Episode #54 - Herbert Vuijk

Episode Transcript:

Luc Moore (00:00.142)
Welcome to the Wing Life podcast, where we talk about wing foiling and the lifestyles of those who enjoy this great sport. All right, my friend, thanks for taking the time to join us today. Frank and Matt both love surfer. So it's going to be super cool chatting with you about everything. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me.

I mean, it was super nice that you reached out and came to chat about Surfer and more. Yeah, like my first thought is how did you get into wind and then how do you think about starting something in the wind industry? It's pretty cool. And I just wasn't sure how the whole journey started. Yeah, that's a good one. Yeah. I mean, if you live in the Netherlands, then there is a lot of winds there, a lot of storms. So...

I mean, I remember that me and my parents, we were, when I was a child, we always went to the beach using kites and enjoying the wind. But into kite surfing, that is what I mainly do. I only moved into that like, let's say seven years, eight years ago through a friend that was just always talking about it. Couldn't stop talking about it. And that kind of convinced me that that must be something good. So, so yeah, that's how I.

tried it out and how I got into it to kiteboarding. And yeah, I do it super, super frequently, super fanatic. And I'm kind of sharing my time in between Cape Town, Europe and Brazil. Currently still in Brazil, by the way, although it's rain season here now, but yeah, me and my girlfriend, we are, we are still here because we are also constructing a nice place here in, in Goodie.

beautiful. How do you, I've heard nice things about Brazil. Like how are you, you're building there, so you must like it quite a bit. Yeah. So for kite, for kite surfing, it's absolutely amazing. I would say it's one of the best countries in the world, maybe the best. The wind is super consistent in the season, six months long, it blows here every single day. so you can get a lot of kiting in and, yeah, it's living close to the beach. Life is not super expensive. so, and, and.

Luc Moore (02:24.75)
Yeah, I met my girlfriend here as well. So which is why it made total sense to start something in Brazil. that's amazing. So how old were you when you started kiting then? Yeah, I would say my current age minus seven, eight, probably like 25 or something. Might actually be seven years, but probably around my 20s, between 25 and 27. So not super young.

I can, I can jump, I could do some basic stuff, but I'm definitely not a super good kiter myself. That's okay. I'm like, I started windsurfing, I think at 28 or 29 and I'm still working on like a lot, a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I heard about it. I mean, I saw it like you're, you have kind of quite a story how you went into the, into the sports, right?

and there's some accidents bothering you along the way. Yeah. And then you find a passion, you follow it, and then you don't know where it's going to take you. But I think that's the super fun part about sports, these sports, especially, it brings everybody together. Like what were you doing work -wise to even consider doing, like where did the spark or the idea come to create Surfer? The spark, I think, was pretty much during a hackathon, which is like,

kind of a bunch of nerds going together for a weekend somewhere in a nice location. I was one of them. And I was actually the only kite boarder, but this was within the context of another company and everybody could do whatever they want to work on. And I was just thinking like, Hey, can I do something with kiteboarding? And this must have been like around four years ago. And I thought, yeah, probably with the phone, you know, we should be able to.

It has the same sensors as that other devices that were already on the market have. So it should be possible to measure the height. And that is just how it started. Just in that weekend, I got a feeling that this is possible. I was not even close to anything like working, but at least I thought, hey, this might be possible. I want to spend more time on this. And shortly after that, I actually started spending more time on it.

Luc Moore (04:49.134)
So at the start, did you start developing yourself or was it that you had it? Yeah, you did. You started doing all the dev. Okay. Yeah. So it was a lot of research in the beginning because there is not a lot of, you know, documentation about it. I have done computer science, so I know about programming, but there is also a lot of mathematics involved, like about how these calculations are done. And there is some various stuff that is really,

complicated that I didn't know anything about. So I think the first few months I was basically just reading, reading, reading, and watching all kinds of content on YouTube. You know, these days you can learn everything online. And I reached out to some people that wrote some papers on this matters, like, you know, particularly how you can use this sensor data to make the best possible estimation.

And yeah, that was a really fun time, you know, because I was just learning a lot. I didn't have like a clear goal or a clear ambition. I just was like spending my time in a way I liked it. And that is kind of how it started. With very little commercial intentions, just like let's do something fun and let's see where it's gonna get me. So the inspiration was more so that you thought it was possible and that it could be a fun thing to work on. Yeah, exactly.

