Concept2 Rowing Machines: Dick and Peter Dreissigacker

Brothers Dick and Peter Dreissigacker used their experience as Olympic-level rowers to build a rowing machine that captured the sensation of being on the water. Initially made of bicycle parts in a Vermont barn, the machines had a limited market at first: mostly rowing clubs and schools that competed in the sport. But in the 2000’s, business began to take off when Greg Glassman, the founder of Crossfit, began putting the machines into his gyms. Today Concept2 sells rowing machines to thousands of gyms and teams around the world, plus rowers, stationary bikes and skiing machines for people who train at home. This episode was produced by J. C. Howard, with music by Ramtin Arablouei Edited by Neva Grant, with research help from Katherine Sypher. You can follow HIBT on Twitter https://twitter.com/HowIBuiltThis & Instagram https://www.instagram.com/howibuiltthis, and email us at [email protected] mailto:[email protected]. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Guy Raz?

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• 5:11Guy Raz?

  Hey, really quick before we start the show. We have an announcement about a really exciting new thing we're launching: a newsletter. And like our show, the newsletter is designed to be interesting, informative, inspiring, and most importantly, fun. It's 100% free, and to sign up, just visit guyraz.com. That's G-U-Y-R-A-Z dot com.

• 5:46Speaker 01

  In the 90s, we were making some attempts to make it mainstream in clubs. And we said, we have got this great idea. You need at least 10 machines. We'll train your staff to instruct how to row in a team kind of workout. And that was the same year that spinning started. Hmm, which was a huge craze, yeah. Yeah, so all the space that we were thinking the health clubs could use for a rowing, they said, well, spinning is where it is at. And that was a bad timing. It was kind of a flop. A flop, yeah.

• 6:26Guy Raz?

  Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built.

• 6:37Guy Raz?

  I'm Guy Raz, and on the show today, how two brothers helped bring a niche sport into the mainstream with a rowing machine that really felt like rowing and is now in fitness centers around the world.

• 6:56Guy Raz?

  You can build a pretty good business off a niche product, something that a hardcore group of devotees will love and support, like a tongue scraper, or a salt slab, or a ring light. The trick is how to turn that niche into something bigger with wider appeal. If you've listened to the show, you've heard us tell stories about a bunch of brands that made the transition from niche to mainstream, like Simple Mills Snacks or Strava, which started out as a website for hardcore cyclists. But probably the best example we featured is Burton Snowboards. Back when Jake Burton Carpenter offered up snowboards, very, very few people had even heard of the sport. Today's guests also launched their business,

• 7:41Guy Raz?

  Concept 2, in the far reaches of the niche netherworld. Back in the late 1970s, brothers Dick and Peter Dreissigacker were Olympic-level rowers who were looking for a way to get an edge on the competition. They started by making something that was totally new at the time, oars made from carbon fiber instead of wood. These oars were lighter and faster and more durable. But after a few years, the brothers realized the market for selling oars to competitive rowers is decidedly limited. So they eventually moved towards the product that they're now best known for: stationary rowing machines, machines that capture the sensation of being on the water.

• 8:26Guy Raz?

  Now, at the time, the product was still very niche. But today, you'll find Concept 2 rowers in fitness centers all around the world. And how did they do that? Well, as regular fans of the show may have guessed, it was a mixture of luck and skill. The skill came from Peter and Dick's deep knowledge of the sport and their engineering know-how. The luck came from the CrossFit movement, which embraced the rowing machine and helped to popularize it. The machines are still assembled in Vermont, where the brothers first began putting them together. Peter and Dick were trained as engineers, and their dad was an engineer, too. They grew up in the 1950s and 60s near New Haven, Connecticut.

• 9:11Speaker 01

  That was a little bit Norman Rockwell, I guess. Bike riding, zooming through the neighborhoods, playing with their kids. We did the things that people did. Went to visit grandparents and cousins and did plenty of stuff. And then, of course, in school, we did sports all the time in school.

• 9:27Guy Raz?

  Would you call your upbringing more like a stoic New England type of upbringing? Like, you know, not in a bad way, just like in a sort of very, we don't talk about emotions or we don't talk about feelings. We just move forward.

• 9:44Speaker 01

  I'm going to say yes on that. Definitely, yes.

• 9:48Guy Raz?

  And there's some benefits to that. I'm not saying it's a bad thing.

• 9:52Speaker 01

  I think that's very much correct.

• 9:54Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 9:54Speaker 01

  I'm not sure if we saw parents fight much. They had some arguments, but it was not... Visible among the family.

• 10:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. Well, Dick, you're the older brother, so we're going to start with you. And then we'll bring you and Pete. I know, I know, Dick, that you ended up, because you're older, you ended up going to Brown.

• 10:14Speaker 02

  Right.

• 10:14Guy Raz?

  And, and I guess while you were at Brown, you played football on the football team.

• 10:21Speaker 02

  Yep. I played football for two years.

• 10:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 10:24Speaker 02

  But I started rowing freshman year. I had seen it in New Haven. I watched the Yale crew row at least once or twice on Houstonic. And I said, well, you know, that's kind of an interesting sport that looks like it would be good for me. You know, it looks like I'd be built for it. And, you know, rowing is one of these things that if you're so inclined, it's very easy to get hooked on. It's a different, different than most sports because it's very team oriented, yet it's a race. You know, there aren't too many sports that's both a race and a team. And a team where you have to work together totally.

• 11:04Guy Raz?

  Synchronously. It's not like, I mean, even on a basketball team or soccer team, you're working together. But rowing is different. You are literally doing the same movement, motion, exactly in time in order to win.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Right. I think, I think it is the team aspect of it that draws you in because you're doing it with, in the case of the college eights, you're doing it with these seven other guys. So there's a real kind of bonding effect there. And you know that you're not in it alone. And these other guys are relying on you to do your best.

• 11:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So Dick, I guess you graduate from Brown with an engineering degree. And, and I read that at that point, you moved to Philadelphia. And I guess you start rowing with a pretty famous rowing club there called the, the Vesper Rowing Club?

• 11:56Speaker 02

  Yes.

• 11:57Guy Raz?

  But I'm kind of bearing the lead here, which is, you were really good at this. Like you, you would eventually be part of five US champion teams between 1970 and 1972. And in 72, you made the, the US Olympic team. You went to Munich to row for the United States.

• 12:17Speaker 02

  Yep. I'd been on the national team for a couple of years. Went back to Vesper.

