A yellow van of 16 seats, two friends and a great will to make their life out of wave sports. And voilà. The conditions for Daniel Beirôco, 35, and Gonçalo Pereira, 32, to release the Surf Bus, at their own stake were finally together. Because «Portugal is increasingly recognized as a surfing destination», they both told the Observer newspaper. It's not a surf hostel in Portugal, it's even better.
Ten years ago, nothing would predict that the career of both would pass by the sea. Or by the access to it. With higher education courses in the field of economics and management, Daniel and Gonçalo met at staffing firm Michael Page, where they both worked. They became friends. In common, a passion for bodyboarding, a sport they both practiced since they were 15 years old. The rest came later, with an unemployment situation.
Daniel and Gonçalo's project doesn't aim to compete with any surf hostel in Portugal
Michael Page went to Multipessoal, now inserted in Espírito Santo Group, but left three years later. «There was a big wear», explained Daniel Beirôco, who left the company in September 2013. Gonçalo Pereira had left a month earlier. First, they thought to open a surf hostel in Portugal, but the idea never left the paper.
When they decided to move forward with the Surf Bus, they said «goodbye» to unemployment benefits. With this project, they want to create a direct and secure link between Lisbon and ideal beaches for users to learn, hone the technique and enjoy the waves aboard a van of 16 seats.
The project came up to fill surf student´s needs
Those who do not have classes, but usually do surf, have the same problem: they rely on transport as the train, boat or bus to go surfing. They both advance the goal is not to compete with surf schools or with the surf hostel in Portugal. They are, rather, a service that provides to these entities. «We try to position ourselves as an aggregator. The challenge is to try to combine things from one side to another», says Daniel.
Tourists, young students, surfing students and bodyboarding schools. This is the target audience of 16 places in the Surf Bus, a project that took a year to be released because of regulations that exist in the transport sector. In order to exercise this activity, both entrepreneurs had to pay nine thousand euros.
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