Brandon Rundquist, founder of YourYacht (renamed VesselWise in October 2014) and recipient of a $1.5mn funding commitment from Prospus, visited the Prospus delivery center in India over the holiday season. His visit coincides with the second half of the development phase reached earlier this month. This wasn’t just a vacation; it was a working trip as well, as Rundquist intends to demo the app in our lab and coordinate its usage with his team back in Florida.
Rundquist’s trip was extremely productive. Not only did the entire team get to meet the visionary founder, Rundquist got the chance to peek under the hood of the exciting new software application that promises to change the way vessels are managed.”I’m pretty impressed with the Prospus story and what these guys have created”, said Rundquist after his trip. “I got a chance to sit with the team that actually built the YourYacht app and listen to their ideas and see how they built it. They were very thorough on all aspects of the project and found quite a few things I hadn’t even thought about”, he added.
“Brandon is the ideal startup entrepreneur”, said Prospus President and Founder, Marc Ragsdale. “He had all the right qualities to build something of value: he’s mature, neck-deep in the industry, found a real pain point, and is very well-connected”, Ragsdale said.Prospus received the requirements for YourYacht in early 2014 after being approached by Rundquist for the job. Within three months, Ragsdale selected the app for combination funding of cash and services.
Prospus follows a 100-point due diligence process for selecting eligible companies to fund. VesselWise is the first external company that Prospus has invested in. Under the arrangement, Prospus will provide all IT services from analysis through to development, deployment, and support. With $500k in cash, Prospus will also provide a generous budget for the initial launch and marketing efforts.