• 12:23Speaker 01

  There were a couple of other guys that were there and we started to row and continued to improve over the summer and we started winning smaller races and we wound up winning the trials, but it was kind of an uphill battle. I think we peaked at the trials, but and then very shortly after, we were over on the course in Munich. I think we were quite ready to make the jump from trials to the Olympics and we didn't do as well as we thought.

• 12:51Guy Raz?

  You finished, you didn't come back with like seven medals like Mark Spitz?

• 12:54Speaker 01

  No, no, no.

• 12:55Guy Raz?

  No. But still, it's pretty cool. You were at the

• 12:58Speaker 01

  Yeah, no, it was still a great, it was still a great, great experience. Yeah.

• 13:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. Meantime, Pete, you were, you went to Stanford also studying engineering.

• 13:09Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 13:10Guy Raz?

  Right? And, and tell me a little bit about, I mean, you did not do any kind of rowing, right? I mean, you actually, your sport was, was track and field.

• 13:20Speaker 01

  Discus.

• 13:21Guy Raz?

  I think discus, right?

• 13:21Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:22Guy Raz?

  In shot put?

• 13:22Speaker 01

  Discus in shot put.

• 13:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 13:23Speaker 01

  I mean, I was sort of in high school, I ended up getting fairly good at discus. Part of it, Dick also threw the discus in high school and this kind of, he and his buddies would practice out in the field and I'd be the little brother out in the field throwing it back to them. And so as they got better and better, I got better and better too, to get it back all the way to them. And so by the time Dick graduated from high school, I was basically throwing as far as he was when I just got into high school.

• 13:56Guy Raz?

  Nice. And so as kids, were you playmates or also was the age gap so big that you didn't really play that much?

• 14:03Speaker 01

  We didn't really play. They were like two separate, totally separate crowds that we hung out and, yeah.

• 14:11Guy Raz?

  But clearly, I mean, clearly you were close, right? I mean, you, I mean, even though Pete, you were at Stanford, Dick, you were on the East Coast. I know that Pete, you went and visited your brother in Philadelphia at a certain point, which is, I think, the first time you actually tried rowing, right?

• 14:29Speaker 01

  Absolutely, yeah. Of course, I was athletic, and so he said, why don't you try rowing? And I said, OK, great. So he put me in a single, which is, it's got to be about 10 inches wide, I think, this single, and pushed me off the dock. And in Philadelphia, there's a dam just downstream from the boathouses. I sort of drifted around out there, trying not to flip over. I really thought I was petrified. I really couldn't move. And boats were coming right at me, and I had to shout out, just say, stop! I can't move. And finally, I sort of picked my way around and got back to the dock. But it was probably half an

• 15:13Speaker 01

  hour later before I got back to the dock. That was my first experience. Terrible.

• 15:18Guy Raz?

  You hated it?

• 15:19Speaker 01

  I hated it, yes.

• 15:20Guy Raz?

  Even though you're a strong guy, you were doing shot put and discus, which, I mean...

• 15:26Speaker 01

  That doesn't do any good when you can't move.

• 15:30Guy Raz?

  By the way, you're one of the very few people I've ever encountered who did shot put and discus. I don't think enough people do those sports anymore. We need to revive those.

• 15:39Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 15:39Guy Raz?

  You know?

• 15:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. But discus actually is, in a way, similar to rowing in that it is, you practice and practice the same move, trying to get it perfect. When it's perfect, it just flows beautifully. Just very similar to rowing.

• 15:58Guy Raz?

  All right. So the first time that you try rowing, you're not that into it. But I guess while you're at Stanford, your brother Dick also comes out to California to be a coach for Stanford's rowing team.

• 16:13Guy Raz?

  And eventually, the two of you end up pursuing master's degrees in engineering at Stanford. And so during that time, like, did you, did you guys ever talk about, hey, maybe after this, we'll do something together? Or was there any, do you recall any kind of conversations like that at the time?

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't right away. It wasn't really until we got into doing a couple of classes together that had to do with starting a business and writing a business plan.

• 16:42Speaker 02

  Right. And oddly enough, our business plan was called Concept 2.

• 16:48Speaker 01

  Yeah. The product design program that I was in, there was a final year-long project. And I had chosen to work with North Face Company on a backpack project. And we used that as the subject of our business plan.

• 17:06Guy Raz?

  You designed a backpack?

• 17:08Speaker 01

  Yes, yep. And they did actually produce it for a while. And they licensed some of the components that we were getting royalties from them.

• 17:17Guy Raz?

  Wow.

• 17:18Speaker 01

  That, for a little bit. We figured the royalties, when all was said, amounted to about 35 cents an hour for our work.

• 17:26Guy Raz?

  Not bad, not bad, not bad. Pete, this is something I'm curious about because you hated rowing when you first tried it in 1972 or something, or, you know, when you first tried it in Philadelphia, you didn't like it. But eventually, something clicked with you and rowing because you then got into it, certainly when your brother was the coach at Stanford.

• 17:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 17:51Guy Raz?

  You got more involved. Tell me how that happened. How did you go from hating it to all of a sudden, not maybe all of a sudden, but to liking it?

• 17:59Speaker 01

  I guess when you jump into a boat, you say, well, I can do this. You know, this is nothing. Look at all these people out there. And you get in there and you realize you have no clue of what to do. And that puts you at very disadvantage for the first time you go out there. Then what happened is that after my sort of disc throwing was done with, Dick said, well, why don't you come down and we can row a pair together? Well, Get in the boat, teach how to row. And I think I picked it up pretty quickly. We got into some races and we beat some people in pairs. And, you know, when you beat people, you feel good about the sport all of a sudden. You start doing well.

• 18:39Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And clearly, like your brother, you had some talent for it. I mean, you guys were good enough where you decided to try out for the 76 Summer Olympics team.

• 18:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think the few pair races we got into out west, we typically won the race.

• 18:58Guy Raz?

  The two of you guys were a pair?

• 18:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:00Guy Raz?

  So you guys were a brother rowing team?

• 19:04Speaker 01

  Brother rowing team, yeah.

• 19:05Guy Raz?

  The Dreisagakka brothers were like the Winklevoss brothers from Harvard, you know, the guys who tried to start Facebook. They were also rowers. That's a different story. And so tell me, you know, not to give away the ending, but you did not make the Summer Olympic team. What happened? Just you just?

• 19:25Speaker 01

  Well, we had a, we had an interesting plan, I guess you'd say. We, our plan was to drive across country and do altitude training. We would camp and row and it was great conditioning. I mean, some of the lakes we found were like two miles high in Leadville, Colorado.

