A flat tire? Battery dead? Speedy’s serves Seattle’s stranded commuters as a fast e-bike picker
If you’ve ever tried to lift and fit a big, heavy bike into the back of a car, Tyler Swartz feels your pain, and he’s started to fix it.
Swartz, a Seattle native and bike enthusiast, is the founder of Speedy’s, a roadside service for bike owners who have a flat tire, dead battery, or other breakdown and need their bike taken to a shop for repair.
Speedy’s doesn’t repair, but it does offer a lot, promising an emergency response time of 90 minutes.
The idea came to Swartz after he was fired from his product management job at Reddit in 2023 — during parental leave with his third child. While using his e-bike as a family bike and travel trailer, he realized how difficult it was to move a large machine to a bike shop when it stopped working. His brother pitched the AAA idea for bikes – they’d just need a truck.
“My first reaction was, ‘Wow, that sounds like driving a truck,'” Swartz told GeekWire. “It doesn’t sound like fun. It doesn’t sound like an attractive software solution.”
But the more he got his head around the problem, the more he fell in love with the idea of serving a community of urban cyclists in a city that values sustainability.
He launched Speedy’s in 2024 after buying an electric cargo van that was converted into a bicycle and wrapped in pink with his logo on the outside. Two years later the bootstrap service has attracted more than 325 active members and completed 384 trips covering 1,900 miles with a crew of five drivers.
Speedy’s has partnered with several bike shops in the Seattle area, offering free trial service with new bike purchases. Swartz said it was important to him to show that he had no intention of stealing the stores’ business — he wanted to help customers return to the stores.
The service costs $99 a year – it covers all the bikes in the family – and is good for up to six pickups. Speedy’s handles emergency and scheduled calls that can be scheduled up to 24 hours in advance through the company’s calendar tool.
Speedy’s covers a large area across Seattle, Bellevue, Kirkland, Redmond, Bothell, and surrounding communities. It also guarantees its response time of 90 minutes from 8 am to 8 pm It has been on time for all calls received so far.
Beyond the website, the user experience is largely text-based. Swartz created a feature where he sends customers a link that tracks the location of a Speedy van, so they can see themselves as an Uber as they wait.
Swartz is excited about Seattle’s strong e-bike market, especially with Washington state’s e-bike program, which began accepting applications this week and will begin random selection on April 13.
His goal is to get 600 customers this year to start paying himself. His long-term vision will be in 30 cities in North America, serving 225,000 members.
“It’s getting slower and slower,” Swartz said. “In software you don’t get used to anything, nothing, and it’s really fast. With local services, it’s slower and more stable.”