You know, as a kite boarder, I was just thinking like, I've been a programmer my all professional life, but I wanted to do something with kite boarding. I actually considered like, maybe I should start teaching kite boarding. I was so super hooked on kite boarding. Like, like I would go and I'm not a morning person, but I would go like, put my alarm on five o 'clock, catch some wind on the beach, go back to work, you know, do my hair in the parking lot and run into a meeting.

I was so hooked on kiteboarding, I thought I need to do something with it. And obviously this made the most sense because it was close to my skills. But I considered everything, you know, as long as it was something with kiteboarding, that was important. I guess that's how this show started too. Same kind of process. I'm not good enough to be pro. We got too much love and passion for this.

Luc Moore (07:07.086)
Like, what do we, where do we go with it? And then it's like, okay, fine. Let's do a round table, a bunch of buddies and start talking about wing foiling and then boom. So I love that. That's awesome. So as your, when did you, I guess, bring on your first, when, when did you bring on your first developer? Like, were you working another job, obviously at the time doing this evenings and weekends kind of thing? No, right before I really started spending time seriously in, into this project.

I had another company, so together with other people actually, but my part was, I sold my part at some point, which gave me a full -time availability. So I started like doing this full -time, I mean, 60, 70, 80 hours per week, because it was just so challenging and it was so much fun that I just started working on this. At that point I did it just by myself.

as I said, I didn't really consider this to become a company, of course, in the back of your head, you thought it could be, but I mean, I wasn't really thinking about hiring people, marketing or anything like that. I was just doing what I liked, which was hacking and developing this, this, this app. So we had a first version I basically did all by myself, but yeah, shortly after that, surfer, you know, true. And.

We hired people, sure. Okay. No, that's, that's awesome. What was the initial user response, let's say, like how did people initially like your app compared to maybe some of the other ones out there? So the initial idea was, was basically to put a phone on your, on your board. And it was very specific for kite boarding. So now, now it's used in other sports as well, but it was, yeah, put the phone on your board. And, there were people that were excited about that. There were people that were less excited about it because yeah,

Having a phone on your board is also something, you know? So everybody that, you know, loves this data and loves to see that this was quite excited. In the beginning, it was a big challenge to recognize all the jumps properly, to get accurate heights on different phones, Android versus Apple, and then all these brands that you have within Android. So yeah, I think the initial response was people were super excited.

Luc Moore (09:31.982)
and they felt like, hey, this can be something really cool. So yeah, that definitely motivated me a lot to keep going with this project. Okay, so can you walk us through maybe the phases of the different versions that have come out and then walk us into what you guys are working on now? Yeah, sure. So I think the first version after I basically spent half a year messing around and making more and more progression,

testing a lot myself, that probably took half a year or even a bit more, eight months or so. And then I pushed it to the public, so to the stores. And I basically just announced it in the Netherlands, pretty much locally. I'm from the Netherlands myself, so that made total sense, you know. And back then we had some active Facebook groups. So people started using it more and more, got more and more feedback in.

And I think what became very clear quite quickly already was that this board mounting is fun, but a lot of people are also looking for bringing it on the water just by putting the phone in their wetsuit or even to use it just on the watch, you know. And so those were kind of the next steps. Support is a way of measuring as well.

Yeah, the complexity increased a lot, like, you know, detecting a jump on the board. as you can imagine, maybe when somebody lands on the water and there's always like a big hit from the board on the water. So it's relatively easy to see like when somebody lands, but people that use a watch, for example, it's harder to see because they, yeah, you don't make like a massive impact with your aunt in the water when, when you land. so those challenges were new and it was.

yeah, super, super nice to work on. And, I think probably around two years ago, one and a half year ago, two years ago, we reliance for the Apple watch. and Apple watch has been like the biggest, success in that way that now the single most used device on the surf rap is the Apple watch. So there's more people that use an Apple watch than there's people that use an iPhone for the surf rap. The Apple watch now is the most popular.

Luc Moore (11:56.078)
way of using Surfer then. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, that's now the most popular way. I mean, as the moment that I had an Apple Watch myself and I went with it on the water, I realized like this is really it, you know. It's so easy to bring on the water. There's so much potential. And we kind of started adding this into our focus or maybe even shifting our focus a little bit more to watch watch development.

