Back in 2023 at the Ciloms hotel across the street from URBNSURF in Melbourne, WavePoolMag interviewed Flowstate cofounder/programmers Mike Mortimer and Chris Hausler. Melbourne was ground zero for the automated platform that reads each surfer’s unique movements to make a “style fingerprint” and then packages their wave pool video clips for purchase. Fast forward to late 2025 and customers at several surf parks across the globe can walk away with personalized video mementos of their wave pool sessions.
It’s a solid win for a new company in a new field, AI Video Capture. And, in all honesty, we thought maybe the team would now focus solely on the artificial wave realm. However, true to their tech company roots, Flowstate just keeps finding new applications for their technology.
Flowstate CEO Luke Wallace has been to pretty much every wave pool in the world. We’ve run into him in Germany, Australia, and most recently, California at the Palm Springs Surf Club. Not one to let an opportunity for content pass us by, we broke Luke away from his family for a spell to find out more about the company’s growth and expansion into competitions, ocean video capture, snow resorts, and more.
WavePoolMag: It seems like every other week there’s a new Flowstate announcement. So if you could break down what you’ve been doing, we’d appreciate the catch-up.
Luke Wallace: Yeah. So we’ve been in wavepools now for a couple of years. We’re in ten wave pools around the world now. We love wave pools. We love surfing. We’re in all the big pools around the world. We’ve long thought that this technology can be applied to new sports, and hence we’re moving into the broader surf market and the broader action sports market, both from the B2B & consumer product perspectives. Working with commercial partners in the surf world, such as wave pools, and then into snow resorts. Alongside this is our move into being a consumer product which is a huge next step for us. When you think about it, the surfer, the skateboarder, the snowboarder — the consumer — people who do these activities may do 1, 2, 3 or more of these sports and allowing them to have a single application that allows them to traverse these sports through a single platform, whether it be in the pool, the ocean, a mountain resort or kicking it down the local skate park, we think that makes a great customer experience.
Something we’ve been working on for quite a while now is the Flowstate mobile app and Flowstate Pro subscription, which is our evolution into being able to facilitate that vision.
What can you do with the Flowstate App? (readers can check it out here)
So within the app — obviously it’s mobile-first and mobile-native — just the overall experience within the app, whether you’re at a pool, the ocean, or anywhere, is slicker. One of the big features within the app is mobile capture — the ability to film yourself surfing, skating snowboarding anywhere and everywhere.
I saw that you can set it up on the beach
On the beach, you can put your iPhone on a tripod or mount it to a lifeguard tower, mount it to your e-bike — a whole bunch of different ways. You can mount your phone, frame up the bank that you’re surfing, zoom in, and press record. After your session, you’ll have all your rides filmed, edited, and ready for you to watch back shortly after the session.
Does it work the same way — the Flowstate app recognizes you through AI?
Yeah, pretty similar to what you have in the wavepool, all packaged up on your mobile phone to allow you to capture the moment wherever you surf. The camera quality on the newer iPhones is phenomenal, so we can create quality output of video content. However, it’s not at the same level as the professional cameras we have in operation at the pools. Leveraging the AI technology comes down to the quality of the video and the pixels. If you zoom in tighter on the app, the video quality is better, and we have a better chance of identifying you. It’s why the beachcams can’t do much with identification; the quality of the video output just isn’t there, they weren’t designed for that. Coming soon, we have a smart watch app that will sync to your phone and help with the attribution of the video clips to you.
So, if you’ve got fifteen waves, you’d have all your fifteen waves right there. At the moment, it’s going to film everybody. If you put your phone up and you surf with a couple of friends, you’ve got all their clips, which is also cool and enables you to share content with your friends.
I was surfing in San Clemente yesterday with my kids. There happened to be one other guy out there. I was like, “That guy surfs good.” It was Kolohe Andino. So soon, you’ll be able to tag him, and it’ll go to his profile. But ultimately, again, the same sort of thing we do at the wave pool — you’d be able to go surf, every wave’s filmed, edited, ready for you shortly afterward, right there on the device in your pocket. Never miss a session.
Why now? Why is this the right time?
The advancement in technology — the processing power, the neural engines within the iPhone in particular. Actually, Android has recently caught up, too. But today, the processing power on iOS devices is so powerful that we can conduct a lot of our AI work right there on the device — tracking objects, processing, and we’re constantly optimizing. It’s pretty good now. It can be better. We’re at version one at the moment, which we’re pretty excited about. Weekly releases of updates are coming out. I’ve barely seen myself surf in the ocean in the last 25 years and in recent months, I’ve seen all my surf sessions. It’s pretty cool that you can now capture surf sessions wherever you are.
What other features are tied to the app?
