Why he crowdfunded millions instead of raising VC — Jelte Liebrand, Savvy Navvy

David Barnard:
Welcome to the Sub Club Podcast, a show dedicated to the best practices for building and growing app businesses. We sit down with the entrepreneurs, investors, and builders behind the most successful apps in the world to learn from their successes and failures. Sub Club is brought to you by RevenueCat. Thousands of the world's best apps trust RevenueCat to power in-app purchases, manage customers, and grow revenue across iOS, Android, and the web. You can learn more at revenuecat.com. Let's get into the show.
Hello, I'm your host, David Barnard. My guest today is Jelte Liebrand, founder and CEO of SavvyNavy, the Google Maps for boats.
On the podcast, I talk with Jelte about crowdfunding millions of dollars to accelerate growth, the two-year subscription that transformed his CAC payback, and why removing signup friction backfired. Quick programming note, Jelte will be on the live stream, August 6th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 1800 Central European Time.
So take some notes as you listen and join us live on YouTube to ask Jelte some questions. And if you're listening to this after August 6th, just consider it kind of a part two of the podcast because I'm sure there'll be lots of great questions and a lot for us to talk about. Hey, Jelte, thanks so much for joining me on the podcast today.

Jelte Liebrand:
Hi. Yeah, thanks for having me. It's been a while, but I'm glad to be on it.

David Barnard:
So I don't often dig into the kind of origin story of apps here on the podcast. I try and jump right to the tactical, but I think this is a really interesting origin story that I think folks can learn from and it's fun and inspiring. So let's dive in. Why did you build Savvy Navy?

Jelte Liebrand:
Sure. Yeah, so a few years ago I found myself in the middle of the Pacific. The wind was howling, the boat was heeled over at 30 degree angles and slamming through three meter high waves because I'd taken a sabbatical from Google at the time to take part in the clipper around the world yacht race. I had a particularly bad day in the office when I signed up to this race. I thought I'd seen the posters many times. I was like, "Oh, I want to do this at some point." And I had a bad day and I was like, "All right, I'm going to sign up for this race." Didn't even talk to my wife at the time, so I just signed up and did it. To be fair, there's a lot of training involved before you actually go do it, but I signed up, did it, got out on the water and just realized, I mean, this is a 70-foot multimillion pound racing yacht and it's to the brim with the latest technology, but it was just outdated.
A lot of the systems on this boat were not talking to each other. A lot of stuff was showing me pretty pictures, but then I'm the one having to do all the computing in my head. And so being Dutch and being arrogant, I though I could do better. So I left Google and started Savingavy.

David Barnard:
Nice. And so back before Savvy Navy started making these things easier, and this was only. I mean, we're only talking 11 years ago. You were still having to plot things on paper while you're cutting through those three meter waves, right?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, for a lot of it. I mean, there were tools and in the professional space, you had different set of tools, but they were all just really clunky. And most would focus on one particular aspect of a passage as it's called. In this particular race, in case it was a race. But if you're going from A to B over water, there's a bunch of stuff that you need to take into consideration. And it's hazards, it's shipping lanes, it's dangerous areas, and it's the weather. What is the weather doing? What is the wind doing? What is the tide doing? The body of water that you find yourself in, that itself is moving. And so you have to compute this all and you have to take all these inputs to get you safely and as fast as possible from A to B, fast as possible in the case of a race.
And so there are tools and there were tools, but they each were focused on one particular aspect. And so you'll find yourself using one tool going, okay, I'm going to go over there. I'll be there probably in six hours from now, because you're computing how fast you're going to go with the wind. So now I've got to go over here and figure out one six hours from now, what is the tide going to do? What is the current doing? Is it going to push me back? Is it not? Is it going to push me into a dangerous area? And so yeah, on the boat that we had, we weren't really using pen and paper, but it was still effectively the same thing because I'm the one doing that work, whereas these computers could far more easily do it. I mean, even the compute power on this guy is more powerful than, well, A, what's in my brain, let alone what was on that boat.
So yeah, it just struck me as odd that you couldn't do this in an easier way. At the end of the day with Google Maps, you drop two pins and it works out everything. It works out the traffic and the road works and the most economically friendly way to do it. And at sea, it should do the same thing. Actually, in many cases, there's more reason to do it at sea because there's more danger element involved. And so for me to compute that in my head, human error, you don't want human error when it comes to lives at sea. So yeah, there was definitely a better way to do it.

David Barnard:
So you get back from this race, you quit Google, you raise VC, and you built Tabby Navy, right?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, yeah, almost. Not quite. Wasn't quite that straightforward. Actually, to be honest, I had the idea on the race. I wasn't initially quite convinced if there was really a market for this. I mean, a 70-foot racing yacht in the middle of the Pacific, how many people are in that position? So it wasn't until I got back and started talking to friends and other boaters and started to realize that actually this isn't just an ocean race problem. This is anybody going out in the water. And here in the UK, on the South Coast, this beautiful, the souland is amazing to sail in. And there's people that have their qualification. They've done all the training that they need to do, but they weren't going out because they were afraid that they would get the title calculations wrong or that they would injure someone or whatever. And so it became clear that this is a bigger problem.
So I did a lot of research. I went down to the South Coast and I even bought a clipboard because not that I needed a clipboard, but anybody with a clipboard is taken seriously. So if you just rock up and ask a question, nobody answers. But well, there's a clipboard perhaps people will answer. So I spent hours, literally hours walking up and down every pontoon I could find to talk to any boater I could find to just understand how they go boating. And not just sailors, but motorboaters, even kayakers and paddle boarders and anybody else getting on the water. What's the pain point? What is the real issue with you enjoying and getting out in the water more?

David Barnard:
Yeah, too many people skip that step. And it doesn't have to be a clipboard, it doesn't have to be in person, but the user research and deeply understanding the problem. And it sounds like that's what really convinced you that this was a bigger market. There are markets where people are like, "Ah, it's not that big." You were thinking like, "I was on a racing yacht. There's only a handful of those in the world. It only happens certain times a year. How big is this market really?" And then by going and doing the research and understanding the pain points like, "Oh wait, the boating market's actually huge and everybody's seeing this problem." So that user research piece is way too often skipped. And so it's really cool that you did that.

Jelte Liebrand:
It's often skipped and that's bad, but it doesn't stop there either. For me, it was like, okay, clearly there is something here and so I can build this. But to this day we do this. To this day, we talk to our customers for new features or whatever, and to this day we learn new things. If we look at what we did originally and then what we're looking at now and even geographically, obviously a boater in Italy is going to have different pain points than somebody in the UK. There's no tides in Italy to start with. So 100% people forget that step or they do it for a little bit and then they just, that's it, we're going to write on this info. You got to keep doing it. You got to keep talking to the customer and understand even over time, how does it change?
People will use tools differently over the last five years, let alone than anything else. So yeah, keep talking for sure.

