Electrical motorbike firm Cake held talks with Harley-Davidson and different automakers in 2023 because it fought to remain alive, founder and CEO Stefan Ytterborn informed TechCrunch in an interview Tuesday.

The talks, which haven’t been beforehand reported, in the end didn’t pan out for the Swedish startup, which slid into chapter 11 final week. Nonetheless, Ytterborn stated he hopes to discover a approach to make it by means of the chapter course of and emerge with a associate on the opposite aspect.

“I’ve had 40 conferences up to now three days,” Ytterborn stated, including that the majority have been with two-wheeler manufacturers. They’re “all for discovering out if there’s an opportunity for us to do one thing” collectively, he stated.

Cake raised $14 million in its Sequence A spherical in 2019, composed of largely enterprise funding, with the aim of constructing high-design electrical bikes and mopeds at scale. It adopted that with a $60 million Sequence B spherical in 2021 led by Swedish pension fund AMF, giving the startup some institutional backing. Ytterborn stated his firm started attempting to boost a Sequence C as early as August 2022 and that he anticipated to have the ability to shut with an identical mixture of establishments and some VCs.

However by the tip of that 12 months, VCs had been pulling again in a giant approach, and shutting a Sequence C instantly seemed quite a bit more durable. “We had a number of curiosity, however nobody stepped ahead,” Ytterborn stated. “The entire house simply collapsed.”

Cake shifted its focus away from European traders and towards these primarily based in North America in late 2022 and early 2023, in line with Ytterborn. Any headway the corporate made resulted in spring 2023 with the Silicon Valley Financial institution disaster, which spooked anybody who confirmed curiosity, he stated.

Cake employed Deutsche Financial institution and funding financial institution Numis (which Deutsche Financial institution later acquired) and began pitching automakers, together with Harley-Davidson. Ytterborn stated he discovered most of them to be “tremendous receptive,” and whereas he wouldn’t go into element about who else Cake pitched, he stated the corporate was a variety of choices, together with investments and strategic partnerships.

Teaming up with a carmaker may need made essentially the most sense, particularly given the growing restrictions in metropolis facilities throughout Europe, Ytterborn recalled. “They’re properly conscious that in the event that they don’t develop their portfolio, [and bring] in one thing that may be really bodily current inside the city panorama, they’re going to overlook out on that last-mile actuality,” he stated.

Cake wasn’t in a position to deliver a deal to fruition and as an alternative needed to concentrate on “extending runway,” Ytterborn stated, which included being “spoon fed” by the lead investor of the Sequence B spherical, the Swedish pension fund. That runway ran out final week, when Ytterborn stated Cake got here to the “horrifying actuality” of getting to file for chapter.

The chapter course of in Sweden is just like the way it works in the US; a trustee has been appointed to ensure that Cake’s collectors are made as entire as attainable.

However, Ytterborn stated, “there’s no motive to attempt to destroy” the enterprise. “Our intention from a administration perspective is to discover a associate who’s keen to put money into [the] firm and administration, for us to restructure and proceed the journey going ahead.”

With rates of interest nonetheless excessive, and micromobility corporations going out of enterprise seemingly each month, that might be a tall job. However whereas it could have been simpler to boost cash initially of Cake’s life, Ytterborn didn’t sound notably keen on that atmosphere in hindsight.

“I believe that 10 years from now, we’ll be trying again on the years between 2017 and 2022 with a little bit of amusing, how horrendous it turned out,” he stated. “Proper now, I believe that we’re preventing our asses off looking for a approach ahead.”