Happy Spring Break Ocean Friends,

Before we get into this week’s (TOTALLY AWESOME) interview with Daniel Kleinman, I have a special announcement. The NYC OceanTech Summit is on for it’s second year! We’re finalizing some of the details but hold the afternoon of June 6th on your calendar. Go to our website and sign up for the early notification list - it is the best way to ensure you get a ticket.

Best,
Will

People-to-know: Daniel Kleinman of Seaworthy Collective

Will: Daniel, thanks for coming. Let’s start here, tell me about you and tell me about Seaworthy Collective.

Daniel: I'm Daniel Kleinman, the founder and CEO of Seaworthy Collective.

We are a Miami-based nonprofit that supports current and aspiring entrepreneurs in ocean innovation, or as we like to call it, BlueTech. To date, we've supported 40 startups and 78 entrepreneurs who have now raised almost $20 million.

We primarily support early stage founders. Usually pre-seed to seed stage, whether it's literally the idea stage, prototype, MVP – getting to those early milestones.

My background is in both marine robotics as well as design and systems thinking. So a lot of the work we do at Seaworthy isn’t one size fits all. It's really bespoke building around each individual founder and their needs.

Our 12 week program is called the Ocean Enterprise Startup Studio and Incubator, where we help founders get from early milestones and their first pitch all the way to finding product market fit and everything in between. We call it the Studio and Incubator because we're co-creating startups in parallel to supporting existing startups. We're founded on a mission of making BlueTech accessible.

Will: One of the things I say about the Blue Economy is that it touches everything. You can take any tech vertical and I can find a Blue Economy startup in it. For Seaworthy in particular, where's the sweet spot or where's the off-limits areas?

Daniel: I'll say a couple of things. Historically we've worked in three verticals:

1. Pollution, both upstream and downstream. Including plastic and nutrient pollution

2. Coastal resilience and adaptation. Such as nature-based solutions or 3D printed seawalls, and

3. Greenhouse gas reduction and removal. Things like marine electrification and carbon capture.

That being said, one of our biggest new pieces was at the end of last year when we won the $14M NOAA Ocean Enterprise Accelerators grant with six other partners, for startups primarily in the ocean data space.

That is already starting to expand our focus through our partnership called The Continuum. But for us, we focus specifically on the regenerative Blue Economy. Anything with extractive potential, we've steered clear of that.

On the flip side, especially with our work with The Continuum, we are looking into a lot of dual use. So a lot of things in the ocean data space have these dual use applications. For example, we supported a company called CASTUS Technologies that is using satellite data to map ocean surface pollution, but can also be applied to things like oil spill cleanup or search and rescue.

So a lot of different ways for us to find applications for these different solutions and explore those kinds of creative avenues.

Will: You've been around this space for a minute now, is there a startup you're really excited about or a success or you love to brag about?

Daniel: I'll share two kind from both ends of the spectrum. Kind Designs is one of our “poster children”, because they're Miami-based with Anya Freeman as founder. We were the first ones to support her back in 2021 in our first cohort. They're leveraging 3D printing technologies to create seawalls that have bio-inspired features like mangroves and coral reefs so that life can bioaccumulate, things like algae, oysters and other shellfish.

Two years after graduating from our program, they raised an initial round. Even though our program lasts only 12 weeks, we provide ongoing support after graduating. One opportunity we set up for Anya was pitching at Miami’s biggest pitch competition, eMerge Americas, where she placed second. That led to her first seed round including an investment from Mark Cuban. Last month, she secured another $5+ million investment! To date, they’ve raised $11.5 million, plus additional grants from the Department of Defense. They’re already well beyond the pilot stage and are scaling up, moving into more commercial opportunities.

They’re one of our rockstar success stories. We were literally the first to believe in each other —Anya and I joke about that all the time.

On the other side, one of our most exciting recent wins is a co-created startup. Co-creating a startup is much harder than supporting an existing one because we bring together three founders—strangers—to align on a shared vision and build something from scratch in just 12 weeks.

We ran our first-ever fellowship program with Miami Dade College, a local community college with the most diverse student population in the country—but no oceanographic or marine science programs. We supported a student via our summer fellowship who initially wasn’t aware of what coastal resilience was. Two months later, she graduated from the fellowship with a startup concept that became Break pHlow.

We paired her with 2 co-founders; a master’s student at the University of Miami and a PhD coral biologist to co-create a startup that combines olivine with breakwaters to sequester coastal carbon and build resilience. Three months after graduating from the cohort, they had already secured $10,000 from a local accelerator in Miami.

This is a huge validation for Seaworthy’s theory of change—making Bluetech more accessible.

To sum it all up, the future of the blue economy is interdisciplinary. It’s not just marine scientists and PhDs—we need people from all backgrounds contributing.

Anya is a great example—she was a lawyer before starting Kind Designs and had no environmental background. This shows how important it is to highlight role models and case studies to break stereotypes about who can create these solutions.

Will: I know you've got an application cycle open right now. Who is that program for? Who should be applying? What type of person or startup are you looking for?