David Barnard:
Well, one of the things I love about this story is that there really are parallels to today in bringing AI into the equation. So a decade ago you were at Google, you were using Google Maps in your car, probably had CarPlay and other things even a decade ago that just didn't exist in the boating world. And then today I think folks listening to this can be thinking whether they have an existing product or whether they want to build a new product, so much of what we think is great tech today is going to feel super clunky over the next few years as you can integrate AI deeper and deeper into it. I just saw a tweet yesterday by somebody participating in the Shipatone. It's a hackathon we're doing starting August 1st, so this podcast will come out right after it. But he's building a cataloging app for all your games and things like that.
And he built this AI feature that he was showing off on Twitter yesterday where you just take your phone and just scan it around and it grabs all the titles and then brings it in and makes it all look nice. So instead of typing in every game thing, it's just using AI to optically visually recognize things. So I think there's so much opportunity to bring AI, bring tech, bring this product intuition into these clunky industries. So tell me a little bit about how you thought about that in building SavvyNavy coming from Google and coming into this really clunky old industry with all these outdated tools and low processing power and all the things you were facing at the time.

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, for sure. And I totally agree. I think when I started with Savynavi, say I was at Google Maps. And so I had a lot of experience, not just Google Maps, Google Chrome did a bunch of different things at Google, but a lot of experience in that user interface and that interaction model that we're also accustomed to right now, which wasn't and to a degree isn't still in Marine. Nowadays, if you've got a product, any tech product that if it comes with a manual, you've already lost. Fundamentally, people don't use a manual. You just use the product and it should just be obvious on how I should use it. And that's not something that was happening in marine. I think in marine, everything is about, if I'm nice, let's say 10 years behind land-based stuff, probably 15 to 20 years quite frankly. And so I took a lot of that learning that I'd had from Google into SavvyNavy and made it a tool that is just immediately recognizable and I know exactly what I'm doing and how I'm using it.
And I think you're absolutely right with AI. If we look back at before ChatGPT came out and had said, "Oh, in a few months from now, you're going to be talking to your computer or whatever else we're typing and just do natural language." Everybody would go, "Nah, no way." And then within months, everybody's doing it. And not only is everybody doing it, but if ChatGPT gets something wrong now, we get annoyed like, oh, come on, it should know better. We're already so accustomed to talking to an AI and to get a response. And so that's how quickly that's changed. And so if you're looking at products and you're looking at stuff in your phone or whatever, that already is, I think, rapidly changing, but it's going to increasingly more rapidly change, if that makes sense. And so the expectation again is different. And I think that's the key thing here.
You have to put yourself in the consumer's shoes. And from a consumer perspective, I expect this thing to work in a certain way. And that expectation is constantly changing. And again, this is why you need to keep talking to your customer because in 12 months from now, I guarantee they will expect something completely different because of AI and because of how you interact with said product. So yeah, it's a never-ending thing and you have to stay on top of it. And if you're building anything with the intent of launching it in 12 months from now, you've already lost. Because in 12 months from now, that's going to be outdated. You need to be able to move quick enough to be able to do that.

David Barnard:
I love that idea of expectations have changed. And that's maybe a really good rubric for thinking about products to build or ways to improve your own product is that if you find yourself frustrated, even my example of the guy building the game scanning app to build a library of all your games, in 2026, the idea of pulling up your iPhone and typing things in is crazy. The expectation is like, oh, AI, everything's so smart. Why am I doing this? And so it's probably a good way to think about opportunities is what are the things that are frustrating today in 2026 that seemed really cool three years ago or whatever, but in 2026, it's like, this is dumb. Why am I doing this? And it's a great way to think about improving your product and even finding new product ideas.

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. And coming back to Savvy and Abby, as I said, when I started, it was this concept of it should be as simple as dropping a pin and say, go. I want to go here, so drop a pin and go. The concept of dropping a pin, you could argue by now is starting to become slightly dated as well. Why am I dropping a pin over here? I want to go to Cows, which is a city on the other white. I just want to go, Hey, Savannah, tell me when I should go to Cows. What's the best time to go? Well, Saturday, 11 o'clock.Okay, great. And then show me that route. So even things like that I think are so quickly changing and turning. And the beauty of software is that you can. You can adapt quickly. You don't have long lead times when it comes to hardware.
We are doing a lot more stuff with boat manufacturers now, which has opened my eyes to that world of supply chain and whatever. But you have to, you have to move quick. You have to be able to move quick because it's what people will expect and already are.

David Barnard:
I want to talk more about the boat manufacturers. You're doing some really cool stuff with B2B that creates a flywheel with B2C. But I did want to continue the story. I joked earlier about, so you quit Google and raise VC because I knew that wasn't the path, but I want to talk about the path because you did think about raising VC. So what happened there?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. I left Google and if you'd have asked me at that time, do you understand all the various different funding vehicles out there, VC, private equity, debt, crowdfunding, whatever, I would've said yes because they're all the same. You get investors, they give you money and they get a share of the company and off you go. And Angel's just a small VC. That's how that works. And it's so not true. It's so different. I left and luckily because leaving Google was invited to a Google Pitch event and a pitch day, at the time we didn't actually need funding yet. Me and my co-founder were bootstrapping. But you get invited by Google, you're going to go. And so we did the pitch and had some interest from a number of VCs, sat down with one of them multiple times, flew out to them, whatever, and went very far down that standard path of getting funding from VC.
Only to realize as we're talking, they want one thing from the business, we want something else. And actually, even as we're discussing the term sheet, it's already a little bit, there's already friction. There's already something here that doesn't feel quite right. And so ultimately, to be fair, from both sides, we walked away and we said, "Okay, this doesn't feel right. This is not what we want from the business. We're going to..." And we didn't need it, so we walked away. And then about a year later, one of our potential angels and then a very good friend and customer actually said, "Have you considered crowdfunding?" Because at the time we had 10,000 people on the platform using the app, et cetera. And so we hadn't. I mean, okay, man, I don't know. Let's give it a go. Why not? Because this is the audience that understands what we're trying to build.
They're literally using it.

