PRE-SEED · WATER-SPORTS SAFETY PLATFORM

A safety layer for water sports — hardware, software, and physical-world intelligence.

SmartSurf turns GPS tracking into safety intelligence: paired rider-and-board location, live environmental context from Senlay, school workflows, and graduated escalation. Before a session becomes a search.

$150–250K
pre-seed ask
70%+
hardware margin potential
10
beta schools targeted
200
first production units
THE PROBLEM

Schools run safety on eyesight, radios, and luck.

Riders and boards disappear from visual control every day. A stopped rider far offshore, a board drifting on the current, a dropping wind at sunset — and nobody on shore knows what's actually happening until it's a rescue.

The buyer isn't only the rider. It's the school responsible for many riders at once — and they have no operational picture of risk.

No second signal

When a board separates from a rider, a single GPS point can't tell you which one you're looking at.

No context

A stop means nothing without wind, current, tide and drift. Generic trackers and forecasts don't connect them.

No workflow

There's no graduated path from “is this rider okay?” to a station alert to local escalation.

WHY NOW

AI is moving from text into the physical world — and it needs verified context to act there.

Models that reason about the real world are only as good as the environmental data behind them. SmartSurf is a focused, fundable beachhead for exactly that capability.

A real first customer

Water-sports schools have an urgent, repeated safety problem and a clear willingness to adopt.

Cheap, capable hardware

Integrated 4G+GPS modules and $15/10-year IoT connectivity make a viable BOM possible today.

A data moat forms

Real session telemetry becomes proprietary labels for false-alert reduction and sport-specific risk.

BUSINESS MODEL & UNIT ECONOMICS

Hardware margin funds the platform. Software compounds it.

Three revenue lines: one-time hardware, consumer subscription, and school SaaS — each reinforcing the safety data underneath.

SmartSurf Tracker
Hardware · BOM ~$50.50 · loaded COGS ~$68–75
$299
70%+ margin
AI Assistant (B2C)
Consumer subscription · coaching + safety context
$19–29/mo
target
School SaaS
Station / fleet dashboard · per-device add-ons
$49–299/mo
hypothesis
Custom Board
Premium board-integrated hardware, made to order
$899–1,299
target
PLANNING ASSUMPTIONS
Connectivity (1NCE)$15 / 10 yr
500 MB · 250 SMS
School SaaS churn2–4% / mo
B2C churn5–8% / mo
First run split50 founder-built
+150 assisted
Targets and hypotheses pending pilot validation — not public forecasts.
THE ASK

$150–250K to ship Phase 1–2.

Enough to fund the first production run, prove the school workflow with beta pilots, and reach investor-ready traction — SmartSurf-first.

Senlay: a prepared parallel option

Senlay can be funded as a physical-world AI infrastructure asset — but only when a specific Senlay-fit opportunity (AI infra, grants, sensor/data partners) appears. SmartSurf revenue and pilots come first.

USE OF FUNDS
Tracker production & supply~35%
Platform & school dashboard~25%
Intercom redesign & thermal validation~15%
AI Assistant (Phase 2a)~10%
Compliance, IP & founder runway~15%
Indicative allocation. Final split depends on BOM supply, QC, assembly partner and beta demand.
FOUNDER-MARKET FIT

The founder is the customer, the builder, and the first field tester.

Viktor is a kitesurfing instructor with 10+ years on the water who saw the missing safety infrastructure from the water and from shore — then built every prototype himself. Domain judgment is the moat; AI multiplies execution across firmware, research, product, and operations.

◆ Custom firmware on deployed hardware ◆ 4 working intercom prototypes ◆ Built & tested in Vietnam
Read the full story →

Back the safety layer for water sports.

Pre-seed, SmartSurf-first, with a prepared physical-world AI option in Senlay. Let's talk.

Talk to Viktor See the product