And yeah, that was a big milestone. And shortly after that, Ali, my partner within the surfshare app by now, he reached out to me and he said like, you know, this is cool. You have it on the Apple watch. Shall I do it? Shall I bring it to the Galaxy watch as well? So Android watches. And he basically volunteered for this project because yeah, back then and until some extent still now.

server, you know, didn't have like, like unlimited resources and what's much more passion project than a commercial project. So I was really just doing this myself for free for fun. And people that wanted to help us did it on the same base. So till this very day, Ali and I, we are still, we are doing this for some passion motivation, you know, and, yeah, okay.

maybe one day this will be a rewarding project. And that is of course the goal. But first of all, we are just like super passionate about the project. And that's how he reached out to me and he said, I can do this. I cannot pay you. He said, that's all right. And he started doing this whole thing. So, and, and now we have, you know, an app for, for the galaxy watch as well. And even today we now have an app for the Garmin watch as well. So, and I think that is basically.

Yeah, fast forward till today is that we support basically every hardware that you can think of. Phone watches on your board in your wetsuits is all supported. So people can choose what they want. And yeah, that's where we are today at least. Okay. Can you walk us through, so if somebody has never heard of Surfer, can you walk us through what just the basics of the app does for them? Yeah, a good one. So.

Luc Moore (14:19.47)
as I sometimes like to explain it to people that have really no idea what this is, or maybe Arnold, even kite boarders or water sporters. we just like to say that it's kind of the Strava for water sport. So, maybe a year ago we would have stayed, set the Strava for kite boarding, but now we would say like the Strava, which is like this big activity tracking app, for, for water sports. So what you can do with this, with it is,

Track your activities, you know, so track where you go. that is like the primary function, how high you jump, which is basically the, the differentiator from, from an app like Strava. So with surf, you can measure your jumps, which is the main thing people like to do. And, yeah, beside that, the app is becoming more and more a place for people to find other people. so it's becoming more of a social product as well.

And definitely also to find places or discover new places where you want to go on your next trip on your next kite trip, your next wing foil trip. And server has a lot of information on that. So, yeah, we basically want to create a spot, a home spot for other supporters, you know, that people come not only for tracking the session, but for, because there is something that is interesting to them and basically every day.

So that is, I guess, the goal. And at the moment, the focus is still a lot on activity tracking, which is the primary function and will remain the main function for sure. Okay. Like I'm genuinely curious as to how that kind of thing gets developed to track jump and like length of time in the air and stuff. Like how, like, are you able, you don't need to obviously give us the nitty gritty, but like,

gist of it. How long did that like, I know you just worked on it for a while, but that's complicated, no? Yeah. And I'm still the, I'm still doing, spending a lot of time on the algorithm developments. And if I would accumulate all time that is spent on it, it's probably four or 500 days full days. Or if it's not more on purely the algorithm, you know, that's not anything that you see in the app. It's just like under the hood stuff. And, and.

Luc Moore (16:44.27)
the complicated, yeah, with or without the technical details that is gonna make a difference in how to tell this. But yeah, I mean, without the technical details, I would say there is like two challenges. One is like using the sensors from your phone to basically always know where your phone is, like in terms of orientation. Is it upside down? Is it straight up? Is it like, is it tilted a little bit? Like.

The 3D orientation of your phone to track that in an accurate way, that is like the first challenge. And to do that, you use the sensors that this device has, which is a gyroscope and an accelerometer. So that is one of the primary challenges, you know, because if somebody takes a phone or a watch and starts throwing it around in the air, flipping it around, you still need to know if this phone is upside down or is.

facing up, you know, you need, you need to know all the time, the orientation of the phone in order to be able to track it correctly. So, that's a challenge that I spent quite some time on. And the other one, which is a little bit easier to, to, to understand if you're non -technical, it's, it's a jump detection itself. So somebody leaves the water, somebody comes back to the water.

And the most simple idea there is like, okay, somebody leaves the water. We see some, we see some, you know, all of a sudden we see like a displacement of the phone or of the watch going up. As somebody goes back to the water means they hit the water and you will see some kind of peak that shows this, this hit, you know, and the harder they land, the easier it is basically. But yeah, how to deal with people that make a hit with their device mid air, you know.

