Christian Michael and Julie Kronstrøm have so far managed to set a new Danish crowdfunding record by attracting almost 14 million kroner for their new electric bicycle project.
MATE Bike aims to be “the coolest and most affordable eBike on the planet”, and judging by their extremely successful crowdfunding page on Indiegogo, their ambitions have appealed to the public.
“We’ve had a project-development company that had some funds we could use, but we’ve always thought of crowdfunding and we’ve studied other successful projects within crowdfunding,” Julie Kronstrøm told TV2 Business.
“He [her brother Christian] had long looked for something he could get around town with, which had a motor and which wasn’t a car or motorcycle. And he quickly became frustrated over not being able to find an electric bicycle that was practical and looked cool.”
READ MORE: Three young Danes raise 670,000 kroner in three hours on Kickstarter
2 million and counting
The siblings initially hoped to raise 80,000 US dollars with their crowdfunding attempt, but with 18 days still left, they’ve now surpassed 2 million dollars – a formidable 2,600 percent more than they hoped for.
The aim is for the folding eBicycle to hit the market sometime during 2017, and funders from 47 different nations have already reserved 2,000 of the bikes.
“We realised that in some countries or places, biking is not as easy as ‘riding a bike’ and there can be many obstacles along the way that prevent you even considering a bike as an option on your journeys,” the siblings wrote on their MATE Bike Indiegogo site.
“We think people would be happier on a bike that could actually remove all the downsides of biking. That’s why we created MATE: to show the world how fun, convenient and rewarding riding a bike can be. So you have freedom and a constant reward of doing the right thing: for yourself, for others, for the planet.”