• 19:46Guy Raz?

  But you wanted to train at altitude because obviously that would require more aerobic exertion and you figured that would help you.

• 19:55Speaker 01

  Yeah, I think we had a great idea for altitude training, but we didn't really understand it or know how to do it. So we got quite fit, but not fast. And there were a lot of good pair rowers.

• 20:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd like to point out that most people don't win trials.

• 20:12Guy Raz?

  Got it. During that training period, when you were training for the Olympic trials, which would be for the 76 Montreal Games, you started to experiment by kind of modifying your rowing oars a little bit and kind of playing around with them. What were you doing? Because the oars, I'm assuming, were just big wooden oars, right? At the time?

• 20:35Speaker 01

  We had a plan to create this modified ore as our secret weapon.

• 20:41Guy Raz?

  Okay, what was the modification?

• 20:43Speaker 01

  Well, we cut off the last like four feet of ore, blade and shaft, and then created in our apartment a lightweight blade. So we had these sort of hybrid, I guess you'd call it nowadays, but they were pretty ugly kind of contraptions that were half wood, half carbon. And that's what we came to the trials with.

• 21:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, I mean, I would add here, at this point in time, the plan, we had a plan to try to start a business together. And these new ores that we had was going to be our first product. And it was changing from wood to where the whole ore would be composite material, fiberglass, carbon fiber, et cetera. So that was our real plan. First, making these prototypes, which were real Frankenstein ores, going to trials and then going on and starting a company where we would do kind of product design, not necessarily a manufacturing company, but we're saying, well, you know, the ore market's not that big. We could make a few ores just to make ends meet.

• 21:51Speaker 02

  And in the meantime, come up with other product designs that, like the backpack or something that other companies might want to manufacture.

• 22:01Guy Raz?

  I got you. Okay, let's, let's kind of break this down a little bit. First, let's talk about the ores, right? Ores, I'm assuming in the mid 70s, if you were a rower, were entirely wood. So the innovation that you guys came up with was to add things like carbon fiber. What, why was this so revolutionary at the time? Like, why would somebody who was a rower be like, wait, what are you doing?

• 22:27Speaker 02

  Boat builders were using carbon and synthetics for boats. And typically, a boat builder would have some guy in the corner making wooden oars because they needed them for the boats. But it was really a boat-oriented industry. So we came along and said, well, you know, the oars are important, too. And by utilizing the synthetics, we could make them lighter, more durable, easier to maintain.

• 22:54Guy Raz?

  How heavy was the average oar at that time?

• 22:57Speaker 02

  Nine pounds.

• 22:59Guy Raz?

  And then what did the synthetics do in terms of reducing the weight?

• 23:03Speaker 02

  About seven and a half.

• 23:05Guy Raz?

  Okay. But even that reduction would be significant if you're competing, like to get a lighter oar. How would that give you an advantage in the trials?

• 23:15Speaker 02

  There's two advantages. First, when you're rowing at a high stroke rate, you're having to move, swing this, rotate this oar back and forth through this wide arc. And because there's weight, particularly the weight out at the end where the blade is, it takes effort to accelerate that back to get to the next stroke. So that takes a little bit of effort. And races are won and lost on little bits of effort. Now, the other element is when we started manufacturing the oars, they were round shafts, smaller diameter than the wooden ones. So there was a lot of wind resistance.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  And again, that may not seem like much, but every little increment gives you...

• 24:01Guy Raz?

  An edge.

• 24:02Speaker 02

  You know, I mean, races are won and lost by a couple of feet, you know, so...

• 24:05Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. So you do not make the Olympic team, but you have this idea to build a design studio. You might make backpacks. You might make other products.

• 24:16Speaker 02

  Right. You know, we'd make prototypes, you know, like we did the backpack with North Face. That gave us some confidence that we could operate in that mode. I guess the problem was when we started making oars, the oars kind of took off and it kept us busy full-time.

• 24:35Guy Raz?

  All right. So you, I guess, both of you were still kind of in California, but you decided that you needed to find a place to... Build your business. Tell me about the decision. Why didn't you just stay in California and keep making oars there?

• 24:55Speaker 01

  I think our decision to move out of California was really a lifestyle kind of decision.

• 25:01Guy Raz?

  Usually it's the other way around. People come to California for lifestyle.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Well, but we'd already tried that.

• 25:07Guy Raz?

  Right.

• 25:09Speaker 01

  I think we had a very clear vision of the place. We had a clear vision of the place that we wanted to move to, to live, to do this business, than we had of what the business was going to be. The vision was to be more rural than we could find in California, to have a place where we would live, get up in the morning, have a shop right there, walk over to the shop, do our thing. And if it was a beautiful day, we could stop early and go for a ski or work in our garden. It was definitely a mid 70s kind of vision.

• 25:49Guy Raz?

  I'm curious for a moment, because you would end up in Vermont, in northern Vermont, in a rural part of Vermont, and I want to ask you about that in a moment. But did your parents think that was a little weird, given that both of you had these like, Stanford master's degrees in engineering, and that your dad had been an engineer his whole career, and that this is still a time where people were like, doing these traditional kind of career paths. Did your dad, or mom, or anybody say, wait, what are you doing?

• 26:19Speaker 02

  Yes, that's correct. Yeah, they were wondering what we were doing. And I think there was a gradually, they came around when things started to happen. But in the beginning, I mean, I think they were probably worried of what we were doing.

• 26:35Speaker 01

  But Guy, I'd like to come back to one thing that you had asked a question about. Did our family hide emotions or express emotions? I think this was one case where we benefited by the fact that they probably hid their actual feelings about what they.

• 26:51Guy Raz?

  They might have been like, what are they doing?

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, but I think unfortunately, probably because of the family dynamic, that we don't have any good stories about that.

• 27:03Guy Raz?

  You don't even know. Yeah, yeah.

• 27:09Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment, how Dick and Pete expand the business by building a stationary rowing machine, come up with a plan for getting it into health clubs, and fail. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 27:40Guy Raz?

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• 29:51Guy Raz?

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• 30:16Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 1976, and Pete and Dick have moved to Vermont to set up shop in the barn of an old dairy farm. The idea is to start a design firm and make all kinds of things. But at this point, they start out by building a new lighter weight oar for competitive rowing.

• 30:40Speaker 02

  Remember, the oars were kind of an interim thing, though. They were to get us going.

