Ben Pinnington, founder of PR firm Polaris Media, on venture capital and maritime tech. With investment of $3bn in maritime tech firms being reported at the recent Maritime Technology Demo Day at Posidonia, some think this is serious progress. But a panel discussion at the event organized by TMV, The Captain’s Table, lomarlabs and a host of others, was quick to point out that this is literally a drop in the ocean when compared with Silicon Valley venture capital (VC) investments. A little research shows just how far maritime is behind, and what could be in store with more VCs, including those in California, turning their attention to maritime. Waymo, Google’s driverless car company, alone has attracted $5.bn in multiple funding rounds while Open AI has raised an eye watering $11.3bn over seven rounds since 2015. By comparison in percentage terms, according to the Beyond Blue Accelerator, maritime has only attracted around 0.3% of total VC investment. Nevertheless, the general consensus at the Demo Day was that change is in the air and maritime tech is at a tipping point illustrated in part by the 16 innovators pitching. In addition, the Last Dinosaur Podcast recently reported, in an interview with theDock VC firm, that there are now more VCs with a maritime specialism than ever before. In total there are reportedly more than 40 maritime VCs compared with single figures seven years ago. One of the prime reasons for change is the maturing generation of entrepreneurs and workers disrupting maritime companies. This group, unlike the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers, are digital natives who love tech and expect tasks to be digitised. However, as anyone in the PR industry can probably attest, it has not always been this way. Adopting new forms of communication or ‘story telling’ for some more conventional maritime businesses has been far from a star struck process. In some ways tech, like PR, has been caught in maritime’s conservative pincers controlled by an older workforce, less giddy on the elixir served up in Silicon Valley or the melodrama of newsrooms. Equally it cannot be said tech has truly grasped the passion of the maritime industry. If ever a sector, so steeped in centuries of exploration and entrepreneurship, should be ripe for disruption it is maritime. But there has hardly been a pack of tech thoroughbreds charging pell-mell into ports, shipping lines and shipyards. Perhaps maritime’s low profile approach, seablindness and the lack of a well known front person has something to do with this ambivalence. Or perhaps it is the sheer complexity and size of the sector which relatively few tech titans have experience of. It is something of an anomaly then that maritime and tech are not as far apart as meets the eye. Apple founder Steve Job’s adopted father Paul, who inspired so much of his love of craftsmanship and design, formerly worked for the US Coastguard. And Jobs himself had a passion for finetuning the spec for his mega yacht Venus with the designer Philippe Starck and Dutch builder Feadship. Furthermore, Job’s successor Tim Cook also has a maritime connection through his father Don, who worked as a foreman for Alabama Drydock and Shipbuilding. But whatever was discussed around the family dinner tables, the commercial potential of marine remains tantalising out of reach for the tech behemoth. Perhaps Cook, who abandoned Apple’s autonomous electric car this year, may be tempted to try again with autonomous ships? Speaking with people a