They flip the board around, they make a fist bump, they wave to somebody, they hit to their phone by accident. So this was the second challenge, like how to do a proper jump detection, the beginning and the end of the jumps. And after spending much, a lot of time on that, I realized like, yeah, this is basically, you cannot really program this stuff because it's just a pencil, so many variables, even.

Luc Moore (19:09.038)
What height you are using, what port you are using. Are you riding on waves? Are you riding on flat water? Everything matters. Every detail, which eventually made us decide to introduce server AI, which is using artificial intelligence to recognize the jumps. So, and this is a whole different. Yeah. So we started with this more than a year ago and recorded.

thousands of jumps with a lot of different people, with a lot of different conditions, a lot of different kites. And we basically start training, training a model and said like, Hey, this, this is the data. And here you have some examples. Like this is the, this is, and this is an, is a job. This is how beginning look. This is how an end looks of a jump. And we basically give that like thousands of examples and.

After, after that, we now have like an algorithm that can detect jumps very accurately, very precise, basically, basically recognizes a hundred percent of your jumps these days. So, so yeah, and we come a long way. It took a lot of effort and a lot of time for sure. Yeah, I don't doubt. And I guess, did you think when you were starting this, that AI would play a role in helping you achieve the success rate that you're at?

Yeah. So everybody that is in software development kind of knows that a pattern recognition is one of the main applications of AI. So yes, you always, I always know that, knew that, but it's also a little bit of a scary thing. It's much for a developer. It's much, it's much closer to a developer's nature. Like, okay, if I program is if this then that you know exactly what's happening. If you train an AI.

You don't know this anymore because the AI make these decisions for you and you have no idea how it reaches those conclusions. Maybe it looks at totally different things as that you think it's looking at or at totally different things that you think is important. So, so it was, it was like an adventurous route, but very quickly turned out to be a rewarding route as well. So we definitely not going to come back from that. And the server is fully committed to.

Luc Moore (21:28.174)
using artificial intelligence for these kind of things in the future, for sure. Okay. that's so interesting. Yeah, because there's such a massive push towards it and everybody is using it for different purposes, but I wouldn't have thought that this would help. But I guess, yeah, that makes complete sense. I was talking to Tom Hartman of the GWA and he said he partnered with you guys and that you were working with for their like big air contest. Like, how did that come about? That must have been pretty exciting.

Yeah, super exciting. Like the first time, we, I think surf was only like existing half a year or so. And then the first competition we did was full power tariffa with the, with the big archive leak in tariffa. because, yeah, this is the, we are probably going to talk about it a bit later, but this is one of the things, the cool things about the surf rap is that you can use this data life, you know, so everything that's being recorded on the water, we can bring it to a live stream.

and we can bring it to people at home. So Mike was one of the persons from the Wicker Kite League that was convinced from that, about that, like from the first second. And once we did that competition, I also reached out to the GQA and pitched this whole idea to Tom, basically Tom and some other people from the GQA. And Tom was also super excited and he said, yeah, let's do it. You know, they were worried as well. They were like, yeah.

Is this accurate, what are writers going to think? Because do they want to take a phone on the water? And what if the data is wrong on the stream? And I said, okay, you know, we're going to approach this in such a way that if you don't feel good anywhere during the event, you just can't take off this whole thing. And that's kind of how we set it up. And like we, we, we started the event and everybody was super happy about it and it worked super well. So.

At that point, we were not at 100 % jump recognition. So sometimes the jump was missed, especially in the hydrofoil disciplines was a bit more challenging for us back then. But yeah, everybody was super happy. And since then we have been doing every big competition with them. Hey, sweet. That's awesome. And then the biggest part of that is to be able to relay that live like you were mentioning. Yeah, exactly. You know, and yeah, just to show like the high airtime.

