Speaker 1: You're listening to Bloomberg Business Week with Carol Messer and
Speaker 1: Tim Stenebek on Bloomberg Radio. We're going to talk about
Speaker 1: something fun, especially going into a weekend where a lot
Speaker 1: of people are well, very lucky people are going to
Speaker 1: be headed to the beach and may get to interact
Speaker 1: with the surf. Nick Leeson joins us he is the
Speaker 1: CEO and the founder of Lift Foils, to talk about
Speaker 1: basically a hoverboard for the water. It is so rad, Nick,
Speaker 1: I was watching videos of it all day today and
Speaker 1: I've already been like configuring the one that i want.
Speaker 1: Talk to us first of all about how you came
Speaker 1: up with this idea and well, explain, I guess to
Speaker 1: listeners what it is.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we build electric powered hydrofoil surfboards. That's a mouthful,
Speaker 2: but it's basically a surfboard that flies over the water.
Speaker 2: So it uses a wing keel called the hydrofoil to
Speaker 2: elevate the board off of the water, so you're surfing
Speaker 2: through the water, but you're also flying through the air,
Speaker 2: so you're suspended in two fluid mediums. Really an amazing sensation.
Speaker 2: It's electrically powered, so it has a motor and a
Speaker 2: propeller on it. You can ride it. It's not just
Speaker 2: for in the surf. You can ride it in the
Speaker 2: lakes and the rivers, anywhere where there's water. You can
Speaker 2: get out and carve some beautiful turns. Really sensation unique product,
Speaker 2: all electric, so it's very quiet, doesn't have any emissions,
Speaker 2: doesn't make any noise, doesn't make any waves or wake
Speaker 2: to bother your neighbors. It's you and mother nature.
Speaker 1: And to Matt's point, how did you end up coming
Speaker 1: up with this idea in particular.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so, hydrofoils have been around for a really long time.
Speaker 2: In fact, Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone,
Speaker 2: made a hydrofoil boat way back in the day. The
Speaker 2: Navy did extensive research on hydrofoils and vessels and it
Speaker 2: kind of crept into the sporting world in the seventies
Speaker 2: in kind of the more lake arenas behind boats, but
Speaker 2: it didn't make it into kind of the surfing world
Speaker 2: until just ten years ago when we really grabbed a
Speaker 2: hold of it and started developing new ways to have
Speaker 2: fun with hydrofoils. And with the advancements and electric technology,
Speaker 2: you know, we came up with a great way to
Speaker 2: create a new personal watercraft that's part surfboard, part smallest
Speaker 2: personal watercraft in the world, and you can just go
Speaker 2: out and be free and ride anywhere you want, no
Speaker 2: surf required.
Speaker 1: The amazing thing is that you can put the power
Speaker 1: in such a small package. Now I saw that the
Speaker 1: longest duration battery can provide you with a ride for
Speaker 1: like two and a half hours. You can go up
Speaker 1: to thirty miles an hour, which is damn fast on
Speaker 1: the water. How hard is it to learn? Like if
Speaker 1: Jess and I I went out with you on a
Speaker 1: calm day, you think you could teach us both to
Speaker 1: get up.
Speaker 2: I got to absolutely teach you how to get up.
Speaker 2: That's one of the most amazing parts about the sport.
Speaker 2: You know, most people look at it and say I'll
Speaker 2: never be able to do that. They're very wrong. We
Speaker 2: get people out. We teach them in fifteen twenty minutes.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's really easy, really intuitive to use. It's really well balanced,
Speaker 2: so all you have to do is pull the trottle
Speaker 2: and go, and you use your weight to shift the
Speaker 2: board and steer where you want to go. But it's
Speaker 2: very stable. We have a lot of success getting people
Speaker 2: out on the water, teaching them how to ride it,
Speaker 2: and it's yeah, you're right. It has a lot of
Speaker 2: power in The modern battery packs that we have today
Speaker 2: are just amazing. They're fantastic. And the thing about the
Speaker 2: hydrofoil is that because you're getting up off of the water,
Speaker 2: you're reducing all of your drag, so you're very efficient
Speaker 2: on your power consumption and that allows you to go
Speaker 2: longer distances, higher speeds with less energy usage. Talk to
Speaker 2: us about the growth that the foils is seeing at
Speaker 2: this point, Well, it's been extremely popular. People are really
Speaker 2: drawn to the product, they fall in love with it. So,
Speaker 2: you know, we've in the early early days when we
Speaker 2: were launching getting the product out there, we were trying
Speaker 2: to double year over year. That's very challenging from a
Speaker 2: manufacturing environment. We still continue to grow significantly. There's more
Speaker 2: people that are you know, more players that are entering
Speaker 2: in the market, including some of the larger water sporting brands,
Speaker 2: have taken a big interest in the product, which is
Speaker 2: great because it grows market awareness and it's going to help,
Speaker 2: you know, rise to raise the tide. So we're seeing
Speaker 2: quite a bit of growth and a lot of enthusiasm.
Speaker 2: You know, despite whatever the economy might be doing, people
Speaker 2: still like to get out and have fun. Yeah, and I.
Speaker 1: Noticed you have a couple of versions. There's one that's
Speaker 1: I guess more of an easy going beginner product, and
Speaker 1: you've got one that it's way more customizable. And do
Speaker 1: people just get totally obsessed with it and end up
Speaker 1: using all different kinds of wings and getting into you know,
Speaker 1: different lengths of board. I mean, it seems it seems
Speaker 1: like overwhelming when I first, you know, went on the website,
Speaker 1: but then I started looking at YouTube videos of I guess,
Speaker 1: you know, people that work with you explaining the differences,
Speaker 1: and I can imagine just you totally get into it.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's really not too complicated. We have a couple
Speaker 2: different surfboard sizes that are kind of the platforms that
Speaker 2: you'll use on the water. A larger board is going
Speaker 2: to give you more stability, a smaller board is going
Speaker 2: to have more maneuverability, excuse me. And then on the wings,
Speaker 2: there's different sized wings for if you want a stable,
Speaker 2: easier ride, or if you want a faster ride, you
Speaker 2: can change the wing size just like an airplane. Right,
Speaker 2: You're going to have different airplanes for different use case scenarios.
Speaker 2: We can do that with hydrofoils.
Speaker 1: Eight about eight grand or nine grand for the starter kit, right,
Speaker 1: and then you can get up to thirteen or fourteen
Speaker 1: thousand if you can figure it that way.
Speaker 2: That's correct, about nine thousand dollars to get into it,
Speaker 2: and you can build it up to fourteen thousand.
Speaker 1: We hope you have a fantastic Memorial Day weekend and
Speaker 1: get out there on the water. And I recommend people
Speaker 1: to go to your website and check out the lift Foils.
Speaker 1: It just looks like an amazing experience and I can't
Speaker 1: wait to try one myself. Nick Lison, they are a
Speaker 1: founder and CEO of lift Foils