The Story

Both sides of my family have owned inland shipping vessels for generations. I grew up on the water — literally lived on ships. My dad operated a 125-meter tanker on the Rhine.

At age 10, he'd let me take the helm so he could cook dinner or step away. Full responsibility for a 125-meter vessel carrying dangerous goods on one of Europe's busiest waterways. That's the kind of trust and capability the industry breeds.

He had me update the spreadsheet after every voyage — harbor fees, bunker costs, trip revenues — to calculate profit. That was the "system." It still is for most of the industry.

After one year of university, I left to sail. I worked with my dad and independently on different inland vessels across Western Europe — tankers and dry cargo ships carrying oil, coal, steel, and animal feed.

I know the operational reality. The harbor fees that eat margins. The bunker costs. The manual Excel sheets tracking profitability per voyage. The WhatsApp groups that serve as fleet management tools. The hours spent cross-referencing 800-page regulation PDFs.

Ship owners tracking vessel positions and status through WhatsApp groups. The gap between available technology and actual adoption is massive.

I always built things. Started with basic code, moved to no-code tools, then discovered AI tools that unlocked the ability to build real software products. I didn't decide to "get into maritime tech." I was already in maritime — and started solving the problems I saw around me.

Inland shipping is one of the most important and least technologically served industries in Europe. The people running it are practical, experienced, and skeptical of tech hype. They need tools built by someone who understands their world from the inside — not consultants who spent a week reading about the industry.

Now I build tools for the industry I grew up in.