Luc Moore (23:50.83)
But there is much more stuff that we can potentially show. So we keep on developing the data. And actually with the GQA now, for the upcoming competition, Lord of Tramps in Leucard, closer to Leucard, in Baccarat. Yeah, we've got to bring some new data to the stream as well. That has not been, and also to the riders, even on the water, you know? So that's going to be pretty cool.

nice. Are we able to talk about that or is that something that's going to get released shortly? No, I think, I think we can talk about it. Otherwise, I will. I told Tom later that it was not, I'm pretty sure because, you know, we have been, we've already been doing some of it in a other competition, the Dutch Big Ed Championships that was organized by SpaceX Skyboarding. And they kind of like, fully on the same page with us when it comes to like, okay, what do we want for this?

for this stream, you know. And so there we already experimented with showing heart rate and showing speed on the stream. So by using watches, so somebody makes like a massive maneuver and you can actually see their heart rate going up live on the stream. And that was one of the ideas. And we did that already. So people take an Apple watch with an eSIM in it and you can start collecting that data. Now with the GBA,

In this Laura's Tramp competition, we're actually going to do really cool things for the riders because the people that are on the water, we are now able to communicate with them so we can tell them stuff. You know, we can say, Hey, like it's now, now it's your turn. So they know exactly when they are supposed to go. We can show them like their timer, like you have 20 seconds to attempt this trick. So the timer will count down on the watch. And as soon as they landed and the judges score that trick.

They will even see like, okay, I scored a seven and I need an eight to progress to the first place, for example. So we are really bringing more data to the live stream, but also to the riders on the water as well. that's awesome. Yeah. To create more of like a more inclusive kind of environment for the listener then, cause they can watch and just see so many different aspects. That's really cool. Right, right, right. It's like, I remember when we pitched it at a Red Bull.

Luc Moore (26:13.39)
we have done the red boom, make a loop in the meanwhile as well. One of the things that we said, like, you know, we basically want to, we basically want to like unmute the live stream. You know, if you look at, if you watch formula one, it's so much data on it and it, it basically gives you extra ears on what is happening. It's like, it's like the same, if you turn off your sound, you know, and then you turn it back on, you get this new set of information. And this is with this data as well. And.

That's what we want to do. You know, bring it to the people so they can also people that are not familiar with the sport can understand better what is happening. What are we exactly looking at? Okay. Height is a thing. Speed is a thing. so I think that is, that is really nice to be able to do that. Yeah, no, that makes sense. And you're absolutely right about bringing that to different set of ears because it's such a more, I'm trying to look for the right word, but more like.

like almost like a more comprehensive experience. Like it's just more information for you to take in and it just makes the experience way more enjoyable for somebody watching. So I'm happy you've been able to do that and you've worked with some pretty big partners then so far. That's been pretty sweet. Yeah. Yeah. So actually the wing foil competition in Wasengaran, Kanaya, right? Yes, Wasengaran, Kanaya where last year we were also there. I wasn't personally there, but a colleague was there.

So that was kind of our first encounter with wing foiling in a more serious way. And also made me realize that how high people jump with this wing foils because I had seen them foiling in the Netherlands, but never seen them flying like that, you know. And Tom said beforehand to me like, yeah, they are going to jump like 15 meters. I think they're going to jump 50 meters. I was like, no, no way that is possible on a wing foil.

And during that competition, you know, I was super surprised. I was here in Brazil, but I was putting my alarm at three in the morning to be standby for them. And I was watching the live stream and I was super impressed. And this was one of the main realizations that I thought like, Hey, surfers actually relevant for wing foiling as well. And that is kind of how we started being much more serious about it. Okay. Yeah. Like we like, I watched some of that and.

Luc Moore (28:38.35)
I never even thought we'd be getting, because that's like 45 feet. That's crazy. And then the hang time and swell and the time and air and how long they travel. And I think Frank sent something. It was like 19 meters or something and travel distance when he was winging. And I was like, come on, man. That's huge. No, it's insane. It's really insane. And then we have this wave, so how high they can go. And yeah, I mean, I saw this footage from...

from Christopher McDonald, but there has been more people going super high. And yeah, I was really impressed. And also the way they come down, you know, because with windsurfing, people also go pretty high, but it always feels a little bit more like a rough landing, no? Well, with wind foiling, people really slow down. So I was super impressed and I thought like, this is really cool. We should do a...

more for it. And that was actually also the moment that we started like training Surfer AI specific with wing foiling data, you know, so it can recognize this patterns also better. So what kind of like payment structure and stuff do you have for Surfer? Like how would somebody get started with it? Yeah, so it's still and it's most likely will remain to be mainly free.

So anybody can just download the app and take the phone and go to the water and start recording their sessions. And then we have a pro subscription model, which gives you extra features. So you can see extra things. You get personal recommendations on how to improve, how to make progression. And the Apple Watch as well as the Wear OS watch are currently also

part of this pro subscription. So in order to be able to track with just a watch and not having to bring your phone, you would have to take this pro subscription as well. So this is the, this is the, this is kind of the structure, how people get into it and our main business model these days. okay. That's cool. Can we name a couple of athletes that are using this that you have, that you've worked with?

