A 43-year-old Los Gatos mother of three, Anna Lindstrom, has teamed up with famed bike-maker Ben Serotta as she launches her new company, Kielo Cycling, Inc., aiming to make high-tech bikes accessible to more people.
This comes as a recent report from market research firm Technavio predicts the top end of the sector will grow by $6.5 billion over the next four years—a nearly 7.5% rate.
“The market that we’re trying to go into is, yes, premium, and I need to nail down the prices with the current tariffs,” Lindstrom said during an interview last week outside Los Gatos Coffee Roasting Co.
She explains that, despite a potential $8,000 to $10,000 price tag, her bikes will be made to last: “I think it’s an option to enjoy your life instead of being stuck in traffic.”
Experts say interest in the sport has soared, in part because bike clubs offer a sense of community and because frame and brake designs continue to improve.
And Lindstrom is right at the forefront of this next wave of innovation.
She made the move to California from Finland after her husband, Jan, got to golf with John T. Chambers, the then-CEO of Cisco (where he worked), as a performance reward back in 2012.
“That is the single time that I’ve been playing golf,” Lindstrom said of joining them on the course in Hawaii that day.
That’s when the tech titan popped the question.
“He was asking, What would you do if I offered you a position in California?”
They said yes.
“That was December,” she recalled. “By February, we’d sold our place.”
Early love of bikes
Lindstrom grew up in Joensuu, on the eastern side of Finland.
“I loved riding bikes as a kid,” she said. “I learned to ride bikes before my neighbor’s boy.”
While the boy, named Antti, would do better in competitive cross-country skiing races, she would beat him in cycling.
“We had helmets on, and we were serious, but nothing more than this,” she said, adding she was also a good computer coder in her early years. “I am a problem-solver.”
Like many Silicon Valley tech founders, she, too, dropped out of college—from the University of Maryland—because she was working two jobs at the same time.
(Drew Penner / Los Gatan)
“I learn much more when working,” she said, adding she returned to Finland and met her husband eight years later.
Despite the good public transportation, Lindstrom enjoyed skateboarding and cycling as a way to get around.
But her serious love affair with bikes kicked off when her husband proposed.
“He offered to buy me a bicycle and take me for a honeymoon around the Alps,” she said.
Lindstrom had just crashed her motorcycle and was considering buying a new one.
Instead, they tied the knot and went on their honeymoon a year later.
“I had a knee injury that prevented me from sports before,” she said. “Having my body tolerate a sport, that was good.”
They travelled about 1,000 miles over two weeks.
The legendary bikemaker
Ben Serotta is a name that looms large in the bike world.
He’s been making bikes used in the Olympics dating back to the 1976 Games. He was contracted by US teams 7- Eleven (1984-1988) and Coors Light (1991-1994). And he developed proprietary “size-specific” bicycle frame tubing, known as the “Colorado Concept.”
“Around here, I see all Serottas on the road all the time,” Lindstrom said. “He is one of the biggest bicycle builders in USA.”
A few years ago, Lindstrom had invested in a hub company that hadn’t exactly worked out.
She’d ordered a custom bike from Serotta to do some design testing.
“I believe all the failures are teaching you a lot,” she said, clearly in a place where she can laugh about it now. “Everything had gone wrong by the time I was picking up my bike.”
She ended up delaying her flight back from New York City for several hours, so they could continue chatting.
“I was like, ‘Okay, why aren’t you building with your own name?’” she recalled, noting he was then under the Serotta Design Studio label. “‘How much would you need to start titanium production?’”
At the time he was focused on steel and aluminum bikes, she explains.
“Titanium is superior,” she said. “My steel bike rides well—for a steel bike. But it’s like a train.”
For his part, Serotta says he was struck by Lindstrom’s passion for innovation.
(Kielo Cycling)
“My first impression of Anna is that she’s a remarkable person all on her own,” he said. “Her interest went beyond just trying to be in business.”
Lindstrom decided to invest.
“Ben’s thesis for the bike is that the fit is more than just the frame. So, the whole bike makes the fit,” she said. “The first bikes (were) supposed to be ready in May 2020, in our optimistic estimation. But they were not.”
The Covid-19 pandemic had thrown a torque wrench in their plans.
“I think they say all the best companies were launched in hard times,” Lindstrom said, noting they were able to get their first bike out by the fall.
But, in the end, she discovered that a path to profitability is easier said than done in the handmade bike market.
“It really taught me a lot and gave me good connections,” she said. “But it also gave me frustration, because I did want to build something to sell. Handbuilding bikes is art.
“So, now I want to build something scalable.”
Looking for scale
Undeterred, Lindstrom set out to find a way that she could achieve this goal while continuing to work with Serotta in some capacity.
“I got the IP,” she said. “We agreed that I have the full right to produce the tubing.”
Kielo Cycling (named after the Finnish national flower) will start taking preorders this summer. Lindstrom hopes they’ll have the first bikes ready by August.
“We’ll do pre-launch this year,” she said. “I’m always optimistic. That’s a quality, not a fault, as I always say.”
As an early supporter of technology like Oura, a ring you wear on your finger that tracks your sleep, Lindstrom also wants to optimize the bike for the AI age.
She’s hoping that the ability to scan and analyze body types will help to break down barriers when it comes to allowing more people to get their very own Olympic-caliber custom bike.
Serotta says Lindstrom seems to be approaching her business launch the right way.
“It really amounts to, who has something to offer the cycling population that’s unique—and uniquely better?” he said. “And from the conversations we have, I think Anna understands that clearly.”
Lindstrom is hoping she’ll be able to get one of her bikes into the hands of Finnish president Alexander Stubb—someone she knows personally from her racing days. (She’s earned multiple national championships).
“I was riding bikes with him when he was prime minister of Finland,” she said. “How cool is it that your president is actually riding bikes? Imagine that.”
