TOUR: Josh Poertner, let's warm up for the interview with ten short questions about your personal preferences:
Gravel bike or road bike?
Gravelbike.
Metal or carbon?
Metal.
Shimano, SRAM or Campa?
Shimano.
Light or aero?
Aero.
Flat or mountainous routes?
Mountainous.
Cycling in a group or solo?
Solo.
Classic or Tour de France?
Classics.
Coke or coffee?
Coffee.
Gel or banana?
Banana.
Shaved legs?
Yes.
As the former Director of Research and Development at wheel manufacturer Zipp, you bought the Silca brand in 2013 to make a fresh start. Why an Italian brand? Does Italian blood run through your veins?
No, to be honest, I think it's more down to the fact that I'm a small company person. We had grown Zipp from six to 200 employees. But then when we sold it to SRAM, we became part of 5,000. And I wasn't a big company person. So I learnt a lot. I have so many great friends at SRAM, but the company is just too big for me. And so I started looking for a new job. I always wanted to run my own company or start my own company. And then Claudio sent me (Sacchi, the grandson of company founder Felice Sacchi, editor's note) I received an email from him saying that he was dying and that the company was bankrupt. And I thought: We can't let this brand die. It's too good. It's too classic. But yes, when I bought it, I had no idea what we would do with it.
I probably have my hands in more different technologies, universities and companies than ever before in my old life.
Since then, Silca's portfolio has expanded considerably. Are you satisfied with the way things are going?
Oh yes, things have developed really well. In the first four or five years, I had so much fun leaving the carbon wheels behind and doing completely different things. And then people came back to Silca and wanted high-tech. And so I was able to do all the high-tech stuff that I like. I probably have my hands in more different technologies, universities and companies than I ever did in my old life. So it's been a lot of fun.
Your podcast Marginal Gains, the Silca products and your Aeromind consulting for professional racing teams seem to have come full circle. You pick up on topics that were also important at Zipp: Efficiency, riding faster, riding better. But why did you completely leave out wheel development?
When I left Zipp, I knew that technology had something of an asymptote, and I knew that we were approaching the asymptote.
In other words: At TOUR, we use ten-year-old Zipp 404 wheels as a reference for the aerodynamic tests in the wind tunnel, and only a few current models are a little bit better.
That explains it, doesn't it? For over ten years it was great to do that. But I think if you're a baker and you bake really good bread, it's fun. But at some point it's just different types of bread. I might want to bake pizza or do something else. I'm no longer interested in making a wheel.
Why is the aeroplane flying? Nobody starts the lesson with this question.
You are present on YouTube and have your own podcast. Do you enjoy sharing your knowledge or is it an economic necessity to make the brand visible?
Oh, both, actually. I love teaching. I've always said that if I ever retire, I'm going to teach. Most of all I want to teach maths, because in America we teach maths just terribly. No one ever says, "Here's the problem you can solve if you can". You have to learn to solve the problem because it's the problem. But I don't care if it's a problem in a textbook. Why is the aeroplane flying? Nobody starts the lesson with this question. So I love teaching and I want to do it.
But as a company, you also have to create your own content in order to be relevant on the market. Especially when you cross boundaries. Five years ago, I wouldn't have thought that anyone would ever treat their bike chain with hot wax. And now it's a legitimate thing that people are doing because we've taught them how to do it. We've created a lot of content to make it easy for people. And that's really created a whole industry. I mean, there was just Molten Speed Wax and nobody else. Now there are 50 wax companies, right? They're popping up all over the place.
Are engineers today better salespeople than traditional marketing experts because they know what they are talking about? And are therefore more credible?
That depends on the engineer.
In any case, channels like YouTube make relevant knowledge much more accessible than in the past, don't you think?
I think things have changed for the better and for the worse, don't you? I can present problems and their solutions honestly. But there's also a lot of stuff out there that maybe frames the question in a way that's misleading or obfuscates the solution techniques and takes people to the wrong places. I mean, you certainly see that in politics and other areas.
