How Revel’s Frank Reig turned a moped startup into an EV infrastructure firm

Though it was founded just seven years ago, the Brooklyn-based Revel has expanded from a startup providing an electric moped-sharing service into a company that intends to jumpstart electric vehicle (EV) infrastructure in major cities. “We’re putting fast chargers in really strategic locations in big dense urban areas like New York City,” explains Frank Reig, Revel’s co-founder and CEO. “No parking fees, no access fees, just come on in and charge your car in minutes, not hours.”

Revel’s introduction of electric mopeds in Brooklyn and Queens in 2018 quickly made the company’s signature blue vehicles ubiquitous. However, in recent years, Reig has harnessed $200 million from investors like BlackRock and Toyota Ventures to turn the company into a more holistic electric mobility company, shuttering the startup’s moped-sharing to focus fully on EV charging stations and ride-hailing operations. Already, the company has created partnerships to build the largest fast-charging stations at New York’s two main airports, LaGuardia and John F. Kennedy International, in order to expand access to charging for New York’s 100,000 Uber drivers. Now, Revel is expanding at a rapid clip, planning a network that will include 500 chargers between New York, the Bay Area, and Los Angeles over the next two years.

Reig joined Ritika Gupta, reporter and producer for Bloomberg Television, at Bloomberg’s Lexington Avenue office in New York City on March 26, 2024, for a conversation as part of the Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg Speaker Series. He shared his thoughts on the origins of Revel’s launch, why EV infrastructure and ride-sharing need to evolve in tandem, and how startups should best approach regulators to ensure long-lasting relationships.

A New Yorker building infrastructure with New York in mind

Reig was born and raised in New York City, the son of a Staten Island auto mechanic who put him to work in his teenage years at his garage. But Reig credits his time in hospitality, as much as his father’s entrepreneurial spirit, with his later success.

Reig spent his first five years after college working in high-end restaurants, like Gramercy Tavern. “I think it’s the best place to learn before you become an entrepreneur,” he says. “You learn about teamwork and being able to stay calm under pressure.”

Reig says Revel’s focus on electric infrastructure can also be traced to his childhood. The years he spent fishing in Staten Island and hiking around the greater New York City area as a child instilled in him a great respect for the outdoors. “I love clean air, I love clean water,” he says. “It’s just how I grew up. I’m just as comfortable doing a week-long backpacking trip in the Adirondacks as I am pitching an investment firm in Hudson Yards.”

Though Revel has since expanded nationwide, Reig’s allegiance to the city he grew up in has remained consistent. It’s why he launched the company in New York, and has piloted most of his newer initiatives in the city, working closely with local politicians to expand the startup’s impact. “When we came up with the idea for Revel, the natural starting place was New York,” he says. “I’m not going to be born and raised in New York and move to Austin to start this business.”

An “integrated strategy” to bring fast-charging EV stations to major cities

The idea for Revel came when Reig visited Argentina in 2017 and watched electric mopeds zipping around the city. “Some sort of light bulb went off,” he says. “Why is this vehicle type not in a city like New York?” When he returned home, Reig enlisted his co-founder, Paul Suey, who he’d been working with closely at the financial firm Gerson Lehrman Group for the prior two years. By April 2018, the pair had an investor deck and a combined savings of $80,000. They quit their jobs to fundraise full-time, securing $1 million from 57 investors by July of 2018.

Revel is a vastly different business today than it was in 2018, when the company launched 70 mopeds in Brooklyn and Queens. In the two years after its founding, Revel scaled the original business of moped-sharing to 6,000 electric scooters in six markets across the United States. But as the company expanded, the biggest barrier turned out to be access to power on the grid. The infrastructure to charge hundreds of moped batteries at a time simply didn’t exist, particularly in cities like New York. This conundrum inspired a pivot: If the energy transition was on the horizon, why was it so hard to find the basic ingredients to make EVs run?

But big infrastructure build-outs like massive fast-charging stations require a lot of funding. “If you’re really going to bring capitalization to an infrastructure build-out, you have to go after the rideshare market,” which Reig says comprises a $10 billion market in New York City alone. A 2021 pilot program from Revel brought 25 fast chargers to New York along with 50 electric ride-share vehicles. It was a success. Today, Revel operates more than 500 electric vehicles and the four largest charging depots in New York City.

Reig says the No. 1 question investors ask is whether Revel is an infrastructure business or a ride-sharing business. “I tell them all the exact same thing,” he says, “and it’s that we have an integrated strategy. Because if you just have one or the other, it doesn’t work.”

Revel’s Frank Reig (right) talking with Ritika Gupta, reporter and producer for Bloomberg Television (left), at Bloomberg’s Global Headquarters in New York City on Tuesday, March 26, 2024, for a conversation as part of the Cornell Tech @ Bloomberg Speaker Series.

Proactive communication for long-term success

Transportation startups can have a bad reputation among regulators, but “one thing that’s unique about Revel,” says Reig, “is that we’re building real things in the real world.” The kind of infrastructure the company is creating, he says, has never before been built in a city like New York. But even from the company’s moped-focused origins, he says, Revel has been proactive and communicative with regulators so stakeholders and politicians always know what to expect.

When the company’s first mopeds hit the city’s streets, a local New York City Council Member spoke at the press conference because Reig and his team had been proactive about contacting them pre-launch. And in Austin, Revel met with members of the Texas State Legislature and its Committee on Transportation, collaborating with them to change the state’s laws in order for the company to launch. “We don’t surprise anybody,” he says.

Reig is excited about the Revel’s future, in which the company is slated to bring 500 fast chargers to major metropolitan areas in the next 18-to-24 months.

It’s this excitement for what’s on the horizon that Reig tries to continuously cultivate. His own advice for other founders centers on finding joy even in the toughest moments.

“Continue to stay super curious,” he says. “Don’t be the biggest mouth in the room. And make sure you’re having fun because the job is so stressful. It doesn’t matter if you’re at angel rounds, seed rounds, or growth stage pre-IPO. It’s a stressful job.”

This article was originally published by Tech at Bloomberg.