The Yachting Ventures Startup Spotlight series goes beyond the pitch decks and press releases to share the real stories behind early-stage startups.

We sit down with founders in our community to explore their journeys, from the first spark of an idea to the realities of building a company in leisure marine.

This week, we sat down with Charles Novaes de Santana, founder of Predsea.

What’s your story?

I’m a risk-taker. I immigrated, moved from academia to industry, started several companies, and went bankrupt more than once. Each of those experiences helped me learn how to adapt, rebuild, and keep moving forward.

Professionally, I’m a data scientist with a background that spans Computer Science, Physics, Climate Science, Oceanography, Ecology, Neuroscience, and AI. I’ve spent years working with environmental and forecasting data, long before AI became fashionable.

The spark for PredSea came through my friends Matt and Graham, who were building a WhatsApp AI assistant for captains.

That made me wonder whether weather and ocean conditions — arguably one of the most important aspects of a captain’s daily life — could also be approached through a conversational interface.

So I started speaking with captains. And what I discovered surprised me. The problem wasn’t the lack of weather data. Captains already have excellent tools. The real challenge was decision-making. PredSea was born from that insight.

We’re not trying to create another weather app. We’re building a recommendation system. Google Maps doesn’t build roads — it helps drivers decide.

Trading systems don’t create markets — they help traders act. PredSea aims to help mariners transform complexity into decisions.

Why does the industry need your solution?

Because there is too much information and too little decision support.

Captains are constantly balancing safety, comfort, schedules, fuel consumption, guests, local effects, uncertainty, and changing forecasts. They already have access to fantastic weather models, but making sense of all that information still relies heavily on experience.

PredSea doesn’t compete with weather providers. We sit on top of them.

Our ambition is to become the intelligence layer that helps answer questions like:

• Should I leave now or wait?
• What changed since my last forecast check?
• Where along the route should I pay attention?
• How confident should I be in this recommendation?

Ultimately, we are trying to do for maritime decision-making what Google Maps did for roads – and in a conversational way.

What have you enjoyed most about starting your own company?

Learning from people who know things I don’t.

I’ve spent years in academia, consulting, startups, and large companies, but one of the joys of building PredSea has been sitting down with captains who have spent 25 years at sea and discovering how they think.

I love multidisciplinary problems. I love seeing AI engineers, captains, scientists, and entrepreneurs sitting around the same table trying to solve something together.

That’s probably what I enjoy most: bringing very different worlds together.

What challenges did you face at the beginning?

My biggest challenge was letting go of my own assumptions.

Coming from climate science and data science, my instinct was to focus on models, resolution, accuracy, and algorithms.

But the captains taught me something humbling.

Nobody wakes up in the morning wondering: “What’s the significant wave height?”

They wonder: “Should I leave?”

The transition from “forecasting” to “decision-making” completely changed how I think about the problem.

What’s next for your business? Where do you see it in 3-5 years?

In the short term, we’re obsessed with building the best possible product for experienced captains. If we can earn the trust of people with decades of experience at sea, I think the rest becomes much easier.

Longer term, I believe PredSea can become the operational intelligence layer for maritime leisure.

Not just departure recommendations, but continuous voyage support, forecast updates, route intelligence, vessel awareness, and eventually a collaborative network where AI and real-world observations work together.

My dream is to see PredSea used worldwide. I’d love to visit marinas in Mallorca, Greece, Croatia, Florida, Australia, or the Caribbean and see captains using PredSea as naturally as drivers use Google Maps today.

And on a personal level, one of my favorite visions is this: one day, I rent a boat in the Caribbean for a family holiday, step aboard with my wife and daughters, and notice that the captain is using PredSea to make his job easier.

In that moment, PredSea would not only be helping the captain make better decisions—it would also be helping my family have a safer and more comfortable experience at sea.

I don’t think we’re building a weather app.

I think we’re building a recommendation engine for the sea.

Any advice for entrepreneurs just starting out?

Take risks. Talk to users. Be prepared to discover that you were wrong.

Some of the best ideas behind PredSea didn’t come from me. They came from conversations with people who had spent decades doing the job I was trying to help with.

Technology matters, but humility matters even more. And remember: startups are marathons disguised as sprints.

A quote you live by:

I don’t know if I have a single quote, but I strongly believe in this: Life is too short to optimize only for money.

AI should help us become more productive, not busier. Success, to me, means having time for family, friends, curiosity, travel, and meaningful work.

Or, if I had to choose one sentence: Take risks. Stay curious. Keep moving forward.

Because that’s pretty much the story of my life.