• 30:44Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 30:45Speaker 02

  And we were hoping that we didn't have to make too many, so we'd have time to do other stuff. I think the reason we picked oars is because we knew a lot of the coaches that were at the colleges, so we could take oars to them and say, "Here, these oars we're making, try them." And, you know, I mean, people liked them, and they started buying them.

• 31:08Guy Raz?

  And you had the legitimacy because you were a coach at Stanford and you probably had the connections and both of you guys had been in the rowing community. So you knew some of these coaches.

• 31:17Speaker 02

  Yeah, we knew most of them.

• 31:19Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Let's talk for a moment about the name, Concept 2, because it's an unusual name. You called your firm, it wasn't that you were calling the product Concept 2, your firm was called Concept 2, right? Your design firm.

• 31:33Speaker 01

  Right. We were looking for a name that was rather generic so we could, in fact, work with other products and other companies.

• 31:43Speaker 02

  And the other thing, at that time, and this is a product of taking the master's courses in the product design at Stanford, we did a lot of almost studying or learning about the design process. The whole idea of Concept 2 came out of the idea that you don't just consider one idea. You look at at least more than one idea, preferably many ideas.

• 32:12Guy Raz?

  This initially was supposed to be kind of a side project, the side project for the design firm. But at what point, and I think pretty quickly, within a year or so, it really became what you were doing. You were making oars.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  I think our breakthrough came probably when Yale bought some oars because we knew the coach really well. And they end up beating Harvard for their big Harvard-Yale race. And a lot of people took notice on that.

• 32:40Guy Raz?

  And a lot of people attributed it to the quality of the oars that the Yale team was using, the carbon, the fiberglass and carbon fiber oars?

• 32:49Speaker 01

  Well, let's put it this way. I think they, a lot of people attributed it to that, whether or not that was the case or not. Yale might have just had a better crew that year and we lucked out.

• 33:00Speaker 02

  And I would say that after Yale beat Harvard, we got an order from Harvard for the oars.

• 33:09Guy Raz?

  Got it. And, and tell me about the process in the barn. Like, how, how long did it take to build one oar, for example?

• 33:16Speaker 02

  Oh, boy.

• 33:17Speaker 01

  I think in the beginning, we could make two a day with just the two of us.

• 33:20Speaker 02

  That was with us, just us. But in the end, we were making one set a day. Eight, eight oars a day.

• 33:26Speaker 01

  Probably with the two of us and two or three other people.

• 33:31Guy Raz?

  In the early 70s, the federal government, there was a, a ruling Title IX that essentially required publicly, I think publicly funded institutions to equally fund sports for boys and girls, men and women at high school and college level. How did that affect, I mean, it must have had a huge impact on your business, right? Because all of a sudden, you've got girls and women getting into rowing. I'm assuming it just doubles your potential, you know, market.

• 34:04Speaker 02

  Yes, I think right in the beginning, it wasn't as big a factor because it took Title IX a few years to really gear up. But very shortly after we started making the oars, it really was noticeable that there's more women's crews at a much bigger pool of universities across the whole country.

• 34:29Guy Raz?

  All right. So you guys are, I think by 1979, three years in, you, you have built your 1,000th oar, okay? But this is still a very small business, right? Like, how much was each oar, were you selling each oar for at the time?

• 34:44Speaker 01

  I think they started out at like $160, maybe? Less expensive than the wooden oars that were available. And I think that was one reason why we helped, anyway, to kind of infiltrate the market.

• 34:58Speaker 02

  Yeah. We tried to price it at what we thought we could eventually make it for. So we were projecting ahead that we could, you know, eventually get to the point where it was more profitable. And, you know, we, we use that philosophy all the time with, with other products now too.

• 35:16Guy Raz?

  The business in 1980, which, which was basically making oars, this was a seasonal business. Can you explain why? I guess seasonal because nobody was buying oars in the middle of winter?

• 35:28Speaker 02

  Yeah, the, the teams that buy the oars, the college teams, they're on sort of a budget schedule, you know, that they, they have money to spend during certain times of the year. So they would typically, you know, they would buy oars early. I mean, it would be kind of winter really because they're buying them for the spring.

• 35:46Guy Raz?

  Yeah. So you had to come up with a, another product that could basically, you know, help sustain your business. Otherwise, you're just making, you're just making a seasonal, a product that sells seasonally.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  That's right.

• 36:01Guy Raz?

  So I, I guess the idea that came up was, all right, if we're gonna, if we're gonna have a business that we can, we sell a product year round, let's sell an indoor rowing machine. Let's make an indoor rowing machine. Was that, that was the thinking?

• 36:15Speaker 02

  Yes. Most of the products that we've worked on and been successful with are products that, that we want to use ourselves, you know? And the theory is that if we, you know, like the idea of having some way to train specifically for rowing without having to get to the water or have water available, then there's going to be other people like us that are out there.

• 36:41Guy Raz?

  So, all right. So you, you decide to create an indoor rowing machine. Now, let me, let me actually clarify something because in 1980, indoor rowing machines existed.

• 36:51Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 36:52Guy Raz?

  Right? This was not a, an invention that wasn't out there, right? There were, there were, probably you guys had used them before.

• 36:59Speaker 02

  Yeah. Well, in 1880, there were rowing machines.

• 37:02Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And were they widely used or would you find rowing machines at, at fitness centers in 1980?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Yeah, there was, you know, fitness studios, gyms would use them. And, you know, there was a pretty good market for those at one point, but that kind, I don't think people really liked to use them that much. It wasn't that exciting to use them. It was more of a drudgery. But the whole idea of indoor rowing was kind of, nobody was out there beating the indoor rowing drum when we made our early rowing machines.

• 37:41Guy Raz?

  I'm looking at a photograph of the first prototype that you guys built, which essentially it looks like you took a bicycle, turned it upside down, I guess you nailed it to the ground and then attached some kind of chain to the rear wheel and then some kind of seat. And that's what you, you basically would just pull and pull and pull and that would, you know, feel like you were rowing.

• 38:05Speaker 02

  Yes, and it felt quite good, actually, surprisingly. Just in that crude form, we could see the potential. We had these little fan blades paddles. It's almost like putting baseball cards on your bike, you know, on your bike spokes and putting the right amount of weight on the, on the wheel, on the bike wheel.

• 38:27Guy Raz?

  Which would create resistance.

• 38:29Speaker 02

  Yeah, the weight would create this sort of momentum and then the paddles would create the resistance and you get the right blend of momentum and resistance and it, it can feel like, you know, rowing underwater.

• 38:41Guy Raz?

