What is Newlane? Give us the elevator pitch.

We want to enable more people to ride more often. Our mission is to make sustainable travel simpler for everyone. We know how difficult it is to carry around bulky helmets, nobody wants it anymore. Phones have gotten smaller, laptops have gotten smaller, everything has gotten smaller. Why haven't helmets gotten smaller in a way that's actually meaningful? We’ve developed a honeycomb structure, which is synonymous with safety. We're going to internationally patent the mechanism that enables the crown, which is the top piece that rotates around and sits into the rim. It clips in and takes about three seconds to do, making it about the size of the palm of my hand, which fits into any bag next to my laptop. ‍

What were you doing before Newlane?‍

I left University and co-founded a branding agency that focused on insight and innovation, which helped companies like Unilever and Nestle to understand their consumers and then try and turn that into a form of innovation. I got sick and tired of branding cereal boxes so moved on to a social innovation agency, helping companies to innovate in the social space. ‍

At what point did you realise that you were interesting in social innovation?‍

It wasn’t planned or strategic, a guy we hired at my old branding agency set up a social innovation agency called Epiphany. It was simple, I said I was free and I fell into the job. I then started to realise that all brands need to think socially and responsibly. So I guess after two years of branding cereal boxes, I said this isn’t good enough and I needed to take action.‍

How did Newlane come about? ‍

I was on my way to a meeting, riding a Boris bike over Waterloo bridge between two buses and I almost came off, in my head I thought, why wasn’t I wearing a helmet? I then realised that it was because I was going to a meeting and didn’t want a bulky thing attached to me. So I spoke to my co-founder Dom who is a keen cyclist and he agreed that a foldable helmet is a great idea, so we decided to kick it off. I guess my experience of being around innovative companies really helped me. Because of my background in insight, I knew that we had to go out to consumers and ask people what they actually wanted. We were given a grant of 20K for a three-month research project and conducted loads of market research, and realised people need this, as it’ll help their lives. We then spent three years in development.

‍Your strapline is ‘Live life in the new lane.” What came first, the strapline or the name? 

We've rebranded twice and we haven't even launched yet. Firstly, we were Cyclo, which we didn’t like as it was too niche in the cycling market but then once we rebranded we came up with “Live life in the new lane” which I think is great. The name came and then the slogan. We want to give people freedom. I'm all about enabling people to get around in ways that don’t damage the planet. That's the mission.‍

What were some of the lows in your journey?‍

We aren’t engineers and had no idea how to create the product. However, I am a big believer in blind optimism as without that, we wouldn’t have done half the things we have done. However, a big low is that we have no idea how to design/build a helmet, or how hard it is to pass the safety standards and how to raise money for the business. ‍

How are you inspiring the future of mobility? ‍

You've got the low hanging fruit, which is people like me that already commute to work by bike or scooter. Then the layer beneath it, which is what we need to get to -  the next generation of people who don't jump on tubes - they automatically get on a bike or a scooter because it's better for the planet. Our mission is to make sustainable travel simpler for everyone.