaded with all the paperbacks you can fit on a cargo trike, Portland’s most public library is rolling merrily forward.
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The Project 529 team in the office on Wednesday. Their new free mobile app makes it far easier to track and report a stolen bike, but the company has bigger plans.
(Photos by M.Andersen/BikePortland)

Working from an office high above Interstate Avenue, a team of Portlanders has spent the last year quietly building what might be the country’s most ambitious bike-specific software company.

Funded out of pocket by three co-founders and led by the lead creator of the XBox, the ten-person company calling itself Project 529 hit the Internet last month with a web and mobile app that aspires to be a next-generation Stolen Bicycle Registry and with an attention-grabbing petition asking eBay and Craigslist to begin requiring serial numbers for the bikes they sell.

But the most interesting part of Project 529, which is pronounced “five two nine” in reference to the hours of rest and recreation, is what it wants to do.

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Sprocket Fly techs Reid Lustig (left) and Sam Appelbaum
(right) with the service’s first client, Aaron Kaffen
of local web services firm Cloudability.
(Photo courtesy Sprocket Fly.)

Portland is great at delivering things by bike: flowers, pizza, beer, plumbing. A new company wants to be a platform for delivering … bike repairs.

The two-week-old Sprocket Fly is a mobile bike repair service that plans to affiliate with several different bike technicians who’ll travel to homes and businesses for on-site repairs.

“I’m not a huge aggressive commuter or biker, but I enjoy biking, me and my wife and kid here in Northeast Portland,” Sprocket Fly founder Dan Hahn said. “One of the things that has always been a pain for us is getting it into the shop.”

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Dave Hoch, co-founder of The Cog Space.
(Photo by J.Maus/BikePortland)

A “recovering SUV driver” with a master’s degree in sustainable business and a job in Portland’s tech sector is setting out to bring two good ideas from the tech industry into the bicycle world: business accelerators and unconference events.

Dave Hoch has just lined up a new co-working space that sets out to serve as an accelerator for Portland’s ever-growing universe of bike-related businesses. Hoch is also hosting an “unconference” event next week designed to bring together people of all sorts interested in “the bike economy.”

Hoch, 33, has been working since December to plan The COG Space. As of this week, he’s sealed a partnership with Forge, a new co-working space for social entrepreneurs and nonprofits that’s planning to open in May at 1410 SW Morrison Street, just west of Interstate 405 near downtown.

Hoch said in an interview last month that in talking with entrepreneurs in the bike world, he’s “hearing they’re really good at their craft, but they’re not business people.”

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Two more bike-based businesses.

Recently I’ve learned about two more Portland businesses that have made bicycles an integral part of their business. Crank Roasting is a new coffee company and Co-Creative Pruning has been in business since 2010. I asked the owners of both businesses to share more about what they do and why they’ve decided to use bicycles.

Cory Love, owner of Crank Roasting:

“I have been involved in coffee roasting over the last 15 years. My love of riding and racing bikes goes back to my childhood – racing BMX through the late 70′s and 80′s and then in my mid 20′s I got into road cycling and racing. As my family and business became busier in my 30′s, I was finding it harder to ride consistently. I started dreaming about a way to be able to have bicycling be integral to my business.”

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I’m happy to have three more bike-based businesses to introduce you to. Two of them are food-related, and we’ve got yet another service-related bike business (to add to the plumber, landscaper, general contractor, couriers, and others!).

Momo Cart is a food cart run out of a bike trailer that sells Nepalese steamed dumplings. The cart opened in June and is the work of Evan Feenstra and his business partners Roshan and Hailey Bhai (Roshan is a native of Nepal). Evan says momos are standard snacking fare in Nepal and they’ve kept the same recipe you’d find on the streets there. Another tradition they follow is to pulling the cart by bike, which Evan says is often how they’re sold in Nepal. (more…)

Chris Sanderson, a general contractor who
works by bike, has had a successful first
year in business.
(Photos © J. Maus/BikePortland)

Back in February, I introduced you to Chris Sanderson, a licensed general contractor who runs his entire business from a cargo bike with a trailer attached. In an industry where big trucks are the norm, Chris’s story stands out among Portland’s growing crop of bike-based businesses. I ran into him the other day and learned he’s celebrating a very successful first year in business.

Hoping to learn more about Chris’s experiences, I asked him a few questions via email…

My first year in business has been a learning experience. I never planned to be in business for myself and I have learned valuable lessons, sometimes the hard way. One thing that I did not anticipate going into this was the amount of administrative/overhead time that it takes to run a business. I am starting to learn that I need to account for the hours running the business, and adjust my rates appropriately to cover those costs. Needless to say, I am beginning to understand why contractors charge what they charge. When I first started doing this business, I was charging $20/hour, which is super cheap compared to many contractors, and now I am starting to see that I need to charge about $45-55/hour to cover my overhead costs. Some people tell me that is still super cheap, but I have the advantage of not having automobile expenses.
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Another bike-based business has set up shop on the streets of Portland. Rolling Wrench, “Portland’s bike shop on wheels,” is a mobile bicycle repair business and brainchild of Tim Ennis. Tim is a veteran of several bike shops whose independent streak left him wanting to go out on his own.

“I’ve worked for various bike shops over the years, and finally got fed up with trying to do something I love on someone else’s terms,” he told me via email this morning.

Tim opened Rolling Wrench in Boston last May and says it was a huge success. He moved to Portland over the winter (to be closer to family), and hoped to open a similar business in the spring. It took a bit longer than he planned to get things rolling; but he opened for business this week and says things are going great so far. (more…)

Portland Pedal Power’s cargo enclosure.

Portland Pedal Power is a local bike business that delivers food, beer and wine, groceries and other products throughout the city. Their fleet consists of Yuba Mundo longtail cargo bikes with custom made enclosures that attach to the rear racks.

The enclosures are a nifty way to hold cargo and they have a highly visible presence on the road.

In the nearly five years they’ve been in business the enclosures have gone through many iterations and design refinements. Now, after receiving many inquiries about them from other local businesses, Portland Pedal Power is selling them as a stand-alone product. (more…)