Building Something You Think Should Exist

What product development looks like when you’re still figuring out what you’re building – and why.

This isn’t a post about business strategy or market research. It’s about what product development looks like before there’s a business to build around it.

When you’re designing something for yourself — before there are customers, investors, or deadlines — it’s hard to even name what you’re doing. It doesn’t feel like art because there’s a practical goal. But it doesn’t feel like business either, because there’s no plan yet. You’re just building something you think should exist.

That’s where what would eventually become Higbee Bikes started.

I didn’t have a company. I just had an idea for what an electric bike could be — something smaller, simpler, and better-looking than what was out there. I wanted a bike that felt like the ones I grew up riding: easy, fun, unpretentious. A bike that captured that feeling of riding down the shore.

The process took years.

I grew up around bikes. My dad has been in the bike industry since he was twelve, and because of that, we always had access to just about everything — the latest prototypes, classic road bikes, beach cruisers, and plenty in between. Every summer “down the shore” in Cape May, I’d pick out what I thought would be the perfect summer bike. One year it was a cruiser with wide bars and whitewalls, another year a stripped-down fixie, another a 29” BMX bike. I was always tinkering, always trying to optimize for that feeling — freedom, simplicity, and just the right amount of speed.

When I moved to downtown Philadelphia, I realized I wanted to chase that same feeling year-round — something compact, fun, and effortless to ride anywhere.

It started with an old Bianchi folding bike I saw locked up on the street. It looked simple and compact but had character — the proportions, the stance, the practicality. I hunted one down on Facebook Marketplace, and that little bike set off a spiral after I realized it was never going to ride the way I wanted it to.

From there, it turned into sketches, parts lists, and geometry drawings. I worked with a frame builder to translate what I had in my head into chromoly steel. I ordered components from everywhere — motors, belt drives, stems, saddles — most of them still in baskets in my basement.

With help from my dad, we connected with a trading company that could help us source parts and produce samples. Boxes started showing up in Philadelphia. I had a few sample frames, each with constantly changing specs – chain drive, belt-drive, flat bars, BMX bars, 250W 500W, etc.

At the time, I wasn’t sure if it would turn into a business. I liked the idea of starting one, but for a couple of years, it was hard to explain why I was doing all this.

I didn’t have that language back then, but I do now.

Recently, I watched a video from Adam Savage (yes, the MythBusters guy) where he was modifying a chair — an hour-and-seven-minute-long video of him drilling thousands of holes into a deceptively expensive chair. About fifteen minutes in, my wife walked into the room, watched quietly, and then — very politely — asked what the hell I was watching and how long it was. When I paused to answer, she did not like the look of the play bar.

I tried to explain that it was sort of an art project. But I didn’t really have a good answer.

Then, right on cue, Adam paused mid-hole-drilling to explain why he was doing what he was doing.

He said we’ve overused the word creative — that it’s become so broad it’s almost meaningless.

“Creativity doesn’t have stakes or an endpoint, but point of view does. Point of view says the buck stops with what your eyes and your brain see in the world — and what you want to bring out of it.”

He described spending years with this idea in his head — not because he wanted to be “creative,” but because he wanted to complete his point of view.

That clicked. I realized that was exactly what I’d been doing, too.

The prototype that came together in our basement — the handlebar width literally determined by the narrow stairwell I carried it up and down over and over — eventually became the bike we’d call the Martini: our first model, and the one that finally captured the feeling I’d been chasing all those summers.

It didn’t start as an art project or a business plan. It started as a point of view.

What I wanted was simple to explain to someone who shared my taste in bikes: a classic-looking, CroMo steel, electric mini-velo with a belt drive and an upright/Dutch riding position. But what I was really chasing was a feeling — that sense of freedom, ease, and joy that first made me love bikes.

The Martini was my point of view made tangible — an idea that started as sketches, prototypes, and endless tweaks that eventually became a real bike.

The closer we got to a ‘final’ design, the more we saw what still needed adjusting. The samples were constantly evolving. We had one in Taiwan for our final assembler to reference as we made changes stateside. My dad and I traveled to Taiwan to meet the frames coming in from Vietnam and see the first full assembly of the production Martini.

We made final tweaks right on the line — swapping out some clips for zip ties to clean up the wiring, changing the bolts that held the battery mount to the frame, tightening a few details that had bugged us from afar. Once we had a couple truly finished, the team went back and adjusted the entire assembly process. Then we started riding them — our first finished bikes rolling straight off the line.

That was the moment my point of view for an electric bike felt complete.

Now it was time to realize our point of view for a business. Along the way, I’d found other people who believed in what I was building — riders, friends, and, naturally… my family. They’d all been part of it in one way or another, and it wasn’t too hard to convince some of them to make it official.

Because while the product began as my own point of view, shaped by years of tinkering, testing, riding, and carrying bikes up and down stairs, it also grew from the input of people I trusted. The business is something we now own and operate together. Higbee isn’t just my project anymore; it’s a family effort to build something lasting with the same care and curiosity that started it.

Adam Savage said creativity doesn’t have stakes, but point of view does.

The Martini was mine. Higbee is ours.