Interview: Meet the co-founders of REVER, the app for all riders

REVER does that by helping riders discover new places to ride, plan routes, track rides, navigate with turn-by-turn directions (no cell signal required), and relive the ride through its detailed ride-recording tools. Riders can also connect with each other and share their favorite trips. 

REVER’s co founders, Justin Bradshaw and Mark Roebke, are hard at work building the future of their app, but they made time for this introductory interview that covers REVER’s origins, present situation, and future aspirations.

Andy Greaser: Welcome on board the Comoto family of brands. Tell me about the beginnings of REVER. Where did this concept come from and how did you get started?

Mark Roebke: Justin was one of the co-founders of Butler Motorcycle Maps, where they actually curated their own content by riding around and rating roads, then they made paper maps out of it. During that journey, they had requests from their customers for something more digital. Justin also had this idea of a community for motorcycles. There are enthusiast communities for bicycling and running, apps that can map your workout and connect you with others, and that kind of community was lacking for powersports.

That experience with route content is what led to the beginning of the idea. Justin hired some contractors and started creating a proof of concept app under the name Riding Social, and during that process is when we got introduced. We both live in a pretty small area in Colorado, and somebody who knew both of us said, “Hey Mark, you should talk to Justin. The light bulb went on instantly for me, once Justin explained what was going on and what he wanted to do. I thought, “Man, there's nobody doing this professionally." There were a few hobbyists and other attempts. We took the foundation of this riding social concept out behind the woodshed for nine months and came out with REVER.

AG:  The Strava tracking app for bicyclists and runners seems to be the benchmark for this kind of app. They’ve nailed the balance of community and utility in one product. What were some of the key features that you wanted to build into REVER from the beginning to provide that for motorcyclists?

MR: I'll make a couple of technical comments and then let Justin speak more broadly. There are some fundamental and critical differences between a motorcycling experience and a cycling experience, definitely, so things like offline turn-by-turn navigation become far more important for us. Taking the wrong turn on your bicycle means maybe you get home a little more tired than you expected. Make the wrong turn on an adventure bike, run out gas in the middle of Death Valley, and you're screwed! 

AG: Definitely. If it was as easy as just cloning Strava and branding it for motorcycles, then Strava would have already cashed in on that.

MR: Yeah, we're all Strava users here, and they're really tapping you into the highly competitive nature of cycling and other activities, all that psychosis of athletics. We'll get to that kind of stuff for closed courses and competitive places where it makes sense down the road, but that wasn't our foundation. It was more about that connection of utility and community, and content too. 

Justin Bradshaw: Even before I met Mark, the real impetus for even going down a path like REVER was my previous business with Butler Maps. We spent years and years riding around the country, documenting kick-ass roads and displaying those roads on paper maps. From day one, people started asking if we could put that information on an SD card, or put it on their Garmins. We explored that for a while but never had a great solution until the app store came around, and it was clear that the phone in your pocket is the solution and building native apps would be the solution. Obviously, I couldn't do that without a technology person like Mark, which is how we got connected.

The basis of REVER was figuring out where the heck to go ride your motorcycle, and that is a core function of it now. The concept ballooned from there because if you're going to have an app to show you where to go ride, well, you may as well have turn-by-turn navigation and the ability to invite your friend along with you, and ride tracking, and ride sharing… Now REVER has lots of evolved features that all kinds of riders can use: discovery, planning, 3D maps, and our friend trackers are really popular. 

AG: That “might as well” attitude is never the fast or easy way out, but it’s usually worth it, huh? Like when you need new brake pads, so you might as well get better ones, and you might as well upgrade your brake lines, and then you’re changing your brake fluid and adding an adjustable lever and what started as something simple is now much better but also much more expensive in time and money. Passing up those “might as well” opportunities can leave a lot on the table, especially if you’d be the only app to offer specific features. It all comes down to extra hustle from you, Mark and the rest of your team. 

JB: We’re psyched on what we've been able to accomplish with a small team. We're just five people and a handful of contractors. Now that we’re folded into Comoto, we really have the opportunity to throw some fuel on the fire, you know.

AG: What are your strengths and what roles do you two fill?

MR: My experience is in technology. I started out at Microsoft, where I got to know big corporate technology, and since then, it’s been technology startups aligned with stuff I'm interested in, so REVER is a good combination. I lead technology and I’m also one of the main iOS developers. We’ll often envision how functionality exists on iOS, and then everything follows from there. Our Android guy, Rolf, and I are in lockstep with features and functions that we launch on the app side, and then we have a handful of contractors that help with the back-end and web presence. 

