01
Judging went digital
Since April 2026, Formula DRIFT takes Line and Angle, 80 of 100 Pro qualifying points, from telemetry. Drivers now train for what the data sees.
Ian's qualifying run, 10 to 18 seconds in, rebuilt by YAW from his phone alone, with the speed and angle overlay YAW lays over any video of a run. The car is YAW's stand-in.
For investors · October 2026
How people drive
at the limit.
YAW starts in drift: telemetry on the phone a driver already has, an event that runs itself, and a coach that remembers every run. It's built, it ran its first competition last week, and the next month puts it in front of strangers.
01 — Why now
Drift judging went digital. The grassroots didn't.
A slip angle is easy to copy. A driver's graded history, the events it was recorded at and the pairs of cars that battled aren't. That's a data company with a sensor attached, and drift is the place to start one.
02
Nobody owns the grassroots
Pro scoring hardware is fitted by officials and costs too much below the top tier. Lap-timing boxes don't measure drift angle.
03
Every driver has the sensor
The phone is already in the car. YAW is free to try from a QR code at the track. Hardware is an upgrade later, not the price of getting in.
04
It's filmed and shared
Formula DRIFT has about 5M social followers. Every run is content, so the reel and the results sheet market YAW for us.
02 — Proof so far
One real competition. Honest about the rest.
HOTPIT Autofest Round 5 at the Bullring, Las Vegas, 16–17 Oct 2026: Ian Koenig's S14, with YAW on the dash and nobody touching the phone. The clip at the top is his one qualifying run, rebuilt and read by YAW.
29runs on Friday, recorded by themselves, every one saved and filed the same day
11laps through the zones, each read zone by zone
11→4metres, about, from the Zone 2 clip, first lap of the day to his best outing (phone GPS: give or take a few)
70 / 71YAW's read of his qualifying run on the zones the day's laps found (60 on the official layout), and what the judges gave it
Real
It survives a race weekend.
Hands-free recording, no lost runs, the data filed into the coaching vault within the hour.
It caught its own bug.
The data showed Ian's phone reading angle high. YAW now learns each phone's order from the drive, and re-reads old runs.
Its read came close to the judges, once.
On the one run that counted, YAW read 70 on zones it found from the day's own laps, and the judges gave 71. On the organizer's official layout it read 60. One run, so a first data point, not a claim.
Not proven yet
Do strangers come back?
Ian is the only driver who has used YAW at a competition. The first open day measures whether new drivers go out again with it.
Does anyone pay?
Nothing is for sale yet. The prices are tests, not a business.
Is every phone read right?
Ian's phone sent its rotation in an unusual order and read high until the data caught it. More phones need checking before a stranger's numbers are trusted.
Does it travel?
An event that runs on YAW without either of us there.
Releases131in 18 weeks, since 13 June
Tests1,500run before every deploy
Screens49from the HUD to the judges' tablet
Running cost$0a month, on Cloudflare's free tier
Revenue$0nothing is for sale yet
Came back?the number that matters, measured first this month
Book the next conversationThe next conversation: the first open day's numbers, the moment they're in.
It held up because most of the product is already built. 03 — What's built
The product is further along than the company.
Everything below works today; the tag is the release it shipped in. The headline of each, the rest a tap away.
Measure
The phone on the dash is the sensor. The work is reading it truthfully.
Live slip anglev60
Drift angle (an estimate), speed and G: the motion sensors read 60 times a second, the GPS once, big enough to see from the corner of your eye. A run starts by itself when you roll.
A way to check against videov123
Film a run from a still camera, tap the car's real angle frame by frame, and see YAW's reading beside it. Tried on test video so far; the first real check is at the next practice.
2 more: The GPS lag taken out · The phone's gyro order, learned
The GPS lag taken outv90
A phone's GPS says where you were a second or two ago. YAW learns that delay for each phone, and how the phone is mounted, and takes both out.
The phone's gyro order, learnedv126
Some phones send their rotation in a different order. YAW works it out from the drive and remembers it for that phone; older runs are re-read in one tap. More phones still need checking.
Coach
After every run, the one thing to fix. Not a wall of numbers.
The one-line readv127
The score, the zone that cost the most and what to do next lap, first on the screen and said out loud when the run saves.
Judged like the seriesv106
Line, angle and style on the course's zones, weighted like HOTPIT or Formula DRIFT, against your own best run at that track.
