Click here for Part I & Part II

Giving boaters the freedom to explore—without unnecessary costs and frustration

Dan Cowens is the founder of Snag-A-Slip. Launched in 2015, Snag-A-Slip is a boat rental service that makes it easy for boaters to explore new marinas and book boat slips across coasts in North and Central America. Customers can use their personal computer or mobile device to browse marinas and reserve a vessel in minutes, with no booking fees. Dan, a US Army veteran, is also the founder of Oasis Marinas in Annapolis, Maryland.

EDWIN WARFIELD: Snag-A-Slip recently acquired Marinalife, a boating magazine and member organization. What made you decide to buy that company?

DAN COWENS: So, Marinalife is similar by name—I say that it’s kind of similar to my previous life. Towne Park, which was my previous company I was a part of, did a lot of things that were even outside of parking, if you will. They did things inside the hotel, they did things inside the casinos to help with the customer service components. Marinalife, I feel like, is the same thing in that, because it has the word “marina” in it, it really makes people in their mind think about them as this really focused—it pigeonholes them, if you will, where Marinalife itself as a publication is amazing. It could compete from a quality standpoint with any travel magazine that’s out there, whether it’s Coastal Living or any other ones like Travel & Leisure, any ones that are out there talking about places to travel. That’s what I tell my friends: I’m like, “you should get your subscription to Marinalife, not because it’s a part of our company now but because it’s amazing.” If you like to travel around to amazing places and know where to eat, know where the retail shops are, know some of the local customs and events that are happening, this is the one to be.

But, what got us into looking at Marinalife as far as an acquisition goes, it really came down to one, a great product; two, a cultural fit. From a great product standpoint, we’re doing a lot of work with Joy who was the founder and CEO for 18 years at Marinalife, and our teams got along famously. One day, Joy and I were talking, and I said, “love what you’re doing, I think you like what we’re doing.” She’s like, “no, I love what you’re doing, too.” I said, “Our teams get along great, so why don’t we just figure out the math and do a deal?” And I kind of sat there quietly waiting, and she was like, “I think that would be great.” So, it was really cool to move that forward.

And then it came down to: How does it make sense for both companies to interact? And, we’ve really come up with some cool things. I don’t know if it was the cart before the horse, where we really looked at product and at the team first and that was the reason for the acquisition, and after the acquisition was done, then said, “All right, how are we going to do an integration and what makes sense?” And we whiteboarded everything and looked at what the boaters want, what the marinas want, what people want; looked at all those types of things. And now you have where they’ve integrated seamlessly with Snag-A-Slip, where Snag-A-Slip and Marinalife now are a marketing powerhouse together because you can get advertisements in the magazine, you can get email blasts, you can get all the social media presence, you get the SEO, and then you also get a way for people to be able to book in your marina. Like I said, it’s become a marketing powerhouse, which we’re really excited about.

Q. Let’s take a step back: How did you manage to fund Snag-A-Slip?

A. For the first 18 months I funded it myself. I was very fortunate with my exit with Towne Park, so I funded it myself. My wife was okay with it. I got her blessing. And then, as we started to look at doing a convertible note that was going kind of be right time money, up until we were doing the Series A, I went out to the team, I went out to our actual teammates and employees and said, “here’s an opportunity if you’d like, and I want to offer it to you first.” I was really humbled that everyone on the team essentially drained their savings accounts and 401(k)s and kids’ college funds and all kinds of stuff, because they doubled down on it. We raised a lot of money from our internal employees. It was myself and my teammates that funded it for that first 18 months.

Then, I went out to a couple friends and family. You know, when I was in business school, they said, when you’re raising money you have to go to the three Fs: the friends, family, and fools. We were really fortunate that we had some people that really believed in us. We won an entrepreneurship competition twice at the Perdue School of Business at Salisbury University. And, the second time we won we went back and one of the board members confided in me, he said, “I’m really excited to see the progress and how well you’re doing, and now I understand what you’re doing. When you won last time, the consensus in the room was we weren’t really sure what you were doing, but we were willing to bet on the team because whatever you did you were going be successful in.”

While we were doing that, we also raised some angel investors. Abell Foundation was one of our first big angel investors that came in, and they were amazing to work with. They were just so, so amazing and gracious, it was humbling for me to see their mission and how dedicated they are to the City of Baltimore. We really wanted to work with them and not just give them lip service about what we wanted to do in Baltimore but really put meat behind it—not just have the sizzle of the steak but actually put some meat behind it. We’re really excited about what we’ve been able to do from our growth rate. We moved from Annapolis to Baltimore because of Abell.

And then it was some friends and family. A group of guys I met at a bar at a boat show had me over to their house, talked to them and one of their sons for about an hour, and I walked out with a check in my hand, and it was the first check I’d ever gotten from somebody that wasn’t a friend or family. So, I remember calling Marco, who’s our VP of Ops, and said, “we have somebody else’s money now!” We celebrated. Those were the milestones leading up to the Series A.

Connect with Dan on LinkedIn

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Edwin Warfield, CEO of citybizlist, conducts the CEO Interviews.

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