  So as you started to kind of refine this concept, because it wouldn't take you very long, I think it took you about a year before you actually had a product, in your mind was the market still rowers, like students and professional rowers who wanted to train the off-season?

• 38:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, at one point when we were first selling these, thinking that a lot of them were to individuals, we had, were visited by a benefactor of one of the schools and he saw them and he said, you know, I think I'm gonna get 10 for my school. And that was the first kind of mass school training.

• 39:21Speaker 01

  Sale that we had.

• 39:23Guy Raz?

  Did you do any research at the time, looking at the potential market for the product? I mean, did you, and did you have any, any data or, or insights that led you to believe that this could be actually a really big product?

• 39:42Speaker 01

  I think we, we figured that, that the rowing machine could branch out into the non-rowing market if we did it right. But I'm, I'm interested by Guy's question. It, one issue is, we don't really have a good answer to your question about market research and that kind of stuff. I mean, we didn't go in that, into this from the idea of a business major might go into it in a different way, you know, and, and say, well, let's look at the market size, what percentage of market can we get, and this kind of thing. We didn't do that.

• 40:14Guy Raz?

  Because had you done that, you would have discovered that the potential, at least at that time, was small.

• 40:21Speaker 01

  Right. We might not have done it.

• 40:23Guy Raz?

  Yeah. All right. Your first indoor rower comes out in 1981. Help me understand how you, 1981, pre-internet, you know, pre-fax machine. I mean, it's like, you gotta sell one of these things at a time. I mean, did you take it to a trade show? Did you, how did you even start to make people aware that these were available?

• 40:47Speaker 01

  The first thing we did was, there was a national masters rowing race in Boston that year.

• 40:53Guy Raz?

  This is on the, on the Charles River?

• 40:55Speaker 01

  On the Charles River, yeah. And we took the, probably the one machine we had down there and set it up in front of the boathouse that was where the registration was. I mean, it was a pretty rickety thing. It was, you have to laugh at it at this point. And I would say almost every one of these people who registered for the race came out the door, looked at it, tried it, said, oh, man, I'm gonna get one of these.

• 41:22Guy Raz?

  Huh.

• 41:23Speaker 01

  It was just instant. Yeah.

• 41:26Speaker 02

  Well, at that point, we had, we were doing our first batch, I think it was like 50. And I think we sold most of those, if not all of them, at that Masters Championships regatta.

• 41:39Guy Raz?

  How did you make these machines? I had to get the component parts for them. Did you, were there factories that could make what you needed nearby?

• 41:48Speaker 01

  Well, one of the beauties of the design was that a lot of the parts were bicycle parts, just off-the-shelf bicycle parts.

• 41:55Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 41:56Speaker 01

  And the, the metal framework, and there was a machine shop in town that probably most of their work was fixing tractors and farm implements, but they were able to cut and weld and drill and poke. And so they took our pencil drawings and created the framework.

• 42:17Guy Raz?

  So, all right, so the, and so I'm thinking like these initial, like from today's perspective, these first models looked kind of janky, like they probably had like, you know, uneven welding, not uneven, but sort of, they weren't machine-tooled, right? It was like hand welded. So each one was probably a little different.

• 42:37Speaker 02

  Right. It wasn't robotic welding, like.

• 42:38Guy Raz?

  Yeah. Yeah. And how much did they go for at the time?

• 42:43Speaker 02

  Uh, $400.

• 42:46Guy Raz?

  And, and was that a good deal in 1981?

• 42:48Speaker 02

  Well, these rowing machines that the colleges would use, that they couldn't really afford to have a whole bunch of them in their gym, but they maybe have one or two, they were over 3,000 at that point, maybe 3,500. And they were big, clunky kind of machines. They took a lot of space. Whereas for that same amount, they could get eight of our machines and have the whole team of eight rowing at the same time and training at the same time.

• 43:16Guy Raz?

  And the difference between yours and the earlier versions was this air resistance, right? That, that basically you could, you could ratchet up, make it harder or easier using air resistance and it could, and it would adjust how easy or hard it was to use the rower.

• 43:34Speaker 02

  Right. And it felt more like rowing in a boat. And. By February of eighty-two, we had the first indoor race down in Boston.

• 43:47Speaker 01

  We got a call from a friend who was rowing down in Boston.

• 43:52Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 43:52Speaker 01

  Who said, "We're gonna put together a little race at the boathouse."

• 43:56Guy Raz?

  What kind of race? Because it went-

• 43:58Speaker 01

  An indoor rowing race.

• 43:59Guy Raz?

  An indoor- what is an indoor rowing race? Explain this.

• 44:02Speaker 01

  Well, you get- you get a couple of machines, in this case, I think there were five or six.

• 44:06Guy Raz?

  Yep.

• 44:07Speaker 01

  You set people in a starting line, and you have a starter, and you say, "Okay, everybody, go." And they go for a distance on the speedometer.

• 44:16Guy Raz?

  Okay, and how do you measure it? Oh, I see you- because it was a mechan- an analog speedometer, right?

• 44:21Speaker 01

  A little cheapo bike speedometer.

• 44:24Guy Raz?

  Yeah, and so- and then you time it, and then at the end, whoever- whoever had the highest number on that speedometer wins.

• 44:30Speaker 01

  Well, yeah, of a stopwatch. Time it with a stopwatch, and you do the distance.

• 44:34Guy Raz?

  On the odometer, yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  And if we were a marketing group from the beginning, we probably would've come up with the idea ourselves, but we weren't.

• 44:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, and after the race was over, they tapped a keg of beer, and everyone had a good time.

• 44:48Guy Raz?

  I'm trying to remember, we had- we had- we've done, you know, a bunch of fitness stories in the show, we did the story of Jazzercise. But in nineteen eighty-two, eighty-three, right? Were- I mean, I don't think fitness studios were quite like what they are today, right? It wasn't- I mean, people went, but it wasn't as widespread and ubiquitous as it is today, right?

• 45:11Speaker 02

  I would say that's correct, yeah.

• 45:12Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 45:13Speaker 02

  But it was shortly after we were doing the rowing machine, they- there were other pieces of fitness equipment, like the stair climber type one.

• 45:24Guy Raz?

  Right, Stairmaster.

• 45:25Speaker 02

  And the, yeah, Stairmaster, you know, they became a whole class of machines that were, you know, people just would kind of stride on.

• 45:34Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 45:34Speaker 02

  And if they had any- a rowing machine at all in those gyms, it'd be stuck in a corner, and no one was using it.

• 45:41Guy Raz?

