A duo of Serbian entrepreneurs is bringing fishing into the digital age with , an app that connects charter boat captains with fishing enthusiasts.
The app, nearly a year old, received attention this week after earning an at startup convention TechCrunch Disrupt, allowing creators Vukan Simic and Nemanja Cerovac to present FishingBooker onstage in San Francisco in front of the tech world鈥檚 biggest names.
Simic and Cerovac, recent graduates of the University of Belgrade, launched FishingBooker in October 2013 to simplify the process of chartering a boat. Using either the app or FishingBooker.com, anglers can both find and charter boats online鈥攚hat FishingBooker content manager Dean Ibisbegovic calls 鈥渢he equivalent of Airbnb with a rod and reel.鈥澛
鈥淔ishingBooker was actually started out of our own necessity,鈥 Ibisbegovic told 国产吃瓜黑料 Online. According to Ibisbegovic, the decentralized chartering industry made it painful for his team鈥攆ull of avid fishermen鈥攖o find suitable boats. Rather than listing on one central website, he says, most charter companies list boats only on their own sites. To compare packages, fishermen have to call each captain individually for quotes.
With FishingBooker, prospective renters can see hundreds of listings in one place. Users can search by boat location, trip date and length, party size, and price. They can even specify which equipment and technology they鈥檇 like on board. The app allows users to review boats and captains and offers 鈥淟ive Angler Support鈥 through a chat screen for real-time assistance.
鈥淭he fact that, for about 10 minutes or so, the entire tech world stopped and listened to how we are reinventing the way people organize their fishing experiences just goes to show that the need for change is overwhelming,鈥 Ibisbegovic said of the founders鈥 experience at TechCrunch Disrupt.聽
In its first year, FishingBooker has rounded up 582 boat listings in 55 countries and facilitated about 300 bookings.