If you’re anything like me, you probably want to huck your phone over the nearest cliff on a regular basis. Not so fast. A new digital app called Venturi is launching this week that might convince you to hold on to that smartphone a little longer.
Do you surf or windfoil or do literally anything on the ocean? Do you have friends? Well, then, Venturi might be for you.
“I’ve always wanted a watersports app that could cross all different sports , not just be for windsports or for surfing , but be something that could speak to me,” says big-wave surfer and all-around waterman Kai Lenny. “I wanted to build something that we could create a real community around.”
Founded by Lenny and software developer Clay Selby, Venturi aims to become an all-in-one platform for watersports people of all kinds. The app offers forecasting and can be set to notify you when conditions are good at your favorite spot. There’s real-time tracking, a social feed, session stats, a group chat function, and that’s just getting started.
“It was maybe a mistake to put too much into it,” says Lenny. “But clearly, I love things in excess — from equipment to giant waves. So I’m like, ‘let’s give the people what they want.’”
An excess of equipment helped inspire one of Venturi’s main features. “I load my truck for seven different sports,” says Lenny, laughing. “The idea is to make our lives easier.” These days, he relies on Venturi to help him narrow down which boards he needs each day. Share your boards, height, and weight with Venturi, and a built-in a.i. agent will suggest options to match the forecast.
Track sessions with a smart-watch or phone, and Venturi allows you to compile stats for your session. There’s also a competitive function that’ll compare your data with the sessions your friends have thrown down. It’s a way to put the parking lot smack talk to the test and reflects Lenny’s long-time career as a competitive athlete.
In addition to trying to simplify his life, a significant source of inspiration for Venturi for Lenny emerged from the difficulty of connecting with friends on the big social media platforms. “Traditional social media started off the way we all wanted to use it,” reflects Lenny. “It’s just become an abyss of slop entertainment.” He sees an opportunity for Venturi to develop a community focused on the ocean that allows us to find and inspire each other.
Venturi
“I have seen that people are more willing to share on the app than they are on their social media pages, because there’s more of a community,” adds Venturi COO Whitney Johnson, a windfoiler. “It is nice to have an audience where you know everyone is more like-minded, and you can be more technical than in the more general social media spaces.”
For surfers who might not want to broadcast their sessions to the world, Venturi offers a variety of privacy settings. “In surfing, we don’t want to have a packed lineup or crowd, and that’s why we like the idea that you can keep your community really small,” says Lenny. Share events like movie nights, contest results, or rad photos with a wide community.
For friends you want to see in the lineup, you can set Venturi to send them notifications when you head out. “Half the time, you forget to text your friend, because you’re so excited,” says Lenny. For secret missions, you can close down the privacy settings to a small crew — or use the app to record information for your own reference, such as what board you rode or how the forecast matched up with the waves at the beach.
Venturi also hopes to become a go-to for trip planning by integrating forecasts, mapping, and group chats. It’s all part of Lenny’s plan to make his life easier and he uses Venturi spin up strike missions and other adventures with friends.
“Like, ‘hey Nathan [Florence] and Kohl Christensen, let’s go,’” says Lenny. “You can keep the dialogue going, and you don’t have to keep going across multiple platforms for the information you need.”
Launching this week, Venturi is free to use. Eventually, Johnson expects to roll out a paid tier that will unlock additional features. Some more advanced stats and detailed data, for example, may be accessible only through the paid tier.
And in fact, Lenny is already bursting with ideas for additional features. As Venturi grows, for example, he hopes to connect traveling surfers with local guides. “I’m going to a spot where I don’t know the in’s and out’s, why not go with someone who does?” suggests Lenny. Coaching and photography are other services Lenny would like to see gain traction on the app.
For now, he’s just happy to see how many people have started using Venturi even before its official launch. “It really just started with, ‘let’s just make this for our friends and our community,’” Lenny says. “Without having told anyone, it caught it’s own legs and we have thousands of users. It was just coconut wireless.”