Luc Moore (30:54.414)
Yes. So I think in every discipline there is now people, you know, obviously in kiteboarding there is, there is many people from like the old generation, from the new generation, like everybody. We know everybody because we see them on the competitions, but structural users like Lasse Walker, Piel Flucht, which are, which are kiteboarders and obviously one of our main ambassadors, Mike MacDonald. I don't know if you know him, the one with this Mohawk.

That you almost lost to a bet by the way, because one time we had a boost off here and we wanted to bet his Mohawk on it. But in the end, he didn't feel comfortable. I did. So it was, it was actually a fruit, but Lenton was here and Mike and me and we were putting like large bets on it. But yeah, he, in the end, he didn't feel comfortable about it. It was good because I out jumped him with one centimeter that day. So, so yeah, but no, those people and within the wing foiling and the windsurf.

I have to say, I don't know so many people by name. I haven't been there personally, but Christopher McDonald is one of the guys and the more that I have seen flying around in this competitions and that has been using this web structurally also on the windsurfing people that have been jumping 10, 12, 13 meters high, you know. So, so yeah, it's getting used more and more. And, yeah, the focus is has been mainly kiteboarding, but we are kind of.

In this year, we definitely want to focus more on wing foiling and wind surfing as well. So yeah, we might get some, some professional people involved as well. That's, you know, start to start using it more frequently. It's kind of cool when you see a project that was just driven by passion is now starting to grow and get incorporated. And a lot of people are using it and the connections are growing as well. Like I love seeing that. Cause I know, and I want to take my hat off cause.

Like I was in development for a little bit and I can, it is complicated and there's always something going. So for you to stick to it and do that just for people to help them enjoy more time on the water with the goal of yes, running a successful company. Like that's, that's good. Like I'm, I'm very impressed. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. I mean, it's, this, this last year's has been really, really amazing because you get so much positive feedback.

Luc Moore (33:16.398)
I think we really have to see how the future plays out because if the company grows, you also face new challenges. People that come with the most exotic devices to your app, like some very niche brands of a phone out of China that is not working properly or that has some strange behaviors, this can sometimes take a lot of energy.

and yeah, sometimes, sometimes people might not understand how much energy it takes. So, I have the feeling that sometimes we are becoming, from like just some guys with a passion and we becoming more and more, a company and that is all very good. But I would really love that people will still see us as like passionate people and also, you know, talk to us like that.

When people start thinking like, this is just another company, you get like different interactions, you know, people are not so super nice all the time. They sometimes complain in a very unpolited way online or in reviews. And luckily the most awesome at Georgia people are super happy, super excited. But I think this is the main motivation driver to all of us is when you, when, when you make other people happy and when you see people appreciate what you do.

So luckily this is still the case, but for sure we have extra challenges. Now we are growing and growing and growing quite fast, you know. Yeah, no, I completely understand that. And we've seen like so far our community has been amazingly supportive just for our show, for kind of examples, starting from passion as well. And then I don't think people understand the amount of time, dedication and work that goes into creating any product on your own and then how much courage it requires.

to like go out and do those initial first steps, right? Go out and meet businesses, go out and meet people to say, hey, like, do you wanna try this? I think this is gonna work. So like any kind of entrepreneur that does that, I think it's a class, it's just people that take those risks. But you're doing it for this whole group of people. So I'm happy that so far that's going well. Have you gotten to see, what are your highlights of places you've been able to see because you've been working on this?

Luc Moore (35:42.734)
So yeah, I travel around for competitions. Me and my girlfriend, we don't have like a specific place where we live. I would say the closest thing to home is currently Brazil because here we are constructing a place and here we spend like all winter season. But I mean, we go around. So for competitions that can be like, you know, anywhere between Denmark, South Africa, here in Brazil, we have done competitions as well.

