What to expect?
While participated in several start-up events, we faced truly amazing mentors, got valuable feedback and earned extra attention because our idea seems exotic, Marina Ahoy sounds exotic and for most of them it is like an escape from the daily routine of the next machine learning, next generation something tool thing.
What we have missed, was the feedback from marine industry experts so far. There simply was none.
Applying into Wärtsilä marine mastermind competition, as suggested from Taavi - one of our earlier team members (Thanks!), was the opportunity to grab deeper into industry knowhow. But for what?
We were very much focused to leisure business, and we still are. Wärtsilä - a global leader in complete lifecycle power solutions for the marine and energy markets, a 181 years old corporation whose net sales exceeds the overall revenue of the leisure market in Europe, seemed focused to hardware and IoT implementation in commercial business.
But after an enjoyable Skype interview and Marina Ahoy being selected to the finals as the only Software as a Service solution in this competition, we saw facing an innovation oriented team of individuals willing to change the traditional heavyweight thinking in their corporation.
It´s hard to expect that Wärstilä enters the leisure business but there sure are consumer oriented service models that could change everything up to the industrial shipping industry. Hope to be one of those. So, can´t wait to find out who will be backed up from Shift Actions OY and gets the opportunity for a lean innovation lab together with mentors from the marine industry. The results will be announced in the Digital Ship event in Copenhagen from 5-6 of April. Keep in touch!