Logbook: 2016 recap & the start of Nautilus Labs
Wow, what a year.
For those that know me well, I like to take a step back at critical points and reflect on what’s happened now and again.
For those that really know me, they know I often get emotional during these moments. As I was writing this, please know I was filled with joy and gratitude for the amazing people in my life, and opportunities I have been given.
2016 was a big exploratory year for me. Not just personally, but also within my career. Looking back, it was filled with more activity than I ever could have imagined:
- I had 3 jobs. All three were at startups.
- I was legally unemployed for two months.
- I had my hand in 6 products, 3 of which are out on the market now. One of them made it on Uncrate, a personal life-goal of mine.
- I helped set up a US manufacturing operation for a product I engineered.
- I got into UC Berkeley for a Masters of Engineering degree in autonomous robotic systems.
- I turned down going to UC Berkeley to potentially start Nautilus.
- I traveled to Europe for the first time.
This all happened before Nautilus Labs started taking a full-time role in my life this September.
The Nautilus Labs story begins 2 years ago when Bre Pettis gave me an opportunity of a lifetime. He offered to hire me. But not under normal pretenses. He told me work halftime for his new venture, Bre & Co. and spend the other half of my time exploring whatever I wanted. Hopefully, I’d arrive on a problem worthy of solving and, who knows, maybe it could turn into a company?
I’m so grateful for that time because it single-handedly allowed me to look deeper into areas I was actually interested in. It allowed me freedom to look where others weren’t or “didn’t have time to”. It was infinitely more useful than going back to school.
I knew I wanted to tackle a huge problem. Something so large, harry, and untouchable, that others wouldn’t even think of trying to tackle it on their own.
We live in a world filled with problems that NEED solving within the next decade. The environment, government reform, food, transportation, infrastructure are just some examples. And yet we have very few people stepping up to the plate to actually solve them. In efforts to not be a hypocrite, I knew I had to.
It was obvious that these were the areas I needed to look.
Being a big fan of the water (in general), I knew I needed to look at the maritime space first. I knew it was archaic, and I knew there’s large economic interest and impact, so it was a perfect place to start.
So at the start of 2016, I had arrived on the maritime industry and had become obsessed. The more I dug into the weeds, the more opportunity I discovered. The more fucked up it got.
I had the opportunity to meet people when I wanted, read every doctrine, law, and article I could on maritime policy, trends, and patterns. All this because I had time to explore the space as an outsider, in the way most efficient for me.
Personally, 2016 can be broke into two categories, when I was working full-time on Nautilus, and when I was not.
While I wasn’t, I worked at Bre & Co and Grow Labs. I owe a great deal to Bre Pettis, Idan Cohen, and Andrew Wanliss-Orlebar, who hired me and allowed me to work on their amazing projects while I worked on Nautilus in my free time.
2016 was all about finding a way to transition into Nautilus full time.
Nautilus was born because a select group of devote believers placed their trust, support, networks, and capital on the line for something absurdly ambitious. Some have said insane, at times. Over 2015 and 2016, Nautilus took many different forms before I arrived on the particular problem set we’re starting with today:
- Small drone boats.
2. Long distance delivery service for parcels using small drone boats.
3. American Marine Highway drone boats for inter-coastal shipping.
4. Hydrofoiling inter-coastal shipping company to alleviate roadway freight bottlenecks.
5. Autonomous SWATH vessels for inter-coastal shipping, eventually providing the “3-day” shipping option for international trade. — This is where I went to Andy Wheeler of Google Ventures and asked for $100M to actually start this. This was the high level foundation where Nautilus took it’s original form. He was the one who told me to choose a specific area within the plan I presented to refine and see if I could make that work. “Then maybe we could discuss $100M”, he said with a smirk.
6. An autonomous shipping software company, a smaller piece of the above.
7. And finally, a data collection and analysis company, the first step.
A select few stood by me through every stage, most entered at later more matured point. But when I think more about it all, all I can say is: Holy shit? How can I thank you all? I’m so lucky to have such an incredible group around me.
It was quite a crazy period of my life, but we arrived at the right starting point. I can’t wait to see what we’ll be able to do in 2017.
Nautilus’ mission is now quite well defined: We’re working toward meaningfully reducing emissions in the maritime space, revolutionizing maritime operations.
Helping companies do this with technology solutions reduces their costs so they capture more profit. They burn less fuel and pollute less so our children may also be able to live comfortably on this wonderful planet. And, on top of it all, the value and revenue potential is so large across the industry, that we at Nautilus can build a large, healthy, fast-moving business with money left over to reinvest across other verticals if we succeed.
It’s a severely overlooked sector for the tech scene and Nautilus is currently pioneering the way.
Nautilus 2016 major milestones:
- I met one of the most talented software engineers in the NYC scene, Brian O’Clair, and am lucky enough to call him my business partner now.
- Marina Hadjipateras (Trailmix.vc), who was critical at helping Nautilus penetrate into the shipping scene, is now an active advisor and friend.
- Nautilus incorporated officially this Oct.
- We got our first LOI signed in Dec with Dorian LPG a publicly traded LPG carrier with a modern 22-ship fleet.
- We raised $780k in an angel round in under three months to give us more than enough to get to the next big milestone.
We did all of this while only spending $15k in 2016. We stayed unbelievably lean. I’m extremely proud of what we’ve accomplished.
Even more, we’re well positioned in 2017 to hire two engineers, get beta units deployed in at least two ships with 3 more companies extremely interested (6–15 more ships), learn a ton, and actually build out a real enterprise product.
This group believed when others didn’t.
Thank you all so very much.
From the bottom of my heart, I wish you all a very Happy New Years, and cheers to what 2017 has in store.
