{"id":35978,"date":"2023-10-20T14:41:28","date_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/startupsmart.test\/2023\/10\/20\/dont-rock-the-boat-queensland-startup-to-help-boat-owners-find-a-place-to-dock-startupsmart\/"},"modified":"2023-10-20T14:41:28","modified_gmt":"2023-10-20T14:41:28","slug":"dont-rock-the-boat-queensland-startup-to-help-boat-owners-find-a-place-to-dock-startupsmart","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/uncategorized\/dont-rock-the-boat-queensland-startup-to-help-boat-owners-find-a-place-to-dock-startupsmart\/","title":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t rock the boat: Queensland startup to help boat owners find a place to dock – StartupSmart"},"content":{"rendered":"
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An Australian startup is looking to connect boat owners with people who have a place to dock them.<\/p>\n

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Ejetty<\/a>, based in Queensland, is an online marketplace launching next month for Australians who own a berth and are willing to rent it out to anyone who has a boat.<\/p>\n

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Founder Chris O\u2019Halloran told StartupSmart <\/i>the idea for the business came to him while he was walking along a stretch of water on the Sunshine Coast.<\/p>\n

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\u201cI started thinking, why are there so many empty pontoons out the back of people\u2019s houses? Surely they\u2019d want to rent them out and make some money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo I did some research and it turns out there\u2019s 10,000 boats in Queensland alone that don\u2019t have a berth. I launched a quick landing page to attract conversion and got flooded with boat owners looking for a solution to berth their boats.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The online platform is currently in private beta, however, it has processed around $6000 in transactions.<\/p>\n

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The website will go live next month, with the average boat owner paying $150 a week to rent a person\u2019s berth. Both long-term renting and short-term stays are welcome.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe berth owners select how much they want to charge, the facilities they want to have \u2013 if there\u2019s a bridge or deep-water access \u2013 and we market that to our list and also to boat owners who come by looking for the solution,\u201d O\u2019Halloran said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe only way people do it currently is through ads on Gumtree or word of mouth and there\u2019s no one-stop marketplace that connects the two together.\u201d<\/p>\n

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O\u2019Halloran says the startup is based out of Queensland, which is perfect because \u201cthere\u2019s a good community\u201d of boat owners and people who love to go fishing.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe will take the marketing to the Gold Coast over the next few months and then move into Sydney, Melbourne and then New Zealand,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThen we\u2019ll look in the US \u2026 places like Florida, with strong boating communities.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Like any early-stage startup, however, Ejetty didn\u2019t come into the world without having to overcome a number of unique challenges \u2013 particularly when it comes to building a two-sided marketplace, according to O\u2019Halloran.<\/p>\n

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\u201cGetting the berths onboard is challenging,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBerth owners aren\u2019t actively searching for marketplace to rent their birth so we do have interesting campaigns under way \u2026 but we will be trying some non-traditional guerrilla campaigns to get the berth owners onboard.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Another hurdle is one any short-term rental marketplace<\/a> has to navigate: regulation.<\/p>\n

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\u201cBut that didn\u2019t stop Airbnb or other marketplaces,\u201d O\u2019Halloran said.<\/p>\n

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\u201cSo while there are barriers there we can certainly overcome those and feedback from our customers to date has been very positive.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Follow <\/i>StartupSmart on <\/i>Facebook<\/i><\/a>, <\/i>Twitter<\/i><\/a>, and <\/i>LinkedIn<\/i><\/a>. <\/i>Buy tickets to the 2015 StartupSmart Awards.<\/i><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An Australian startup is looking to connect boat owners with people who have a place to dock them. \u00a0 Ejetty,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62187,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35978"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35978"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35978\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62187"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.startupsmart.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}