David Barnard:
So at that point, you were at a place where you felt like more capital would improve the business more quickly. And you needed capital, but you didn't necessarily need to go down that VC path. And I read about this crowdfunding, but actually didn't go deep enough to know exactly what you did. So actually I'm super curious and going to be learning on the fly here exactly what you mean by crowdfunding because everybody thinks Indiegogo and Kickstarter and things like that. But yeah, so tell me how it actually went.

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. So Indiegogo and Kickstarter, that is a form of crowdfunding, I suppose. But the "investors" are backers. They back this product and by giving some money, you effectively donate the money. You might get that product sooner than anybody else. But you're not investing in the business, so you're not getting an equity share of the business. So there are platforms here in the UK. It was Cedars who has since been bought by Republic from the US, CrowdCube, there's a bunch of different ones across the world. And it's basically you're investing your money and you get a share of the business. The platform usually sits on the cap table and becomes your front of the investors of activity because you have a long till. We have two and a half thousand investors like this by now. But yeah, anybody can invest. And so anybody can invest as little as 10 bucks or as much as hundreds of thousands if they want to.
So when we started, we weren't sure what was going to happen. We got 10,000 people using the app, and sure, I have a network of people that potentially have some spare capital, but I don't know. And we only needed a little bit of funding. And you're right, we needed the funding because we wanted to push it into marketing. At the end of the day, we're a B2C business predominantly. And so in order for us to get to the number of subscribers that we need to get to cover our fixed cost, you're going to need capital. And so we launched this campaign, did this video for it, no idea what to expect. And within 24 hours, we're oversubscribed. We're blown past the target that we needed and people are jumping on the bandwagon and mostly voters. People going, "Yeah, I'm done with what I have. I want something new.
I want something fresh." And so within six days, we shut it down because it was triple of what we needed. And since then have repeated that a number of times because we basically have this army of investors who A, believe in what we do, B, can back us with money, but also back us with knowledge. We've had a number of times throughout these years that you start a business, there's so many aspects of the business you don't actually know about. You don't know what you don't know until you don't know it. And so at some point we needed something for logistics or something in marketing, whatever. And we can tap into these two and a half thousand investors and go, "Hey guys, we need some help with this. Can anybody give us some advice or jump on a call or even tell us where to go?" And so it's been really, real good for us to have that army of investors that can help us, not just financially, but also in knowledge-based stuff and in marketing and in other aspects.
So yeah, it's been fascinating. It's been really, really good.

David Barnard:
So I'm fascinated, and I think our audience will be as well because actually two podcasts ago I actually had a venture capitalist on, and we were actually talking about this specifically. And I hadn't even thought to bring up crowdfunding, but we were talking about how VC just doesn't make sense for so many bootstrap or so many consumer apps. It just doesn't make sense to take VC. Ditch ham's not big enough or the opportunity's great, but then there's so many sacrifices where when you're shooting for those big outcomes and you're spending a lot of money, you as a founder can end up screwed where you otherwise would've had a really amazing outcome. So we talked through all of this and crowdfunding didn't even come up. So I want to dig into the mechanics of it because I think there's folks listening to this who can learn from this and go do some crowdfunding.
Now, it shows an incredible level of product market fit that you have 2,000 people investing in it because they believe in it. But let's start with just the simple mechanics of it. On Kickstarter, which is what I know, you give perks and things like that. Is it similar where every dollar in gets a certain ownership percentage, but then you also offer certain perks and things? So how did you actually structure that?

Jelte Liebrand:
It can be. And for some of the brands we did, it was. I think before I jump into the mechanics of that, I think just coming back to VC, I think one of the things that I learned throughout this process, look, I have nothing against the VC model as such. I think it's a great model and it works really well, but it works really well for a very particular set of businesses. And unfortunately, and I don't know, I'm presuming you've seen Silicon Valley TV show. I think everybody should watch it. It's an amazing show. Unfortunately, everybody believes that VC is the path. That is how you build a business, which is not true. I think for 80%, 90%, I'm making up a number here, but for a large percentage of businesses, it's probably the wrong model. It's probably not the model you want. You can build a really successful business that isn't necessarily hyper growth.
You're not going to be the next Mark Zuckenberg, but that doesn't mean the business is crap. That means it's a different business.

David Barnard:
Yeah. And what's funny is a ton of VCs would actually agree very strongly with those statements because they don't want to fund the kind of businesses that aren't a good fit for VCs. So even VCs would 100% agree it is a great product, but it's a great product for a very narrow set of people. Whereas exactly like you said, everybody in tech wants. It's almost like this weird dream of like, oh, I'll really have made it if I can get venture capital investment. And that's not the path for so many business. There's so many great opportunities for great outcomes where you don't take VC, and if you did, it would actually mess your business up. So I think it's so important for people to understand.

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, absolutely. And you're right, VC will back me on this one. Funny phrase there to back me, but they will agree. Fundamentally, in some cases, there's almost like a Venn diagram overlap. And that's where it gets even more quirky because then the VC goes, actually, okay, if you just change this bit, then maybe you could. But now you're changing that business. And that doesn't necessarily help. And so you're trying to, what's the saying? Round peg, square hole. It doesn't necessarily fit. Whereas if you're looking at an angel, and again, when I started, I thought an angel is a mini VC. They put money in, they want to get a return on investment just like the VC does, but they don't. They do, don't get me wrong. Everybody wants, you're investing, you want to make money. But a VC, when they invest, they don't just invest once.
They invest multiple times. They want you to spend the money that they put in, in order to grow, to get that hyper growth. They want you to spend all of it, and they want you to come back for some more. Pre-seed, C, Series A, Series B, Series C. The reason they want that, and again, they will agree with me, is so that they own more of the business. They want to own as much of this business as possible so that when there is an exit, they make the most, and that's how they get the 20X on the fund that they need to do. And so the object is to own as much of the business and to have that business grow at a hyper growth rate. If you're looking at an angel, 99 out of 100 times, the angel will have made their money. They're retired.
Their partner probably has kicked them out of the house going, "You're doing my head in. Go do something with your life." And they want to give back. Yes, they want to invest and make money, but they want to see the business succeed. And that is a very different motivation. They don't necessarily want to own as much of the business as possible. They want to see it succeed, not just by putting money in, but putting their expertise in. And they will invest in a vertical that they're familiar with because they've done it before. And so you get the best of both worlds. You get somebody who knows what they're talking about, who has some capital to invest. Now, you're not going to get the level of capital that you would get from VC, but quite frankly, in the vast majority of cases, people raise too much.
They go, "Oh, I want this. I want this." I guarantee you all the founders that I've talked to who ask me for advice on Crowdfund and whatever, in the majority of the cases, I would tell them raise half of what you're trying to raise. Because whatever you're trying to raise is your. That's the other thing. I actually hate the phrase raising money. Like you said, people think it's a, "Oh, I've made it if I raise money." It's not some magic money tree that you put some water in and you're raising this magical free money. You're selling your business. That is what you're doing. And even with crowdfunding, you are selling part of your business. So if you're doing that and you're getting a lot of money in, you're selling a lot of the business. Yeah, so back to crowdfunding. Crowdfunding, the better way to look at it when it's crowdfunding for equity is indeed angels.
So the majority of year round will be funded by a handful of angels who put in a significant amount of money. Now, the long tail is everybody else who's putting in a hundred bucks or 10 bucks or 500 bucks or a few grand or whatever else. And yes, it's a platform like Kickstarter or Nicogo. You go on the platform, there's a video there that explains what this business is doing. There's some documentation and some financials and a pitch deck and whatever. And in some cases, in most cases, there'll be some perks. I think in the first round, all of our investors got a Savannavy sailing jacket, like a really cool jacket with Savnavy in the back. In one, we gave people three-year subscriptions because again, most of our investors are actually boaters. But the big reason you do it is to get equity into that business.
And the ultimate aim is always, well, it's not always a trade sale, but there is an exit in mind so that you get your money back. And in most of these platforms, there's then a secondary market as well. And so actually, even though we're not a public company, our shares and stocks are being traded on this secondary market. And so even if you invested and we haven't yet made an exit, you can still liquefy some of the money by selling it on the secondary market. So it's a really good platform. It's very founder-friendly as well because again, you're not dealing with a VC who's trying to mold your business into their model and trying to change what you're trying to do. And again, that's nothing wrong. If you're building a business that fits the VC model, go at it any day all day long. But in most cases, you're probably not.
And there's also nothing to stop people from doing both. It's very common for people to say, okay, we're going to fund via crowdfunding initially, couple of rounds, whatever, and now we're going to get institutional money in to back us further.