  I think by 83, you had sold 1,000 rowing machines. So, you know, you'd done about $450,000 in revenue by that point, you know, a couple of years in, which, you know, not horrible, but not, you know, gangbusters. There's an advertisement that I'm looking at from that time, and it's an awesome ad, actually, that you guys put out. And it's a series of photographs of a man doing different exercises with like different weight exercises, but holding up the actual rower. So like trying to lift it, trying to bench press it, trying to squat it. And then the last window is the guy just rowing on it. And it says, you know, "You can do all of these exercises and work out, or you could just do this one exercise and be in great shape."

• 46:26Guy Raz?

  So was it hard to make that case to people like, "Hey, this rowing thing is great. It's low impact, it's full body." Did people not quite get that concept in 1983, 84?

• 46:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, that was me with the doing the exercise.

• 46:43Guy Raz?

  Oh, that's you in the picture? Yeah, all right.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  It was somewhat of a take on machines that were meant to do all these exercises on and thinking that rowing does all these things for you. You know, that is definitely what we were trying to convey there. I think we were one of the few voices trying to say that for quite a while in those days.

• 47:10Guy Raz?

  But still not a whole lot of interest because you'd go to a gym, they'd have a rowing machine, and nobody would use it. Nobody'd be on it.

• 47:17Speaker 01

  Right, right.

• 47:18Guy Raz?

  All right, 1986, you're 10 years into the business. And I would assume that at this point, your overall revenue is in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. So it's still a very small company. Is that, is that fair to say around that time?

• 47:32Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, we were growing slowly.

• 47:35Guy Raz?

  Probably, yeah. Were you concerned about the slow growth? Or was that sustainable? Was that, did that, you know, even though you didn't have a lot of revenue, you were still able to make a profit?

• 47:48Speaker 01

  Yeah, we're profitable and we had money to be able to sort of start putting into research, going away from the bike wheel to more, more custom components that we're able to refine the machine.

• 48:04Guy Raz?

  Because I think they changed the design in that year.

• 48:07Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 48:07Guy Raz?

  Which was, it was no longer just an, it was, the wheel was enclosed in like a, it looks like a big fan, like a, like, yeah, like how a fan, fan blades are enclosed.

• 48:16Speaker 02

  I think that was an effort to make it more suitable for more general public. I think the health club market for us with the original Model A, as we call it, was very limited because you had this open flywheel spinning around that people could walk up to and stick their fingers in. Although, nobody ever did that, that I know of. It seems, you know, you see this spinning thing and you know you shouldn't touch it.

• 48:40Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 48:41Speaker 02

  But having it in a cage was a big, big, broke that barrier for us, really.

• 48:47Guy Raz?

  I wondered by the, you know, by the late 90s, when there actually were stores selling fitness equipment, were you still resistant to the idea of going, of doing it that way? Did you still want to focus on, no, you gotta buy it from us?

• 48:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I think when we first started out, you know, stores or retailers were, were demanding very large margins, you know? They had to have a 40% margin or whatnot and we didn't want to raise our price so that we could give them a 40% margin.

• 49:17Speaker 01

  We were looking after the end user. We thought the end user was really our, our person.

• 49:21Speaker 02

  Our customer, yeah.

• 49:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. But in the 90s, we were making some attempts to make it mainstream in clubs. And, and we said, we have got this great idea, similar to what the boathouses have now, where the boathouses will have 20 machines for their team and they'll work out together. So we've created this package and we said, okay, this is how much space you need. You need at least 10 machines. We'll train your staff to instruct and coach how to row in a, in a team kind of workout. And we had the whole thing sort of packaged and we had a couple of pilot health clubs that we, we inserted these into.

• 50:08Speaker 01

  And that was the same year that spinning started.

• 50:11Guy Raz?

  Mmm, spinning, yeah.

• 50:13Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 50:13Guy Raz?

  Which was a huge craze, yeah.

• 50:15Speaker 01

  So, yeah, so all the space that we were thinking the health clubs could use for a rowing style class that they said, well, spinning is where it is at.

• 50:27Speaker 01

  That was a bad timing.

• 50:28Speaker 02

  It was kind of a flop, yeah.

• 50:29Speaker 01

  A flop, yeah, yeah.

• 50:30Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 50:31Speaker 01

  And so it just kind of blew rowing out of the water, so to speak.

• 50:36Guy Raz?

  When we come back in just a moment. After rowing gets run over by spinning, it finds a new home in another fitness craze. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

• 50:58Guy Raz?

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• 51:37Guy Raz?

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• 51:58Speaker 03

  Hi, my name is Diane and I'm from Paris, France. I've been listening to How I Built This for four years now, and I even listened to some of the episodes while I was running my first marathon. My favorite episode is the one about Ben and Jerry's. I love how these two outcasts who knew each other from high school came together to create one of the most successful ice cream brands. They were also very disruptive in terms of company values and were one of the first company to be vocal about social issues. I think it's a very inspiring company that has had a strong influence on many brands that we consume today. Thank you so much, Guy and the How I Built This team for bringing us such an inspiring content.

• 52:40Guy Raz?

  If you want to share your favorite episode of How I Built This, record a short voice memo on your phone telling us your name, where you're from, what your favorite episode is, and why. A lot like the voice memo you just heard. And email it to us at h i b t at i d dot wondery dot com and we'll share your favorites right here in the ad breaks in future episodes. And thanks so much. We love you guys. You're the best. And now, back to the show.

• 53:14Guy Raz?

  Hey, welcome back to How I Built This. I'm Guy Raz. So it's 2007, 30 years into the business, and Concept 2 is selling pretty well. But the rowing machine is mostly being used by competitive rowers, so still pretty niche. But then Dick and Pete go to a trade show and meet a guy named Greg Glassman, the founder of another fitness community, CrossFit.

• 53:40Speaker 01

  The way I understand it, Greg was, had always been a fan of the rowing machine. I mean, he's into that hardcore stuff. And he said he liked the machine because it'd make people puke, basically, what he said. And so that was one of the pieces of equipment he started his gym with. He told me a story one time that he actually felt a little self-conscious when he would contact Concept 2 to buy more rowing machines because he wasn't in the rowing community. And he was concerned that we wouldn't sell them to him because he wasn't a rowing team.

• 54:19Guy Raz?

  So at this point, they started, and CrossFit, Crossfitters are a tribe, you know, and they are very loyal. And that's a different audience because it's not rowers. All of a sudden, you've got, and did you see a shift, a shift, starting in 2007, with your rowers becoming more mainstream?