My strong suit is looking out and identifying opportunities to evolve, especially in behavior and expectations. We’re five years into REVER, and we’re finally at a maturity point where the features mostly work the way people want, and we're always, always going to improve on that. I really look forward to how we can use REVER to change the way people experience or think about what a motorcycle or powersports experience is. While it might be a bit cliché, we use an idea of the rider’s journey. We have content that helps riders think and dream about what they can do on their motorcycle, then ride planning to start working towards making the ride happen. For actually riding, we have turn-by-turn navigation, ride tracking, friend tracking, tactical stuff like that, and then there’s a reflection phase at the end where you can replay your rides and share them, hopefully inspiring the next ride so the cycle starts over.

It's a cool challenge. What I love about technology is that it's never done.

AG: Justin, what are your main roles with REVER?

JB: Mark has Rolf and a couple other developers on his team, and I manage the marketing team, content, operations, and business development. Everybody wears a lot of hats around here, as a typical startup. My role is keeping the train on the track, managing all the business relationships, planning and directing with marketing, and guiding the product to make sure that we're delivering the features that people want. I was also doing a lot of fundraising and investor relations until joining Comoto.  

AG: I'm sure you’re excited to just get on with chasing the dream.

MR: Yeah, we have always taken the app and our content very seriously, so that when somebody comes to REVER, they should get a world-class experience. You can't fake it in this industry. If you're not authentic, people see right through it. 

AG: Let’s talk about REVER’s future a little. A few years from now, a motorcyclist opens up REVER and heads out for a ride. What does your dream version of that look like? How does REVER fit into their ride?

MR: One tech thing that we definitely see happening in the next few years is the move from mounting your phone on your bars with REVER on it, to that being integrated into the display of your motorcycle. We've got motorcycles with Apple CarPlay now, and Bosch’s mySPIN is going in Ducatis, Kawasakis, and BRP products. I see an evolution into more seamless integration.

JB: Yeah, that's a really good point, Mark.

And we're working towards that all the time. Mark mentioned CarPlay and mySPIN, and there are other integrations that we have coming down the line. Just really, really cool technology that just enhances the baseline of whatever is now, but we always said from the beginning our dream is to have REVER for every motorcycle ride. It doesn't matter what kind of motorcycle you ride. It can even translate to sports cars and UTVs… If it has a motor, we’re into it.

And everybody has a different reason for being out there. There are lots of different types of motorcycle riders. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to find cool new places to enjoy riding. We’re making it easier to share the ride and to comment on it after the fact. 

MR: Yeah, I think one thing that often gets missed about REVER is there are really two value props. First, there's the value to the consumer, all the stuff that you do on the front end. That drives the other part: an insane amount of data on the back end. We have billions, literally billions, of data points around rider behavior. I think the future holds us harnessing that. We can make way better recommendations in the app. We can use our knowledge and data to automate or predict what you're going to do next, or let you know to expect the next right turn.

AG: So you've built REVER in such a way that it encourages data-driven decision-making, planning, and functionality?

MR: Yep, and we're super excited about Cycle Gear’s physical stores because those stores tend to be meeting places anyway. There are so many elements to work with there.

AG: What kind of riding are you into, and what do you have in your garages?

MR: I grew up around motorcycles. I lived in Minnesota, so even as a little kid, there were dirt bikes, and snowmobiles in the winter. I'm mostly just an off-road guy since I moved to Colorado. I've got a KTM350 XCF and a Honda CRF250RX for mostly woods riding. Nothing competitive for me on dirt bikes, however I’m a super competitive mountain biker. I did a lot of cross country stuff back in the glory days, traveling around and even going to world championships. I do anything with handlebars, so I’m on a snowmobile in the winter, and then this summer, I got a Honda Talon side by side to see what the fastest-growing segment is all about. Turns out you can put on a pair of Crocs and a baseball hat and go have a ridiculous time off-road with your friends. It's so much fun.

JB: I grew up on motorcycles. My dad and my brothers race professionally in Supercross and motocross. I got into road racing when I was 15 or 16, and so I road raced for a long time, everything from 600s to liter bikes. I’ve done a lot of adventure riding, especially with Backcountry Discovery Routes. I’ve been on their board from the beginning and heavily involved in the ADV scene. I rode a KTM 950 around the world in 2010, and I also have a Pinzgauer, the four-wheel version. Lots of crazy adventures with that. I drove that to Chile when I was younger, and still have it for driving my kids to school and putting it in parades and stuff like that. My garage is just a KTM 500 EXC right now but we constantly have bikes coming in and out.

Give us anything with a motor and we're having a good time, and that's what makes REVER so much fun. I can't tell you many times we've come back from a weekend and identified something to remember or improve. It is priceless for us — we almost can’t be out there enough. And it’s not only our own experience. At an adventure rally, when riders come back and they’re pissed that something didn’t work, that’s good! We don’t just put REVER on a shelf and look at it. It's a real living thing to us.

MR: And a lot of people who are into motorcycling tend to be into other things that REVER could also work for, so we'll see where things go with that in the near future. We’re psyched to be building this right now, because there’s so much that can happen.

Learn more about REVER here or try it for yourself on iOS and Android.