LEAD MAGAZINE | 2019
home, rigging plumbing pipe, floatation devices
together and then stealing and rewriting code
and watching endless youtube videos on how to
program a drone in order to make sure I could at
least show a reasonable facsimile of what was in
my head. I tested this in the swimming pool and
the results were great!
So, I had a prototype, an idea of how I would go
to the market and of course a name! How could I
fail!? Let me count the ways!
Firstly selling a new innovation, in its absolute
infancy and trying raise funds to keep going are
probably some of the biggest hurdles you will
ever encounter as a business person. No matter
how good you think the device will be its actual
take up is determined by what the market says...
and in my case, the local South African market
wasn’t up for the risk. I pitched everywhere and
to anyone who would listen but got nowhere. The
reception was great from people who wanted to
do something about the environment, but at the
end the day they were not my customer. As good
as my thinking was I still needed to prove that my
product could complete against the established
norms and products; I had to prove greater
efficiency, greater cost saving and a reason for a
customer to take a risk as an early adopter.
As luck would have it, and those who have been
down this road before will know, luck is some
80% of getting started, I was invited to Rotterdam
in the Netherlands to pitch my idea and gain a
possible seat at a Maritime Accelerator there;
having just run out of money, no investors on the
horizon and the thought of needing to finance
two weeks in Europe I nearly gave up. But then I
remembered a friend who right at the start said
that if I ever needed some small investment just
to ask. Having been looking for larger sums I
dialled down my expectations and I approached
him again and asked for just enough to get me
through the next few months, without being
able to guarantee there would be a company
or a product on the other side of that. Arriving
in Europe on the tail end of a very cold winter
with next zero cash was hard enough, but I then
needed to go up against twenty other companies
all vying for limited space in the accelerator; the
mentors and decision makers were also my
prime customer target, maritime and ports; if
anyone could scupper this dream it would be
them. But again luck was on my side, I managed
to refine my pitch, know who I was my audience
was and speak to what they needed. When my
company name was read out as being accepted
on the final day I truly felt I had arrived and had
won the battle, but with everything in this game,
it was just a small win on the way to a number
of bigger and greater challenges and battles.
I needed to move to Europe for three months
and finance that, I needed to create a proper
prototype and finance that and I was still a one-
man band.
Perhaps to cut a long story short, we found
financing for the first year with the Port of
Rotterdam who saw our vision and just how
much value it could add, from there I managed
to form a small but strong team of thinkers,
engineers and tenacious doers who have
pushed us through to where we stand now.
We set up the company in The Netherlands
where we remain headquartered today, we
were embraced but the EU’s sustainability
grants process which helped us immensely with
financing and development and gave me access
to experts well beyond my hopes. We now have
our first executed product out in the water doing
its job in Holland, Germany, India, the USA,
Dubai and South Africa with more and more
opportunities opening up every day.
None of it was easy, I fell many times but always
got up; the challenges are constant but as we
grow they always seem to be surmountable. It
may have started with an idea, but it was one
that was executed; the hardest part was putting
things into motion, none of the other challenges
or successes would have come without that first
hard step.
An idea without action is simply that, an idea
59