• 54:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. You know, we saw our planned 5% or 10% growth year over year increase to more.

• 54:49Speaker 01

  I don't know exactly what, but it was like, you know, higher growth than we expected. We call it, that's the CrossFit bubble. It'll pop soon. But it lasted, lasted a number of years. I mean, I think there's something like 13,000 CrossFit gyms out there now.

• 55:04Guy Raz?

  Many of them with these rowers, with the concept.

• 55:06Speaker 01

  Probably, yeah, 90% or more.

• 55:09Guy Raz?

  Wow. When did you, I mean, were you still able to manufacture most of the, the rowers in Vermont? Or at a certain point, I imagine, as you started to scale, you had to move some of the manufacturing overseas, or some of the, at least some of the components had to come from overseas?

• 55:28Speaker 01

  Yeah, our first step was moving from the farm production shop, but also we happened to find a good one in Vermont that was very progressive in terms of efficient metalwork. But we do make components, you know, it's a, I mean, now it's a, it's a world product. We get components from everywhere.

• 55:47Guy Raz?

  But you, so you, you, but you continued, were able to, and you continued to assemble them in Vermont?

• 55:53Speaker 01

  We assemble here, yeah, yeah.

• 55:54Guy Raz?

  So everything is assembled in Vermont, right?

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 55:56Guy Raz?

  Okay, so what I'm trying to figure out is, as these kind of grew, I mean, the, was the growth just kind of organic? I mean, I imagine you didn't have a huge marketing budget ever, really, to get the word out about what you were making.

• 56:14Speaker 02

  I think, yeah, I think most of, yeah, we tried. But I, but I also think our, our best marketing was really taking care of customers, making sure that, that people have access to the parts they need to maintain their machine and make sure that the parts aren't obsolete. And then the word of mouth tends to follow.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  And the customer service folks we have here have, I have a lot of pride. I think they, they consider themselves part of the product. We sometimes try to embarrass them when we get these glowing letters from people and we read them at staff meetings.

• 56:57Guy Raz?

  And you've got, how many employees now do you have, total?

• 57:01Speaker 02

  It was like 130?

• 57:02Speaker 01

  130, which includes about 40 overseas at subsidiaries.

• 57:10Guy Raz?

  And I guess eventually you would branch out into things like ski machines and even a bike. You have, you now make a bike as well, all based on a similar concept of the air resistance wheel.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  Yep. And, and the technology for accurately monitoring that output, I think has been a, a technology that we've transferred to each of the products quite well.

• 57:35Guy Raz?

  So, one of the things that really intrigued me about this story when it came to me was, you know, your Vermont-based is still mainly assembled there.

• 57:45Guy Raz?

  And it's a decidedly, you know, lower tech machine than some of its competitors. Not to say there's no tech, there is, I mean, but, and you can attach an iPad and get to that and use wherever you want, but, you know, the, the competitor machines out there, there's like the Hydro or the Peloton, and they've got these immersive screens where you can, you know, attach to them where, you know, you're like on a, or any river you want and you're, you know, they have sound effects and things like that. As those competing machines started to come out, did you worry? Did you think, we better get on this and try to do something like this?

• 58:30Speaker 01

  Well, interesting. Years ago, we, we made the decision to have the data from the monitor be able to be used by other apps. We have like 40 other third-party apps that connect with that monitor.

• 58:46Guy Raz?

  But your monitor, just to be clear, is not a, it's not a graphics monitor, it's just, it's just numbers.

• 58:52Speaker 01

  Correct. Right.

• 58:53Guy Raz?

  It's just a digital LED screen with numbers.

• 58:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 58:56Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  We made that decision to not create content and not be, you know, an entertainment company.

• 59:03Guy Raz?

  A media company.

• 59:04Speaker 01

  Media company.

• 59:05Guy Raz?

  Like Peloton or?

• 59:06Speaker 01

  Yes. Yes. Yeah. And to basically allow...

• 59:11Speaker 01

  Creative people in the world to do that stuff that connects with our machine.

• 59:16Guy Raz?

  So basically, you have a holder for like an iPad or a tablet. And there are apparently, I guess, a bunch of apps that are rowing apps that integrate, that can integrate with your machines.

• 59:28Speaker 01

  Yep, yep, yep. And you can, you have, you could have the scenes of any river on the, in the world, or have guided workouts from, with a coach.

• 59:39Guy Raz?

  And that's a customer's choice if they want to do that or not.

• 59:42Speaker 01

  Right, right, right. I think one of the things is we have such a diverse customer base. Some people like to throw the machine in the back of their car and take it with them everywhere.

• 59:53Guy Raz?

  Right, and you could do that, you can just fold it up.

• 59:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then there, some customers are gonna like the more media-based, media-driven kind of workout experience, too.

• 1:00:06Guy Raz?

  It's interesting, because I think that there is a lot of membership fatigue going on. We pay constantly, are paying subscription fees for these things. So you buy a concept, too, and it's a lot cheaper, but that's it. You buy it and you don't have to pay anything anymore.

• 1:00:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it'll last you for a long time. It's so good that you have your rower and now you're gonna buy a ski erg or a bike.

• 1:00:28Guy Raz?

  Yeah. That's the hope.

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  Right, and it happens a lot.

• 1:00:34Guy Raz?

  One of the things that I'm curious about is community. Because I, my brother-in-law has a Concept2 rower. You know, there's a, there definitely is a type of person who loves these things, machines, right? How have you cultivated the community? You know, we did Strava on the show years ago, and those guys, they've really cultivated a community of hardcore Strava users, people who, you know, are in a community, in a social network. How have you guys been able to harness the Concept2 community?

• 1:01:04Speaker 02

  One of the things that comes to mind are all the little events and challenges we would have, you know, like, like the holiday challenge, you know, it's how many meters can you row between Thanksgiving and Christmas? You know, it all gets posted online, you get this big list of people, and, you know, you see where you stand in that.

• 1:01:26Speaker 01

  There's the ranking system and...

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  People look in to see where they are and who's ahead and behind them in the ranking system.

• 1:01:35Speaker 02

  Right.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  I had a UPS driver come by, drop off a package, and he looked at it and said, "Oh, I'm right behind you in the ranking."

• 1:01:43Guy Raz?

  Did either of you ever worry about money over the course of the lifetime of the business?

