6 Industry Leaders Join Forces to Accelerate Marine Tech Companies

By Jan Wilhelmsson, Founding Partner and CEO

A while back (when we still could), I sat down with a few friends at a hotel lobby bar in London after an acquisition workshop. We had just spent hours in a conference room discussing a number of maritime tech companies. As these discussions go, with lots of perspectives that need to blend together into a well-reasoned recommendation, we were all a tad knackered when we sat down over a pint to debrief.

The conversation started something like this: “Why are these companies always struggling with the same things – despite having good products?” someone asked.

“The global go-to-market problem?” someone else suggested. “This is a constant, reliable theme we see over and over again.”

“So where would all these businesses be today if that single problem was dealt with early on?”

“All of them would be better off, and some of them probably worth a lot today,” I mutter over my beer, “but you can’t manage yourself out of that corner. You would need a workaround.”

As the conversation went on, we did a quick count on our fingers (in general terms and with confidentiality respected), to what extent we had come across this exact hurdle. Between us we had over the past year looked into something like 40–50 marine startup tech business from an investment perspective, and we concluded that global market penetration was a real challenge in roughly 80% of the cases. What makes this interesting is that shipping is reasonably uniform from a geographic perspective. As such, you would think that any product finding real success with good product market fit in one area should have potential in another. But in most cases scaling global is only successful for a small minority.

So here is roughly the challenge we tend to see, just to illustrate:

1.       Sales cycles in our industry are long. After a couple of years, the product is right, and the long engagements that have now turned into good local industry relationships start bearing fruit and revenues start coming in. Most of the sales are closed by the founder/CEO.

2.       Efforts are now put in place to expand to other shipping hubs across the world. A large part of the budget is now spent on traveling sales and hiring rather expensive, local, one-man sales offices, with the expectation of continuing the current growth trajectory from the home region. Not realizing the foundation of that home region’s sales was laid over years.

3.       Growth from the new areas don’t materialize. The one-man sales operations can’t persevere with the long sales cycles, resulting in high staff turnover and loss of time and money.

Naturally this is not all true in all cases, but there are elements of this scenario in a very large proportion of marine tech startups that try to go global. It is also natural that this is what we (as consultants) would see when they are rightfully seeking external funding to overcome the global G2M hurdle. It is also quite evident when looking into staff turnover among one-man sales offices that this becomes costly and highly ineffective in too many cases.

As the discussion went on, we concluded that for small tech companies to move beyond market penetration in one or two key locations (within reasonable timeframes), some sort of collaborative approach with others would be necessary. The shipping industry has long been successful in joining commercial resources through pooling, why not collaborate on global go-to-market for new tech? Given what we have witnessed ourselves, we realized that if we can create a model for this one very predictable hurdle, we could seriously offset participating tech companies’ trajectory in the industry, and link in the funding to do this. We now knew what was needed, and in the backdrop of the global pandemic spreading through the world, we started a long row of workshops and discussions that eventually became Blue Alliance Partners.

“Blue Alliance Partners”, an independent global go-to-market platform and accelerator for marine tech companies

With support from the most experienced team in the world in maritime digital transformation, we are now setting up a global collaborative go-to-market platform. The Blue Alliance collaborative approach will, for its members, generate global revenue faster and at lower cost-of-sales than could be achieved alone, while also assisting them with strategy, legal support and funding. As a truly independent body we can create the framework needed to achieve this.

Despite the challenges expected in setting up a business in the peak of a pandemic, we decided just to go for it. In fact, we believe that what we are trying to achieve has never been more relevant.

So why are we “now” putting our own time and money into maritime technology?

Functions within the industry have historically been very insular, and silos have created large inefficiencies in terms of how goods and vessels move as part of the supply chain. The processes, checks and balances in place today came to life in a world before we had our current level of modern connectivity and digital capabilities. They work for the individual parties involved, but are counterproductive as a whole; they cause operational inefficiencies and prevent efforts to reduce emissions. As digitalization is now bringing cross-functional transparency, the stage is set for change.

Shipping is trailing behind other industries in technology uptake. And as the sheer size of the current imbedded inefficiencies becomes increasingly public, it is unlikely that governments and public opinion will allow for this to go untouched. We are already seeing regulations coming that will effectively force a focus on operational excellence and energy efficiency. This will all come from new technology.

We believe that:

·        There are people out there who want to invest in maritime tech, but may need support in understanding the dynamics of the industry.

·        There are many good tech solutions out there that are relevant, but global market penetration is in many cases too expensive and too time-consuming for small companies.

·        For owners and operators, it is not easy to find what they need in this fragmented landscape of small suppliers. Owners want to invest in new tech if it works and makes sense financially, but it’s often too time-consuming to be an early adopter.

We are a mix of Chief Digital Officers, Senior Shipping Executives, Maritime Lawyers, and Entrepreneurs, some with a seagoing background and some with a tech background. Together, as an independent body, we believe we can help close some of the gaps and accelerate business.

Blue Alliance Partners Ltd, starts trading today with first representation in Tokyo and London as more locations are being set up.

Does any of the above sound intriguing, or perhaps all too familiar? Please get in touch!