bookings so owners of boats currently have to search for phone numbers of directors of the marina, overcome language and time difference and ring them up to check for and reserve places. If that marina is full, or the director is difficult to reach, the boat owners have to search again for nearby ports.

Marinanow solves this problem by using proven business models from the hotel and home rental industry. It offers the ability to book online, automatically from any port in the world using one site (a similar concept to sites like hotels.com). It also allows the “subleasing” of berths that have long term bookings (a similar concept to airbnb).

The team is made up of four partners who have a vast experience in the marina industry as well as programming, internet companies and Startups. They have been accepted into an incubator and raised money from an accelerator programme and are now looking for angels to coinvest with United Ventures, an Italian VC firm.

The site and mobile apps are online and fully functional and last summer, the team invested a small amount in marketing to test the product. The test was a huge success with a return of initial investment of around 2000%. They are now looking to raise further money to build on this initial success and expand aggressively to become the dominant player.