Daniel: Under our umbrella of the Continuum, we are launching our Ocean Enterprise Startup Studio and Incubator, specifically focused on data-centric startups aligned with NOAA’s goals. We support data-centric startups —whether by capturing valuable data with hardware or leveraging software to generate critical insights using AI and other advanced processing methods.

That’s our niche focus, but we also have support beyond NOAA, allowing us to work with startups that align with the verticals I mentioned earlier. This is part of our 12-week program.

It’s called the Ocean Enterprise Startup Studio and Incubator. We work closely with founders—we’re in the trenches with them. We like to say our program is more like “co-founder as a service” because we dive deep into their challenges, helping them identify and solve problems they might not have even realized they had.

We also focus on foundational elements—developing theories of change, business models, and creating opportunities and connections that founders may not have considered before.

This is our flagship program, and our sixth cohort will launch this fall. Applications are now open and will remain open until June 26. The cohort will start early August and run through the end of October.

We also have our new platform, The Shoreline, to support additional startups with access to much of what we offer in our formal programs, including our network, resources, opportunities, and 1 on 1 support on a less intensive basis.

Will: You sit in a very interesting place in the Blue Economy. What are you excited about in the ecosystem? A specific technology? Projects you’re seeing coalesce?

Daniel: First, just to reiterate your point about where we are in the Bluetech ecosystem—we’re in the earliest stages. Many of the startups we see aren’t even ready for angel investment, let alone venture capital.

Given where we are in the ecosystem, and especially with federal funding for startups at this stage evaporating, it’s a challenging environment. On one hand, it’s not the most exciting time in terms of traditional funding—it can feel discouraging. But at the same time, it’s an incredibly exciting moment for philanthropy. That’s where we’ve been focusing in parallel with everything else we’re doing—developing our own investment vehicle using philanthropic capital.

I’m really excited about the future of philanthropy becoming more scalable and effective. A lot of my time and energy has been spent figuring out how to mobilize philanthropy in a way that drives greater impact. That means not just funding beach cleanups or saving sea turtles—those are important, but they don’t address the root problems at scale.

Historically, philanthropy has funded a lot of incremental efforts, but the problems we face are exponential. We’re looking at how to drive innovation in philanthropy to mobilize more capital, support startups, and help de-risk them for investment down the line.

That’s what I’m most excited and passionate about right now. 

Will: Well I’m about to publish this interview in a newsletter. Looking at that audience, who do you want to talk to? What ask would you make of them? And how do you want them to engage?

Daniel: We’re really excited about finallylaunching our Shoreline platform. The goal for Seaworthy, and the Bluetech ecosystem as a whole, is to create clearer pathways for engagement. Typically, collaboration is challenging because we’re all small, often underfunded, and capacity-strained organizations. Even though we want to work together, it’s really difficult. And I don’t think we talk about that enough.

With this platform, we’ve mapped our network, resources, and opportunities to make them more accessible without the unneccesary formality or commitment of our 12-week program. 

So, if you're looking to mentor and support startups, we’ll be putting that call out—hopefully in time for our next cohort recruitment or shortly after. And if you're an investor or philanthropist looking to offset capital gains or mobilize your philanthropy for more effective outcomes, we’d love to chat.

Lastly, for Seaworthy, with our flagship Ocean Enterprise Startup Studio and Incubator, we’re always looking for current and aspiring founders. That’s really our niche—finding people on the verge of taking the leap into Bluetech. This is your opportunity to jump in, even if you don’t have a fully developed idea or co-founders yet. We help bring it all together, forming strong interdisciplinary teams with value-aligned individuals.

Will: Very cool. Well, thank you for your time. I really appreciate it.

If you are a founder looking for accelerator or studio support, checkout Seaworthy Collective’s programs here.

OceanTech Fundings

📞 Underwater wireless communication company WSENSE raised €7.2M in a pre-Series B round led by FINCANTIERI with CDP Venture Capital SGR, SWEN Capital Partners, RunwayFBU, Axon Partners Group, and Rypples. | More from Silicon Canals

⚓️ Autonomous defense vehicle company Blue Water Autonomy raised $14M from Eclipse, Riot, and Impatient Ventures. | More from Pulse 2.0

More OceanTech News

📖 Builders Vision Joins Forces With the National Geographic Society to Amplify Stories and Inspire Action Toward a Sustainable Blue Economy | Together Our Organizations Will Elevate and Support the Changemakers Driving Systemic Oceans Solutions | More from Builders Vision

🛳️ UK-US Collaboration for Zero Emissions at Port with First-Ever Integrated Solution | Startups STAX Engineering and Seabound completed a successful demonstration, proving viable comprehensive emissions and carbon capture for the global maritime industry. | More from GlobeNewsWire

🌎 EarthX Announces 10 Semi-Finalists Competing for Prestigious 2025 EarthX Climate Tech Prize | Selected Startups to Pitch at EarthX's 9th Annual E-Capital Summit for $15,000 non-dilutive cash prize. Ocean Exchange Returns to Earthx2025 to Host Blue Economy Pitch Showcase. | More from PR Newswire

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