You’ve got the coaching software, the new competition product, and self-progression features. You can set goals. All your waves will be tracked. What maneuvers you’re doing are tracked. We’re getting close to AI coaching — still working with other coaches. We want to give them their own AI agent to deliver coaching. I think in AI coaching, particularly for beginners to intermediate, that’s low-hanging fruit. There’s a lot of repetitive feedback we can address easily.
But for upper-intermediate to advanced surfers, it becomes more nuanced. The tools we’re creating for coaches on the beach can accelerate what they do. Coaching has become almost inaccessible for a lot of people because it’s costly. Coaches have to stand on the beach and film you for two hours — and it’s hard to get waves these days.
If you get five waves, that’s it. Now, we can automate that manual task. You can collect videos over a couple of days or weeks and send them to a coach, or maybe do a session-by-session coaching setup. It’s flexible and helps people surf better, get more enjoyment, and track their progress. We want to help keep the stoke alive.
We heard that you are expanding to snow and other sports.
Yeah. Snow, skate, and the broader action sports market is where we’re launching now. Snow has similarities to wave pools. There’s the B2B side of partnering with mountain resorts — snow in winter, mountain biking in summer. Partnering with those resorts to film people skiing and snowboarding — same principle — most people have never seen themselves doing it. Some mountains still have someone with a camera, but the Flowstate model helps people enjoy the sport by seeing themselves, laughing at wipeouts, and having fun.
The original problem we saw in wave pools and surfing exists in so many sports. It feels natural to expand. And it just happens that we’re doing cool stuff like surfing, snowboarding, and skateboarding.
Mountains are huge. We can’t cover everywhere. So we focus on key areas like terrain parks, halfpipes, and mid-mountain runs with nice backdrops. If you go skiing with your family on an annual trip, you want that souvenir. Our mobile app lets you put your phone up, capture your friends coming down the run. That content can also feed into the network of content for that resort. It’s a hybrid B2B/B2C, user-generated content model.
How is the skate market different from other action sports?
Skateboarding is different — lots of indoor skate parks. Different demographics, different challenges. You need a lot of cameras for an indoor skatepark because of all the nooks and crannies. It’s not a big, wide-open space like a wave pool. So the mobile app and consumer play are stronger there — especially with all the outdoor parks.
Looking ahead to the 2028 LA Olympics, well, California is the home of action sports. There’s so much interest. Governing bodies of these sports are heavily invested now that they’re Olympic sports. They’re counting down the days. There’s more emphasis, more money. We want to build on that momentum — release products that make it accessible for anyone to film tricks, connect with coaches, run competitions.
Tell me more about the competition product feature.
The competition product has a few different lenses. On the consumer side, you can set up a mock comp with friends — maybe last place buys the first round of beers. More gamification than a competition.
Clip comps work really well for wavepools, and a number of our partners are running those at the moment, whereby surfers can submit a clip from any of their sessions into a competition. These are often positioned on the fun side of things; best wipeout, best barrel, fancy dress, and themed events around Christmas and special occasions. It’s not really about being the best surfer; it’s equally about fun and inclusion.
I’m really excited about the Live Competitions that span wavepools, the ocean, mountain resorts, anywhere. We’re bringing a pro-level toolset to grassroots through to professional leagues.
Clubs and Organisations can create a Zone on the Flowstate platform in which they can completely automate their media production, highlights, manage their competitions end to end, judging, memberships, and connect with their community in a much more engaging way.
We’ve got partnerships in the pipeline with key Organisations and Boardriders clubs. Every comp will be filmed, edited, and packaged up into highlights and a highly consumable content package. Kids can come in after their heat, watch heat-by-heat replays, division highlights, and full comp highlights. After the event, maybe everyone heads to the local bar or watches iton Wednesday night — helping communities come together through content.
This hasn’t been done before because the tech wasn’t there, making it not commercially viable. People used to spend all day filming, editing, uploading, and distributing content manually. We automate all that — giving semi-pro-level tools to community clubs and top-tier organizations.
How do you prioritize where to go next?
My hardest problem is saying no to opportunities — golf, diving, cricket, martial arts, all of the footballs have been presented to us — so many possibilities. If there’s people doing exciting, action packed adventure activities, it poses an interesting opportunity. But right now, we’re focused on executing on all the things in action sports we’ve just discussed.
Let’s talk about company growth. You started with a few friends — where are you now?
We are now fifteen full-time people, mostly based in Australia. Mostly software engineers or machine learning researchers. As we expand into being a consumer product, we’re starting to grow the GTM side of the business.
We pump every cent we make back into the business to grow. We could’ve just stayed a small founder team and still had a nice little business, but we’re all in a growth mindset. We see where this could go. We believe in the product and its potential.
The original problem we saw in wave pools and surfing exists in so many sports. It feels natural to expand. And it just happens that we’re doing cool stuff like surfing, snowboarding, and skateboarding. We get to take our kids around the world and show them what dad does for work.
You can find out more about Flowstate at this link.