David Barnard:
What did the distribution look like for you? Were there a few angels that put in 100K plus? And actually I'd love to know what that first round looked like. Were you raising 100,000? Were you raising 500,000 and then what that distribution looked like?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. So the first round, our target was 125,000, and I think we stopped at 370 or something like that. I'm like, okay, well, we definitely have enough now. And then from there on in, I'd have to remind myself on the numbers, but most of our rounds will have been around the million mark. And in most rounds, there would've been two or three angel investors that come in at six digits each. And then the rest is then the long tail of other investors.

David Barnard:
So then what are the mechanics of it? How much ownership do you give up? Do they get profit share distributions or is it just only if there's an exit? And then, I mean, in VC you have the, what's it called? I always forget the - Preferential shares. Preferred shares. Yeah. Yeah. So then do they get their money back first before you get a profit? Walk me through the actual mechanics of that.

Jelte Liebrand:
So when it comes to how much equity you give up, just like any funding round, you set a valuation. And usually even if you're VCs or even you have maybe multiple VCs, there'll be a lead investor. And you basically negotiate the term sheet with the lead investor, which sets the valuation and therefore sets how much equity you're willing to give up. That's no different really. Fundamentally, when you're thinking about crowdfunding, before that round goes live, you will be talking to a handful of select people that you have identified who might be interested. And so you fundamentally with them agree the terms and in large part agree what the valuation of the company is and therefore how much equity you give up. Once you have that agreed, then everybody else jumps on the bandwagon at the same term sheet. And that term sheet, again, for most platforms and definitely the one Cedars/Republic that we do, it is very, very simple in the sense that there are no preferred shares.
Everybody gets the same share. Even the guy that's putting in 10 bucks versus the guy that's putting in 200,000, they all get the same level of share and nobody has a preferred share. And so how do they get the money back? Yes, that is generally speaking by the exit. And that could be that we IPO. And so okay, now they can either sell or dividends comes their way or whatever or a trade sale. This is usually the most common too.
But But yeah, I think the mechanics are not that different from any other funding round in the sense that you have to agree with someone what your valuation is. I can argue that we're worth half a billion, but if nobody's willing to put money into that valuation, then clearly we're not. You're only worth what somebody's going to put in. And so it's the same concept here. You will have angels with whom you have that connection and you sit down with them and work that out and then everybody else comes on the same terms.

David Barnard:
I would imagine because you're doing this publicly that the valuations are public and so all the numbers would be public and people could even go back and look at some of your old crowdfunding campaigns, but maybe walk us through since it all is public, when you raised that first 300,000 - ish, and you can talk ballpark, I know we didn't talk about doing these numbers ahead. So ballpark, what was that first valuation? And by taking 300 instead of 125 or 375 or wherever you ended up at, did that mean you were giving up a much larger percentage of the company? Yeah, talk me through some of those numbers.

Jelte Liebrand:
So yeah, I don't have those numbers at hand here, but you're absolutely right. If you've agreed a valuation, and I'd have to look up what the first one was, but our last one, for example, we're 15 mil as a valuation. And once you oversubscribe, you are going to give up more equity. So this is, again, not necessarily different from a VC round where you have a target of how much you want to raise, but usually it's kind of a range. I want to raise a million to a million and a half or whatever, or I want to raise five to 10 or whatever it might be. And you kind of settle on a number with a VC. In this case, if another VC jumped on board as well, then obviously you're going to go over and you're going to lose more equity. And so what you tend to do, and the only difference on crowdfunding, I think, is that that range probably is larger.
And so before you start, you really want to have in your own head, what is the bare minimum? What is the minimum that I want to raise in order for me to do what it is that I want to do in the next 12 to 18 months? But I also want to set the maximum because I know that we're going at this valuation, and if I go over that maximum, well, I'm losing too much of my business. And so fundamentally, again, try to raise as little as possible because it's costly. And so set that maximum and that's when you stop. And so in our case, in that very first round, we didn't even know what to expect, but after six days we're going, well, this is getting out of hand, so we're going to have to stop it because we're losing too much equity. It's something you have to consider in a lot more detail.
I think the other thing that while we're on the topping, and I'll throw it out there, when I get asked about this by other founders who are thinking about crowdfunding or thinking about funding in general, my first bit of advice is don't raise it all. If you can get away with not raising VC or crad or angel or anything else, just don't because it is really difficult. It is very time-consuming. And once you're down that path, you are setting yourself up on purpose and explicitly so for doing it again and again until you get to that level that you want to get to. And if you are doing crowdfunding, you're right, it is very public. So all these numbers are freely available. You can go to Cedars today and find them and find our previous campaigns and find all the videos that are made about what we said we would do.
And that's the other aspect. It is, we are publicly stating this is what we're going to do with this money. And then in 12 months from now or 18 months from now, if we need another round, we do have to prove that we were able to do that. And so while the long-tiller investors sit behind the platform, we have a very direct connection with them. I'm very open and transparent with my investors. I said it from the very first letter to investors that I wrote, I'm going to share the good, the bad, and the ugly. We're in this together and there's going to be bits here that are going to hit me in the face and it's not always going to work the way that we want it to. And so we have been transparent in that and we've been open in that. And when we did the first one in 2019, I won the Cedars Entrepreneur of the Year Award because of that communication that I have with those investors who voted for me because of it, because you have to stick close with them because you're going to come back, you're going to need more money.
But yeah, if you can get away with not fundraising, I would highly recommend not to do it because yeah, it takes a long, long, lot of time, a lot of time and effort.

