Yawboard is a team of skateboarders, surfers, and engineers, each with a vision to revolutionise the future of urban transport methods.
Founder Ray Reynolds, a former snowboard instructor from New Zealand, wanted to bring the sensation of the waves to the pavements, tracks, any terrain for that matter to create a practical commuter vehicle that doubles as something to have fun with at the weekend.
“I was a snowboard instructor in New Zealand, and it was really to recreate that style of riding where you can pass and be able to do that when you can't get to the slopes on the streets. The riding style and the enjoyment that you get from the products we see is completely different.” – Ray Reynolds, Founder of YawBoard.
The YawBoard is a hybrid-electric scooter skateboard. Developed over 6 years and following 7 prototypes, the YawBoard brings together the fun and adventure of a kids stunt scooter to allow flips and tricks, and the ease of an e-scooter for day-to-day commuting.
The future of e-mobility, powered by SOLIDWORKS
To take their vision to the next level, YawBoard joined our SOLIDWORKS Entrepreneur Programme, which gave them access to the full suite of SOLIDWORKS tools and products, as well as technical support from our team. This allowed them to begin to develop and validate their ideas using CAD and visualisation software.
““The Entrepreneur Programme has been fantastic for us. There's no way we could afford a full licence without paying customers and without validating our products, so it's allowed us to develop the first level of products which we were then able to put out to the market to see that we have validation and before manufacturing the full product. - Ray Reynolds.
Using SOLIDWORKS enabled YawBoard to create their concepts as 3D CAD designs, and continue to develop and iterate, allowing them to refine and validate their designs without the need for physical prototypes.
“It [SOLIDWORKS] was essential really to package the product, to know the shape and design of the deck and to look at the visual aspect of the board and make it look like a cool product and nice product. Without being able to do that in 3D CAD it's a lot more difficult, impossible, probably, and we'd go through a lot more prototypes.” – Ray Reynolds, Founder.
Validation through Visualisation
Once they had their design nailed, YawBoard decided to validate the market and opted to run a crowdfunding campaign before investing into physical prototypes, using SOLIDWORKS not only allowed them to design the product for the real-world, but by using Visualize, they were able to communicate their idea clearly to their potential market.
“We used SOLIDWORKS to create photorealistic renders through Visualize to display what we thought the product was going to look like and to gauge interest. Without the ability to do that, we wouldn't have been able to commit to the next stages and put money towards things but because of this, we had the validation and the confidence that we had a good product.” – Ray Reynolds, Founder.
Every Start-Up starts somewhere!
During our time on-site with YawBoard, we took the opportunity to speak to Ray about the reality of being a startup and to find out more about the journey they have been on during the past 6 years of development.
“It's not easy, I had to work on another job for the majority of it. I've only just gone full time into this, about three months ago, so juggling the two is difficult. You go through hard times and stressful times, and you work long weekends. But if it's in you, it's in you, you just have to do it and go through the hard work and it's ultimately worth it.”
Discover Yawboard
You can find out more about
Yawboard on their website.