Local residents create ride-sharing app for boating

from June 2023 Liberty Hill Independent Monthly

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BY RACHEL MADISON STAFF WRITER

Let’s face it, most people don’t own a boat. They can be expensive, require a lot of maintenance, and take up a lot of space. However, two Liberty Hill residents have found a way for people to get on the water without owning a boat, all through a free online app.

Kyle Greenfield and Ryan Ostrom are the brains behind Boat With Me, an app they created for boating enthusiasts, including those who want to ride and those who want to provide the rides.

Greenfield and Ostrom have been friends since childhood, and now as adults with careers and families, they are closer than ever, thanks to both living in the same city and creating Boat With Me together. Ostrom is the software development guru, while Greenfield is the boating pro. They started working on their app in 2017, and finally launched it to the public last summer.

“We go boating a lot,” Greenfield said of he and his family. “It donned on me one day that every single time we were out there, whether we were on the water or on the boat ramp, bystanders would be there asking if they could give us some money to just go ride their wakeboard for five minutes or take a quick ride around the lake. I started thinking, ‘There’s got to be a way to meet the demand for the average person, because boat ownership is one of those things that’s a luxury. I’d like to say that it’s not, but it is.”

That’s how the idea of Boat With Me was born. Greenfield said they wanted to make the lifestyle available to everyone and anyone. Ostrom’s background in software was the perfect match to Greenfield’s boating know-how, and together the two started building the app.

“We were certain someone else had already done something like this, but we found that nobody had done it,” Greenfield added. “Uber had tried a taxi service for boats back in 2015, but it failed miserably. After seeing that, we decided if Uber wasn’t able to pull it off, maybe we couldn’t either. We paused and thought about it, but after about two months I called Ryan and told him I felt in my heart we needed to do it. He told me he was just about to call me and tell me the same thing, so we said, ‘Let’s go’ and the next day we started coding.”

It took the pair some time to develop the inaugural version of the app. After a lot of beta testing, reworking and surviving the pandemic that hit the world in 2020, they finally launched the app in late 2021 on both Android and Apple platforms.

“The app really started as a purely social app for people who were interested in boating,” Greenfield said. “From there, we took feedback from people on the beta version and went back to the drawing board. We loved the concept of networking, but we wanted to make sure the app was also worth it for boat owners.”

With that in mind, they added categories that boat owners can select, based on what type of boat they have, that changes the price to different tiers, depending on the difference between a small fishing boat to a luxury sailboat. Greenfield said the average cost per rider is $20 per hour, which puts more money in the pockets of the boat owners who are sharing their boats.

“We have also been able to share this concept with boat dealers, because they might have a couple that comes in and they’re really staring at the $75,000 boat, but they can’t afford it so they settle for the $8,000 boat. But the dealers can tell them about us, and say, ‘Here’s how can afford that boat— let other people pay for it.’”

On the flip side, Greenfield said riders will also spend less money because they are only paying for their own seat on the boat, not the entire boat as a whole.

“Renting a boat is pricey, and usually they’re very beat up, and then if the weather gets bad, you can’t just change things on the fly,” Greenfield said.

Though the app is available to download nationwide, Greenfield and Ostrom have been strategically launching the business in specific areas. They started with Texas, including the Austin, Houston and Dallas-Fort Worth areas, and next moved into Arizona.

“We specifically chose Lake Havasu because the lake is iconic,” Greenfield said. “People travel to that lake from all areas of the country, and the city is driven by the lake.”

Earlier this year, they also launched the business in Florida.

“We started with Texas, and will continue to expand as we go,” Greenfield added. “People come to places like Austin for vacation and business a lot, so we’re hoping they’ll see us and take it back to their home states

N O W O P E N so we can continue to expand.”

Once a rider or boat owner downloads and signs up for the app, they will be prompted to enter the type of experience they want. Riders can drop a pin of the location where they would like to get into the water, and the app will send out a ride request to any boat owner on the app that is within 25 nautical miles of the location that fits the criteria they are looking for, like if kids are allowed on their boat or if the boat owner is okay with alcohol being on board. Similar to Uber and Lyft, riders will pay for the rideshare service through the app.

“This is ultimately a social networking platform for water enthusiasts,” Greenfield said. “Everyone deserves to experience the boat life on their terms.”