I met RJ Scaringe, founder and CEO of Rivian, at the ReGen Ventures Summit in Napa Valley in October 2023. Play Bigger was leading a Category Design workshop for the ReGen portfolio, and RJ was one of the most thoughtful people in the room.
We connected over our shared passion for the future of mobility. I told him I’d been on the waitlist for nearly three years and was finally driving my R1S. He lit up and said something that stuck with me: “You’re an eMTB rider, right? I think you’re going to love what we’re working on. There’s a very special mobility project in the works. You should come down to SoCal and take a look.”
He didn’t say more than that—but I could tell he was excited. Now I know what he was hinting at: Also.
Also was born as a stealth skunkworks team inside Rivian—a group of 70 engineers, designers, and operators reimagining what urban mobility could look like if it was built on Rivian’s DNA.
In early 2024, they were spun out as their own company. RJ stayed on the board. They raised $105M from Eclipse Ventures. Chris Yu (formerly of Specialized) became president. And the product? Still mostly under wraps.
RJ called it “a highly compelling portfolio of small EVs.” He teased a bike-like form factor: two wheels, a screen, some computers and a battery. He spoke about solving the cost problem in micromobility by leveraging Rivian’s tech stack and supply chain scale.
Everything about the setup is world-class.
And yet… the story is missing something.
Because when you don’t define the category, the world defaults to what it already knows.
And right now, that sounds a lot like:
“So… another e-bike?”
Which brings us to Segway.
Segway was an engineering marvel.
Self-balancing. Zero-emission. Elegant.
More than 400 patents. Silicon Valley gushing. Steve Jobs himself reportedly said it could be “bigger than the PC.”
They weren’t short on innovation.
They were short on story.
Segway called itself a “personal transporter.”
They said it would “revolutionize human transportation.”
But they never made the problem clear.
They never named a villain.
They never told us who it was really for—or what aisle to put it in.
The result?
Segway didn’t own a category—so they got filed under electric scooters and novelty gadgets.
Eventually, the company was sold off quietly. The day production stopped in 2020, no one noticed.
The product survived.
But the market never showed up.
Also is on the brink of something huge.
They’ve got:
But if they don’t define the game they’re playing, they’ll get trapped in an existing market.
Today, the early signals point to “premium e-bike.”
If that sticks, they’ll be forced into a feature war they can’t win—or a price war they shouldn’t play.
But they still have time.
If they frame the real problem; name the villain and claim a new category (Something bigger than e-bikes, smarter than scooters, more scalable than either) They could own the middle of the mobility market.
Whatever it is, they need to name it —before the market names it for them.
Segway tried to reinvent urban movement.
Also could finish what they started.
But only if they learn the lesson:
Engineering brilliance doesn’t make a category.
The world doesn’t reward the best tech.
It rewards the best framing of a problem—followed by the best solution.
RJ has built a rocket.
But unless ALSO plants a flag, the world will assume it’s just a fancier e-bike.
If they don’t move first, someone else will.
What are the best practices or pitfalls to avoid that you have experienced in your category design journey? We’d love to hear them.