David Barnard:
Yeah. And so the mechanics of it are essentially, like you said, a $15 million valuation at the last raise. So just for round numbers, if in that round you raise 1.5 million, that means you'd be giving up 10% of the business. Across all those raises, one, is there a dilution as you raise similar to VC? And then the second question being how much of the business have you now sold to these investors through crowdfunding?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, so it is literally the same. Yes, you dilute and yes, therefore my and my co-founder percentage is significantly lower. That's no different to VC. By the time you're at a series D, for the founder to still have 8%, you're doing well. And so it's very similar in those terms because the concept is the same. Fundamentally, you're saying my business is worth this and I need this much cash. And yes, that's usually about 10%. And the exact numbers are always slightly different, but fundamentally similar to a VC, if you're trying to raise something that is going to give up 40% of your business, that's red flags all over. What's going on here? That's way too much for the valuation where you're at right now. So that doesn't change. That's just normal business mechanics. And so yeah, the same thing applies here.

David Barnard:
In that last round you did, I actually did pull the numbers from this. You did almost 700,000 pounds at that $15 million valuation. But in those disclosures on the platform, you shared that you were doing three and a half million in ARR from the B2C business. You also have B2B, which we'll talk about, but the B2B was doing somewhere in that two plus million dollars a year range. So you're really only talking a three to four X multiple, which seems low. Typically in VC for fast-growing businesses, it would be higher. How do you set the multiple? You talked about negotiating with some of the lead investors. Is that how it's typically done?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, it is. And I think if you look back in 2025, that might sound low, but I think everything was low. Raising in 2025 was difficult. And so that is reflected in that number. It's also reflected in, yes, we have the B2B side, and we'll talk a little bit more on that in a second. But I think a lot of people focus predominantly on the B2C side, which is our core business. And so if you're only looking at that number, then that multiple becomes slightly different. But you're right. I mean, fundamentally, again, I don't think it's any different to VC from that perspective in the sense that that multiple has to be sensible. If that multiple was 20X, then that'd be crazy. Why would I invest in a business that is clearly talking BS? So it has to be sensible. And also, I think there's an element of having to prove that what we can do with those funds and how we can change our growth does come to fruition.
And so in the course of having Abby, there have been black swans. We've had COVID, we've had the boating industry dropping through the floor on certain occasions. And so getting the growth that we had anticipated hasn't always panned out. And so therefore we have a different plan, which involves the B2B side of things and the flywheel that we briefly mentioned before. But a lot of that is risk. It's like, okay, well, is that going to pan out? And am I going to put that money there? And so I think you see that reflected in that multiple as well.

David Barnard:
Yeah, yeah, that makes a ton of sense. And at the end of the day, and this is where I think VC does often pay a higher multiple because they want you to be growing 100% a year. And when you are growing 100% a year, the 20X multiple, you catch up on that much more quickly. And so they're specifically funding for that kind of hyper growth. And so those higher multiples make sense. But then with this crowdfunding, the idea isn't just a donation. The idea is you will get some return on investment over time. And so the multiple is a reflection of that. It's like, okay, if it's a 5X multiple today, can they double the business and give me a return on that investment over time? And then how long will that take? And all that kind of stuff. And so it makes sense. And that's about what we're seeing for acquisitions.
Unless it's a super strategic acquisition, an app is typically valued only at 4X trailing profit, not even revenue. And so when you think about it from that perspective, a three to five X multiple on top line revenue probably is for a consumer app, a healthy multiple. But it's funny because I think a lot of people will listen to this and think they could potentially go onto a crowdfunding platform and get the kind of VC multiple. But it's nice to have this little bit of a kind of bring you down to earth that it does have to make sense.

Jelte Liebrand:
It does. And I think you hit the nail on the head. I think it's also, it depends on is it "just an app?" And that sounds very derogative, and I don't mean it that way because obviously it's my business, but there's a difference between, okay, it's an app, it's a consumer app, more than likely. And that is the space that it's swimming in. We expanded from that, and I don't know if this is the right segue to go into that B2B side of things, but when you are boating, and we talked about this big yacht that I was on and stuff, there's obviously tech on that boat. And so just like if I am getting in my car to drive to London, there is a dash there. And I might've looked on my phone what the traffic is like to get to London, but when I get in my car, I want that to sync, I want that to work.
And so similarly for us, we're not just that app because we are also now working with B2B and integrating directly with boat manufacturers' helm displays. And that becomes a very different story because now all of a sudden it's a platform. All of a sudden, all the aspects of what we have built has a secondary route to market on that dash of the boat. And that acts like a firewall. If more and more customers, I've had people on the stand at a boat show, boat builders who've come to me because they've got consumers coming to them and saying, "Hey, does your stuff work with Saviynavi?" I goes, "I don't know. Does it? I need to talk to Yota and I figure out how we do this." And so consumers, $3 million, they're going to the boat manufacturer, boat manufacturer coming to us to put it on the boat.
That acts like a flywheel because now as a consumer, I can see, oh, Savyn Abbey isn't just on my phone, but it's also on that boat that I'm going to buy. So it's going to work together. And so it's validation that that is the right tool for me to get when I get on the water. And that's a different thing. Now all of a sudden you're not investing in an app, you're investing in a platform that is changing marine navigation across the board, across the industry, and bringing innovation where there wasn't much, let's just put it that way.

