$60K personal water toy lands $1M worth of preorders

It takes a special kind of boldness to raise a wad of cash, claim to have $90 million worth of preorders, then pivot away from passenger ferries and light container ships, and instead start selling $59,000 personal watercraft. Bold, yes, but the tactic seems to be working. Boundary Layer’s CEO and founder, Ed Kearney, told me the company has more than $1 million worth of preorders.

“After being live for just three weeks we have slightly over $1 million worth of vehicles reserved, mostly to folks in the U.S., and one customer in Kuwait,” Kearney tells me, adding that the company is “on track to demonstrate the prototype in early February.”

The company charges a $1,000 refundable deposit for a place on the waiting list. It remains to be seen when the company will be ready to start shipping the personal watercraft to its customers and whether the company’s investors are enthused about a B2B to B2C pivot in the middle of a complicated world of global financial instability.

One thing is for certain: There’s a lot of activity in the world of hydrofoiling electric boats at the moment. Navier is in the process of preparing for production as well, and Candela raised $24 million for its bid for the hydrofoiling crown.

In the electric non-hydrofoiling boat space, Flux Marine recently landed a $15 million round, Arc raised $30 million and GM snagged a 25% stake in Pure Watercraft about a year ago.

$60K personal water toy lands $1M worth of preorders by Haje Jan Kamps originally published on TechCrunch