Fundraising Fox
Krak
Techstars '18Los Angeles, US · Founded 2014 · 4 employees on LinkedIn · 2 known investors
Find your way into Krak
Sign up to see every warm intro you have to Krak
- Paths you didn't know you had: your email and LinkedIn already hold routes to the Krak team. We find them for you
- 2nd- and 3rd-degree connections: the friend-of-a-friend routes that take hours to manually find through your inbox or LinkedIn
- Answers now, not in days: momentum is everything in a raise. Skip asking around whether someone knows someone
Days of research, done the moment you sign in, with every route ranked by how warm it is.
A free skateboarding archive built and operated by skateboarders as part of OpenSB. The platform preserves skateboarding-related content and materials for the skateboarding community.
Also known as Krak Mag · Krak Skateboarding
Investors · 2
.png)
How we know: Matchstick Ventures's portfolio page · Not right? Tell us
How we know: the Techstars portfolio · open dataset · Top 3000 Accelerator Startups (no YC) 2026-08 · Not right? Tell us
Company profile
researched Sep 2026Krak is a skateboarding project whose stated mission is twofold: to increase the amount of skateboarding in the world and to archive the culture's places, moments and media. Its published plans describe a free online skateboarding encyclopedia written and maintained through open collaboration by skateboarders, a free editable world map of skate spots released under an open-content license, and a skateboarding-focused publication. The company compares the combination to Wikipedia, OpenStreetMap and Thrasher combined with a decentralized autonomous organization.
A core motivation described by the company is documentation: skate spots carry history and context, older video parts can be difficult to find or are deleted entirely, and the team argues that without deliberate archiving much of the culture will be lost. The map is presented as the central medium for annotating streets and preserving the record of tricks performed at specific spots, with an explicit intent that younger generations add their own local scene footage.
An earlier version of the company built a hardware product and social network for skateboarders, pairing a small chip mounted on a skateboard with a mobile app to give riders data about their sessions, help them track progress and connect with other skateboarders around popular spots. Krak also operates Krak Mag, a publication for skate stories, interviews and reviews that solicits outside contributions.
Founding story
Founder Kevin Straszburger, who describes himself as chief skateboarder and says he started skateboarding in 2000 and grew up between Lyon and Paris, has said the concept was in gestation for more than twenty years. The team reported that before building a website they spent time in skateparks and rode between city spots to talk with active skateboarders about the idea. Early prototypes were tested with 50 skateboarders in Paris, then in London, and the team says it received over 500 messages from supporters offering to test and help build the product.
Business model
Krak is positioned as a community-owned common good rather than a conventional equity-held venture, with a stated promise that the project is 100% owned by skateboarders, workers and the community. Its published funding mechanism is a membership subscription priced at $50 per year, with proceeds pooled into a common treasury intended to keep the project sustainable and fund new releases. Members are described as a release club that collaborates on what gets built and shipped. In its earlier incarnation the company pursued a hardware-plus-app product for skateboarders and was seeking a seed round.
Recurring membership subscriptions of $50 per year paid into a shared treasury that funds ongoing operations and new releases.
Traction
The earlier hardware effort completed about ten product iterations with a couple hundred users testing the device and app, following prototype trials with 50 skateboarders in Paris and a repeat in London, and reported over 500 inbound messages from interested supporters. Team size reached ten full-time people at its 2018 peak, with a core team of five maintaining the project since 2014. Krak Mag's category listing showed no articles available at the time of review.
Latest developments
In November 2022 Krak published its "Call-to-Adventure" document setting out plans to organize as a DAO and co-operative and to build a free skateboarding encyclopedia, an open-content global skate-spot map and a publication. Alongside it the company opened a $50-per-year membership that pools funds into a common treasury and confers participation rights and ownership in the project.
▸Full profile — market position, technology, go-to-market, geography, history
Market position
Krak addresses the skateboarding community, a market it earlier characterized as roughly 100 million skateboarders worldwide. It positions itself between commercial skateboarding, which it describes as increasingly shaped by large corporations and Olympic inclusion, and locally rooted DIY initiatives that lack economic and political power, proposing to unite the latter under a collectively owned organization.
Krak frames itself as an independent, collectively owned alternative to corporate involvement in skateboarding, contrasting large brands that hold economic and political influence with unfunded local DIY initiatives. Its distinguishing commitments are open-content licensing, community authorship of the encyclopedia and map, and an ownership structure intended to vest the asset permanently in skateboarders, workers and the community rather than outside shareholders. On the earlier hardware product, the team emphasized direct, sustained relationships with individual testers and its own roots in skateboarding culture.
Technology
The current project centers on open, community-editable digital infrastructure: a collaboratively written encyclopedia, an editable global map released under an open-content license, and a publishing platform, with governance planned as a decentralized autonomous organization. The earlier product was a combined hardware and software system in which a small sensor chip attached to a skateboard paired with a mobile app to capture ride data; the team described its scope as spanning sensors, data, design and code, staffed with a product manager, a creative, a software architect and a hardware architect.
Go-to-market
Krak reached skateboarders directly through in-person contact at skateparks and street spots and through iterative prototype testing programs in Paris and London that built close relationships with individual users. More recently it recruits paying members through its website, offering participation in build-and-release discussions, private community spaces, early access to releases, member-only benefits such as a couch-surfing directory and newsletter co-writing, and a share of ownership. Krak Mag invites community members to contribute editorial content.
Skateboarders worldwide, including riders seeking to document and discover spots, local DIY scene organizers, filmers and photographers, and readers and contributors to skate media.
Geography
Headquarters were established in Los Angeles after the founding team, previously spread across London, Paris and Singapore, relocated there. The founder's background is in Lyon and Paris, and the project's mapping and archiving ambitions are described as worldwide in scope.
History
The project traces to a hardware and social-network product for skateboarders started in 2013 by four co-founders distributed across London, Paris and Singapore, who subsequently relocated to Los Angeles to establish headquarters, raise a seed round and build further prototypes. By that point the team had run roughly ten product iterations and had a couple hundred users testing the hardware and app, after first trialling prototypes with 50 skateboarders in Paris and repeating the exercise in London. Krak states it has been managed by a core team of five people since 2014, reaching a peak of ten full-time contributors in 2018. In November 2022 it published a manifesto reframing the effort as an archival common good governed as a DAO and co-operative.
Compiled by commissioned research from 8 cited public sources — announcements, filings, and press listed under research sources below.
Key figures
latest reportedCompany-reported or press-reported figures, each dated to when it was claimed — not independently audited.
Timeline · 2
launches, deals, and filingsKrak published a long-form manifesto describing its mission to archive skateboarding culture and build a community-owned common good structured as a DAO and co-operative, including a free skateboarding encyclopedia, an open-content world map of skate spots and a skateboarding publication.
The four co-founders, previously distributed across London, Paris and Singapore, relocated to Los Angeles to establish headquarters, raise a seed round and launch further hardware prototypes.
Dated company events from announcements, filings, and press; legal rows summarize public dockets and regulator releases.
▸Research sources · 8
primary sources listed
- Krak Mag | our very own skate stories, interviews, reviews and cie.skatekrak.com · web
8 public sources were cited for this profile; the first-party ones are listed here.
Frequently asked questions
- What does Krak do?
- Community-owned skateboarding project building a free open-content archive, spot map and publication, organized as a DAO and co-op.
- Who are Krak's investors?
- Krak's investors include Matchstick Ventures, Techstars.
- Where is Krak headquartered?
- Krak is headquartered in Los Angeles, US.