David Barnard:
Yeah, I actually want to dig a little deeper into that. This is one of those areas where I don't think a lot of people listening will have these kind of B2B opportunities to become part of a hardware platform and stuff like that. But you are seeing more and more hardware attached subscription services. And I'm actually going to have on the podcast pretty soon this health company where they white label a wrist-worn device that actually collects way more data than a whoop or a ring. And they're able to do so much more because they are a hardware integrated company. But let's dig into how did that flywheel first start? Did a boat manufacturer come to you? Did you go to them? How did you first get into working with these bigger companies?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, so we go to all the boat shows. We don't actually have a stand at the boat show. I don't think that necessarily works well for apps. Boat shows are expensive. They price these stands per meter for the boats that are going to go on it, which I can't really compete with. But we do. Obviously you see everybody in the industry and walk around. And so a few years ago, one particular boat brand called Arc Boats out of LA, think of them like the Tesla for boats. So it's a fully electric wake boat. It's an amazing piece of kit. They've taken me out on a few times. I'm converted. I want one. Unfortunately, I can't afford one, but we'll get there at some point. But they have this boat and obviously it's fascinating because similar to Tesla, they worked on first principles, they built it from the ground up, redesigned everything, designed the helm, and et cetera.
And so we got talking like, okay, well, that's what I expect to see. That's what I expect to see in the industry. I expect to see some innovation. How can we help? Et cetera. And long story short, we ended up partnering with them to provide them with the charts and some other technology to get that innovation onto the helm of these boats. And as soon as we did, actually somewhat surprising to us, we just found so many more people that came to us. We obviously did the press release on it. And so many people who we didn't even know were building new things because obviously that's their R&D, and so it's not necessarily public yet, started to come to us going, "Hey, we like some of that. Thank you very much." And where previously, as I said, a lot of the stuff in marine was outdated and a little bit clunky.
These boat manufacturers want to innovate, but they couldn't get what they wanted from the normal incumbents in the industry. And so we started to work with more and more and more, and actually more than we initially anticipated across the board. So that's boat manufacturers, that's new marine electronic manufacturers. And what we're seeing is that for a lot of these guys, they know they need to innovate. They know that fundamentally, if you just put the same hardware on your boat as the next guy, well, how's your boat different? It might have an orange cushion or a blue cushion, but that's not really how I'm going to sell this boat. And so they need to innovate and they want to innovate. And for some of them, that means they're building their entire tech stack and their entire software stack themselves and they're bringing it in-house and we're helping with them and we're integrating with them.
And so what we provide is not just an off-the-shelf solution, it isn't truly integrated product for them. For some others, they don't necessarily have the appetite or even the experience and know-how to build it all themselves. So they go to new players in the industry who can provide them with a marine electronics that's slightly different, that allows them more customization, and we work with those. So again, we get on those boats. And then the latest category, which I'm really excited to announce because when this podcast comes out, it will be public, is the more entertaining boats. So in the US, you got pontoon boats, you're not going to go offshore with them. It's not my 70-foot racing yacht in the middle of the ocean. But you go on a lake and you've got the family and you're entertaining and you go from A to B, you might go to a restaurant with a nice pontoon.
These boats traditionally don't have any navigation on them because the navigation would be really clunky and big and complex and expensive and it doesn't make sense. So for these boats, what we're now having is CarPlay. And everybody knows CarPlay. Everybody knows how it works. Everybody know how easy it is. I've got my phone, I put in the route that I want to go to. I get to normally my car and it immediately works. I don't have to press buttons to sync anything or make it work. It just works. And the same thing now with artifots.

David Barnard:
And these entertainment boats, it's like you got Spotify and Apple Music and all the other things you're used to from the car. Put on a podcast, whatever. That's

Jelte Liebrand:
It. Exactly. Exactly that. And now also navigation, just like you have Google Maps in your CarPlay. I have Savvy Navy and you can see where the shallows are and you can keep safe because here in the UK, we don't really have these pontoon boats. So the first time I came to US to beyond pontoon, I was shocked. These things go fast. They're not pottering around, they're going at speed. And if you don't know where you're going and there's a shallow, that's dangerous. So being able to provide that navigational element and that element of safety while at the same time playing your Spotify music and getting a drinks out on the table, it's perfect. It's exactly what that segment of the market needs.

David Barnard:
That is so cool. I've been trying to think as you've been talking about segments that our listeners could potentially enter into because these opportunities are fewer and further in between. But I mean really any hardware that you interact with that feels clunky is an opportunity either to white label a version of that hardware and do better software integration. The thing that popped into my head though was I have a Kia electric vehicle, a Kia EV9. Their app sucks. And I so desperately want to build my - Well, there you go. There's your opportunity.
Well, so I've looked into their API. They don't have really good APIs. I'll probably just reverse engineer their APIs and vibe code an app because I want it so bad for myself, even if I can't sell a reverse engineered app into the market. But hey, maybe if I build a really great app, I can work with them to get it released and get access or whatever. So there's potential there. They might buy an option. Yeah. But then that reminded me of an app, Tessie, that works with Teslas because Tesla, like you were talking about with ArcBoats, they've wanted to be that more software forward, more tech-forward company. And so they actually do have really great API access. And this app, Tessie, is a great example where early on they're like, "Oh wow, wait, there's an API for Teslas? What can we do?" And they've built a really great business and a really cool app that Tesla users absolutely love.
And so it's like there are opportunities like this if you go seek them out and you think creatively about it. And it's so cool to see you after starting as just an app, as we've talked about, not a pejorative, but just an app. But then building in this industry has then created all of these opportunities. I do want to have you talk a little bit more about the flywheel aspect of it. So with the CarPlay in these new pontoon boats, the announcement that just came out yesterday when the podcast airs, is it there a bundle situation or do they promote Savvy Navy as the ultimate way to get navigation? What does that actually look like and how does that flywheel work?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. So it's a bundle and it side depends on the models and we're obviously talking to other people as well. So it's a wide range of opportunities here. So either it is a case of, well, you're picking the high end of this pontoon boat, it comes with 12 months of Savvy Navy. And so ultimately the manufacturer pays us for a QR code or whatever it might be, which touches on other routes to market I'll get back to in a second as well. And so it's bundled effectively with the boat. In other cases, it might be a case where an extended trial is bundled with the boat. In the US, we have a freemium model. Outside of the US we don't, which is actually slightly unique. We have two different business models across geographical areas, which is fascinating for so many reasons. But in the US we do.
And so therefore there is a free product that you can just get anyway that can be more tailored. There are then flavors of the app whereby it is actually, it's not white labeled, but maybe gray labeled for that manufacturer. And so therefore think about particular information of the boat that could be surfaced within the app as well within the CarPlay. So there's a variety of different options and mechanisms to get in front of the user. And yeah, a large part of it is the boat manufacturer promoting us. And this is really where that flywheel comes in because it's all well and good us saying that we are savvy and smart and the best app out there. It carries a lot more weight if that message comes from somebody else, and especially if it's somebody in the business who's been in the business forever and has been building these boats.
And so we do a lot of stuff with partnerships for getting CarPlay and Savvy Integrated for a second where again, where we look for opportunities to get in front of that customer and in front of that consumer. We have a massive program for instructors, boating instructors. When I got my day skipper or whatever, it doesn't really matter which qualification it is, I spent a week on a boat with an instructor. One of the aspects of what he was teaching, it's a sailboat, it has a winch, forget the detail, but basically they'll teach you to always keep your thumbs away from the winch because if you screw it up and your thumb gets into this thing, you could lose your thumb. And if you do the other way around, you only lose a pinky. And it's better to lose a pinky than it is to lose a thumb, which is a little bit of a morbid talk.
The man who's teaching me this is missing a thumb. He literally lost his thumb doing this and is telling me this is why you don't do it. I'm going to trust anything that guy says. If he's done this and to the point of losing a thumb, I'm from now never, ever, ever going to put my thumb near that thing. And so word of mouth is a great thing for any business, but not every mouth is the same value. And so if that instructor is telling me that this is the thing that you need to get, that carries a lot more weight. And the same goes for these savvy integrated partners. If this is a boat manufacturer that's been around for decades building boats and they're putting SavvyNavy on there as a consumer, I'm going to trust that more. And likewise, if more consumers like our product because it is easy to use and it's clean and clutter-free interface, more of them are going to demand that from the manufacturer.
I want this to work with the boat that I'm buying. And so that's the flywheel. It's like the consumer wants it, therefore the manufacturer wants to provide it. The manufacturer provides it, the consumer sees that and now has more validation that this is the right thing to get. And that's how that flywheel works for us.

