FROM LEFT: The Seaglider is prepared for testing; a crane lowers the craft into the water at the Port of Davisville; Thalheimer and Klinker during testing on Wednesday, Aug. 6.
he’ d met when she moved to Boston to work in biomed in 2018. Lindsey and Brittany gave their consent, on one condition.
“ Our girlfriends / wives gave us five months from quitting to being gainfully employed again,” Thalheimer says.“ Which meant we really only had three months to raise money or we’ d have to start interviewing for jobs again.”
The two left Aurora and set up shop in Klinker’ s apartment in Winchester, Massachusetts. Early on, they were accepted into Y Combinator, a three-month startup accelerator program that awards seed funding. Combined with additional funds from friends and family, the pair had about $ 500,000 to turn their Seaglider concept into reality. Thalheimer, chief executive officer, began calling up friends with MBAs for help developing a business strategy. Klinker, chief technology officer, got to work on the logistics.
At the same time they were developing a new mode of transportation, the COVID-19 pandemic was grounding global travel to a halt and disrupting the airline and ferry industries. Far from killing the project, the pause delivered an unexpected boost as travel executives suddenly found themselves with more time at home to hear out a couple of tech entrepreneurs from Boston.
“ It flattened the world a little bit and it made our access to top executives in our space easier,” Thalheimer recalls.
By Christmas— when Lindsey and Brittany gifted the guys shirts that read“ Salaries are overrated”— the company was sparking interest. Its earliest supporters were transportation companies who envisioned the Seaglider as a new, cheaper solution for carrying passengers over short-haul routes. Brittany Ferries, which operates between the United Kingdom, France and Spain, signed a letter of intent to purchase Seagliders in June 2021. Hawaiian Airlines, another early investor, made plans to use the Seaglider on its regional routes between the Hawaiian islands. They also found an early supporter in investor Mark Cuban.
“ We needed to be a different thing to everyone,” Thalheimer says.“ To the ferry industry, we’ re a flying ferry. To the airlines, we are a flying machine that operates on their same routes out of docks under maritime law.”
By spring 2021, the company had enough investment to hire its first employees and begin building a prototype. The idea had generated plenty of buzz, but Thalheimer and Klinker still hadn’ t proven that the concept— an electric Seaglider that used foils to assist with takeoff and landing— could fly. The design drew heavily from competitive sailing, an industry that has long had a foothold in Rhode Island. One of the company’ s first employees, chief engineer and lead designer Bryan Baker, formerly designed racing yachts for the America’ s Cup and Ocean Race and met Thalheimer while sharing an office with him at Aurora. Like those boats, the Seaglider incorporates two hydrofoils that allow it to rise above the water, achieving a more efficient takeoff than a traditional aircraft. After takeoff, the foils retract into the craft during flight mode. The building materials, likewise, are the same carbon-fiber composites used on the fastest racing boats.
“ Having Bryan, who understood all the flight physics of an aircraft but came from a maritime world, opened up a whole required complement,” Thalheimer says.“ We could go into the very pinnacle of yachting racing sport and get the best boatbuilders in the world to come join us.”
For that expertise, they went to a town whose legacy in the craft was well known. Their quarter-scale prototype, named Squire, was fabricated at Moore Brothers Company in Bristol and christened on Narragansett Bay in December 2021. That spring, employees spent several months testing it in its floating and foiling modes in Florida before returning home to New England.
With the company continuing to grow, REGENT relocated its headquarters to the Quonset Business Park in August 2022. In addition to meeting the company’ s geographical requirements— an inland bay for testing and access to world-class boatbuilding facilities and expertise— the state offered a generous incentive package of up to $ 13 million in tax credits over ten years. In exchange, the company committed to creating 300 jobs by 2028.
On Aug. 15, 2022, the prototype flew for the first time on Narragansett Bay. Klinker and Thalheimer followed behind in a support boat, with Thalheimer recording the milestone using a drone.
“ I was glued to the screen, but I was screaming my head off,” Thalheimer says.“ To me, that moment— that was the first time that anyone had taken off from hydrofoils onto a wing. No one had done that before, and we proved it.”
The real work had just begun.
REGENT’ S HEADQUARTERS IN A CONVERTED HANGAR on Callahan Road has all the trappings of a Silicon Valley startup. Staff gathers daily for a catered lunch, with pizza
SELFIE PHOTOGRAPH: © BILLY THALHEIMER / REGENT.
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