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