After the HyperSport, with Jay Giraud - Part 1

Finding the Line - How Jay Giraud Rewired the Motorcycle World

Jay Giraud

Back in 2017, Jay Giraud had an idea — one that hit the electric motorcycle world like a torque spike to the gut. An idea bold enough to pull 3600 riders off the fence and make them throw down real money for a bike that, at the time, existed only on paper. An idea that didn’t just challenge the ‘electric vs. gas’ debate — it aimed to bury it.

Seven years later, after re-engineering what an electric powertrain could do, rewriting the playbook on safety, speed, and range, and raising the kind of funding that would make even legacy OEMs sweat, Jay Giraud may be gearing down for his final lap in the EV sector.

When we sat down with him, it wasn’t the usual tech-founder talk. No buzzwords, no polished pitch deck — just raw honesty about what it takes to build something from nothing. From the first sketches of the HyperSport to the gut punches that come with chasing perfection in an unforgiving industry, Jay’s story isn’t just about a machine. It’s about a man trying to push the limits — and what it costs when the throttle sticks wide open.

This is the first instalment of a three-part deep dive into Jay Giraud’s journey, the HyperSport, and the EV revolution — not just a story about machines, but the man who risked everything to build one.

Finding Solutions from an Early Age

Most people will tell you that early education is the foundation for any career — the classroom, the lessons, the endless grind of routine. But for some, those walls feel less like a foundation and more like a cage.

In Canada, like in the UK, kids start school at five. By seventeen, Jay Giraud had already been shuffled from one place to another, landing in a high-school classroom that wasn’t keeping pace with his curiosity—or his ambition. While his peers were zoning out and dealing with unruly classrooms, Jay was already looking for the exit. He wanted more: a shot at higher learning, a shot at snowboarding glory, and most of all, a shot at finding a system that actually made sense.

So, instead of waiting for the curriculum to catch up, Jay did what he’s been doing ever since—he found another line through the course.

I left school because the class was out of control. Teachers had no authority, and it was a poor place to learn. I knew about adult night school where 20 to 30-year-old adults who recently immigrated to Canada would go to finish their education. They were three-hour-long classes, and I thought, "That sounds like a way better school. I'm gonna go there instead." But, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to tell my mum, and she threw me out.

Work Is Not Life: Jay’s Anti-Salary Manifesto

Work/life balance is a mantra for most people. The eternal debate — work-to-live or live-to-work — haunts nearly everyone at some point. On this, Jay is blunt. For him, work isn’t about trading your autonomy for a monthly slip of paper. It’s about the grind that pushes you forward, the challenges that sharpen your skills, and the freedom to chase something that actually matters. Watching the majority settle into comfort, Jay learned early that chasing stability often comes at the expense of ambition — he's never been built that way.

I couldn't give a shit about salary; I'd rather choke myself. To just work and live for a job sickens me a bit. The amount of self-will and dream pursuits that people sacrifice and compromise for security—I've seen it again and again. Of course, it's perfectly understandable. But for me, it's like vanilla when you could taste the rainbow.

Following his unconventional education, Jay launched into the world of business development, founding companies and testing the limits of innovation. Driven by a restless mind and a genuine passion for a more sustainable planet, he was hunting for the next breakthrough — the idea that could change the game entirely.

Collision Point: When Safety Became an Obsession

Anyone who’s launched a company will tell you it’s brutal work. It takes every ounce of energy, focus, and belief — often in the face of everyone telling you it’s impossible. Most businesses start with an idea, a flash of clarity where experience and knowledge collide. For Jay, that flash came in 2016, during a motorcycle accident in Jakarta — a moment that would shape not just his thinking, but the very future of motorcycle safety.

That was the aha moment because I saw that the manufacturers were producing safer cars. And those same manufacturers were producing unsafe motorcycles. It's Honda, Yamaha, Kawasaki, Suzuki, and so on. They make safe cars with airbags, seat belts, and collision warning systems, but they don't bring those technologies down to their motorbikes. On a bike, you're much more vulnerable. They have the capacity and the means. So why don't they provide... It's almost like, well, those people that live in Jakarta are low-income earners, so they don't deserve safety. And I'm sure that's not Honda's intent, but it sure as hell looks that way.

Learning the Hard Way

Keen to get things moving and immerse himself in the business of motorcycle safety, Jay made his first move—diving headlong into the industry, learning its inner workings from the ground up. He wasn’t content to sit on ideas; he wanted to see how the pros handled design, engineering, and rider protection, and figure out where existing systems fell short. His first real test came with Yamaha, where he got a front-row seat to the challenges and compromises inherent in bringing safety innovations to life.

I got hired as an EIR (entrepreneur in residence) at Yamaha Motor Ventures a month later, and I spent six months working for Yamaha out of Silicon Valley. They asked me how to make motorcycling 10 times better.

My proposal to Yamaha, to its board and CEO, was: You have to make a better motorbike. And while you're making a better motorbike, you might as well make it electric! Because that's obviously the way it's going. You can't strap on a collision warning system to an existing system, because that existing design is wrapped tight. There aren't inches of space. There are millimetres of air between the plastic and the frame. You can't just add a credit card-sized radar anywhere on a motorbike that's already been designed. Let alone its processing and additional wiring harnesses and Lidar and cameras and interfaces and lights and blinkers and all the stuff that has to communicate to the human. And they, well, they disagreed!

Jay left Yamaha still fired up to make motorcycles safer, but he’d gained a new perspective along the way, a better insight into why a company like Yamaha made the choices it did — balancing safety, performance, cost, and market demands isn’t easy, and compromises are inevitable. At the same time, he realized that building a bike from the ground up, with the freedom to innovate without those constraints, wasn’t something he could tackle just yet. The fire was still there, but the timing and the resources weren’t.

The time it takes to design a new motorbike nowadays is five to eight years, and the number of times they refresh an existing design is 10 to 20 years. Models like the Suzuki Gixxer and the Honda Gold Wing haven't changed in 15, 20 years.

Refusing to wait for the glacial timelines of traditional manufacturers, Jay kept pushing. He pivoted his focus to systems that could retrofit or integrate with existing bikes, finding ways to improve rider safety without having to start from scratch. It wasn’t ideal — it went against his instincts — but it allowed him to test ideas, learn fast, and keep the vision alive.

Before we made the HyperSport, we developed aftermarket collision warning systems and grafted them onto existing motorbikes. We chased Bosch, Yamaha, Suzuki, Honda—the list goes on. They tested our collision warning system on their bikes. For days at a time, they tested them, and nobody placed an order because they knew it was too invasive to the existing designs. They were Frankensteins that nobody would buy.

The experience was a double-edged sword. On one side, it stung — the systems were rejected, and the work felt almost wasted. On the other, it confirmed something crucial: manufacturers weren’t going to bite unless the safety tech was built into a bike from the ground up. His instincts were right — to truly make a real impact on rider safety, he’d need full control over the ride.

I already knew it; I knew it in 2017, but we didn't effect the pivot until the end of 2018, when we finally decided to build our own bike.

Jay with the HyperSport

Jay had sharpened his vision, locked in the drive, and was ready to carry his obsession into what came next. But a bike doesn’t build itself. Join us next week for part 2 — 200, 200, 200: Building the HyperSport Dream — when the HyperSport hits the track, lap times start dropping, and the real fight to rewrite the rules of the road begins. See you there.

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You can find Jay on his new YouTube channel - Founder Whisperer - and if you're a new or experienced founder yourself, you can ride on Jay's advice through his coaching services. He can be contacted via LinkedIn