Nibletz Staff
In the summer of 2012 Jaclyn Baumgartner got separate calls from her two brothers, each saying the same thing.
“I think I’m going to have to sell the boat. It’s just too expensive to keep up.”
At first glance, this probably sounds like a rich guy problem. But Jaclyn’s brothers are like the majority of boat owners in America. They make less than $100,000, own a small boat, and only use the boats and average of 14 days a year.
“Just rent it,” Jaclyn told her brothers, which does seem like the obvious answer. Except that boat insurance doesn’t cover renters. Boat rental companies pay for a whole other class of insurance that would never make sense for the average boat owner.
So, with her background as a strategy consultant, Jaclyn did some research into the car-sharing industry, trying to find something that could be applied to boats.
The ultimate problem is that even small boats are expensive and relatively unused, even by the most avid boater. The ability to rent out the boat would help with costs and provide boaters with a wider range of craft to experience.
The solution was, obviously, an insurance policy that would allow for rentals.
That solution, obviously, proved more difficult that you would think.
Jaclyn recruited help and spent 9 months knocking on the doors of major and minor insurance providers. She tried to convince anyone who would listen that a peer-to-peer insurance policy would solve the problem and provide income for boat owners and, ultimately, insurance providers.
“It was like trying to get them to invest,” she told me.
Finally, she convinced a major insurance provider to set up a policy, and Cruzin was in business.
In the spring of this year, Cruzin did a test run at the WesTrec Marina in Fort Lauderdale, FL. By the end of the test run, 10% of the marina tenants were signed up
on the site. The company found that boat owners didn’t just rent their boats. They were also excited to try out other boats and are also some of the most frequent renters.
After such a successful test run, WesTrec was happy to open up all their marinas to Cruzin, and since the summer soft launch, the site has grown to include 27 states. They’ve kept their marketing focus on Florida, so the growth they’ve seen is almost completely organic.
It takes a lot of trust to allow someone to man your boat. Cruzin also prides itself on thorough background checks and vetting processes. Boat owners maintain the right to refuse to rent a boat to someone, and they can even set up a test run with the potential renter. Those measures–plus the $1 million insurance policy–eliminate a lot of the hesitancy owners may feel.
Just a few months after launch, Cruzin is post-revenue, and Jaclyn knows they’ve proven the model. The company will present this week at the Angel Capital Expo, hoping to secure the capital that will help them scale in the coming year.
Find out more about Cruzin on their website.
