The application that got us into Techstars 2017
Nearly nine months ago, we applied to Techstars with a misguided vision on how to create a successful startup. We had hastily built a product without drilling down on our customer’s pain points and ultimately delivered a narrow-sighted solution that didn’t address our ultimate goal. As you probably expect, we were rejected.
Despite our unsuccessful application, we remained optimistic about our goal of radically improving the inefficient seafood supply chain. Over the following months, we earned opportunities to work with great organizations— The Next 36, The Next Big Thing, Propel Entrepreneurship, OCE and the Spin Master Innovation Fund — who helped steer our company in the right direction. Through renewed focus and experience collaborating with mentors and leaders, we streamlined our business model, pivoted our product and got on the same page as a team.
Now in 2017, we’re proud to announce (on our second effort) that we were successfully accepted into Techstars Seattle. Two weeks into the program, we find ourselves sitting in a new office with an expanded vision of revolutionizing the seafood supply chain at a global scale. Joining an alumni network of 71 Techstars Seattle companies that have raised $350 Million, we’re humbled and determined to push our company to the next level.
Throughout our first few weeks, one overarching notion that has stuck with us is Techstar’s #GiveFirst mantra. Inspired by this, we’ve decided to share our successful application to Techstars Seattle. While some sections may be outdated, we hope the general application helps entrepreneurs/startups looking to apply to accelerators like Techstars (or 500 Startups or Y-Combinator). The entrepreneurial spirit is all about paying it forward and helping the next generation of companies succeed. As such, here is our application to Techstars:
The Application
Company Description (50 characters or less)
We connect retail buyers to local fishermen
What is your company going to make?
Coastline Market is an online marketplace that connects commercial fishermen with restaurants and retail buyers in local geographies. Through this process, we eliminate the 3–6 middlemen that exist between source and sale. Using a mobile app, restaurants put in orders through three simple clicks, and fishermen reserve aggregated orders by species. As the fisherman returns to offload the catch, a delivery subcontractor picks up at the dock and drops off the seafood to clusters of restaurants and retail buyers. We help fishermen skip the middlemen and earn more revenue, while allowing restaurants to source fresher seafood with full traceability at a lower cost.
How long have the founders known one another and how did you meet? Have any of the founders not met in person?
Robert and I met during our freshman year of high school, and we have been friends and collaborators for the eight years that have followed. Despite attending different universities (UBC Vancouver, Western University London), we continued to bounce ideas off each other, one of which resulted in Coastline Market. We previously started an organic candle company that sold to farmer’s markets in Vancouver.
How far along are you?
We soft-launched Coastline Market in Vancouver in early September, and we now have partnerships in place with [redacted] restaurants and [redacted] commercial fishermen in Vancouver. We’ve since generated revenue and are in the process of integrating our MVP into the workflow of chefs and fishermen. Prior to this, we were carrying out ordering, matching and logistics manually to fully understand our users’ workflow. In terms of funding, we recently closed a pre-seed round of [redacted] from a VC (SAFE), family and friends, government grant programs and debt financing.
Why did you pick this idea to work on? Do you have domain expertise in this area? How do you know people need what you’re making?
Robert’s family has contributed to and/or worked with the fishing industry in the maritimes for over four generations. Growing up in coastal communities, Robert and I both witnessed major issues in fishing (such as seafood changing ownership seven times on average), and grew passionate about creating impact in an industry that hasn’t changed in decades, if not centuries. Prior to incorporating, we spent eight months part-time speaking to fishermen, distributors, wholesalers and restaurants across North America. From our conversations, we derived that there was a massive unmet need for fishermen to sell direct in an easy, hassle-free way and for retail buyers to source fresh, local seafood with full traceability.
What’s new about what you’re making? What substitutes do people resort to because it doesn’t exist yet (or they don’t know about it)?
Coastline is a wholly new just-in-time business model that automates the role of middlemen in the local supply chain. By shifting the supply paradigm from supply to demand-driven, we can minimize or eliminate the cost of storing, preserving and transporting seafood. The technology we’re building simply does not exist today, and it has the potential to overhaul the traditional supply chain.
In terms of substitutes, a limited number of fishermen skip intermediaries by selling directly off the dock. While this is an effective method for small-scale transactions, most high-volume buyers are unwilling to pick up from the dock due to inconvenience. Others have formed restaurant supported fisheries (RSFs) to skip the middlemen and sell direct. However, RSFs require manual logistics coordination, sales managers, and physical wholesale facilities which makes it a difficult model to scale.
Who do you fear most?
Incumbents in the fishing industry have not recognized the long-term cost advantages of having localized supply in multiple markets. By keeping supply and demand exclusively local, aggregating the supply of many fishers and automating manual coordination processes with software, costs can be minimized and seafood freshness maximized in each geography. Furthermore, with rising tech accessibility and growing demand for fresh, local ingredients, there exists an immense opportunity to integrate technology and capture previously untapped data in the traditional fishing industry.
How do or will you make money? How much could you make?
Our business model is one where we take a [redacted] commission on each seafood transaction that occurs on Coastline. With our current [redacted] partner restaurants ordering at an average of [redacted]lbs/week of seafood at $[redacted]/lb., Coastline will generate $[redacted] in annual revenues.
Within three years, we are confident in our ability to scale up the business to [redacted] restaurants and [redacted]lbs* of seafood transactions per week in three cities, which would amount to revenues of $[redacted] million per year.
*Although we operate under a marketplace model, one fisherman can offload up to [redacted]lbs of seafood per week, which dramatically reduces the number of users needed to obtain network effects.
How will you get users? If your idea is the type that faces a chicken-and-egg problem in the sense that it won’t be attractive to users till it has a lot of users (e.g. a marketplace, a dating site, an ad network), how will you overcome that?
- We plan to build out a viral revenue-share model that nets fishermen a percentage of the revenue generated by a referred account. Since the fishing industry is very relationship-driven, we anticipate that the revenue partnership will have an exponential impact on our user growth
- We’re in the preliminary stages of building out partnerships with sustainability-focused brands and local certification programs. Restaurants can use this branding to cross-promote their products with our services
Please tell us something surprising or amusing that one of you has discovered. (The answer need not be related to your project.)
While he was working with a solar energy company in the Hindu Kush mountain range in India, Robert learned that city ruins hewn into very steep mountain sides are not very common, but hallucinations associated with altitude sickness are. Shangri-La does not exist.
Links:
Website: www.coastlinemarket.com
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jhylee & https://www.linkedin.com/in/robertkirstiuk
