From a Dublin bedroom
to a factory in Saigon.
I've been building businesses since I was a kid. At 13, I funded my downhill mountain-biking habit by importing and refurbishing iPhones — about €20k a month — until I realised anyone could do it.
At 16 I founded Vital Fixies, a direct-to-consumer fixed-gear bike brand for Dublin's tech crowd. I borrowed against 165 bikes, undercut every shop in the city, and ran it solo for five years. Somewhere in there I got asked to leave school for poor attendance, taught myself in the local library, passed my Leaving Cert anyway, got into UCD — and left after four months.
I wanted to build the best bike in the world, and I couldn't do that from Ireland. So I flew to Shenzhen, then Vietnam, and found a factory. That bet became Modmo.
"I thought I could create the best bike in the world — so I went to where the best bikes get made."
Modmo set out to build the vehicle that replaces your car: a modular, GPS-tracked, 200km-range ebike. We went from a two-person concept video to 982 pre-orders from 27 countries, first shipments in early 2021, and a team of 65 across Dublin, Europe and Ho Chi Minh City.
