- John and Mateen Yuksel moved to the Midwest from San Francisco in 2020.
- The brothers and business partners lived in Iowa and Cincinnati while building their startup company.
- Although they sometimes miss their life in California, they love Cincinnati’s friendly people and low cost of living.
The essay is based on conversations with siblings John Yuksel, 33, and Martine Yuksel, 29. San Francisco In 2020, they moved to Dubuque, Iowa, to start Beltways, an accelerated sidewalk company. The brothers then relocated to Cincinnati in 2022. Their company is based in nearby Northern Kentucky.
John: We are children of immigrant parents who grew up in Southern Arizona.
I always wanted to be close with my brother, he is my only sibling, and we lived in San Diego for a few years after college before moving to San Francisco in 2018.
Mateen: San Francisco is amazing. It’s the most diverse environment I’ve ever experienced and has a high standard of business, especially when it comes to technology.
John: Mateen worked in e-commerce at Walmart before going to work at Apple, and I worked as a lawyer.
The rent was incredibly high, but we had the most amazing view out the window overlooking the Pacific Ocean and watching the sunset every night.
But San Francisco really felt like the end of the world. During the pandemic, the streets were deserted. It felt unsafe. My car was broken into multiple times.
Mateen: COVID caused us to rethink and reprioritize things. Instead of working on releasing the next generation of iPhone, we wanted to build a new product that most people have never heard of.
John: The ring road is really my father’s dream. Forty years ago, he was living in Istanbul and he noticed that the current transport methods were not moving people efficiently, so he came up with a modular design that would make sidewalks 10 times faster.
My brother and I had always wanted to do something together, but it wasn’t until many years after my dad came up with the idea that we started considering it.
Mateen: We founded Beltways in July 2020 and quickly realized we needed to relocate out of San Francisco because it was becoming too expensive to do what we needed to do there.
John: It just wasn’t the right place for our startup. We’re a large hardware manufacturing startup. It made a lot more sense to be closer to the tech industry. We wanted to be in the Midwest, where manufacturing is still viable.
Mateen: John met with someone with experience in the sidewalk industry who encouraged him to open a store in Iowa.
In 2020, I moved to Dubuque, Iowa.
John: It was a very small town in the middle of cornfields and an hour and a half from any airport. Dubuque is a beautiful, quiet town on the Mississippi River. Anywhere in town was a 2 minute drive.
We were basically living in a mansion: a three-story, four-bedroom house for half the price of a condo in San Francisco.
Mateen: The snow was definitely a nice change of pace, and shoveling snow was a great workout.
It was a different way of life. We had to be focused, and Iowa was great because there weren’t many distractions. The two years I spent there went by in a flash.
John: While we lived there, we built a prototype of the world’s fastest moving walkway, a 100-foot long system that got us our first VC check.
It was a big milestone for us. We put all our money into this company. We quit stable jobs. We refinanced our mortgage. Nothing has been more fulfilling than commercializing my father’s invention.
Mateen: It was surreal the first time he went out on the system, and it was just the best feeling seeing his excitement riding something he’d dreamed up all those years ago.
John: We needed to investigate the next location for the company. The next step was to pilot walkways. Several airports invited us to do pilot demos of the system.
“We knew that Cincinnati CVG Airport has a proven track record of innovation and supporting startups. The area is also favorable for manufacturing, and rents are very affordable. Our current facility is just a little more expensive than rents would be in San Francisco, and it’s 20,000 square feet.”
Relocated to Cincinnati in 2022
John: My parents also moved here because we wanted my dad to come work with us and be part of the company. They live three floors below us in the Mount Adams neighborhood.
When I moved to Cincinnati, after two years in Iowa, I felt like I was moving back to a big city with big-name sports teams, a major hub airport and much milder weather.
The winters have been pretty mild so far, the springs are lush and green, there’s kayaking on the river and great trails nearby, the air quality is great, and the summers aren’t 120 degrees like they are in Arizona.
I met my partner and now we have a child who was born in Cincinnati, and this city has become home for us – our business and our family are here.
Sometimes I miss living on the coast. California is a beautiful place. We love the climate and the diversity of the people. San Francisco is where technology is born and flows from. It’s where a lot of really great stuff is born.
Mateen: But the tech scene in Cincinnati has also been really good to us. It’s growing. It’s a tight-knit startup community. From the moment we got here, the community has been really welcoming.
John: And it’s much cheaper here.
It was wonderful to make my father’s dream come true.
Mateen: We started Beltways in a humble garage in Tucson, where my brother built his own prototypes, and now we’re in a 20,000 square foot facility here in Northern Kentucky, right next to our first airport customer. And we’re made in the USA.
John: Our goal is to become an official partner of the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games and provide extraordinary rapid transportation.
Cincinnati is a great place to raise a family and run a business, and we plan to stay here for the foreseeable future.
But our ultimate goal is to make our sidewalks commonplace and spread this technology around the world, so we’ll go anywhere to make that happen. This is bigger than us.
