Sailing on dozens of ships in the Netherlands
Smart-Ship designs advanced, haptic feedback control levers for the maritime sector to optimize the interaction between the operator and the vessel. “If a ship sails too fast or uses a lot of fuel unnecessarily, the skipper notices immediately.” Jelle Tiemensma, CTO & co-founder of Smart-Ship reflects on the company’s development . “Once we received type approval, we were able to the continuity we had been aiming for. The fact that we could then bootstrap the business says a lot.”
How do you finance a step that has not yet been proven?
Type approval is one of the toughest hurdles in the maritime sector, and for good reason. Any innovation must withstand vibrations, shocks, temperature fluctuations, high humidity and salty mist. Only if the product survives all these conditions may it officially be installed on board. For Smart-Ship, the burning question is then whether an idea that is not yet proven will actually cross the finishing line?
“Thanks to this start-up capital, we have been able to design enough products to pass the tests successfully. It allowed us to go through the entire development cycles and has brought us to where we are today.”
Serious capital
A working prototype is one thing; an officially certified product that can be installed on board is quite another. That process can easily take a year.In the meantime, the company depends on subsidies and pilot projects That may be enough to keep going, but is not enough to build a team or cover the expensive hardware tests.
Jelle says that “Without serious capital it continues to be a promising project, but will never be a full-scale company.” Fortunately, the technology itself is no longer the uncertain factor.The haptic feedback works. The skipper immediately feels if he is sailing too fast or is wasting fuel unnecessarily. His wallet does the rest. The market is only waiting for the official stamp of approval.
The earliest phase
To keep your head above water as a start-up took some pioneering work. In the very earliest, and thus most critical, phase, the start-up approached UNIIQ. This is the South Holland proof-of-concept investment fund that helps innovative entrepreneurs bring their initial idea to market. They pitch their idea there first. And for Smart-Ship it worked. In 2019 they received a € 200,000 loan. “Thanks to this start-up capital, we have been able to design enough products to pass the tests successfully. It allowed us to go through the whole development cycles and has brought us to where we are now.”
Do you also need financing to move from prototype to a proven product?
Smart-Ship shows how start-up capital helps make expensive development, testing and type approval possible so that a promising technology can really move on board.
What is now possible
Smart-Ship will scale up radically in the next few years, moving from the current 30 ships to more than 100 every year. This means that the team is expanding, the production will rise, and the company will look at international expansion, primarily in Southeast Asia. At the same time, it will work hard on the next step: self-learning levers that adapt to individual sailing styles, situations and environmental data. Predicting necessary maintenance based on user data is also becoming increasingly important.
Smart-Ship in Focus
Are you also ready to move from development to production?
Scaling up needs more than just good technology. It needs the right combination of funding, knowledge and networks. Find out all the options to move your innovation further below.
