Hello Ocean Friends,

I’m really excited about this week’s people-to-know interview. I got to chat at length with Marcelino Alvarez of Photon Marine. We got into it for so long that I had to edit the interview down so it didn’t need to upgrade my Beehiiv subscription. We talk about the on-water workhorses, climate as a secondary benefit, and his soon-to-come NYC Sea Trials.

Enjoy the interview. Sign up for Marcelino’s NYC Sea Trials in two weeks. I’ll be there.

Best,

Will

People-to-know: Photon Marine’s Marcelino Alvarez

Will: Marcelino, thank you for taking the time — I appreciate it. Let’s start here: tell me about you and your company.

Marcelino: I'm Marcelino Alvarez and I'm the co-founder and CEO of Photon Marine; we're building electric propulsion systems for commercial marine applications—everything from workboats to tourist boats to aquaculture and government and municipal vessels. 

I grew up in South Florida and spent my summers in the Florida Keys. I'm a lifelong boater — my passion for the water started at a very young age and I've carried that with me ever since.

My career started in the Dot Com era at a video startup that was a little too early. I then parlayed my online video skills into advertising, where I was fortunate to go on to work at two of the world's top creative ad agencies. When one relocated their offices to mountainous Boulder, CO I chose the waters of Portland, OR.

After a few years, I decided to leave my cushy advertising job and start a product design studio building mobile applications, Uncorked Studios. We went from mobile apps to designing interfaces for anything with a screen, to IOT hardware, and expanded to designing and developing emerging tech for innovation teams at Fortune 500 firms.

We sold Uncorked in 2019 to a larger consultancy and then the pandemic hit. Shortly thereafter, I started searching for purpose like I think many of us did around that time. As a father of then two (and now three) little ones, I began to reflect on what I wanted to do next. I sought to combine all my passions in life personally and professionally into one thing. I felt that the key insight for me from the pandemic is that you only get one shot at this and if not now when. 

I joined a couple of friends — and met some new ones — interested in the propulsion space and electrifying vessels. As a lifelong boater and a person who's worked on hardware-software things for some time, this was a strange confluence of everything that gets me up in the morning.

Will: Talk to me about Photon Marine. What's the problem you're solving?

Marcelino: The problem is simply that gas outboards are expensive to own and operate—especially if you're a commercial operator doing 1,000 to 2,000 hours a year on the water.

Commercial operators are out there every day—a boat is a tool for them. They know that gas is expensive. Beyond that, the maintenance programs for gas outboards are designed around recreational use: every 100 or 300 hours, approximately every one to three years. If you're a commercial operator, you're hitting that every six weeks.

Every six weeks you're changing oil, removing spark plugs, replacing the impeller—that's a $200–300 job, plus you're not on the water generating revenue. If you’ve got a fleet of 10, 20, 30, 40 boats, it adds up quickly.

Plus the outboards themselves get replaced surprisingly frequently. For recreational boaters, it’s every five to seven years. Commercial folks? Every two to three years. We’ve even talked to operators who replace their motors every single year just so they can sell them with some warranty left. It’s absurd.

If you were leasing a car, you wouldn't do a one-year lease. And if you're still driving a gas car, you wouldn’t tolerate getting an oil change every other month. But in boating, we’ve just accepted that as normal.

For Photon Marine, the problem we’re trying to solve is an economic one. Yes, it has an environmental benefit, but that is a nice side effect. This is an electric system that is cheaper to own and operate, requires less maintenance, and over its lifetime is significantly more cost-effective than gas.

Will: Electric boating is not an uncrowded space; everyone has a unique value prop. Putting yourself in context with the rest of the market that’s blown up in the last 5-10 years, where is your sweet spot?

Marcelino: We're the only exclusive B2B electric outboard player. Period.

We partner with commercial boat builders to outfit our technology on their rugged hulls — from aluminum to fiberglass to carbon fiber — that are used to move people and products day in and day out. The space is crowded with electric recreational vessels, where there are a number of, beautiful-looking boats out there—stylish lake boats, wakeboarding boats, and freshwater boats with electric inboard systems. And those are important, however, our customers would never purchase one - it’s not what they do.

Our customer sees their vessel as a tool first and foremost. We designed our product to meet the demanding needs of the commercial operator and integrated hardware and our software platform in a purposeful way that considers their needs.

Our outboard is about a foot and a half shorter than a standard gas outboard, which improves visibility and makes towing easier. It’s intentionally low-profile and significantly lighter—not just compared to gas outboards, but in some cases even compared to other electric outboards. Our system weighs under 400 pounds, which gives us room to optimize around battery weight as well. It can be maintained without taking the vessel out of the water. On the performance side, our motors are rated at about 300hp peak, 150hp continuous.

From an investor’s perspective, our beachhead is commercial. That’s where we see a real opportunity to scale—not just in sales volume, but in data generation and customer relationships.

Our customers don’t just have a boat—they have fleets. It’s much easier to sell 100 motors to one customer with 100 boats than to sell one motor to 100 different customers.

Will: It feels like the Blue Economy is having a moment—would you agree? And if you had a crystal ball, what does the 5-, 10-, or 20-year future look like for the Blue Economy?

Marcelino: I do think the Blue Economy is having a moment—because, to borrow a marine analogy, there’s a confluence of several streams coming together.

First, I think venture capital is finally realizing that the ocean is an untapped market. We're seeing food and agriculture innovation cycles moving from land to water. Oysters, kelp farming, aquaculture—it’s a similar evolution to what happened with ag tech on land, just now happening offshore.

Second, I’d say there’s a genuine—not bluewashing—push from corporates to reduce environmental impact. That’s happening partly because of peer pressure, public commitments, and internal sustainability goals. But also, it’s economic. These aren’t just environmental moves—they’re financially motivated, and they make business sense.

Third, the technology itself is maturing. We're now at a point where the economic payoffs are visible, which makes it a lot less risky for organizations that might have been more conservative in the past.

Finally, there’s a legal and regulatory rationale. Governments and regulatory bodies are creating incentives—or mandates—that make these investments necessary and viable.

In the small vessel space, across all these categories, we want to be a thought leader. We’re not just here to sell motors. We want to be part of the ecosystem—bringing along partner suppliers, and channel partners, and helping the entire marine electrification movement evolve.

Will: BlueX has a diverse readership. If you could make an ask—who are you looking for? What kind of intro would help right now?

Marcelino: There are two main groups we’d love to connect with: investors and customers.

And my ask for both is simple: Come spend some time on the water with us.

We’re going to be in New York from April 8th to April 10th. We’ll be operating out of Brooklyn, with support from the Newlab team, at the Navy Yard. The ask is: come out on the water, let’s talk.

If you miss the early April window, we’ll have other opportunities to get you on the water this summer. You can find me on my last remaining social network, LinkedIn.

Editors Note: I plan on being there on April 10th. Come by and check out Photon Marine’s New York Sea Trials. And Newlab is hosting a little celebration afterward.

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