Riding high on ‘Shark Tank’ success, Santa Cruz-based Surf Skull aims to make safety fashion-forward

Head and neck injuries are one of the most common and potentially serious injuries for surfers, and yet helmet use remains relatively rare. That’s what the team behind Surf Skull hopes to change with their take on a surf helmet that pairs function with fashion. Last month, the company earned a $50,000 investment on the reality television series “Shark Tank” from KIND Snacks CEO Daniel Lubetzky.

Surf Skull was born out of founder Davon Larson’s own head injury experience during a surf trip in Baja California in 2022 when he smacked his head on the fin of his board. Still bleeding profusely he walked to a nearby campsite to seek help, and eventually found a nurse who was able to stitch him up. Scared by the experience, he thought he should start wearing a helmet, but existing options were ugly.

Drawing on his experience as a product designer, he got home and started working on a prototype using what’s known as a bump cap, which is designed to protect industrial workers from minor head injuries. He concealed the protection in a bucket hat, to make headgear that fits in with the surfer aesthetic. Soon he was surfing with his makeshift helmet, and working on new ideas. He found some suppliers through online marketplace Alibaba.com to help, made around 100 bucket hat-helmets, and soon all of his friends were clamoring for one. He quickly sold out.

Surfers’ head injuries are getting more attention recently, driven in part by the real-life experiences of some of the sport’s most prominent athletes. In 2022, the World Surf League implemented new protocols and regulations to prevent traumatic brain injuries, and began providing optional helmets for athletes at some events. This year, the Mavericks Ocean Safety Summit, an annual event focused on ocean risk management and rescue techniques for big-wave surfers and ocean enthusiasts, featured specific discussions on brain health and the importance of understanding brain injuries.

Around that time, Larson met Paul Huang through a surf club at Google, where they both worked. Huang heard about the helmet Larson was working on, and he wanted in. As an avid surfer who’d also suffered head injuries, he thought Larson’s idea was “really freaking cool.”

The pair became business partners. Their protective head contraption quickly spread beyond the Santa Cruz community via word of mouth. Soon they were hearing from customers who told them they’d long been looking for something like Surf Skull. That feedback has inspired them as they grow the business.

“This was always just kind of a fun experiment for us, and the weird thing is that the experiment worked,” said Larson.

Surf Skull sells mostly through Instagram and Shopify, but the company is also working with a couple of local resellers. Parts are manufactured by its partners, but Larson and his wife assemble the helmets in their living room. By his estimation, his wife has assembled as many as 2,000 helmets at this point.

This fall, Surf Skull got two big breaks: In October, Time magazine put Surf Skull in the special-mentions section of its best inventions of 2025 list. And last month, Larson and Huang went on ABC’s reality show “Shark Tank” seeking $50,000 for a 20% stake in the company. From multiple offers, they accepted a deal from Lubetzky, citing his prior investment in water sports companies.

While Huang and Larson are legally restricted from divulging too much about taping “Shark Tank,” they said it was an incredible experience — a whirlwind from the time they first made contact with producers to the time their episode aired a couple months later.

“It was just this super weird fever dream,” said Huang. “We flew down to Los Angeles, did the pitch and then went back home. It was as if nothing ever happened.”

The pair weren’t allowed to tell anyone what happened before the episode aired, and since then, they’ve received an outpouring of response — even from some unexpected places. Shortly after the episode aired, Larson was surfing at Moss Landing when he was approached by a group of local surfers who asked him if he was trying to sell his helmets there.

“They were kind of aggressive [at first], but then they told me they thought it was a great idea,” he said. “I thought they were going to yell at me and tell me to get out.”

Now, Huang and Larson are hard at work on next steps, including fulfilling orders for version 2.0 of Surf Skull, which is designed to meet more robust standards and which they hope to start shipping this month. From there, they hope to get their product to surf schools and expand to new markets in different countries, while continuing to iterate on their product. That will also include testing to get their helmets certified under CE EN 1385, the European standard for whitewater rafting that’s widely considered best in the industry for helmets used in water sports. There’s currently no specific certification for use in surfing.

“We just want to make sure that we represent the city of Santa Cruz well as we grow,” said Larson.

Have something to say? Lookout welcomes letters to the editor, within our policies, from readers. Guidelines here.