Flagship Founders

European Startup Map 2022

Flagship Founders’ first European Maritime Startup Map to illustrate the current landscape of maritime tech startups and scaleups in Europe

Why are we doing this, and why now?

We believe that digitalization, and with it young, innovative tech companies will shape and transform the future of shipping in a crucial way. We believe that discourse and networking are also key factors for the success of our industry. And we believe that transparency plus a holistic view of developments in our industry are needed so that we all have common ground for exchange and further development.

Other sectors and other regions of the maritime industry have led the way with comparable provider landscapes. However, a European Maritime Startup Map that focuses on innovative technologies and software solutions has not existed until now. It is time for that to change!

Why does our map look like this?

For many of the sectors shown on the map, there are neither fixed categories nor universally valid definitions. This means that we had to make many decisions in the process of creating the map.

  1. We have integrated all European countries into the map. To limit ourselves to the EU would mean excluding important countries such as The United Kingdom or Norway –  the informational value would be very limited.
  2. We included companies that are no more than 10 years old and stand on their own – we have not taken corporate spin-offs into account, as these usually have different prerequisites and characteristics than independent startups due to their dependence on the parent company.
  3. Many companies from related sectors such as logistics also offer applications for the maritime industry. We have not integrated these but limited ourselves to purely maritime players. Otherwise, the map would have become much larger and the clarity would have suffered.
  4. Our core topic is the digitalization of shipping. Therefore, startups and scaleups that produce hardware, for example, are not included in our map. Instead, we limit ourselves to software providers, as they in particular are the drivers of digital transformation.
  5. Many of the mapped companies fall into several categories. We have placed them where we believe their core business model is located.
  6. We have created the categories to the best of our ability, in order to achieve a compromise: a map that offers enough granularity to be meaningful –  and at the same time it is so small-scale that clarity is lost.
Help us complete and improve the map!​
MinusPlus

One thing is certain: the first vision of our map can not possibly be error-free and complete. We have created it with the greatest possible thoroughness, but we have certainly overlooked some companies or not classified them quite correctly. We would therefore be very grateful for your feedback! Do you think a company absolutely has to be included – or that your own company is missing? Do you see a startup on the map that we have placed in the wrong category? Or do you disagree with the categories we have chosen? Also if you have general feedback on the map or are interested in exchange and networking beyond that: Contact us! We certainly can’t take everything into account. But we promise to take all feedback seriously.

What's next?​
MinusPlus

The maritime tech landscape is evolving so quickly that an overview of the ecosystem can only ever represent a snapshot that quickly overtakes itself. Therefore this is of course not meant to be the last (and only) such maritime tech starup map from our company. We will improve and update it based on your feedback and plan to publish a completely revised version annually in the future. If you have any questions or suggestions, please contact info@flagshipfounders.de We look forward to your feedback!

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