Most scuba diving resources on the internet look like they were built in the early 2000s and nobody's touched them since. Forum threads with broken image links. Dive shop websites that haven't been updated in over a decade. Instagram hashtags that surface the same five destinations. TripAdvisor reviews that tell you nothing about visibility, current, or what you'll actually see.
It's long overdue for an upgrade.
The story
My name is Victor. I'm a Canadian living in San Francisco. During COVID, I packed up and spent a few months in Thailand — ended up living above a dive shop in Phuket, where I got my PADI Advanced Open Water certification. I've been diving since 2019, and I still remember exactly how overwhelming it is to figure out where to go, what to look for, and which dive shop to trust.
I don't have a software engineering background. My career has been in Finance, Strategy, Operations, and Business Development. I built hellomydiver entirely with AI — which is either a cautionary tale or a proof of concept, depending on how it turns out.
What I do have is a reason to care.
My wife Nari learned to swim from scratch as an adult. She used to be afraid of being in the water. Less than a year after her first swimming lesson, she got her Open Water certification. Watching someone go from fear to weightlessness underwater — that changes how you think about what this sport can be for people.
We dive together now. We want to keep diving. And we want to find the good stuff — the right sites, the honest shops, the moments worth documenting.
What we built
AI-powered dive site discovery
Not just a list, but a ranked recommendation based on your certification level, where you're travelling, what month you're going, and what you're hoping to see. Manta rays in April in the Coral Triangle are a different conversation than shark dives in the Red Sea in October.
Aquatic life identification
Upload a photo and get a species ID with a confidence score. Dive shops can override the AI with their own expert knowledge, because a local divemaster knows things Claude doesn't.
Geotagged photos from real dive shops
Not stock photography, not influencer content. Photos taken by the people who dive these sites every week, tagged to the specific site where they were shot.
Alpha
hellomydiver currently operates as a sole proprietorship. All rights, privileges, and obligations will transfer to its successor legal entity upon incorporation.
We're in Alpha. The first 100 dive shops shape what gets built next.