David Barnard:
Tell me more about the instructor program. Do you treat them as affiliates? Do they have a code? Do they get kickbacks? Do they just get free savvy navy? How does that work?

Jelte Liebrand:
They're not affiliates. They do get a free version of the app. But actually what is far more important is that we work really closely with them and go, okay, how are you teaching boating? What are the things? What are the tools that you use? Here in the UK, there's a big push for digital first to step away from the old way of teaching with just paper charts and doing more digital stuff. How are you guys bringing that into the classroom? What are you missing? What is not really working? And so we've built tools within the app to help instructors teach boating and teach a safer boating effectively. And so yeah, they get time and everything for free, and then their students get a discount. Sure. But the real working mechanics here is that we work closely with them. We do webinars, we take a lot of their feedback, they're beta users for us.
Any features that we have, we first roll it out to them, we get their feedback. Does this work? Does this not work? And so it's a real close-knit arrangement. We do a similar thing in the US. We've just signed with American Sailing.
And outside of instructors, we have a bunch of different programs like this working with chandleries or boat shops where people obviously, they might not be on Facebook, they might not be searching for boat apps, but if they see us in the shop, if they can see a QR code through which they can get something, all of these non-digital routes help us with that validation for an end user to go, "Oh, okay. Well, if I can see it in this particular store that I always go to that I trust, where I get all my kit and they have it, well, that must mean that it's good."

David Barnard:
Yeah, that's so awesome. I would've thought you would be giving them kickbacks, but it's so cool that you're not, but you're giving them a ton of value. So there's a value exchange there by helping them be better instructors. You are giving them free access. But I would've guessed that there was an affiliate revenue kind of situation. But I mean, it just speaks to what a great product you've built and how respected you are in the industry and how much care there is that these instructors would promote and be a part of this without getting that kind of financial kickback.

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah. And to be clear, for a lot of them, they don't want the kickback because they don't want to be seen as a sales rep. That's not the point. The point is how are you safe on the water? And for a lot of them, they also promote some of the other tools or at least use some of the other tools. But we work more closely with them. And so they go, "Okay, well, here are all the tools that are available to you." And there are different apps you can get on the app store and they'll all walk through them, but we're the only ones that are talking to them. We're the ones that are listening to them. And so they will go immediately to San Fernando. If your GPS fails, and I know this is a thing that a lot of people go, "Ah, GPS doesn't fail." Well, if you're in the Baltic Sea right now with everything that's going on geopolitically, GPS does fail.
And so the concept of traditionally on the boat, if the mechanics fail, you need to be able to take what's called a three-point fix. You use your hand-bearing compass to look at a light hose over there and another one over there. And whenever you draw three lines, you triangulate on the paper chart, that's where I'm at. We do that within the app. None of the other apps do that because we work closely with the instructor. And so it's almost like they purposely don't want that kickback because it's not about being a sales rep. It's about being a good instructor and teaching people how to stay safe out on the water and what tools you can use and which ones are the best.

David Barnard:
Yeah, that is so cool. Well, we have a ton of things on this list for us to keep talking about, but we are running short on time. The good news is, and I'll have said this in the intro to the podcast, we're going to have you on the YouTube Sub Club livestream, August 6th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 1800 Central European Time. We will pick up from here and cover some of the stuff we didn't get to. And then we'll also take questions. So those of you who've listened here to the end, jot down a few questions and come join us live August 6th, 9:00 AM Pacific, 1800 Central European Time on YouTube to be able to ask Jelte questions. I think this is so cool. I've been wanting to do this for a while, and this is going to be the second one we've done this way.
So come to that. But there were a few things I did want to wrap up. I wanted to wrap up with the three questions I now ask every guest, and that is, because these are just so fun. I've had so much fun asking these. What is the most impactful experiment or change of the past year, your biggest win of the past year?

Jelte Liebrand:
Two-year subscriptions. So we now, obviously in the US, there's abilities to not necessarily use the app store for payment. Forget the whole debate, whether or not that is a good thing and 30% this and whatever else, that's a side story. But what it has allowed us to do is actually provide different type of subscriptions, and one of which is a two-year subscription. If you're a boat and you've got a boat, you're going to likely have that for a number of years. And so if we can provide you with a two-year plan at a discount that is much more favorable for you. The benefit for us isn't actually, ooh, that's more money. It's more money upfront. And what that does is really help on the marketing side with the CAC payback. All of a sudden, even though we're giving a discount, but ultimately over the span of two years, we're probably getting about the same revenue out of this person, but we're getting it now.
And so that's had a huge impact on what we're then able to do on the marketing side and the spend that we can have because we get that back immediately as we spend it. So I think that's definitely one of the biggest wins this last 12 months.

David Barnard:
Yeah, that's so cool. What level of discount have you found successful for that? You're not doing two years for the price of one, but are you doing two years for the price of one and a half, two years at 25% discount? What does that look like?

