Seaworthy Year 2 In Review - Looking Back Before Looking Ahead

Before unveiling Seaworthy 2.0 next week, I always love to take the opportunity to look back on the highlights and lessons learned over the last year, as we continue to evolve to better serve our community.

This month marks two years since Seaworthy Collective launched, with our first of over 30 events to date. We started building community rooted in our ANCHORED values, with lofty aspirations of seeding systems change from the ground up. Along the way, we discovered an opportunity to break down barriers to contributing to impactful solutions by building the first ocean and climate startup venture studio. By the start of 2021, we launched our Opportunities for Sea Change, creating the first accessible opportunities for aspiring impact entrepreneurs co-create ocean and climate solutions, while also supporting current entrepreneurs already working to make their visions a reality. All of that led up to the launch of our first venture studio cohort of 10 startups led by 25 sea change makers (founders) in July of 2021.

Seaworthy’s first year was dedicated towards proving our concept and establishing our Collective as a leader in regenerative ocean and climate impact for Miami and beyond. From building an inclusive community that dependably showed up for both our virtual and in-person events, to tangibly demonstrating the value we could create for startups and founders in our venture studio, we knew we were just getting started. In case you missed it, you can read the full recap on Seaworthy's first year here.

Looking back on year #2, the growth, outcomes, and impacts created by our community and team has been everything we could hope for and more. Between wrapping up our first cohort in October of 2021 to our second cohort in July of this year, we've been able to reach over 2300 people with our programs and support 20 startups and 48 founders across 4 continents. Throughout, there were some incredible highlights that we are excited to celebrate with our community, with key lessons learned along the way.

Highlights

Sea Change Makers Cohort 1 - Then & Now

Next month marks a year since we wrapped up our first cohort at Frost Science Museum. While we knew our first group of sea change making founders were off to do amazing things, we didn't realize that would actually be an understatement.

In less than a year after completing our inaugural venture studio program, we've seen an incredible amount of traction and accomplishments for many of the members of our cohort! These are some of the latest datapoints from our first cohort:

Read the full recap on cohort 1 here.

This doesn't even include many of the amazing news our startups made! We saw two of our cohort members, Anya and Kind Designs (FKA The Addition Co) and Nicholas Kee and Kee Farms, pitch at Miami's largest ever climate conference, Aspen Ideas Climate. We also saw Frode and Paulina at Thalasso winning pitch competitions, and so much more!

Earning Our Stripes

Meanwhile, 2022 accelerated the growth of Seaworthy itself, with opportunities that became pivotal to not only growing our business, but truly catalyzing personal development.

Kicking off the year, we were invited to attend the Ultramarine Ocean Summit, an annual gathering of ocean leaders at Richard Branson's Necker Island. We not only proved we belonged in the room; we ended up as co-facilitators (and will be co-facilitating Ultramarine 2023)!

From there, we kept up the momentum, winning the CleanTech category for Synapse Summit's Innovation Award, earning recognition as one of the most innovative startups in Florida! We also co-led breakout groups at the 2022 National Ocean Exploration Forum in Austin, Texas.

Most importantly, we achieved two critical milestones in Seaworthy's growth as the Seaworthy Foundation earned its 501c3 status in March, and we brought on our first full-time employee with Tamara Kahn coming on board to lead our startup programs!

Some other spring highlights included getting to meet Her Deepness, Dr. Sylvia Earle, participating in a local climate leader roundtable with F1 Champion Sebastian Vettel, and becoming Miami-Dade's first startup in residence under Mayor Levine Cava!

While all of this excitement was going on, we remained focused on assembling our second cohort of 10 startups, which launched in April of this year.