2 more: Line coaching · Your qualifying run, beside the judges
Line coachingv120
Each zone read against the line the field drove. Quiet while you're in the zones, then one call after the last: “Two. Wide.”
Your qualifying run, beside the judgesv93
Tag the run that counted, add the judges' scores, and see YAW's read of it next to theirs.
Run the event
One phone starts an event. Everything after that can run on YAW.
The big screenv82
Start an event on any phone and open it on a TV. Drivers join by QR code, and every car shows live on the map with boards you can read across the tent.
The judges' tabletv118
Judges score every run on a tablet. The scores land on the big screen, the results and each driver's phone as they're given.
Battle replaysv121
Every battle in 3D from the laps the event keeps: who led, how close the chase stayed and how much angle it held.
3 more: Courses that find themselves · The bracket · Tandem, two phones
Courses that find themselvesv117
The zones are found from the laps everyone drives, and each track remembers its course for every phone that goes there.
The bracketv119
Seeded from qualifying, battles called by the judges' votes, and every battle run tagged by itself.
Tandem, two phonesv95
Pick the lead car on the event. The chase phone measures the gap, how close it stayed and how well it matched the angle.
Share
Every run is content. YAW cuts it for you.
YAW Camv81
Anyone's camera, with the car's name, speed and angle burned into the video. The crowd taps to hype the car on track.
The day's reelv122
The day's best moments cut into one 9:16 video on the phone, ready to post.
1 more: Stream overlay and booth
Stream overlay and boothv105
Live numbers over an event's stream, and a commentator's screen with the storylines of the day.
Built to last
A small team with production habits.
Costs nothing to run
A static app and one Cloudflare relay, on the free tier. The paid tier is $5 a month when events grow.
Tested before every deployv66
Every deploy runs the full test suite first and stops if one test fails.
3 more: Data that files itself · The App Store app · The driver's runs stay theirs
Data that files itselfv117
Every hour, a job pulls shared runs into the coaching vault and writes each driver's debrief and the day's read.
The App Store appv124
The same pages in an iOS app, set up and ready to sign.
The driver's runs stay theirsv87
No account, no ads, no trackers. Runs live on the phone, and sharing them is a switch the driver turns on.
04 — How it makes money
Free to drive. Paid to go further.
Every price below is a test this month, not a decision. Drivers try YAW for nothing, at the track, from a QR code.
DriversFree
Recording, your runs, getting them out and your place on an event's board stay free for good.
Membership$89 a year
The paid layer on top of the free app. To test with thirty drivers this month.
Event licence$99–199 an event
The big screen, judging, the bracket and the results sheet, for an organizer. To test with ten organizers.
YAW Pod$249–299
Later, and only once demand is proven: 25 Hz GPS, motion and the engine's data in one box.
Who it can reach
RingWhoHow manyRevenue if YAW is the standard
DriftGrassroots drifters worldwide50–150k drivers (our estimate)≈ $1.5–4M a year
Every car on trackTrack days, autocross, time attack, karting10–50× more; SCCA alone logs ~77k autocross entries a year≈ $15–60M a year
Sim and fansSim racers and drift's audienceHundreds of thousandsA funnel, not a market
Drift alone is a good small company. The second ring is where a venture outcome lives.
Others measure. Nobody else runs the day.05 — The field, and where it goes
They measure. YAW runs the day.
WhoWhat they doWhat's missing
Race Data LabsFormula DRIFT's official scoring: centimetre-grade kit fitted by officials, for about 80 pros.Nothing for the drivers below them. YAW is the feeder, and a partner.
DriftMeterAn iPhone app with a drift angle and leaderboards.No events, judging, tandem or coaching.
RaceBox, DragyGPS and motion boxes, $129–289.No drift angle. YAW can read them over Bluetooth later.
Garmin CatalystA track-day coach in a box.Lap time, not drift.
What protects it, strongest first
The driver's history strong
A season of graded runs and benchmarks doesn't move to a rival's app.
The event graph strong
Courses per track, organizers' habits, the 5 pm results sheet as a ritual.
Tandem pairs grows
Two-car data exists only when both cars run YAW, so each event makes the next more useful.
A consented dataset grows
Limit-handling data at scale, if consent is designed in now. It's on this month's plan.
The sensor fusion weakest
Hard-won, but a funded team could rebuild it in a year. We don't lean on it.
Where it goes: four acts, each behind a gate
Now – 2027
The paddock
Prove strangers come back.
60% go out again, 25% return to the next event, an organizer pays without being chased.
2028
The pod
Own the sensor.