Jelte Liebrand:
Yeah, I think it averages on about 30%. So our normal price is 129 bucks a year. The two-year plan is 183. So we're giving $75 off effectively. And so I think that comes down about 30%. I can't do the math in my head, but that's about it.

David Barnard:
Yeah, no worries. Yeah, it's so cool. I mean, there has been a big push the last few years to annual subscriptions for that CAC payback. And then this is taking it to that whole nother level, is that with a two-year subscription, you even have much higher guaranteed LTVs on that. So we didn't even get to talk about, but we'll talk about this in the YouTube live stream. And if you don't come live, it still would be a good follow-up to hear more because I would love to ask more about whether you Do free trials, no free trials, what your freemium looks like, and those kind of things are in my notes, but we just didn't have time to get to today. So we'll catch up on those later. All right. And this is the one I have the most fun asking. What was your worst experiment, your biggest fail of the last year?

Jelte Liebrand:
I think the biggest fail, and I can kind of hear my team in the background shouting this at me at the moment, in my head, is something we call anonymous accounts. So obviously all of us in this space, we're always looking at experimenting and looking at that onboarding flow and the funnel and where do people drop off, et cetera, et cetera. And so obviously one of the areas people drop off is when they need to create an account.That's a friction point. No denying do I put in an email even if I've got federated accounts like Facebook or whatever. It's still a friction and for some people that is a problem. So as an experiment, we went, "Well, what if we just don't have those? What if we just skip that entire step to just go through? We'll create an anonymous account under the hood and let you do what you need to do." We don't actually need your details.This is another aspect that we should probably pick up at some point.
We don't do any email marketing. I hate it, and so I've killed it. I've just thrown it away. But that's a side point. So we did this anonymous account and we did it as an experiment. We do everything. And initially the results were through the roof. It was amazing. It was like, oh my God, this is night and day. This is going to be so good.
And then we rolled it out to 100%. And that success rate started to drop a little. It's like, hang on, it doesn't make any sense. And ultimately, long story short, we ran it for quite some time. It caused so much grief, so much customer support issue because while people are on one side going, well, I want privacy and I don't want my details there, but they actually do want an account. And I have multiple devices. I've got it on my phone. I want it on the iPad, but now how do I sync the two if I don't have an. How do I log in? I need to log in. Surely I need to log in. And it's just no end of grief. And ultimately, the uptick wasn't as good as we though it was due to some metric issues that we found in this region.
So yeah, anonymous accounts is a big topic on our virtual whiteboard and internally people have scars from it.

David Barnard:
And a great example too of so many tests that you think at a 10% or in one particular region that you are experimenting in, the numbers look good, but then once you roll it out, you need to keep an eye on those numbers because they don't always pan out the way you

Jelte Liebrand:
Think they're going to do. They don't. And I think at my time at Google, if you've got a billion users, AB testing is easy. And actually it's surprisingly demotivating because most of the time what you think is going to work doesn't work. But if you don't have a billion users, if you're an app, you're a startup, whatever, you probably do not have the sample size to do proper AB testing. And I think, yes, we should all do AB testing and I will get my team to do it and we do it for everything, but it is difficult. It is so hard to do that. Conversely, it's so easy to fuck it up. Excuse the French, because it is. It is just so easy to get it wrong and to read into the numbers what you want to read into them, or it's only I have the blinkers on and I'm looking at this number that I'm going to improve.
Forgetting that that number down there and the funnel is not completely effective. Nothing is in isolation. And so yeah, experiments, AB testing or ABC testing for that matter, it's so difficult and it's so easy to get wrong.

David Barnard:
All right, last question. Growth would be easier if.

Jelte Liebrand:
Growth would be easier if. So I'm an engineer at heart and I want to measure everything, come back to the AB stuff. And so when it comes to growth, obviously that relates to marketing. I think the one area that I hate the most because I can't measure it is brand recognition. Brand recognition is actually super important. This comes back to the flywheel, this comes back to validation. People need to know about you and if you're starting up, they don't. And so how do you make sure that they do? It's easy enough to get the early adopters, but beyond that, if you want to scale beyond that and thus you want that proper growth, you need brand recognition. And nobody knows. Nobody knows what will stick, what doesn't stick. Next to me, I've got eight boxes here of Saving Avvy caps that we're going to hand out.
Are they going to work? You don't know. And so if only you could measure, truly understand and scale brand recognition, that part, then growth will be easy.

David Barnard:
We should talk about this more on the livestream because it's a nice counterpoint to the last podcast I did with Yulia Lennox where she actually argues, nobody cares about your brand. Brand doesn't matter. She was pretty hard on brand. It was like, performance marketing is the only way you're going to make any money. Bring her on. We'll have a chat.

Jelte Liebrand:
We'll have a chat.

David Barnard:
But I think this is a great counterexample to that where you are building a brand because people need to trust. If they're out on the water, they need to trust you. And you're in a unique position as well with the B2B motion where when the boat manufacturer is telling people to use Savvy Navvy, that is a form of brand play that you just don't get with traditional performance marketing. And so I think she's right that for most apps, brand doesn't matter, but for some apps, brand does matter. And you're an example where I think it really does. So another topic for us to pick up on the

Jelte Liebrand:
Livestream. I think she's right in the sense, even with brand recognition, performance marketing is where your growth is going to come from. But with brand recognition, you can actually scale that more because otherwise you. And again, it depends on the brand, depends on the niche, the market. You can hit ceilings that you cannot get through unless there's brand recognition. And so again, nothing is in isolation. And I'm sure that if you're building a recipe book app, then no, nobody cares about your brand. I just care about the ingredients and the recipes and does it work? But if I'm trusting my life on the water and my family's life to this app, you bet your bottom that I want to know that this brand is good. And so it depends.

David Barnard:
That's a great way to put it. All right. Well, as we wrap up, anything you wanted to shout out, any roles you're hiring, another crowdfunding campaign coming up, if people want to invest or anything else that our audience can do for you?

Jelte Liebrand:
We don't have another funding round, unfortunately, so you're going to have to sit on the sidelines if you wanted to join that boat. There is a secondary market on Cedar, so you can buy some shares that way. But no, no hiring at the moment and no fundraising, but I would love to talk to people and answer questions anybody might have.

David Barnard:
Awesome. Well, thanks so much for joining me. This is fun and I'm looking forward to chatting again in just a few weeks.

Thanks so much for listening. If you have a minute, please leave a review in your favorite podcast player. You can also stop by chat. Sub Club.com to join our private community.