Start to scale. Startup and Scale-up Founder Stories. · Start to Scale

BAQME founder & CEO Souren Arakelian on the future of urban mobility.

·53 min·3 clips

Suren says a startup can IPO in three years in Silicon Valley, which is not thinkable in the Netherlands or Europe.

1. Start to scale episode 45 features Suren Arakelyan, founder and CEO of Buckme, on urban mobility and shared cargo bikes. 2. Lars Kramer hosts the Upper Rotterdam episode, and Suren matters because he built Buckme after careers at Merrill Lynch and Rabobank. 3. The episode asks why a free-floating shared cargo bike service needs to exist in Rotterdam, Amsterdam, and other dense cities. 4. Suren says his family moved from Armenia to the Netherlands, and that immigrant background created a desire to prove himself. 5. He connects that drive to a long career in finance, which he says suited his character and gave him years of experience. 6. Suren also links Buckme to his father, who was a car dealer, creating a contrast between adding cars to cities and removing them. 7. He says the idea started after moving from Rotterdam to Amsterdam and noticing how common cargo bikes were there. 8. Suren describes thinking about his mother, who had no driver's license and three children, when he imagined easier access to cargo bikes. 9. He says a move to San Francisco and Palo Alto exposed him to startup growth at Series A, B, and C, and even IPO timelines of about three years. 10. Suren argues that the U.S. grows faster because the market is larger and capital is more available than in Europe. 11. He says Buckme launched in 2021 with aggressive city expansion in mind, but quickly learned that converting people from cars to bikes takes time. 12. He explains that the company shifted toward focusing on the Netherlands, unit economics, and profitability per ride. 13. Suren says Buckme has facilitated more than 200,000 rides, and he now watches profit per ride instead of only ride count. 14. He describes one of the strangest cargo-bike loads as roughly 70 watermelons, loaded onto a bike that was later found to be stolen. 15. Suren says the company raised money through OnePlanetCrowd, and that the round hit its maximum in 35 minutes. 16. He says a strong angel lead and a prepared storyline mattered more than tactics during that crowdfunding process. 17. The conversation mixes straight business answers with casual asides, true-or-false questions, and listener Q&A. 18. Lars Kramer keeps the pace conversational, while Suren answers directly and uses specific examples from Rotterdam, Amsterdam, San Francisco, and The Hague. 19. People interested in urban mobility, startup strategy, and city logistics will likely get the most from it. 20. People wanting a purely technical transport-policy discussion may skip it.

As heard by us

A cargo-bike founder story that treats mobility and financing as one practical challenge.

Urban mobility is treated as a startup problem with hard logistics underneath it. Suren Arakelyan, founder and CEO of Buckme, is presented as building the first company globally to offer a free-floating shared cargo bike service, and the setting near Rotterdam Airport fits the…

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A cargo-bike startup story with real lessons on crowdfunding and profitability.

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