• 1:01:49Speaker 02

  We haven't had to. I mean, we haven't, we haven't ever, well, I'll tell you, to go back to the very beginning, interesting story, you know. Our father was kind of worried at some point when we were making and selling the product, but when you start making products, you have to buy materials and you have to pay bills. So in general, the cash flow goes down in the beginning. He was worried, so he said, "Here's a check for $5,000 because I think you're going to need it before you start going up." So we kept that check and didn't cash it. We watched the bank account go down, and just as it was getting close to being ready

• 1:02:33Speaker 02

  to cash, we got some more payments coming in or more sales, and from then on, it's gone up. So we tore up the check.

• 1:02:43Guy Raz?

  And, and I know you're, you're privately owned company. You guys don't, never took on any outside investors. Is that right?

• 1:02:51Speaker 02

  Correct, yeah.

• 1:02:53Guy Raz?

  And, and so your, you know, your revenue numbers are not public, but from what I gather, you're, you know, you would be considered to be a, still a small business by US standards. I think a small business is anything under $100 million.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  We'd be a little bigger than that. Medium business.

• 1:03:10Guy Raz?

  Right. So, so pretty efficient. I mean, it's such a small number of employees and you've got, you know, pretty healthy, pretty healthy revenue. But I think it's, would it be fair to sort of assume that? How do I put this? It sounds like neither of you really care that all that much about getting rich. Is that, is that fair to say?

• 1:03:34Speaker 01

  I think that's fair to say.

• 1:03:36Speaker 02

  Yeah. I don't think it mattered to make a lot of money. I mean, in the beginning, it mattered to make enough money. The bigger issues are how to keep the thing going once we're not around.

• 1:03:51Guy Raz?

  Yeah. And how do you do that? Do either of your, do both of you have children?

• 1:03:56Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 1:03:57Guy Raz?

  And are any of your kids interested in taking it over?

• 1:04:00Speaker 02

  No.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  No, they both, they all have different things, different directions.

• 1:04:04Speaker 02

  Different going on, yeah.

• 1:04:05Guy Raz?

  So, so looking ahead, I mean, has, have, have you been approached by, I don't know, private equity groups or other, you know, companies that have said, hey, we want to maybe buy you?

• 1:04:18Speaker 01

  You know, we've been approached for the, for the last 30 years.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  Well, we're working on how we can assure that the company continues on more or less in the way it is now. And it just hasn't seemed like from experience that the sort of buyout thing is not necessarily the way to do that.

• 1:04:42Guy Raz?

  You know, yeah. We had a guy on the show many years ago, Bob Moore, and, and some people listening will, will recognize the name because he passed away not that long ago. He founded Bob's Red Mill.

• 1:04:52Speaker 02

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:04:53Guy Raz?

  And, uh, which became one of the most successful, um, you know, flour and, and, you know, baking goods brands in the United States. And essentially, he, he gave the company to his employees.

• 1:05:06Speaker 02

  We're studying that right now, actually.

• 1:05:10Speaker 02

  And, you know, we've looked at things like what Patagonia has done and, you know, they become kind of this poster child a little bit for this idea of the purpose trust.

• 1:05:22Guy Raz?

  Where the company was given to a trust and, and.

• 1:05:25Speaker 02

  Yeah. So that's all, um, all being looked at right now.

• 1:05:30Guy Raz?

  What do you, what do you got? It, I, it doesn't sound like the two of you have had many disagreements. Have you?

• 1:05:38Speaker 01

  Not many.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  I'm sure we have. But in general, you know, I think this stems back to our kind of the concept two thing, you know, where the problem solving or decision making process is more of a.

• 1:05:55Speaker 02

  More of a mechanical decision making process of trying to figure out what the best option is, what's going to give us the best outcome.

• 1:06:03Guy Raz?

  And, and I think some of it's temperament. I just think the boat, both of you are just, just, neither of you seem like you have massive egos.

• 1:06:12Speaker 01

  Well, you know, it, it kind of, you, you wouldn't know about rowing a pair unless you've rowed a pair, that it's a boat that has no stability whatsoever. And all of the stability is based on how you're holding the oars. And each person only has one oar. So you have to sort of have this mental connection and physical intuitive connection as to what is the other person going to do with his oar and when's he going to do it? Because if it doesn't, if it doesn't happen simultaneously in a total flow, it, it just messes up entirely.

• 1:06:52Guy Raz?

  And you guys rowed together?

• 1:06:55Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:06:56Guy Raz?

  So naturally you knew how to work in tandem?

• 1:06:59Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:07:00Speaker 02

  There is a thing there to it, yeah.

• 1:07:03Guy Raz?

  What's your favorite place you ever rowed on at?

• 1:07:06Speaker 01

  For me, it's got to be someplace in Vermont. It's either Crasberry or Lake Champlain on a calm day.

• 1:07:13Speaker 02

  Yep, yep.

• 1:07:14Speaker 01

  Crasberry is where we did all of our oar testing.

• 1:07:17Guy Raz?

  Yeah.

• 1:07:18Speaker 01

  And we'd always go on the perfect mornings and, and we'd just be able to, the water be calm and just black. And you could see the bubbles from your last round still sitting on top of the water. It just, that's pretty nice.

• 1:07:34Guy Raz?

  One, one question I'm curious about is, rowing, right? You've got to do it really early in the morning, but it's cold. It's so cold. It's so freezing. I've done it before. It's freezing cold. But do you like, do you, how do you deal with the cold? Do you wear a wet suit? Or do you just like, I don't know, do you just have like, like walrus blood or something?

• 1:07:54Speaker 01

  We stay out of the water.

• 1:07:55Guy Raz?

  Fair enough.

• 1:08:00Guy Raz?

  That's Pete and Dick Dreysergecker, co-founders of Concept2. By the way, both of them still row regularly and both still compete indoors and out. They even compete at the famous Head of the Charles Regatta in Boston, where they row with other over 70s in a boat called The Motley Crue. Hey, thanks so much for listening to the show this week. Please make sure to click the Follow button on your podcast app so you never miss a new episode of the show. And as always, it's free. And don't forget to sign up for my newsletter at guyraz.com. It's free and full of incredible insights from some of the world's greatest entrepreneurs. This episode was produced by J.C. Howard, with music composed by Ramtin Arablouei. It was edited by Neva Grant,

• 1:08:45Guy Raz?

  with research help from Katherine Seifer. Our audio engineers were James Willetts and Patrick Murray. Our production staff also includes Casey Herman, Alex Chung, John Isabella, Elaine Coats, Kerry Thompson, Chris Messini, Carla Estevez, and Sam Paulson. I'm Guy Raz, and you've been listening to How I Built This.