Like apartments and cars, you can rent boats between individuals. With 13 million casual boaters (called “sailors”) in France and more than a million boats registered on French shores that remain anchored the vast majority of the time, sailing seems special suitable for shared use.
It is precisely in this niche that the Bordeaux start-up SamBoat, which is celebrating its tenth anniversary, is surfing. On this occasion, Laurent Calando, one of the two co-founders, announced his departure“toward other horizons” (no further details) leaving the helm to his partner Nicolas Cargo.
Today, SamBoat lists more than 50,000 vessels (sailboats, catamarans and powerboats) distributed in 76 countries, and its one million sailors every year from 2022 (in the whole ecosystem that gathers seven brands), of which about 45% are French customers.
Attractive prices and a tailor-made offer
For ten years, they have been promising to make boat charters more accessible thanks to “an overall lower price than with a charter company (up to -40%) and a tailor-made offer”, and “to help owners amortize their costs”, explains Nicolas Cargou, who offers various contracts about renting from the day to the week.
In addition, like Airbnb (or any other mediation platform), SamBoat plays its role as a “trusted third party”: it receives payment on its site and then pays the boat owner, taking along the way a transaction commission of about 18% of the price paid by physical persons. SamBoat also offers, on a margin, an insurance service for tenants (representing less than 3% of its business).
Other conditions (type of license, need for a skipper, duration, options, etc.) are determined directly between the charterers and the owner. But the company says it is available “if the need arises.”
A total of 2.5 million euros was collected
A decade earlier, in order to launch their start-up, the two entrepreneurs say they invested “not even 2,000 euros each”. He supplements his small savings with a modest bank loan of 20,000 euros. A year later, they collected more than 250,000 euros, combining a crowdfunding operation and the support of private investors.
In total, thanks to a second Series A fundraising in 2016 of €1 million and a doubling from Bpifrance, they have raised €2.5 million – far from the €6 million of their competitor, also French. click and ship, launched the same year.
In 2018, SamBoat ended up buying the French giant Dream Yacht Charter. Then, rather surprisingly, this pioneer of online peer-to-peer rental reached profitability during the Covid crisis, 2020. Finally, French group Beneteau enters equity in July 2021. In 2023, SamBoat announces that it has strategically integrated five professional charter companies, including rival French agency Vents de Mer.
And then ? Nicolas Cargou follows his direction: strengthening international development, especially in Europe and North America. For this, he is accompanied by a team of about sixty people distributed in five offices between France, Spain, Germany and the United States.
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