I\u2019m sure a lot of you Bay Area folk remember when the BART workers threatened a strike in August 2013. The walkout was avoided, but for an entire day the state of public rail transit across San Francisco was shaky at best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In that dark hour it was Uber who came to the rescue\u2026well, halfway to the rescue. They actually partnered with a local San Francisco startup called Boatbound<\/strong> to send people off to work on boats across the bay.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Uber\n never would have been able to orchestrate this singlehandedly: \nBoatbound was the crucial element that made it all work. Here we are \nnow, almost two years later, and Boatbound is both still kicking and \nthriving.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, Boatbound is the Airbnb for boats. It\u2019s an idea that founder Aaron Hall cooked up thanks to a life spent boating with family and friends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe\n were always out boating, and when we traveled it was something we\u2019d do \non vacation too. It was always an integral part of my growing up,\u201d says \nHall.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n On one of those vacations, in 2012, they tried \nto rent a boat for the weekend. They walked into an old, clunky marina \nin North Dallas that was so desolate it didn\u2019t even have a website.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The\n drive was to get there was long and arduous, and when they finally \narrived the last available boat had already been rented out. However, \nHall saw hundreds of owned boats just floating in the marina, not being \nused and not available for rent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Surely there was a service out \nthere that let people rent these owned boats. Well, long story short, \nthere wasn\u2019t, so Hall built Boatbound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n They initially launched in \n2013 and only serviced San Francisco, which highlights the strategic \nprowess Boatbound showed by teaming up with Uber in 2013. That, paired \nwith the hard work of a dedicated team took Boatbound to South Florida, \nand ultimately across the rest of the US in 2014.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hall would say they\u2019ve \u201cexploded\u201d, and I have to agree. I pressed him about what contributed to this massive spike in growth:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThink\n about it: nobody goes out on a boat themselves unless they\u2019re a lonely \nfisherman,\u201d Hall explains. \u201cWhen one person books on our platform a lot \nof other people find out about Boatbound while on the actual, rented \nboat. The opportunity for it to spread like wildfire is unprecedented.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Currently,\n Hall and his crew are spending a lot of time with boating events and \ndry land fun to keep the hype fueled. It\u2019s fascinating: they still \nhaven\u2019t turned on the marketing magic, so to speak, but have over 10,000\n boats registered for rental on the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Not only that, the \nlist of people waiting to sign up seems to get bigger every day. There \nwas even one man who rented his boat out eight times in the first week \nit was listed on Boatbound.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWe can\u2019t activate boats quickly enough<\/em>.\n It does take some time to get the boats ready, which is why we\u2019re still\n picky on markets we launch in,\u201d Hall says. \u201cThough, it\u2019s mainly because\n there are boats there already waiting for us to activate them before we\n even arrive.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Consider what this means for boat \nowners. Effectively you can offset a sizeable portion of monthly \nexpenses by renting your boat just a few times in a given month.<\/p>\n\n\n\n That\u2019s\n huge, considering that about 80 percent of boats just float unused over\n one calendar year. Hall tells me that people who rent their boats on \nthe platform can finally view their crafts as tangible assets and not \nsinkholes to throw money in.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For all of us who don\u2019t own boats, \nit\u2019s a steal to get out on the water for about $30 a day. What are you \nwaiting for? Daylight is burning, my friends, and summer is already \nhalfway over. Go have some fun already!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I\u2019m sure a lot of you Bay Area folk remember when the B […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[37,51,102,105],"class_list":["post-2975","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-update","tag-boat","tag-daylight-is-burning","tag-start-boating","tag-stop-sittting"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2975"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2975\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2975"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2975"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/millionairemag.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2975"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}