(Fortune) -- On any given Saturday morning, throngs of bikers in brightly colored jerseys cluster in front of Roberts Market in Woodside, Calif., preparing to hit the back roads of Portola Valley. Among this unlikely crew are some of technology's titans.
But while they spend their days chasing the next, newest, lightest, fastest thing, the most coveted bike in these circles doesn't have titanium forks or computers to record each pedal stroke.
It's a handmade, hand-measured steel frame bike by a little-known guy named Brent Steelman.
At 6-foot-1, with white just starting to show through his red beard, Steelman is somewhat of a cult hero to clients like Kohlberg Kravitz Roberts co-founder George Roberts, Trinity Ventures partner Noel Fenton, and Accel Partners VC and Facebook board member Jim Breyer, who raves that the bikes are "perfectly proportioned."
A former racer who started building bikes in his teens, Steelman doesn't mess with fancy new materials. He attends no trade shows and does no advertising.
And it takes more than money to secure a Steelman: "When I'm building, a tremendous amount of my energy goes into that bike, that person," he says. "There are certain people I get the wrong vibe from, and I just don't deal with them." Once you make the cut, Steelman's interview process can take up to three hours.
Full article here.
Doesn't seem like much? When you're on a bike and riding that 130km to 160km each day for 2 to 3 days, it really hits you.
