Why I Built This

I'm Leo. I've been surfing for 10 years, and last January I became a certified ISA Instructor.

My dad ran a surf school in Costa Rica where he also coached members of the national team and worked as a judge on the national circuit. When he moved back to the UK he ran the Quiksilver surf school in Jersey, Channel Islands for several years. Which is where I really had my opportunity to watch him when I attended the Summer surf camp programme and spent around 5 years watching my dad at work.

I watched him toil for hours each day doing the admin before he took us to school and also during the holidays. Now he works for the ISA and has let go of the schooling business. Seeing him stuck at his desk for most hours a day when his passion was for surfing, was a hard sight to see.

Growing up in my dad's surf school, I watched him miss out on the season's cleanest swells, and family surf sessions, because he was drowning in hundreds of emails backed over just one weekend, most of them the same questions he received daily, which really did his head in.

I realized that this was a common problem for surf school owners, wanting to make surfing their career and ending up stuck at a 9-5 desk job. With most software either extremely dated or not tailored to surf schools, it makes the process that much harder.

That's when I proposed the idea of a surf-tuned admin operating system to Mohamed, who I knew was technically gifted.

The Partnership

My co-founder Mohamed whom I met through school where we found similar interests in the software space. After years of friendship I introduced him to my greatest passion, surfing and Mohamed showed me the ways of tech and software development and we started making personal projects together.

He loved the idea since he was passionate about learning to surf and had asked me prior, if I could teach him. We sat down and after a lot of refining and lots of scrapped ideas, we landed on a fully automated Surf School Operating System.

While I bring the surf industry knowledge, he makes sure the backend is rock-solid and reliable.

What Drives Us

OptiveraAI isn't just another AI company. It's a solution to the most painful tasks that almost all surf school and surf camp owners despise.

My goal is to make the surf business achievable without having to trade your surfing for admin work. So when you're out surfing and can't pick up the phone… we can.