Where it all started

The idea was simple: take a small group of founders somewhere warm, put them on the water in the morning and around a long table at night, and let the rest happen on its own.

What we didn't fully expect was how quickly twenty near-strangers turned into a group that actually looked out for each other. First-time founders sat next to people with two exits behind them. Nobody was performing. The war stories came out over the first dinner and didn't really stop.

Onto the water

The plan was wingfoiling, but the wind never really showed up, so the first attempt turned into a lot of falling in and laughing about it. The next day the ocean sent waves instead, and the foils became surfboards. Almost nobody had done either before, and that was the point. There is a particular kind of bonding when a room full of capable, successful people are all equally hopeless beginners for a morning. No experience needed, and no need to be sporty. Just an open mind.

Afternoons and evenings, the part that stuck

The schedule was deliberately light. A talk or two, small informal sessions, and then long stretches of unstructured time, the kind you never give yourself back home. People paired off to walk, to swim, to spar on the exact problem one of them was stuck on. By the third night, the dinners were running past midnight.