FoilFinderFAQ
Q: What the heck is the FoilFinder “fun box”?
A: FoilFinder is an expert advisor that does something no single person can quite do–hold all of the relevant information about parawings in mind at once, and come up with a coherent, comprehensive, specific, up-to-date answer.
Q: Where does all this expert data come from?
A: FoilFinder scours the net for the latest public info, reviews, and rundowns–and incorporates relvant details into a detailed knowledge base with full attribution.
Q: How is FoilFinder built? A: It’s an expert knowledge system built on top of Claude, with a ton of help from humans.
Q: I asked for help with a particular parawing and FoilFinder didn’t know about it–what gives? A: We’ve included everything we could get specs and detailed, expert reviews for, but of course there’s always going to be stuff out there that we don’t know about, or that doesn’t have enough info for us to include. If you know of specific gear that you think should be included in FoilFinder, we’d love to hear from you.
Q: Why not just use ChatGPT? A: You know that, just like Kleenex isn’t all tissues, “Chat” isn’t all AI–right? There are ton of what are known as AI “models,” it just so happens that “ChatGPT” has become shorthand. So why not use ChatGPT? First of all, general AI models don’t have the deep knowledge about our sport, the products, assessments–or the expertise to put all of that together into a meaningful, realistic, up-to-date recommendation–so you can’t get the kind of answer that you’d get from FoilFinder from a general model. Secondly, ChatGPT is owned by OpenAI, they have been clear about their intentions to insert ads into results–in fact they are already doing so. Seriously, fuck that!
Q: Why just parawings?
A: While everyone needs expert gear advice, I had to start somewhere, and parawinging is the latest form of sail-, wind-, board- and foil-sports that gets me fired up. Soon we’ll be expanding to inflatable wings, kites, boards, foils—and all sorts of other specialized outdoor adventure-sports equipment!
Q: Does FoilFinder serve ads?
A: No—and we never will. We are committed to staying completely outside the advertising industrial complex. FoilFinder will never sell your data, or let anyone pay to influence recommendations. When we monetize, it will be through licensing to dealers and brands and/or affiliate links—never ads. Our only job is to give you the best possible gear advice.
Q: How does FoilFinder work with content creators and publishers?
A: FoilFinder’s knowledge base is built on firsthand riding experience and publicly available web content—YouTube reviews, published articles, manufacturer specs—the same information that search engines and large AI models are already ingesting, often without any credit at all. The difference is that FoilFinder is built by an industry expert who cares about getting this right. We attribute every source by name, and every opinion in our knowledge base is tagged to the person who said it. No one reviewer, creator, expert, or publisher has all this information in one place—FoilFinder exists to synthesize it into personalized advice that simply isn’t possible for any one person to give all the time, no matter how expert they are. If you’re a content creator or reviewer, we’d love to hear from you. We’re always looking for ways to collaborate, improve our attribution, and make sure your expertise is represented accurately.
Q: How does FoilFinder work with dealers and retailers?
A: Our knowledge base is dealer-aware from the bottom up, so we can easily offer a dealer- or retailer-specific version of FoilFinder filtered on your inventory and tailored to your needs. We also have a partner-specific private data layer that allows you to add proprietary data to the FF knowledge base for internal use–and have it stay private. If you’d like to chat about a version for your shop, for sure, let’s talk!
Q: How does FoilFinder work with brands?
A: Our knowledge base is also brand-aware, so we can easily offer a brand-specific version of FoilFinder that provides focused expertise on just your products. Our partner-specific private data layer allows us to incorporate your proprietary product data into your co-branded FoilFinder as you wish, without sharing that with the public. If you’d like to talk to us about a version specific to your brand, we like to start with yes–let’s set up a time!
Q: Who built FoilFinder?
A: Bowen Dwelle, life-long outdoor adventure sports enthusiast, sailor, kiter, foiler, winger, parawinger, writer, developer, and entrepreneur who lives and rides in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Q: How can I contact FoilFinder?
A: Drop us a line any time.