Former Santa Cruzian teams up with Kevin Costner
We see it all around us in the business and tech world: people who start their own companies from scratch -- no matter what line of business it’s in -- using that excellent early experience to lay the foundation for the next success, even when that startup has little to nothing to do with the next venture.
Case in point is long time surfer and windsurfer Clay Feeter. Clay went to Cabrillo College and lived in Santa Cruz through the late 70s into the 80s and has always kept his connections here, despite taking jobs on Guam, and in Oregon, Southern Cal and now Maine. Everywhere he’s gone, he kept dipping back into his “well” of Santa Cruz experiences that involved publishing, writing and advertising sales in order to grow his popular windsurfing magazine called Wind Tracks, which he founded in Santa Cruz. See photo below of two windsurfing pioneers Clay Feeter and Doug Erickson.
Clay is a big believer in the axiom “Whatever you do today will prepare you for what you’re going to do next,” contending that the experience of publishing a magazine and all the complexities involved in “getting to press” in the old days is really not that different from “going live” with digital material today.
That’s because nothing has really changed about the art -- and power! -- of storytelling. Which brings us to what this saltwater-seeking old surfer/windsurfer is doing today, after 30 years of magazine publishing. Feeter has teamed up with a unique partnership of three Santa Barbara app developers, some of whom you’ve heard of; most notably Academy Award winning actor Kevin Costner.
Another partner, outdoorsman Bill Werlin, is the originator of HearHere’s “road trip app” business model. Bill is former president of The North Face. He, along with Costner and their other partner Woody Sears, began charting out the company’s course nearly four years ago for their launch last August (2020). Company president Sears is also a surfer whom Feeter swears has a “swooping arms” surf style almost identical to Aussie surf legend Mark Richards. As the youngest member of the trio, Woody is the driving force on the tech end, and performs overall management duties. His resume includes developing the iStory Interactive Children's Books app.
Together with a couple dozen top writers, narrators and marketing people -- most of whom work virtually between New England, Oregon and even Panama (yes, she’s a surfer) -- HearHere creates fun and informative 3-minute audio stories that are triggered by gps when you drive past a historical marker or other interesting places.
Imagine the Waze navigation app, but with HearHere, instead of “caution vehicle on side of road ahead,” you get a snappy, informative short narration about this very spot you’re driving past. Story categories range from Natural Wonders to Colorful Characters, to History, Sports, Local Insights and Music.
“This is a fascinating app that really works,” explains Doug Erickson, Executive Director of Santa Cruz Works. “We saw two other companies try variations of this. Acorn by Frank Scott Krueger which allowed anyone to “drop an acorn” - a digital seed of history about a place using their smartphone, to educate visitors about that location. Frank pivoted away from software to craft brews with the highly successful Humble Sea Brewery. Julia Gaudinski created Mobile Ranger focusing on geological history. HearHere is all and much more of what early app developers envisioned.”
The beauty of HearHere is that you can also hear these stories from your couch. That’s right, you can “take a trip without leaving the farm,” using the app to plan your escapes by pre-listening to what’s ahead on roads you plan to take. Another popular user group, “to our surprise,” says Feeter, “is elderly people using the app to revisit and relive places they ventured to in their earlier years.”
The HearHere team has, in less than a year, gone live with 8,500 stories and many thousands more are on tap… “It’s a fun job,” Clay says. The self-described history freak claims to be “Getting a ‘PhD in America,’” because with each new story the HH team produces he learns about unusual and interesting places across the country, noting: “Not a day goes by that we don’t say to ourselves “So THAT’s where that happened!”
And of course the icing on the cake is being part of a project that Kevin Costner shares a deep passion in: history, and especially Native American history. “One of Kevin’s main reasons for partnering up with Werlin and Sears is to bring out the stories of the 500+ Nations; the First People,” Clay says.
Long before Costner starred in Dances With Wolves, he was studying American history and vigorously delving into the stories of America’s indiginous populations. “Kevin really cannot get enough of history; he’s so into it!”
One such story the HearHere team recently brought to their audience is: Guffey - The Promise of Gold in a Colorado Town Where they Have a Habit of Electing Animals as Their Mayors. Listen to it here
Get the app free at HearHere
Got a Trip Story?
And the good news is that the HearHere team is always on the lookout for “radio journalist” type writers able to boil great copy into 3 minute audio clips. For more information or partnership queries: www.HearHere.com
Praise for HearHere
Doug Erickson, Clay Feeter, talking about the early days of windsurfing and legendary Santa Cruzian Steve West.