The best example of this is that there are still companies that say: "Here's a cross-section of a wheel with a tyre on it, and that's basically an airfoil". And we say: That's not an airfoil at all, is it? There is no airfoil that has a bicycle tyre as its leading edge. But since it's supposedly an airfoil, you just look for the fastest airfoil and make it. So if you use the NACA 24 or 18 or whatever they're advocating, you've basically lied. (NACA is a former US aerodynamics research organisation. Certain aircraft wing profiles are designated with this abbreviation (editor's note). But they have the feeling that they have learnt something. I don't like that. In my opinion, we've also done well to admit what we don't know. I mean, until recently we were still talking about not knowing where chain friction comes from. We just had to say, you know what? We don't really know.
When did you learn that you know nothing about chain friction?
Oh, I learn every day that I know nothing. The more you learn, the more you learn that you know nothing ... And there are a few things. Why does the ice under the skate blade become liquid? We don't know that.
What is the mechanism you have found? How does the friction in the chain work?
The pin in the chain is inserted in the bushes formed in the inner plates. The pin has a contact line with this bush. When the chain rolls onto a sprocket under load, the pin pivots on the first half degree. It actually rolls. It is a rolling point. But then it has to go in the other direction. So it starts rolling and then slides down the hill, turning in the other direction. And at this moment, the wax liquefies due to the pressure at the contact line. The wax becomes slightly liquid and allows it to slide. This is quite fascinating and not intuitive. Theoretically, with sufficiently large pinions and blades, the sliding friction could be eliminated and only the rolling friction maintained.
It makes sense to dispense with very small sprockets.
So your advice would be to use larger chainrings?
Oh, yes. Because this joint angle controls the glide, right? It therefore makes sense to dispense with very small sprockets. Don't even get me started on those. Bigger is better, for sure. With a 10 sprocket, the calculation is 360 divided by 10, resulting in almost 36 degrees of slippage. With a 12 sprocket, there is only 30 degrees of slippage.
SRAM obviously didn't listen to your advice, they made the sprockets smaller instead of bigger.
No, they didn't listen to me. I love my friends at SRAM, but I'm definitely persona non grata when it comes to certain topics. Cogs is one of them. I mean, you really shouldn't use 10 or 11 tooth sprockets. If it were up to me, all cassettes would start at 13 teeth and get bigger accordingly.
So the worst case scenario for you is probably a 1x13 transmission that starts with a nine sprocket?
Yes, terrible. Also because the chainring is usually smaller on a single drivetrain, right? So you gain friction everywhere. And where I live, it's pretty flat. And that's why I hate it. For me, the single drivetrain is a pain because you just never get the right gear. The steps in between are too big.
The marketing departments tell a different story.
They do.
When did you realise that science is the key to better products that need to be used?
I studied aerospace engineering and automotive engineering. And I think in aerospace engineering you learn that science is important because the aircraft has to stay in the air. Things have to work. And yes, I don't think I'm the first to transfer this mentality to cycling. But maybe I'm just digging a little deeper. I think I probably have more areas of interest than most people. And I just can't stop.
How big is Silca today?
We are about 50 people.
Only 50?
Well, that's pretty big for me.
Do you mix your waxes in your own plant or do you work with contract manufacturers?
We mix everything ourselves.
How many chemists did you have to talk to in order to develop a product like the Strip Chip, which eliminates the need to degrease the chain before waxing?
There were probably a dozen people with different backgrounds involved. I think that's the key, and that's what I love about working with universities. You get this real diversity of experience. Just because you're a chemist doesn't mean you know the ins and outs of what we do. And so you can bring in people who have worked in the automotive industry for 20 years, and another person comes from food science, another person teaches, and yet another is a laboratory chemist. These people bring all their experience to the table and you sit down and talk to them and they throw ideas around. Oh, what about that? They use words you've never heard before.
Some of these meetings are simply magical.
So it's mainly about bringing the right people together?
