From Customer, with Love

We expected worst, but were pleasantly surprised 😍

I had a nice boost to my day when I received the following message from one of our M1-S preorder customers, Mr. Henry Kunardi. We serendipitously met for the first time at one of our consumer exhibition appearances, where I had the chance to meet and speak at the sidelines of the event with him and his wife. We kept in touch and became friends.

We had actually expected far worst responses to my announcement a few days back, and have been quietly beating ourselves up given how much we had wanted to ship the M1-S by the end of this year. I shared this message with my team to perk us up, and figured it wouldn’t hurt to share it with all of you too, after I obtained Henry’s permission to do so. I originally assumed he would want his identity obfuscated. To my (pleasant) surprise, he said it would be okay to reveal his identity in order for my sharing to be more believable.

My Instagram chats with Henry Kunardi

Investors I meet that ride motorcycles or scooters are far and few between. Investors that have made money from hardware bets? I haven’t had the fortune of meeting any, with the exception of our Series A lead investor, TVS Motor, who are world-class operators of an extremely profitable 2W business themselves. This has indeed been a long, winding, humbling yet fulfilling journey for me and my team at ION Mobility.

Conviction is not easy for investors or customers alike to price into their mindset. To that end, I salute our investors, suppliers and customers who continue to stick it through with us, and understand that we’re so dead serious about our software, so much so that we end up making our own hardware heh.

Cheers to Alan Kay, the OG for this quote, for saying this over 37 years ago.

Have a great weekend folks, over and out.