Joined Jan 2008
43 Posts | 0+
Seattle, WA
If you're interested in online media, forums, web 2.0, etc. this interview may interest you. If not, skip it. It's just another mid-30s guy who gets to ride all the cool bikes in all the cool places while going to work every day where he gets paid to think about motorcycles.
The complete interview is at midliferider. Here are some snips . . .
Lowell Goss is yet another boy-genius who has figured out a way to combine a passion for riding with making a living. Actually, he’s working hard on a new internet venture called Fast3R, so the making a living part is still a fiction buried on page 11 of some PowerPoint. (If you haven’t checked it out, you should . . . but only after you finish here!).
Fast3R has huge promise. I say that as someone who has spent more than a little time and effort on “web 2.0″ (look it up yourself) businesses and applications. The part that has been so roundly missing, and the part that I think Lowell is on to, is linking all this cool community-building technology that’s floating around out there with communities that already exist. That’s where we motorcyclists come
Do you remember your first bicycle? Is there a good story about it?
My first bike was a black and yellow Huffy. Nothing special. When I got older my dad bought me a Schwinn that he had the bike shop customize for me. It was a yellow Stingray with a banana seat, BMX bars and yellow fiberglass mag rims. When I first got it I thought it was super cool. It was certainly unusual and extremely heavy. Other kids made fun of it for being weird looking.
Sadly for my dad, that made ME think that it wasn’t cool. I started trading other kids for parts to customize it. Eventually I traded for a Mongoose BMX frame that I used to make a BMX bike. The frame was all scratched so my dad took me to a local body shop run by a car customizing guy name Johnny Guardo (sp?). Johnny painted the frame candy apple and metal flake. It was super cool.
When did you first ride a motorcycle?
I guess there are really two stories here. When I was about 12 my uncle John bought a 50cc moped. I think it was a Puch. When I would go to visit him all I wanted to do was ride the moped. I rode it flat out all the time. By this time it was clear that I liked things that had motors and went fast.
My re-introduction to bikes was in 1997. My friend Jerry had just started riding and purchased a Yamaha Seca II. The Seca II was not a great bike, but I really wanted to give it a try. We went together to the Rose Bowl parking lot in Pasadena. Lots of people go there to learn to drive and practice. He parked the bike, handed me his helmet and the keys. I got on the bike and started it up.
Now on the old moped you had to give it a handful to get going. This is not the case on a 900cc motorcycle. I gave it a handful of gas, let out the clutch and pulled a huge wheelie. I managed to not fall off, but scared myself silly. I was hooked. Now I don’t even really know how to wheelie.
What was the first bike you owned?
I immediately went from my first adult riding experience to reading everything I could find about bikes. I ended up buying an ex-press fleet 1997 Ducati Monster 750 from Pro Italia in Glendale. I didn’t even have a permit yet. Earl delivered the bike to my house in the back of the shop van. The bike was a steal. It had about 550 miles on it. I bought it for way under sticker price because it was a press bike. A couple years later I sold it for almost exactly what I paid for it. Since it was a press bike it had probably been ridden hard, but other than a faulty rectifier (which all Ducati’s of that era suffered from), it was great.
You are the moving force behind Fast3R. I spent a lot of time and money over the last two years on a “web 2.0″ project. I have lots of my own observations about what’s going on, on the web. One of them is that there is a lot of money and technology in search of an audience and a purpose. What inspired you to start Fast3R? Was it an extension of your interest in motorcycles, or did it just seem like a logical market?
I started Loud3r Inc. in June of 2007. Our aim is to build a network of enthusiast content sites for many topics. When it came time to pick topics to test the software, motorcycles were an obvious choice. There is a great passionate community of people involved with motorcycling. The content and interest areas are very diverse. To be successful we needed to be able to find and publish the best content about everything from Sturgis to World Superbike to Stunt riding.
Because motorcycles are a huge passion for me I knew that I could provide a good eye in judging whether the product was really working. When I started finding cool articles every day that I couldn’t easily find elsewhere, I knew we were on to something.
Motorcycling isn’t a singular thing. In fact, there is arguably a fair distance between the person interested in sport bikes, the person interested in heavy cruisers, and the dirt bike rider (just to name three). How do you see bridging those diverse interests? Few traditional media companies even try.
I think you’re right that motorcycling is incredibly diverse. At the same time, every time I go to MotoGP at Laguna I see many guys there who love racing, but rode there on their Harleys.
Riders have much more diverse personal tastes than traditional magazines and sites seem to understand. How many riders have a dirt bike and a sport bike. Here in Southern California, many Ducati riders also own custom bikes. The idea with FAST3R is to let the individual user pick the content they think is cool. The product helps you find just Honda content if that’s your thing or you can choose to read about Motocross or Adventure Touring. I think that’s much closer to the reality of people’s interests.
There are certain brands that inspire a great deal of passion. I’ll name a few. I’d be interested in what you observe based on what’s going on with Fast3R and the sources you feed from: Harley, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, KTM, Triumph, BMW, Buell.
Wow. That’s a big question. The site has been live for a little over a month, but we are definitely seeing trends from both writers and from readers. The big areas of activity so far are around BMW, Ducati and KTM. The Moto Guzzi Stelvio has gotten a fair amount of attention. The KTM RC8 launch is a big deal.