So those places I keep coming back to and it's kind of, it's kind of like this with people that follow the wind, you know, they follow the season around the world, Europe, South Africa, Brazil, and we are doing the same because it makes total sense to be close to the, to the action when you're developing something like this. Yeah, that's very true. I guess it makes the most sense to go to the various different competitions. Are there any coming up in 2024?

that you're super stoked about and looking forward to? Not, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of coming up, not anyone that I think like specifically is more, more, more exciting than the other one. Of course, it's super nice that we are going to do the Red Bull MagnaLoop again. And we're also going to do that with the Apple Watch. So all the writers there are going to get the Apple Watch Ultra on their wrist and they will be able to see a lot of stuff and we will be able to show a lot of stuff in the live stream.

So that was pretty exciting, but all the competitions are really cool. I really hope that one day we can bring a competition together with the big hack high league back here to Brazil because we, it has been here for a few years, but last year it didn't happen. And yeah, this says this fuel feels kind of like, it would be super nice to have a competition here. And I think one of the things that we are considering to do as well, and that is most likely.

going to happen later this year is to run our own competition, which would be a competition that everybody can participate, everybody around the world. And it would have like a long wind window. There will be different formats. And yeah, we hope that that competition will involve thousands of people around the world. But that is something we're going to organize ourselves potentially in collaboration with one of our partners. yeah, that would be pretty sweet.

Luc Moore (38:04.558)
Do you have anything in development for this coming season that you guys are going to release that you're working on? Any updates in the foreseeable future? Yes. So I think for us, the most important thing now is it's not so much to develop a lot of new features. We still have a lot of ideas and we are going to do all of them. But you know, Surfer is also, we are also shifting a little bit of focus on to

a bit of marketing and features that are essential for Surfer to be adopted in other markets. So one of the things that we're going to do is we're going to introduce other languages. So this is what we are currently working on. Soon Surfer will be able to use the app in Spanish, in Portuguese, in German, in France. So we're going to bring more languages to the Surfer app.

to increase like, you know, the users of the app in, in countries, in those types of countries. And an other thing, yeah, it's like, it's more like the smaller things, you know, like, smaller things that we are working on. Either boards, like, for example, you were talking about your colleague that shared like, Hey, I jumped this and this, and we are making it more easy, for, to share this kind of information. So if you.

If you actually jumped high on the leaderboard, you will receive an email about it and this kind of features we are also working on. But in terms of like really big major developments, there is one, but it's kind of like, it's not like public information yet, but I mean, it doesn't really matter actually, you know, we can on the spot decide to talk about it anyway. Because...

Yeah, this is like, this is, this is a big development that we're, I've been working on for a while already. You know, at some points we, you know, we were able to do the jump tracking on the phone, on the watch. and we have, we are, we are, we are not reaching an end station there because we can, we can keep improving, but the big challenge there has been tackled already. So we're like, what, what can we do next? You know, what is possible based on what we have and what we have in the server app.

Luc Moore (40:25.934)
is like it is like a tremendous amount of data from from people that people have like been providing into the surf wrap or that we just have been tracking like you know all the sessions we know a lot based on those data we know we know what are good good places to kite we know what is which places are good to kite to the left we know what place are good to kite to the right we know if there's kite schools.

We know everything about seasonality on kite spots. And one of the challenges that I personally experienced, but what I also see a lot of people having is like, you know, what is going to be my next kite destination? Where do I, what's my next trip? My next wing fling destination. So, and you see these questions online, you know, Hey, is tariffa good in April or does anybody know a good flat water spot in?

South America, we have a kite school and that has wind in these and these months. And it's also a super personal thing because what good wind means to me, somebody else might have a whole different definition of what is good wind, you know? I prefer strong winds, but it doesn't need to blow every day for me. Another person might prefer everyday winds so we can just practice, practice, practice. And maybe even wants to avoid the strong winds.

to be able to progress faster. So this type of questions we can basically answer based on all the data that we have. And what we are working on is a website that will make it possible for you to go to something like our working name at the moment is like a water sports world map or height world map, something like that. And you go to the website and you can say, Hey, I'm looking for

Windy places in September that have a kite school that have flat water with a day temperature above 25 degrees. And I want like strong wind, two out of five days and the rest I don't care. Or whatever you want to say, you can provide this input and then it will present you with what is the best place to go, what are the best countries to go to. And for each of those items, you can then drill down and see, hey, what has been happening in that country? What are people saying? Because...