About $1M a year in revenue, pods shipping, three series partners.
2029–30
Every car on track
Leave drift without leaving it behind.
50,000 active drivers and a series paying for judging help.
2030 on
The dataset
The record of driving at the limit.
A first carmaker or tire-maker contract.
06 — The next month
Four weeks to the first strangers.
What we're shipping, building and testing over the next four weeks, soonest first.
- by 18 OctLive
The weekend's fixes, on every phone
Out to everyone on 18 Oct (v129): the gyro fix, the sharing fix, the one-line read, and runs put on the course's route. v130 re-reads a phone's older runs in one tap.
- by 18 OctLive
Ian's qualifying run, scored again
Run again on the corrected angle (v129): 70 on the zones the day's own runs found, against the judges' 71. The phone's quicker read, against his own best run, says 84: it runs high, so the course read is the one we quote.
- by 31 OctBuilt, shipping
YAW's own address
A real domain before strangers install. Moving is built: runs and set-up come across in one tap.
- by 31 OctTo do
Founders' agreement and the trademark
Roles, equity and the code's ownership on one page with Ian, and the YAW name searched for software.
- by 1 NovTo do
The iPhone app on TestFlight
Ian and the test drivers get the App Store build first. The app is set up in the code (v124); Xcode, Apple's developer account and signing on the Mac are next.
- by 8 NovTo build
“How did that feel?” and lap 1 against lap 2
One tap before the number, so you read your own feel first. Then why the second lap dropped: on Friday it dropped about 14 points an outing, part of that the GPS (being checked).
- by 8 NovTo do
More phones, checked against video
YAW tried on more iPhones and Androids, and a phone on a tripod at the next practice for the first real angle-against-video figure.
- by 15 NovTo do
The first open drift day on YAW
An open practice day with 8 or more drivers, most of them new to us. YAW runs the big screen and the results sheet, and counts who goes out again. The date is the next day Ian enters.
- by 15 NovTo build
Count what drivers read
Which part of the read each run opened, sent with the report the event already gets, and said on the privacy page first.
- by 18 NovTo do
Price tests
Ten organizers and thirty drivers asked about three prices: $89 a year for a membership, $99–199 an event for an organizer, $249 for a pod.
- by 18 NovTo build
Research consent, off by default
A separate opt-in to give runs to a research dataset, so the data can become an asset later without surprising anyone.
Written 18 Oct 2026 for the month to 18 Nov. Dates are targets; safety and the angle come first, so nothing ships on a day Ian is at the track.
Who's doing it.07 — Who
A builder and a driver on the grid.
Builds it
Griffin
131 releases in 18 weeks, each with its tests. Found the iPhone's GPS lag in real track data and, the day after Ian's first competition, the phone quirk that read his angle high.
Drives it
Ian Koenig
HOTPIT Autofest Pro class in an LS3-swapped S14. Top 32 at LS Fest Las Vegas 2026. Every feature is tried in his car first.
08 — Fair questions
Straight answers.
- Isn't drift small?
- Yes, and that's why it's first: it's the most filmed, judged and data-hungry kind of driving. Track days, autocross and karting are 10–50 times bigger, and the same app reads them.
- Is a phone accurate enough?
- For coaching, useful now; for judging, not known yet. The angle is an estimate, phone GPS is good to a few metres in the open and tens beside big steel, and the first real check against video is next. A pod is the upgrade.
- What stops Garmin, RaceBox or DriftMeter?
- They measure. YAW runs the event, pairs the cars and remembers the driver. That's what they'd have to build or buy.
- Is this a side project?
- Today, yes. Going full-time is a milestone, and it comes before any raise.
- Why not raise now?
- Money speeds up a loop that already works. It can't create one. The first gate is strangers coming back.
09 — The ask
What we're asking for.
Introductions
Organizers who'd run a day on YAW, drivers who'd try it, and people in the scene who back things like this.
Your read on the gate
What would you need to see from the first three open days to put money in?
An early check, when the gate is met
We raise nothing until strangers come back. Then a first round of pre-orders and angels, up to $150k.
Book the next conversation
Tell Griffin in the room, or reply to the message that brought you here. The next conversation starts with the first open day's numbers.
Scan to startyaw-e3r.pages.dev/welcome/iPhone: Safari → Share → Add to Home Screen.
Android: Chrome → Install app.
Android: Chrome → Install app.
Put YAW on your own phone. The demo event replays real laps on a real track, big screen and all.