Why startups need guts, a network and other thoughts from the latest Fathom World/Oceans Arena co-hosted Clubhouse meetup
In the Shipping and Sustainability meetup on Clubhouse on Monday 15th March two entrepreneurs behind two completely different start-up stories shared their experiences and their journeys with the discussion group audience, who also offered their comments and experiences.
Tor Østervold, with his brother, founded ECOsubsea in 2008 in Norway, ECOsubsea is a company delivering sustainable hull cleaning where the focus is on collecting everything that is cleaned off a ship’s underwater hull and making sure it is disposed of safely. After winning entrepreneurship awards Tor focused on growing his business sustainably rather than going for quick gains based on the media attention he received.
Constantine Komodromos co-founded Vesselbot, a data driven company focused on vessel efficiency in 2015 in Greece. With a growing range of intelligence tools powered today with AI, the company offers a range of stakeholders, from charterers to operators, insights to make fleet and vessel improvements.
Both talked to Fathom World’s Craig Eason and Gina Panayiotou founder of Oceans Arena and It’s All About shipping, along with other visitors to the Clubhouse room to share experiences.
The notes below are neither verbatim, nor attributed to any particular guest or contributor to the discussion. The Shipping & Sustainability discussions on Clubhouse are free to attend and participation and debate/discussion is welcome.
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You likely will not survive if you just want to build a business and sell it for a few million dollars. You need to have another driver to stay alive, to ensure that you can get up in the morning and carry on despite what may have happened the day before.
You need self-perseverance and drive to wake up and do what you do. You need also to be stubborn about your goal, but not so stubborn you are not ready or prepared to make slight deviations or changes in your dream.
If you live in a society, particularly one which has a strong tradition in your industry (shipping and maritime) you have to be aware and honour the generations before you and also honour the generations that come after. We have a responsibility to develop sustainable roles and goals.
“Sometimes I felt I was looking at a masterpiece in a museum, only I was the only one who could see it there. When we started sustainability, was not key, not back then. There were very few who did.”
At times we were told that our concept is innovative, and also has more chance of success if we have a big shipowner supporting our idea (offering a letter of intent should we prove to be successful in development) and that it make economic sense. But we were also told then that the sustainability element was unsaleable,. So, do not take all the advise you are given to heart.
It has been a long journey and it has not always been easy, and usually ones private life has to suffer. Taking side jobs to pay for your dream is not uncommon.
When you start there is a temptation to over strategize, but then you may lose too many pieces of the picture. It is best to talk to people in the market early on. You do not need to see it as mentoring, but just about getting some of the knowledge of your peers about potential steps. And always be ready to grow, to start with your product and then see where other potential lies.
On one hand support networks, clusters, accelerators and incubators have great value and facilitate the development of startup companies, but experience differs and some companies have been successful without them.
Maritime is largely not on the venture capital funder’s map. Venture capital firms do need some domain expertise. The saying is one starts with ones own savings and then by going to friends, family, fans and fools.
Also a lot of major funding is for multi-million dollar Greentech projects run by large corporates, and unfortunately it is difficult for an entrepreneur to get the relatively smaller amounts they seek to move ahead with their start up. Maybe there needs to be a facilitation platform that can lift up entrepreneurial companies with the larger financial institutions, make them more visible.
Often funding will be local, so based on startups in the geographical location of a venture capital fund or incubator fund or grant. Government grants are there, but limited. But there are opportunities with some banks.
Is there a need to have help in finding paid pilot project opportunities, help in getting direct revenue streams and customers? This scaling up support is where there is a big gap.
A higher price on a tonne of carbon in shipping, say $100-$150 will be a great help as it would drive potential customers to seek new ideas to save fuel.
“Sometimes I felt I was looking at a masterpiece in a museum, only I was the only one who could see it. When we started sustainability was not key, not back then.”
We were able to find some customers that understood us, and thought like we did that sustainability was going to be big so we got support form them. The letter of intent from a potential customer who is willing to use the product if there is success in developing in is very important, so seek that early on.
But at times we found it difficult because there were people who did not see the need for change and wanted to stay where they are, maintain the status quo. The challenge was/is to change this mindset.
We recognised we were not getting customers so had to quickly shift our focus to ensure we built up revenue-generating products enabling us to then subsequently develop more sustainability focused products, which then became our main products.
An entrepreneur startup may be ahead of a regulatory change trying to be ahead of the curve. Regulation makes change happen quickly, so being ahead of the curve when that regulatory change happens is an advantage. It has to be a relationship building exercise so we get the customers to move forward.
Often we have corporate careers in the shipping industry but felt that something was missing. A feeling of needing to make a difference.
Coming at the problems from inside the industry (having domain expertise) certainly gives insight and at times more credibility in an industry that is still cautious about external startups seeking to be the disrupters. One can still disrupt from the inside, perhaps ship owners and operators can incentivise the ships’ crews to be innovative.
The shipping sector is diverse and while everyone talks about sustainability and the development of the industry, we have to look also at company culture. Do businesses support crew engagement in sustainability issues, welcome innovative thinking from them and actively seek their support.
The crisis of conscience regarding crew repatriation during the Coronavirus pandemic has certainly not helped here, but when it comes to being disruptive on the inside then the crew should be seen as an asset. In many cases the crew (and other staff of a shipping company) may be the users of the entrepreneurs startup solution, so they need to be part of the thinking, or perhaps a shipping company can look at this expertise and incentivise it to be innovative and sustainably disruptive.
"The saying is, one starts with ones own savings and then by going to friends, family, fans and fools."
The Shipping & Sustainability Show on Clubhouse is a joint undertaking from
Fathom World & Oceans Arena/It’s All About Shipping
