It’s a good time to have a motorized skateboard company in Santa Cruz—the hard work of two innovative startups is paying off as they start getting a little love nationwide. Inboard, the only skate company of its kind with motors built into the wheels, will be appearing on ABC’s “Shark Tank” at 7 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 2.
The platform provides an opportunity for CEO Ryan Evans and his team to show off their M1, which has speeds of up to 20 mph and a range of 10 miles between charges. That is, unless Mark Cuban or one of the show’s other panelists goes into asshole mode, ripping the team a new one for absolutely no reason.
But it’s hard to imagine anyone doing that over a sleekly designed longboard that has a remote control, the capability to maneuver the ride from a phone application and the ability to coast when the skater runs low on battery power or simply feels like getting a workout.
Also, Inboard posted an image on its website of venture capitalist and “Shark Tank” regular Kevin O’Leary testing out the board, and he looks to be handling it OK. The basic gist of the show is to convince a filthy-rich entrepreneur to fork over a sliver of his or her fortune without giving up too large of a stake in your brilliant idea.
The market for such rides among extreme-sports enthusiasts could soon snowball, as shoppers look for an alternative to those trendy hoverboards that have been recalled for being more dangerously flammable than a Samsung Galaxy Note 7 doused in gasoline.
Not to be outdone, the more rugged Onewheel, which was inspired by the feeling of snowboarding on powder, got called the “the futuristic toy we hoped for” by the Wall Street Journal. “What is this unicycle-skateboard hybrid that appears to have been engineered by hackers on mushrooms at Burning Man?” the paper asks.
It’s called Onewheel, guys. And it’s from Santa Cruz.
