What is the 10-questions interview? Regularly, we interview a promising startup or scale-up in the climate & energy tech ecosystem and ask them our 10 questions to showcase their technology, inspire the sector with their ambition and better understand their needs. With our platform (ZERO), we want to put these bold innovators on a pedestal and introduce them to our audience. Do you want to connect with this startup/scale-up, feel free to contact us at info@platformzero.co! 

Bruno Balbi, Co-founder of i4sea, combines a visionary approach with a proven track record in driving climate adaptation technology for maritime industries. In this “10 Questions” interview, he delves into his leadership journey, the mission of i4sea, and how the company is transforming the maritime and offshore energy landscape with its cutting-edge weather and sea intelligence platform.

1. Could you briefly introduce yourself, who are you and what makes you tick?

My name is Bruno Balbi and I co-founded i4sea with friends in order to make people and businesses less vulnerable to current and future climate challenges. I’m creative in my essence and I love to create things and find ways to scale them commercially.

2. What is the core of your mission (the bold goal) that you are pursuing?

The core is to make sure that we have a resilient future when it comes to the impact of climate change in our daily lives, especially in the most vulnerable areas of the globe – the coast.

3. What are you building/developing with your organization?

We developed a solution that supports operators and planners in the maritime, port and offshore wind industries in reducing downtime, fuel consumption and C02 emissions while increasing operational safety. We provide a weather and sea intelligence platform that accurately forecasts hyperlocally waves, wind, currents, water level and many other parameters combined with operational insights and alerts customized to each specific operation.

4. What makes your team that you are working with, special?

Not only are we incredibly passionate for what we do, but we’re also very committed and motivated by our mission. It’s very engaging to wake up everyday and notice that little by little we’re helping our customers to be safer, more efficient and growing despite the increasing number of extreme weather and sea events around the globe.

5. What is your view on our climate challenge and how do you want to contribute?

The main impact is that extreme weather and sea events are getting more regular and more intense day by day. In a climate that has already changed, we need to change the way we adapt to it, so we’re resilient to it. Our way to contribute is making sure that we’re able to capture these events so people can prepare for it and reduce the impacts as much as possible.

6. What is your view on your sector and what is needed to accelerate change?

Our sector is made of traditional industries, much because it needs to be conservative, as we’re dealing with lives at sea and very expensive assets (ships, ports, Wind turbines, etc). So in order to get there, there’s a need to gain trust with the industry showing that it is possible to have a better tool to tackle the weather and sea impacts. Unfortunately, the impacts of climate change are creating awareness in the industry, and companies more and more are actively using or looking for solutions that can better support them in this challenge. We notice that every year this topic becomes more important – especially because of the carbon neutral goals, solutions that can help reduce fuel consumption and emissions are very much a priority.

7. What are some recent highlights that really make you proud?

In less than a year, we ran a pilot with Vattenfall, signed a contract for 4 wind farms and expanded to all of their active offshore wind sites. This showed that not only we have the best and most accurate forecast out there, but also we have a solution that is tailored to support Offshore Wind the best way possible. We also just closed a €1.2 million funding round, led by KPTL in Brazil, one of the country’s largest early-stage funds, together with Polaris Investimentos, and are rapidly expanding our team and solution worldwide.

8. What is the biggest challenge you see for your company to grow even faster?

Getting access to the decision makers in the main market leaders of the industry. We don’t operate in a market where cold calling works, we need to build trust and for that we need warm introductions and referrals. The more satisfied customers we have the easier it gets, but it’s still a challenge. We haven’t found a sales channel that is able to accelerate the way we would like.

9. Are there needs (network, funding, people) that our community could provide?

Because of the answer in the previous question, our main need is the network. Especially with offshore wind but also with ports, terminals and shipping companies.

10. What are the 3 inspiring startups/scale-ups you think we should interview next?

TeqPlay, Mavisoft and Reefy

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