Definitely, yes. And it's important to be in a room together. And then trying to capture the idea when it's in the air. Some of these meetings are just magical when someone says something, and that triggers an idea in someone else, and then it takes off. 90 per cent probably don't work. But if you can distil that one thing, if you can pick up on that idea - it's just magical when that happens.
Do you see Silca as a practical university?
Yes, more or less. My goal in life is to surround myself with as many super smart people as possible and really figure out what the question is. I think that's the thing that it's really about - it's taken me a long time in my career to realise that. I think there are so many people out there who answer a question right - but it's the wrong question.
When developing Strip Chip, you took the customer's perspective and asked yourself how the degreasing of the chains before waxing could be simplified. In doing so, you invented a new product.
And then the question is: Who is the customer? I think that's where it gets interesting and tricky. Is Jonas Vingegaard my customer? Yes, in some cases. What he needs is probably different from what you or I want or need when we do Unbound (a legendary gravel race in the US state of Kansas, formerly known as the "Dirty Kanza" known, editor's note) want to ride one or some kind of bike-packing tour. We simply have different needs. We have therefore developed endurance waxes and speed waxes.
How many different waxes will we see in ten years' time?
We could produce an infinite number of different waxes. That's why we've started selling the ingredients so that every cyclist can mix them to suit themselves. If you want to use pure speed chip, you can. And that's what Visma | Lease a Bike is doing in the races at the moment.
Do you use hot-waxed chains for all your races?
Oh, yeah. Yes, pretty much.
At the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert receive a new hot wax chain every day.
So are the chains changed and re-waxed after each stage, or what is the procedure?
Well, at the Tour de France, Jonas Vingegaard and Wout van Aert get a new hot wax chain every day. The other guys usually get new drip wax. In the classics, the one-day races, fresh hot wax chains are at the start.
How does the team organise the running-in of the chains? With a machine or simply by driving?
You ride the bikes on the trainer to warm up.
How long does it take to run in the freshly waxed chains?
If you only use Speed Wax, it takes around 20 minutes to run in until you reach optimum efficiency. With the Super Secret wax, it's an hour and a half. With the endurance wax, I think it's two and a half hours before it's really efficient, but the team doesn't use endurance waxes. If you use endurance wax, you know you're going to lose a quarter of a watt or whatever. But you don't care about that, if you're doing really long distances, the main thing is to make it last.
Is this a common procedure in the World Tour? Do other teams also use the hot waxes?
I officially have Visma | Lease a Bike as a customer and I have five other teams that buy the stuff and they buy a lot of products. So I don't know exactly what they do with it. But they buy a lot of it.
In terms of business, is wax the most important product for Silca?
If you add it all up, probably. I would say that we probably do half of our business with lubricants at the moment. And the rest of our products are very expensive. We want to be the best in every category we're in, which means we're always going to be expensive. So I think our market is quite narrow, whereas with these lubricant products it's different. We are in the more expensive area of lubricants, but it's still an affordable 25 euros for a wax and not 500 euros like a pump.
Is science or common sense more important in bringing products to market?
Oh, both. You have to have a balance of both. I talk a lot about mental models. If the science solves the problem in a way that fits the mental models that already exist, then everything is fine. But if it doesn't, then you really have to focus. If I have to change your mental model of how something works, that's a different story. In this case, you can only change the mental model with common sense, language and analogies. I would say that analogies are probably our most powerful tool.
Looking back, which product was the most difficult to develop in your entire career?
Oh my goodness. The bottom bracket project at Zipp was terrible, the Vuma aero time trial crank and bottom bracket. I did the chainring, the bottom bracket, the spindle, all the machining, the tolerancing and all the carbon work. It was an insanely difficult project. And not in a fun way. And then a huge investment in tools.
Have you successfully sold these cranks?
Yes, we did indeed. These cranks weren't as successful as the Zipp wheels, but I think they were still used for years in World Tour time trials without sponsorship. I think a few of them were still spotted on the track at the Tokyo Olympics. So it was a cool project. I would say the other particularly difficult project was Strip Chip. Complicated and challenging, but in a positive way. Maybe also because so many people were involved. It was an attempt to put something very theoretical into practice.
