Founded On Laziness, College Student's Electronic Skateboard Startup Takes Off
(CBS SF) -- Another Bay Area startup is spreading its winds, or in this case, its wheels.
At first glance, this new "smart" skateboard looks like any other piece of wood on wheels. But take a closer look, and you'll see it's a lot smarter, and faster.
It's called the ZBoard, an electronic skateboard equipped with headlights, tail lights and can go 16 miles on a single charge.
In a city with overcrowded public transit and little to no parking, the ZBoard makes commuting a cruise.
The ZBoard started out as a senior class project for co-founder Ben Forman who was looking for a better way to get to class.
He was a mechanical engineering major at University of Southern California -- a self-admittedly lazy one.
"We were procrastinators, we didn't want to walk," Forman said. "We wanted to get there quickly and easily as possible."
The board soon caught others' attention.
"People would stop, take their sunglasses off, take their headphones out and say what is that and where can I buy it?" Forman said. "And that was when it was a hunk of junk, basically a 2 by 4 with wheels on it."
That's when Forman's new career took off, and so did the ZBoards popularity.
Thousands have already been sold in dozens of countries.
"It's amazing to see boards out there we say, 'In the wild,'" Forman said. "People we don't even know and don't even know we're behind it -- we'll see them riding on the street ... When you see them in real life it's a totally different thing."
ZBoard just released its second-generation board after raising four times its crowdfunding goal.
