The other week, I ran into two “dudes” (said with a never-ending pronunciation of the letter “u”) who just recently launched a gnarly (I had to say that…) app called Surfr App.
In between catching waves in sunny South Florida and planning what turned out to be an extremely successful Startup Weekend West Palm Beach in November 2013, Surfr App co-founders Chris Callahan and Nicholas Mohnacky launched their mobile iOS app into the App Store recently and have had great success in their first couple months of being “live.”
Surfr allows surfers to log their surf sessions with an easy-to-use interface that allows them to document and share their wave-riding adventures. The app brings together the Instagram/Foursquare-like experiences of checking in, uploading photos, journaling, socializing, and sharing surf reports in an environment that users find familiar. Rather than using a variety of apps designed for things other than surfing to accomplish all these tasks, Surfr App specifically makes surfing simpler and smarter.
Instead of making wasted trips to the beach to catch waves, you can look at check-ins from friends to see if the day is a good one for surfing. “Surfr does what Waze did for maps; it adds the human element to reporting real-time information,” says co-founder Nicholas Mohnacky. On the social front, Surfr allows friends to follow each other and share these experiences on a personal level, although it can’t prevent the jealously your friends and family may feel when they see you scoring awesome waves in tropical destinations while they are back home freezing during this especially frigid winter season!
Surfr even has a social good element, allowing surfers to document garbage on the beach for beach clean-up efforts, or help bring resources to remote locations where surfing conditions may be good while living conditions are rough. The company is already speaking to a number of organizations like BeOcean.org and Waves for Water to try to help communities both locally and abroad.
According to Mohnacky, “The app is just the first step in realizing a much larger vision, not only for the surfing community, but coastal communities all over the world.” In the meantime, Surfr is sure to deliver tons of fun and utility to surfers around the world who are looking to catch a couple of waves and share their epic experiences with friends.
Guest author Jared Kleinert is a 17-year-old tech entrepreneur who has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, and TechCrunch. He is currently the coauthor of an eye-opening book called “2 Billion Under 20” featuring stories from some of the world’s smartest and most talented people at or under 20; customer advocate for the enterprise software startup 15Five; and founder/CEO of Synergist. Jared has been invited to attend and speak at various events around the country focused on young entrepreneurship, social good, and lean startup methodology. He’s always available atjared@synergist and @jaredkleinert, so feel free to say hi!