Savvy Navvy exceeds crowdfunding target ‘within hours’

Savvy Navvy has raised more than £800,000 with its fourth crowdfunding round, exceeding its original target.

The UK-based marine tech company started overfunding on investment platform Seedrs yesterday, only hours after opening its doors to investors.

The company says offers are still coming in, and it will continue to overfund for as long as possible “to give everyone who wants to own a piece of the marine tech company a chance to come onboard”.

It’s the fourth time Savvy Navvy has exceeded its crowdfunding targets, as the boating navigation app company predicts another huge growth year with the leisure boating market set to continue its boom in 2022.

Billed by the company as “Google maps for boats”, Savvy Navvy was founded by avid sailor and ex-Google software engineer Jelte Liebrand in 2017, who set out to simplify boating navigation.

The Savvy Navvy app lets boaters check essential marine information and plan trips at sea at the touch of a button, acting as a digital cross-check to traditional navigation.

Together with co-founder Kevin O’Neill and backed by the founders of Kahoot, the Savvy Navvy app has had more than 43 million miles plotted by hundreds of thousands of users globally, according to the company.

“I’m blown away by the support and it’s incredible how quickly we have overfunded, and continue to overfund, during this round,” says Liebrand, the company’s CEO. “Our vision from the outset has been for Savvy Navvy to be in every boater’s pocket, supporting both new and experienced boaters on the water and there is a real appetite to join us in this.

In November, the company reported record growth for 2021, breaking global user targets for the year and doubling revenue in the last quarter.

“In 2021 we set out to obtain 15,000 paying subscribers for our boating navigation app and we blew past that target at the end of the summer,” says Liebrand. “With the boating boom surpassing even our own projections, we will continue to keep the funding round open for as long as possible to give everyone the opportunity to own a piece of Savvy Navvy. What a way to start 2022.”

The company’s previous three crowdfunding rounds on Seedrs have all been oversubscribed, raising a total of £1.8m since 2019. Liebrand says he is excited about the new investors joining his expanding marine tech venture, which has seen a particularly huge boost in North America, Norway and Sweden in the last quarter.

“Now in our fifth year here at Savvy Navvy, we are actively shaping the marine industry for the better and challenging the bigger navigation apps in the market. We’re pulling the technology out of the dark ages and making it possible for more people to enjoy this boating boom with safe and easy marine navigation solutions. This investment will help continue to drive these business and new technical innovations forward. It is a rare opportunity to play a part in shaping the future of sailing tech as we know it and we are so delighted to have our new investors on board,” he says.