The ocean industry is one of the fastest growing industries worldwide. Especially energy production with its frontrunner offshore wind is in demand like never before, but until now inefficiencies in data management, digital collaboration and cloud-based data analytics have hindered faster expansion of the marine economy. TrueOcean developed a cloud-based marine data ecosystem that can run on every big cloud infrastructure and enables a new level of marine data management, collaboration and analysis. The technological approach is a milestone for a data-driven blue economy that has also caught interest in North America.
In June, the Creative Destruction Lab (CDL) team contacted TrueOcean founders Jann Wendt, Frithjof Hennemann and Onno Bliß. CDL was founded at the University of Toronto in 2012 and expanded into an exclusive network with twelve locations worldwide. The Creative Destruction Lab offers a renowned mentoring and scaling program that helps pioneering startups reach the next level. One focus: Ocean Tech.
Successful entrepreneurs, technological leaders, investors and venture capital funds support selected founding teams in eight-week mentoring sprints, some of which take place on-site and some remotely. Evaluating market potential, optimizing strategy, preparing financing rounds - in intensive sessions, the teams work on their road to success.
"The invitation to apply came as a complete surprise, but we didn't think twice and put our documents together," Jann Wendt is convinced, access to the CDL program will be a growth catalyst for TrueOcean. "Many mentors come from the U.S. and Canada, where the trend toward offshore wind is just beginning. Introducing our technology into the North American market as well as access to venture capital are huge opportunities for us."
TrueOcean has strong growth prospects in North America as the software-as-a-service model, which is still meet with reservations in the B2B realm in Europe, has long been established. Jann Wendt: "We want to learn from the American perspective and from the experience of entrepreneurs who have already scaled to several billion." After all, he says, it is a great chance to learn and avoid making mistakes on the road of developing a successful and scalable tech company.
All mentors are top-class in their field of marine science or economy. To name just a few: Anya Waite, CEO of the international Ocean Frontier Institute; Michael Brasseur, co-chairman of the NATO Maritime Unmanned Systems Innovation Advisory Board; and Steven Adler, CEO of the Ocean Data Alliance. The first group of mentors who will support TrueOcean during their journey will be decided at the launch event on October 6, 2022, in Halifax, Canada. For Jann Wendt, one thing is already for sure: "We will benefit from expert feedback and insights in any case. Our goal for the coming 12 months is to optimize our business for our series A financing."
TrueOcean's marine data platform enables digital collaboration for data management & sharing, digital map-centric work, quality control, data processing and simplifies the scalability of marine projects. A northern German investment group with annual revenues of more than €4 billion has been on board as an investor since 2022. TrueOcean's goal is to digitize the ocean to support the shift toward sustainable marine economic solutions.
TrueOcean has already received several awards before its product launch in September 2022, including the Vision Award 2021, and was selected by Startus Insights as one of the "Top 5 Cloud Computing Startups" for the marine industry 2022.
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