Germany has seen lots of maritime start-ups come and go. That is no surprise to Carsten Bullemer, a serial entrepreneur and pioneer of the country’s maritime digital start-up scene.
“If you give me a list of 20 maritime start-ups here in Hamburg, 10 have disappeared,” he said.
This article is part of a special report on the shipping market that you can read in full in TradeWinds' weekly edition on 29 January.
Bullemer has invested in a series of digital ventures using money from the sale of fleet monitoring system Vesseltracker in 2013.
He is currently developing three online portals: Trusteddocks, for the ship-repair sector; Searoutes, which covers voyage planning; and Navisense, for the optimisation of tug boat operations.
Digital guru
And Bullemer, a software engineer who stems from Bavaria’s automotive industry, does not intend to stop there.
But he feels his adopted city has some way to go if it is to become a maritime technology hub.
“One of the reasons is that Hamburg hasn’t [got] an engineering tradition. Hamburg is a city of traders,” he said.
That has not stopped other entrepreneurs from trying, although so far most German digital maritime ventures appear to fail.
The plug has been pulled on Shipstock, an online networking and transaction site backed by some heavyweight German names.
There are questions over the fate of Marvest, a crowd-sourcing website backed by asset manager Ernst Russ. Financial sources say it failed to gain traction and is currently dormant.
The next big thing
Such apparent failures have not stopped others from coughing-up cash in the hope of finding the next big thing in the maritime world.
That includes FlagshipFounders, a company co-founded last year by Auerbach Schifffahrt founder Lucius Bunk together with Berlin venture capital firm Rescape.
Its first start-up, Kaiko Systems, seeks to prevent merchant ship incidents and reduce downtime.
Bullemer suggests that the provision of venture capital to digital start-ups cannot be underestimated.
“It’s difficult when you have an idea to find a party that support you moneywise,” Bullemer said.
“I was in a good position because I sold my first company and financed the other ones out of my own pocket. But if you are a young man, it’s not such an easy game.”
