The Wave founder Nick Hounsfield interview: How I built my £27m surfing lake dream from £500 in the bank

If you were asked to name a world-class place to surf, a field near Bristol isn’t the first location that would spring to mind.

But this slice of the English countryside is home to The Wave, an artificial surfing lake that is one of just a handful in the world to use cutting edge technology and was the first of its kind.

The Wave is the fruit of the ambitions of Nick Hounsfield, a pioneering British entrepreneur who wanted to build a unique business that had a positive social impact, with improving health and wellbeing for surfers and non-surfers alike baked in.

For this special bonus interview episode of the This is Money podcast, Simon Lambert visited The Wave to meet Nick, be shown around and hear the story of his more than decade-long journey to get waves breaking and people riding them.

It’s a fascinating tale, not least because Nick didn’t come from a background in property or business, but was an osteopath, who started with £500 in his bank account and managed to raise £27million to build his dream. 

He tells Simon about the challenge of doing that when potential investors thought it was a great idea but were reluctant to take the risk on it, with a theme of ‘we’ll back the second one, but not the first one’ coming through.

Eventually Nick and his business partners got traction in raising the funds to get the Wave off the ground, but he says it was important to find the right people to back it: those who bought into the social impact element as well as making money.

‘We talk about profits with purpose’, says Nick. ‘But generally, I think across the finance industry, it seems that people are understanding how important it is to be future facing - from a profit perspective but also looking after people and the planet at the same time and how important that is in building a brand and building a business.’

He adds: ‘Right at the beginning we very much set out our stall that we were going to be environmentally conscious and socially conscious, but also be profit making.’

But Nick’s rollercoaster ride hasn’t just been about getting a hugely ambitious business off the ground, he also faced a double whammy of unexpected events as it finally opened its doors.

The Wave started welcoming surfers in late 2019 but shortly afterwards Covid and lockdowns struck throwing plans into disarray.

Yet Nick was already facing his own personal challenge, as he had suffered a stroke in February 2020, which left him in hospital for weeks and then needing six to nine months of rehabilitation at home through the disconcerting times of the first Covid lockdown.

Nick tells the story of how he found himself working alone in the water at The Wave, while it was shut during lockdown, and benefitting himself from the impact of ‘blue health’: the idea that spending time in or near water is good for people, which is a cornerstone of his business dream.

The Wave has flourished since it was allowed to open again during the Covid lockdowns and there are now plans for more facilities in the UK, including one in north London’s Lee Valley, close to the Olympic water sports facilities.

Nick shares more details on those plans, explains more about how The Wave works and what visiting surfers can expect and need to know – and at the end of the podcast Simon – a self-described painfully average on-and-off surfer – explains what it was like to ride the waves.