Wodd

Wodd 730x314 7 startups to watch from Seedcamp Londons first Investor Day of 2014

Wodd is a Paris-based startup that, essentially, wants to end arguments and give bragging rights to skateboarders – and ultimately anyone who takes part in other forms of extreme sport, like kayaking, snowboarding, etc.

Promising to be “the ultimate hardware for skateboarders”, Wodd is a small device that attaches to the bottom of your skateboard to track everything that you do and everywhere that you go.

Alongside the hardware, Wodd also plans to launch an app that will record all the details of your skating sessions, like where you went, how long you skated for, how many times you fell, which tricks you landed perfectly – all the things you’d want to pore over later if you’re a skater that love data. To get to this stage, Wodd has been working with 50 different skateboarders to ensure that all the tricks have been learnt by the device .

The company said it also plans to introduce a range of social features and other gaming elements into the app.

At present, the founders Kevin Straszburger and Tristan Nicolas say that the plan is to monetize through the hardware and deliver an ever improving user experience through the software to generate further hardware sales for future generations of the device. It might seem like a bit of a niche, but the company says that 85 percent of the market is below the age of 20, 75 percent of that figure are boys and 50 percent of it is based in the US, so the company is targeting “the typical 16-year old American teenager; he has an Xbox, a PlayStation, an iPod, a smartphone and he already spends $100 per month in a skate shop.”

Apparently, there are about 20 million people within that demographic alone worldwide, so perhaps it’s not so much of a niche.

➤ Wodd