How much artificial intelligence was involved in the development of Silca products?
None.
Really not?
Zero! We all took an AI course, which was really fascinating. It was about how the tools work, how they're programmed, how they're similar, how they're different, and then we looked at the different models, not just chat GPT, but also specialised AI for design and image creation. But I don't use it anywhere. I don't think anyone on the team is using it, but I want them to be at the forefront of understanding what it is and what it could be.
What's the next big thing in bicycle technology? What wonder material is waiting to be used in bicycles?
If we were able to bring nanotubes into use, it would change a lot of things. That's not going to happen any time soon. If we could use carbon nanotubes commercially, everything would change. Strength and rigidity would be higher than with the known carbon products.
I love bikes made of metal, steel and titanium. They are much more environmentally friendly. They ride amazingly well. And they are beautiful.
Would you favour even better performance, marginal improvements or more sustainability? For example, should we replace carbon fibre with more sustainable fibres?
Yes, I would like to see more sustainable materials. I would welcome it if we all chose products more according to our needs than our wants. I mean, I don't own a carbon bike. I haven't owned a carbon bike for a long time. I love bikes made of metal, steel and titanium. They are much more environmentally friendly. They ride amazingly well. And they're beautiful.
A deliberate sacrifice of the last ounce of performance, despite the scientific approach to development?
Now, I don't have anywhere near the fitness or desire to need any of these technologies. It's a bit like those endless YouTube videos saying that cycling has become too expensive. And that's because everyone wants Tadej Pogačar's bike, right? One of our employees bought a new bike, a Cannondale. I've ridden it. The thing is brilliant for 1500 dollars. It's better than any bike we rode in the 80s, 90s, probably even the 2000s.
So what do you think of additive manufacturing? Is there a future for it? In theory, customers could have one hundred per cent customised products manufactured in the back room of a bike shop.
Oh, definitely. That will happen. But not very soon.
It would meet your needs. So metal would be the material of choice?
We already print bicycles or parts from which bicycles are made. We work with a number of companies. One of our customers, Sturdy from the UK, prints entire frames.
Sturdy is not the one-man show you think it is? He is supported by your expertise?
Someone has to do the printing, right? And these printers are expensive. One and a half million dollar machines. I think we have 40 customers worldwide, frame manufacturers, for whom we print.
How many of these printers do you have in your company?
We have two, both four-laser production machines. So they are much faster than a normal machine. Our first 3D printer was a 2014 Renishaw AM400, which the Bastion guys also have (an Australian frame manufacturer, editor's note). Great machine! We now have a 2022 AM500, which works with less than half the tolerance, probably has twice the surface quality and prints at four times the speed.
I don't think anyone loves American brands at the moment.
What do you think about the Chinese market? It seems to be on the upswing and the Chinese are starting to use the bicycle as a piece of sports equipment.
Oh yes, the market has grown like crazy, but it's difficult. That goes for both sides. The Chinese are very brand-conscious and they love European brands. They don't like American brands so much at the moment. I don't think anyone loves American brands at the moment. But it's very difficult to get into the Chinese market. We do decent business there, but it's hard to say if it can get really big. There are so many market forces created by the government that favour the local market.
Why did you enter the world of cycling?
I raced. I was on the national team. As a teenager, I raced in France for two years. So I had that background. Then I left racing, came home burnt out, never wanted to touch a bike again and ended up racing in Indianapolis. There I met Andy Ording, who had just bought Zipp, similar to what we had done with Silca, and founded the company. I joined nine or ten months later and we were five or six employees. I was working next door at a race car builder called Riley & Scott. They built cars for the 24-hour race at Le Mans. I thought I was going to go into motor racing, but it never materialised.
Do you want to become a bicycle developer again in your next life, or would you rather do something with space travel?
Space travel. Or aeroplanes. I'm a big aeroplane nerd.
