Technically Not Tech: StealthRowing indoor rowing training

Twenty-four year old Daniel Harbuck agrees that necessity is the mother of invention.
Almost a decade ago, as a young high school rower, the University of Penn Wharton undergrad tried to convince friends to trudge through 10 feet of snow to help him train on Salt Lake in Utah, where he grew up. They wouldn’t.
Instead, he had a friend—”a football player, a big guy”—hold a boat in place in an indoor community pool.
“We were right next to 65-year-old ladies doing water aerobics,” Harbuck says. “It was a nice idea that clearly needed a lot of work.”
It was the first iteration of StealthRowing—a device the business student is developing that enables rowing athletes to experience on-the-water training while indoors.
Essentially, a row boat cockpit is anchored to the edge of a pool, enabling rowers to practice balance and teamwork. The stationary design allows them to be tied down in a pool—but not locked in—to train in any weather.
The technology is the first to offer rowing synchronization and balance training in an indoor setting. During interviews with 1,050 clubs affiliated with USRowing, 82 percent expressed interest in the project and purchase intent, he says.
“Those who know rowing understand the need for this,” he says.
Last week, Harbuck won $5,000 from University of Pennsylvania’s Weiss Tech House for the idea. That’s in addition to $10,000 won with a Wharton Venture Award last year. On Wednesday, he hopes to win $20,000 more in Wharton’s Business Plan Competition.

The money will go to improving design and securing five patents that Harbuck says makes the system more versatile, portable and affordable. He hopes to bring the StealthRowing system to market for a price point between $10,000 and $15,000; about what it now costs a rowing team to purchase a standard rowing boat.
Alternative training methods, such as rowing machines found commonly in gyms, and rowing tanks—which cost up to a half-million dollars—can’t match the training capacity of Harbuck’s StealthRowing prototype.
Rowing machines don’t offer stability lessons, unable to recreate the waves that throw off a rower’s balance. Tanks are unable to help with synchronization—learning to row as a team—he says. Coaches have told Harbuck that they appreciate the close access to athletes, as well. With StealthRowing, there’s no need to trail behind a team in a separate boat, yelling orders through a megaphone.
A social mission behind StealthRowing is also helping dictate the model.
Harbuck would like to see the technology used in underprivileged neighborhoods where rowing has been historically inaccessible. The average U.S. rower earns $105,000 a year, 88 percent hold undergrad degrees, and 60 percent hold masters degrees or higher. StealthRowing makes the sport accessible in any community pool.
“Rowing is an old boy’s club, unintentionally,” he says. “I have yet to meet anyone adamant about keeping it that way.
The company was incorporated in 2007 after Harbuck recognized the viability of it on a commercial scale. Although he owns the company, he has been receiving engineering help from senior students at Bucknell University. Harbuck says they will be delivering a final prototype to him this week.
Yet, Harbuck realizes that Philadelphia is a perfect hub for the technology.
UPenn’s men and women row teams that have used an early prototype have told Harbuck that StealthRowing is as competitive as everything in the market. He hopes to demo the final prototype publicly for the first time in Philadelphia on National Learn to Row Day on June 6. He also expects to centralize the company in Philadelphia.
For now, Harbuck is counting down the hours and making last minute adjustments to two presentations he’ll have to give at Wharton’s Business Plan competition on Wednesday (which is open to the public).
“In third grade I started selling bookmarks for a quarter each, and I’ve been trying to come up with my own thing for a long time,” he says.
“Hopefully, we’ll be selling this one for a little more than a quarter.”
Photo courtesy of artist Elaine Moynihan Lisle.