Bravo! Entrepreneur award
John West
Founder and CEO
BomBoard LLC
Whitewater
www.bomboard.com
Employees: 3
John West was a platoon commander in Vietnam before returning home upon being wounded. He launched two high-tech companies and ran them for more than 30 years before selling his second company to Boeing and entering retirement.
West and his wife moved to rural Wisconsin, but after a few years of retirement bliss, West’s entrepreneurial spirit struck again.
From the time he was a small child, West had a fascination with boats, so he took that fascination and invented a new, high-performance, portable watercraft. BomBoard LLC was born.
“It took me quite a few years, and several different prototypes, to arrive at our current model for BomBoard,” West said. “What we’ve developed is totally unique to the industry, and we’re poised to really take advantage of an untapped market.”
According to West, BomBoard is a smaller, lightweight, high-performance watercraft capable of reaching speeds of 40 miles per hour; but it’s the portability that really sets the device apart.
“It’s completely modular. It separates into six different pieces that can be transported in the back of a car,” he said.
BomBoard has three issued and two pending patents for the modularity of the product.
With the product priced at less than $4,000, West hopes to target a younger watersport enthusiast who may not have the storage or budget for a traditional watercraft, he said.
West envisions the BomBoard on the watersport circuit, and has already started shooting video demonstrations and recruiting ambassadors for the sport.
The company is currently manufacturing several pre-production prototypes for testing and hopes to have the final product available direct to consumers in spring 2017.
