MTBR.com
by Alan Davis


Back in March of 1996, a software engineer and mountain bike enthusiast by the name of Francis Cebedo did something that may very well have changed your life. You see, as a mountain biker, Francis bought and used a dizzying array of bike parts as he sought out to build his perfect ride. As you can imagine he was met will varied results and often frustration. Once, after spending a hard-earned wad of cash on three different titanium bottom brackets, none of which performed to his expectations, Francis decided he'd had enough. He put his considerable computer programming talent to work and set out to create a mountain bike website to solve his problem.

Remember now it's 1996, the dot-com boom is but a faint blip in the radar screen so websites are something of rarity. But that didn't matter, Francis wasn't looking to make himself rich or launch an IPO bidding war, he just wanted to build a website so that he could learn how to make better decisions, on what parts to buy, using the opinions of other riders around the world; and so mtbreview.com was born.

After some quick research, Francis determined that there were already about 1000 mountain bike-related internet sites populating virtual reality. All these sites seemed to be built around the premise of some enthusiast telling the world what he or she happened to be up to. MTBR was a little different. In its infancy it was comprised of only three sections including part reviews, trail reviews, and sharing of experiences through a message board and photos.

By the time June of 1996 rolled around, just three short months after MTBR's unveiling, it had become the most visited mountain biking website in the world and had counted its 1000th product review. The site continued to grow and sections were added to the website, as the users requested them in effort to cater to different enthusiasts across the web. Soon there were bulletin boards for single speeders, downhillers, bicycle maintenance, and the most popular board on the site: Passion.

Passion was kind of accident; it simply evolved from there being lots of people on the site who like to talk about riding. It's not centered around any particular type of bicycle or product, it's just people who pedal getting together and talking about the ride, and it happens to consistently be the most popular board on the MTBR site. The people of the Passion board are so into their riding in fact, that there are several Passion get-togethers every year all across the US in places like Lake Tahoe, NV; Sedona, AZ; and Fruita, CO. These events aren't organized by Francis or MTBR, but rather by people on bulletin board itself.

MTBR could not exist either if it had not caught the interest and attention of some influential companies in the bike industry. Rob Roscopp and Santa Cruz cycles were the first to recognize the importance of Francis's vision and quickly rewarded him with MTBR's first site sponsor. Real Components, Bontrager and others soon followed, buying advertisement space on the MTB site and supporting the growing bandwidth expenses as Francis's little ideas blossomed into a full-fledged business.

Francis realized that the other enthusiast-strong hobbies could benefit from a similar website and soon, others sites followed. Some of these site included PCGamersReview.com, PhotographyReview.com, AudioReview.com and ComputingReview.com. All of this expansion lead to massive growth in 1999 until the company maxed out with 70-plus employees and about 18 different sites. Despite the diverse range of interests see across all the sites many of these employees were mountain bikers. Having the company located south of the bay area in Northern California certainly helped in this respect, as excellent riding can be found in almost every direction be it in Marin, Santa Cruz, Pacifica, Oakland, or even the Tahoe area.

Like many other companies that experienced massive expansion during the dot-com boom, the growth was not sustainable, and quickly resulted to layoffs and restructuring. Fortunately for us MTBR.com continued to be the flagship site of the bunch even as ConsumerReview.com changed hands and was purchased by E-centives in 2002.

Today there are five original employees, plus a handful of others, who help maintain one or more of the consumer review sites. Most importantly they all still ride together, be it on single speeds or long-travel freeride bikes.

One ironic twist regarding the use of the site is that the reviews have become a popular place for bike industry fold to hang out and research products. What was once intended as a consumer-only environment has now gone full-circle. Product managers look through reviews of products for problems, requests, and issues that they can use to improve and evolve their own merchandise. Now the site is acting as a forum for consumers to voice their opinions and to have a direct influence on the product; sometimes before it even hits the shelves.

The incredible popularity of the MTBR site spawned numerous copycat bike communicates, which can now be found throughout the web. The majority of these sites are more niche or regionally oriented. None of them have the sheer quality of consumer feedback that MTBR has amassed. At any given time, you'll usually find ten times the users on the MTBR site.

Early in 2004, dramatic changes to the MTBR bulletin boards have taken the website to the next level. All of the bulletin boards have gone through significant upgrades. The look of the boards had changed, as well as the addition of a long list of manufacturer boards. A representative from each company mans the board to answer questions and help resolve issues.

These changes are just another evolutionary step in the life of MTBR, as it's always grown to better meet the needs of its users. One thing that hasn't changed, however, is reiterated on the walls of an MTBR office and it's that this site remains, "A site by mountain bikers, for mountain bikers."

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