Luc Moore (42:50.894)
We have now around 7 ,000 written reviews in the Surfer app that people have been writing stuff about the spot. So, you know, we can share this information better and that is our next big project. And so we hope in the future, if you Google like best kite spots in Colombia, the first hit will be this new kite roadmap with all the information that you need to know about Colombia.

gathered by the community built for the community. Built for the community, inputted by the community. And they like, because every time you go somewhere, the surf rep will ask you questions about the place. This, this, we started doing like one and a half year ago, we asked people like, Hey, was there a restaurant? Is the parking free? What do you think of the sport? So we already asked these questions and now it's kind of time to, to make, to bring this information back to the people that, you know, have been providing it.

So we will also do this for free. It will not be like anything that you need to pay for for this website. And yeah, hopefully people can use that in their quests for their next adventures. man, that's awesome. Yeah, good for you guys. Cause that is like one of my friends runs like a Facebook group of about 7 ,000 people in Canada and I think worldwide. He has some other worldwide people on there and that's their number one thing that they're.

that everybody is looking at doing now is just finding out where to go, where to stay, all those kinds of steps. So, I have a fly running around. Yeah, so that's pretty cool. Nice. Is there anything else about Surfer that you want to share to the community for people who may not use it or we could even take it one step further for those who are using it? Is there anything else you think they should know?

I think they, I think not specifically in terms of new developments. I think for many, it has already become clear that we are really like focusing more on the watch. And quite recently we launched a update to the Apple watch. And Apple watch is actually the most advanced watch you can potentially take to the water. You know, a lot of people think like, Garmin watches are the best Garmin watches. And you have lots of people that are super fanatic about Garmin.

Luc Moore (45:09.006)
But from a technical point of view and like what a watch can do, Apple Watch is like miles ahead of any other watch. And yeah, they can do, you can do super cool things with it. We recently launched features for people to be able to chat with the Apple Watch. So you are on the water, you can talk to your friends, which, you know, obviously can help a lot when you're in a problematic situation or you want to.

You want to ask for help or anything like that. And, and other, other type of features, you know, that we are bringing watches for, for kind of like an underwater navigation for your outwinder. with kiteboarding, this is a big thing. And with wingfoiling is also, also happens a lot, right? The downwinders, although you can even go up with, much easier. But, but yeah, to help people with on the downwind, tell, tell them like, okay, it's like.

you are halfway, you still have plenty of kilometers to go. The next place that you're gonna arrive at is this and this Kitesport. These are the reviews. And we all present that like kind of underwater to the person. So yeah, I think what people should know is that this is an important focus for us. But for all the people that don't have a watch, we will keep pushing the phone development as well for sure. Okay, because I know when we were trying to book,

like this recording, I think you were heavily into dev. So we waited a little while. cause I think it was Garmin time and, and it was just like, yeah, like I completely understand how much dev is consuming. And, but yeah, so far, like even just from the two guys on the team here, Frank and Matt, they absolutely love it. And, they're always showing and showcasing and stuff, what you're, they're doing. And I think in that sense, like it's,

Passion breeds passion and that's what in essence what your community feel for this app is doing. It's bringing you data that you didn't have before, but then you can now share that with your buddies and progress. So I think overall that's amazing. Yeah, no, it is. And I think it's thanks to the people that are excited about it that we are growing. We have barely invested anything in marketing, at least not yet.

Luc Moore (47:30.286)
And it's just the people that are important to us and why obviously we want to have them as happy as possible because they are telling their friends about it. And this is why it exploded so much in the Netherlands and the countries around it. And now worldwide as well, but for sure, Netherlands and Europe are still like the hotspot of the surf rap at the moment, at least. All right, cool. Hey, good to know. Is there any wind out your way today? Like what's your...

The rest of your day looking like. No, that's not an exciting thing to talk about because it's rain season here in Brazil. And the only reason I'm here is because of our construction, you know, but it's basically raining every day. Maybe sometimes I kited like a week ago for the last time, but I barely kite anymore at the moment. So, but soon back to Europe and then hopefully getting some more kiting in. All right, cool. Hey, sounds good.

Well, hey, like thanks for taking the time out of your schedule to come here and introduce Surfer and talk about some of that functionality. And also it was nice to learn a bit more about you as well. And just, yeah, thanks for taking the time. Yeah, thank you so much, Luke and super nice to have us. Yeah, absolutely. Well, hey everybody, thanks for joining in on this one and we'll chat with you all next time.