Kai Lenny had the packed house’s full attention at the Shorebreak Hotel. Photo: Progression 2025

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The US Open in Huntington Beach, California has always been a place where surf industry folk meet to compare notes, make plans, or better yet, make deals. At the 2025 Open, there was a different sort of meeting happening just off the Pacific Coast Highway at the Shorebreak Hotel, where, fingers crossed, some big deals were made for our planet. In partnership with the WSL and Conservation International, the Progression conference went off, highlighting six extremely “progressive” environmental companies looking to secure further funding for their respective brands.

Organized by talented entrepreneur Ryan Bellissimo, the smartly built event brought business investors together to listen to  pitches from the six companies (more on them later). It was Bellissimo’s second Progression conference, the first being held in 2024 in conjunction with US Ski and Snowboard and POW at Park City, Utah. 

With keynote speaker Kai Lenny delivering an impassioned speech about ocean health (“This was rad,” he told me later), and the WSL’s Ryan Crosby and Kanoa Igarashi sitting on panels as well, the six brands gave stellar presentations about how they could help fix the planet in their own respective ways. Investors listened (and hopefully funded) these brands. We all know the clock is ticking. And the time is now.

That’s why the presentations were so enthralling. These weren’t companies promoting beach cleanups (not that those don’t help in a small way). All of the guests were selected to present based on the fact that they can make huge impacts on environmental problems from not just the consumer level, but on a business-to-business level as well, where many of our environmental problems stem from.

Ryan Bellissimo getting the party started. Photo: Progression 2025

There was a Shark Tank feel to the proceedings too, including a panel on the Future of Ocean Investing presented by JP Morgan. The takeaway? Investors who put money in environmental companies are often looking for the same things they would when investing in general brands. Are initial investors returning to provide a second round of capital? And does the company hit on a consumer, industrial, and/or a manufacturing level? Definitely a thought-provoking afternoon.

“Progression is about breaking down silos,” Bellissimo told me after. “When you put surfers, conservationists, venture capital, and startup founders in the same room, unexpected things happen, new ideas, new partnerships, and hopefully, real momentum toward solving some of the most pressing challenges facing our ocean and climate. We hosted Progression with the WSL during the US Open because surfing is a reminder of what’s at stake. If we want to protect what we love, we need more capital, more collaboration, and more urgency.”

Truer words were never….well, you get it. Bellissimo certainly hit on the intellectual aspect of ocean and environmental health, and made it presentable to a general audience. Now, let’s hope it makes a difference.

More about the six companies presenting at Progression 2025:

Sway – Creating smart, compostable plastic packaging – for everything from dress shirts to salami – out of seaweed.

Cruz Foam – Manufacturing bio-foam, for things like surfboards and television packaging, all from composted material.

Flux Marine – Designers and manufacturers of electric outboard boat motors.

Natrx – Solving landscape-scale resilience challenges with nature-based solutions. (Nature-based culverts for water control, etc.)

Carbonwave  – Upcycling seaweed into advanced biomaterials like healthy fertilizers and cosmetics.

Ulysses – A builder of autonomous underwater and surface vehicles to solve the most critical tasks in our oceans like restoring seagrass.