The complete interview is at midliferider. Here are some snips . . .
Lowell Goss is yet another boy-genius who has figured out a way to combine a passion for riding with making a living. Actually, he’s working hard on a new internet venture called Fast3R, so the making a living part is still a fiction buried on page 11 of some PowerPoint. (If you haven’t checked it out, you should . . . but only after you finish here!).
Fast3R has huge promise. I say that as someone who has spent more than a little time and effort on “web 2.0″ (look it up yourself) businesses and applications. The part that has been so roundly missing, and the part that I think Lowell is on to, is linking all this cool community-building technology that’s floating around out there with communities that already exist. That’s where we motorcyclists come
Do you remember your first bicycle? Is there a good story about it?
My first bike was a black and yellow Huffy. Nothing special. When I got older my dad bought me a Schwinn that he had the bike shop customize for me. It was a yellow Stingray with a banana seat, BMX bars and yellow fiberglass mag rims. When I first got it I thought it was super cool. It was certainly unusual and extremely heavy. Other kids made fun of it for being weird looking.
Sadly for my dad, that made ME think that it wasn’t cool. I started trading other kids for parts to customize it. Eventually I traded for a Mongoose BMX frame that I used to make a BMX bike. The frame was all scratched so my dad took me to a local body shop run by a car customizing guy name Johnny Guardo (sp?). Johnny painted the frame candy apple and metal flake. It was super cool.
When did you first ride a motorcycle?
I guess there are really two stories here. When I was about 12 my uncle John bought a 50cc moped. I think it was a Puch. When I would go to visit him all I wanted to do was ride the moped. I rode it flat out all the time. By this time it was clear that I liked things that had motors and went fast.
My re-introduction to bikes was in 1997. My friend Jerry had just started riding and purchased a Yamaha Seca II. The Seca II was not a great bike, but I really wanted to give it a try. We went together to the Rose Bowl parking lot in Pasadena. Lots of people go there to learn to drive and practice. He parked the bike, handed me his helmet and the keys. I got on the bike and started it up.
Now on the old moped you had to give it a handful to get going. This is not the case on a 900cc motorcycle. I gave it a handful of gas, let out the clutch and pulled a huge wheelie. I managed to not fall off, but scared myself silly. I was hooked. Now I don’t even really know how to wheelie.
What was the first bike you owned?
I immediately went from my first adult riding experience to reading everything I could find about bikes. I ended up buying an ex-press fleet 1997 Ducati Monster 750 from Pro Italia in Glendale. I didn’t even have a permit yet. Earl delivered the bike to my house in the back of the shop van. The bike was a steal. It had about 550 miles on it. I bought it for way under sticker price because it was a press bike. A couple years later I sold it for almost exactly what I paid for it. Since it was a press bike it had probably been ridden hard, but other than a faulty rectifier (which all Ducati’s of that era suffered from), it was great.
You are the moving force behind Fast3R. I spent a lot of time and money over the last two years on a “web 2.0″ project. I have lots of my own observations about what’s going on, on the web. One of them is that there is a lot of money and technology in search of an audience and a purpose. What inspired you to start Fast3R? Was it an extension of your interest in motorcycles, or did it just seem like a logical market?
I started Loud3r Inc. in June of 2007. Our aim is to build a network of enthusiast content sites for many topics. When it came time to pick topics to test the software, motorcycles were an obvious choice. There is a great passionate community of people involved with motorcycling. The content and interest areas are very diverse. To be successful we needed to be able to find and publish the best content about everything from Sturgis to World Superbike to Stunt riding.
Because motorcycles are a huge passion for me I knew that I could provide a good eye in judging whether the product was really working. When I started finding cool articles every day that I couldn’t easily find elsewhere, I knew we were on to something.
Motorcycling isn’t a singular thing. In fact, there is arguably a fair distance between the person interested in sport bikes, the person interested in heavy cruisers, and the dirt bike rider (just to name three). How do you see bridging those diverse interests? Few traditional media companies even try.
I think you’re right that motorcycling is incredibly diverse. At the same time, every time I go to MotoGP at Laguna I see many guys there who love racing, but rode there on their Harleys.
Riders have much more diverse personal tastes than traditional magazines and sites seem to understand. How many riders have a dirt bike and a sport bike. Here in Southern California, many Ducati riders also own custom bikes. The idea with FAST3R is to let the individual user pick the content they think is cool. The product helps you find just Honda content if that’s your thing or you can choose to read about Motocross or Adventure Touring. I think that’s much closer to the reality of people’s interests.
There are certain brands that inspire a great deal of passion. I’ll name a few. I’d be interested in what you observe based on what’s going on with Fast3R and the sources you feed from: Harley, Ducati, Moto Guzzi, KTM, Triumph, BMW, Buell.
Wow. That’s a big question. The site has been live for a little over a month, but we are definitely seeing trends from both writers and from readers. The big areas of activity so far are around BMW, Ducati and KTM. The Moto Guzzi Stelvio has gotten a fair amount of attention. The KTM RC8 launch is a big deal.
