Watching another 1 Billion dollar Unicorn trade at a loss, it brought up so many essential startups that literally do what your mum used to do.
Uber picks you up and drops you off, just like Mum’s Taxi used to do.
Food delivery brings your food to your door, just like mum used to.
Marley Spoon brings meal ingredients to your door, just like mum used to do.
Juicero is a $400 juice machine that raised $120 million dollars to squeeze a bag of juice into your cup, just like mum told you that “you can damn well do yourself, iim not your slave.”
And then there’s We Work, an office rental company that’s now worth 3 Billion less than the 13 Billion of venture capital it raised.
Net profit of conducting business…Negative 3 Billion.
But We Work has diversified into artificial waves. If you’ve raised 13 Billion, what the hell are you doing meddling in the fringes of the surf industry ?
Are there any surfboard tech startups running around making noise ?
Is there room for ‘Tech’ in the surf industry ? is there any Original tech and are we just going to be consumed by unrelated takeovers.
No thanks, not reacting to where your industry, community or country is heading, is why they are as they are. It was bad enough when Asia became the major surfboard manufacturer years ago quickly sending many small, local, unique and specialist surfcraft makers broke.
I think there’s a solid future for wave pools/wave machines. There are so many people that want to surf today. The industry is catering to the beginner/inexperienced and wave pools would be the perfect addition to all the softboards. I hope the wave pools can scale up to solid overhead waves and have a mix of beginner and advanced sessions.
I think surfers are generally to cheap to spend the money needed support higher tech R&D costs. Similar to other products, mass sales get the most attention.
And, sadly money has a way of convincing people to sell what they have, only to see it changed for the worse.
As Sting says in If I Ever Lose My Faith In You, “I never saw no miracle of science that didn’t go from a blessing to a curse. I never saw no military solution that didn’t always end up as something worse”