Monthly Subscription Includes Board, Wax, Leash, And A Community Of Ten Thousand People You Will Never Meet In The Water
Filed for Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat, whose technology and beach desks have been merged for budgetary reasons since January.
MANHATTAN BEACH, CALIFORNIA – A Manhattan Beach-based startup called FoamCloud has closed a forty-two-million-dollar Series B funding round, the company announced Tuesday, to expand what its founders describe as “the Netflix of surfboards”, a subscription model in which members pay a recurring monthly fee to access a rotating library of boards delivered to and collected from their home by a dedicated fleet of electric vans driven by contractors.
The Pitch
FoamCloud’s core pitch, as delivered by co-founder Luka Osterhout-Monge at a press event held on a rented yacht off the Manhattan Beach pier, is that traditional board ownership is “inefficient, emotionally burdensome, and, frankly, boomer”. Members are freed from the costs and anxieties of owning a board and are instead inducted into what he called “a community of ten thousand people who share your passion, whom you will never actually meet in the water”. Memberships start at 129 dollars a month, with premium tiers at 289 and 499, the latter including “collab boards” designed in partnership with an unnamed Danish architecture firm.
The round was led by a Silicon Valley firm, with participation from a Gulf-state sovereign wealth fund, two celebrities the CEO described as “significant cultural figures on the ocean side”, and an angel investor whose LinkedIn describes him as “fractional Head of Momentum”.
A Board Shaper Weighs In
Gunnar Pitras, a Hermosa Beach board shaper of thirty-one years standing, reviewed the FoamCloud website at the reporter’s request. “Half of this is marketing for a shelf. The other half is insurance I am now going to have to pay more for because these kids are taking my boards to the beach on electric vans driven by a guy who has been paid 14 dollars.” Mr. Pitras declined to apply for the FoamCloud shaper partnership programme.
The Critics
A local surfers’ forum ran a 2,400-comment thread on the announcement within thirty hours. Commenters raised concerns about board quality, environmental impact of van-based delivery, the appropriateness of the CEO’s hyphen, and what several described as “the VC-ification of a free thing”. One commenter noted that paying 129 dollars a month for a rented board was, over three years, more than the cost of buying a board and burning it for warmth.
Broader Pattern, Acknowledged
The model, per TechCrunch, is consistent with a broader trend in American consumer subscription categories. The London Prat’s reporting on the Cereal Killer Cafe noted a similar dynamic in London, where the act of opening a box of breakfast cereal has been successfully outsourced to a specialist venue.
Coverage Area, Quietly Narrow
FoamCloud’s delivery footprint currently covers Manhattan Beach, Hermosa, parts of Redondo, and “select zip codes on request”. Members outside this footprint may apply for a “virtual membership”, which includes access to the app, the community, and “exclusive digital content”, but no board. The virtual tier is priced at 29 dollars a month and has 1,900 subscribers.
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