Sport Meets Business - Kiting to Change the World
Published: 11/05/2016
Outdoorsie athlete, California kiteboarding pioneer, entrepreneur and conqueror of big waves, Jeff Kafka, talks about kiteboarding as the golf course of Silicon Valley and how it empowers his disaster and humanitarian relief non-profit through sport.
As one of the first people in Northern California to teach kiteboarding, Jeff Kafka has always blazed a trail. His early students would include Sergey Brin, Larry Page and Joy Covey. From there, he would help start the global community of extreme athletes, innovators, entrepreneurs and investors called Mai Tai, he would become a partner of Primowind, a founder of the Big Wave World Tour and the first man to kite the infamous wave Mavericks. Most recently, Jeff co-founded kite4water which gives people in poverty access to clean water by providing them with small, portable, easy-to-use, reliable, inexpensive water filters that can last a decade without needing to be replaced.
Jeff Kafka: When I first saw Flash Austin tied to a stackable kite on a surfboard I wasn’t like “Oh wow! That’s kiteboarding” I thought; “what the heck is that guy doing with that kite and that board in the middle of the ocean?” It wasn’t until two years later on the North Island of New Zealand that I approached someone and asked “Hey, is this a good spot to learn?”.
Around 1999, the global community wasn’t more than several hundred people, if not only a few thousand. If you saw other people kiting you’d be drawn to them. The sport has continued on like this in that it’s very interactive. Because there’s plenty of space for everyone out on the water it’s naturally far less territorial then surfing which can be uninviting to beginners and not interactive. Kiteboarding accommodates a complete mix of pros to beginners out there enjoying it together and can be as mellow or extreme as you want it to be.
We look at kiteboarding as the new golf course where people can build strong business relationships. We helped start an event called Mai Tai which was founded by Susi Mai and Bill Tai and is, among many other things, a platform for startups to talk to angel VC’s. The great thing about kiting and many sports is that you get to see people's true colors when you’re out in the water. You see who they really are by being in an environment where they’re not totally in their comfort zone. Pushing people out of their comfort zone really helps people connect on a strong level. You can talk about how amazing a technology you’ve developed is but a huge part of investing is whether you can really trust this person and these sports allow me to take these relationships to that level where you can more clearly identify who you do and don’t want to work with.
I’ve met a lot of amazing people who have become my business mentors and in turn I’m sort of their water sports mentor. Larry and Sergei are doing amazing things for the world. Our friends have this meet up where they bring people together to solve world water quality problems and through this our minds were drawn to help people through our sport. Surfing and kiting, like all sports, are amazing in that they are without borders.
Sports can help with environmental and humanitarian problems. We’ve attached to water quality with a project called Kite4Water that aims to bring people in poverty clean water. We know a lot of other groups within the kiting community that are working on great humanitarian initiatives. Once we go to a location, we do a pilot project and if it goes well we can leave it in the hands of someone on the ground that we have a good relationship with. We continue our support through them and continue to send them the filters. All of this has been facilitated through the sport of kiteboarding.
Places like Fiji and the southwest Pacific Islands are some of the best places to kiteboard and surf in the world. It’s just that there’s no infrastructure there which leaves hundred of thousands of people without clean drinking water access. Every time someone talks about travelling somewhere and getting sick from the water, that’s the day to day reality for locals. Their children and their grandparents are exposed to bacteria that is present in their water and is preventable. South America is a major focus of ours as a very poor area which is frequented by many kiteboarders and surfers. If we can tap into people travelling to these locations as well as doing our own trips and get 100 people to take 5 filters, that’s 500 filters which can clean water for 50,000 people. One filter can serve 500 gallons a day.
So it’s not only our project, it’s about inspiring other people to pay it forward. It’s about awareness that you’re going to stay in this incredible place doing what you love but there is a reality of poverty there which you can positively impact. You could be staying in a beautiful resort where there is a town literally half a mile away where the people don’t have access to clean water and everyone drinks from one unfiltered well. One filter to this town and everybody there would have access to clean water.”
Outdoorsie is proud to work with and support Jeff Kafka. We believe that helping people engage with each other and the environment around them through sport fosters an appreciation for the need to look after our planet and it’s inhabitants. Please consider donating to Jeff’s project by visiting kite4water.org