Our community boasts a vibrant array of startups, each with a unique journey and story. The Startup Spotlight series introduces their ventures, exploring their inspirations, challenges, and successes. This week, we feature Marine Data Cloud, the startup creating 360° boating data management.
How did you come up with the idea for the business?
The idea behind creating TheBoatApp came up when we realised that a modern web-based platform, affordable by all sailors to register and track not just their trips (logbook) but all sail and cruising related data, was missing. There were already decent programs and apps for logbook keeping but not covering inventory, tasks, checklists, documents, etc, while much “heavier” solutions providing these features were too expensive and addressed to either Superyachts or commercial ships.
Furthermore, we wanted the maximum data consolidation thus we integrated TheBoatApp with TheBoatDB, an open-database of technical boat data and metrics, ratios and even documents, where everyone may browse boats, make side-by-side boat-comparisons, shortlist boats, access useful public user-checklists and much more.
Why does the industry need the solution you're providing?
We are here to empower mariners with tools to set new standards for boat management, safety and more. There are substantial benefits for each and all stakeholders of the maker-owner-manager-user chain, with discrete Value-Added on: Safety, Legal Compliance, Peace-of-Mind, Lower Operation Cost, Higher Reselling Price.
What have you enjoyed most about starting your own company?
It is sheer enjoyment providing a meaningful solution to thousands of fellow mariners over five-continents and seven-seas! Receiving user-feedback and making constant improvements, adding new features, even fixing those nasty software-glitches keep the whole team ticking. Talking to users and potential partners, brainstorming with them on how we can make things even better, is a motive to keep pushing ahead and provide a better product on each passing day.
What challenges did you have to overcome at the beginning of your journey?
Our challenges have been initially mostly technical. Although we have put together a good team of professionals the scope to cover the needs of TheBoatApp on a modern web-interface plus two (2) mobile apps, along with TheBoatDB complimenting the platform with all boating data, photos, documents, etc, has been quite challenging. It took us some time to stitch together all these pieces and achieve the needed unification. Not only these but doing so on a bootstrapped budget so that the marine community may have it publicly and for free for TheBoatDB and on a Freemium model for TheBoatApp, with a free-forever-account for all boaters to enjoy basic functionality and a rock-bottom price for more advanced features, starting at just €19/year.
Any bits of advice for entrepreneurs getting started in this space?
Do your due-diligence related to market-needs and product-fitment, then put together the right team and keep them motivated. Advocate of smart work, over plain-hard work, and strive to adopt best industry practices and tools to do so. Technology can be the means to being more effective and efficient thus design with this principle in mind. Like fellow seafarers over the globe, having no geographic barriers, embrace modern tools facilitating effective online collaboration.
Always share with your team the bigger picture of what you do and why. Your team’s people are a key element and should be treated as such. Consider empathy and collaboration as key elements to make things happen in a meaningful way. Keep the full team updated on the big-picture. A meaningful career means being in touch with the end-product. Knowing what you do, why and for whom, makes people happy and products great!
What's the plan for the future of the business? Where do you see the company in 3-5 years?
Smart-cars are already here while smart-boats are starting to emerge. Connected boats is the next big-thing, with Internet-of-Things (IoT) smart sensors reporting systems’ status around the clock and notifying makers-owners-managers-users about what is going on and what may need their attention. We already had discussions with marine sensors makers and we expect to provide to them our platform for interfacing their sensors, resulting in a holistic system where the user has the full visibility of his boat in a single platform.
Further down the road, we have intelligent analytics, with predictive maintenance needs, support for AI on both intelligent data entry as well as processing and reporting, and many more. Technology is making leaps ahead and our beloved boats should finally reap some technological benefits, exactly like their more modest cousins, the cars, are doing already.
TheBoatApp will be there to empower makers-owners-managers-users with tools to set new standards for boat management, safety, legal-compliance, lower operational cost and higher reselling price; to always cruise safe, with peace of mind!
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