Siren Marine with Dan Harper
World class IoT Innovation founded in Newport Rhode Island, the city by the sea. Siren Marine created a “first mate” app to be aboard your boat and report back any problems while you are away. “Siren Marine” is like “Nest” but for your boat. Essentially, Your boat, in the palm of your hand.” states owner Dan Harper.
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Welcome to Newport Living and Lifestyles
I’m Christon and we were at the
2019 Newport International Boat Show with
Dan Harper of Siren Marine
Thanks for having me. Great to be here. Great to be at the 2019 show.
We’re off and running had a great crowd today.
Yes. It was actually really great!
It was, you know, a little gray outside, but hey, the Sun was shining here.
And it will be shining the rest of the weekend.
I’ve seen that and I can’t wait.
So tell us about Siren Marine.
Yeah, super excited to talk about the company always, of course
Yeah, we’re a Newport Rhode Island based company, very excited about that.
We live and play here and there’s nothing better than actually living in town where we love being on the water
And we’re connected with the marine industry here, especially the sailing piece of the marine industry
Which makes coming to work everyday a bonus.
What is it a drinking town with a yachting problem?
I’ve heard that, I mean, I don’t know that, but I’ve heard that might be the case, yeah
You don’t have a bunch of yachts?
Yeah, I don’t have a tab at the Cooke House, no… That was somebody else…
Yes, they keep my credit card on file, yeah
So what we do is, you see behind me here,
We’ve got a giant iPhone actually and it’s actually a real iPhone it connects with this black box
over in the corner and you can really think of it as Nest for boats.
Like you can change your thermostat or check on what’s happening back home, check the video
What we do is
on any cell phone, Android, iOS, Doesn’t matter
I can click onto our app, which looks the same as this.
Nice boat by the way.
That’s my boat, my swan.
I had not idea.
A little plug for Swan, there.
Swan Nautor
All the things that I’m interested in, my boat is right out here in Newport Harbor, but I’m working a ton, here building Siren.
I’m not on my boat nearly as much as I would like to be and so,
When there’s a storm that comes through or I just want to check and I haven’t got out to the boat for a few days
I just take a look. My battery voltage is right where it needs to be
My geofence is actually broken right now because I moved the boat from my normal mooring
to a mooring just off of the dock for the show. So it’s now gonna be this big red indication,
Hey, there’s something that’s different or wrong and I can I can deal with it.
It’s not a problem in this case because it’s right where it’s supposed to be, but it is outside of the geofence.
so really what we do is we
We are your on board first mate and anything that you’re interested in.
You’ve got a beautiful boat a Hinckley 36
Phenomenal boat, we had a lot of work with Hinckley, another hometown team.
Those things like, you haven’t been out to the boat in a few days, you’re wondering if the battery okay,
is the bilge taking on water? Well, all you do is check your app and there you go.
When did you start your company?
Great question. 2011 I started working on the project in 2006, brought the first prototypes and then
really turned it into a formal thing in 2011 and came here and I want to say 2014
I’ve not heard of this for boats previously,
but you’re gonna buy one from your boat tomorrow.
I’m gonna buy one today today
Today, and on film…
He’s got me now, is there any competition
There are
How do you guys stand out?
We’re leading the pack by
It’s easy for me to say that because I own the company,
He’s not biased
I’m not biased at all
But it’s a great question and it’s one that I love talking about because objectively speaking
if we measure our functionality, our features, our price point
What we offer our customers in terms of peace of mind, features and functions and maturity as a company
We’re on our third generation product, most of our competition
Is just getting their feet wet and this stuff is hard
I’ve got an amazing team of engineers that carry out sort of my vision for the company
They’re way smarter than I am these days and I built the first prototypes a long time ago
I can barely keep up with these guys these days, but they are absolute experts in their field of IOT, RF or
low power edge devices, the things that we do and build are built by incredibly smart guys
And then we leverage additional engineering, where there’s a specialized thing like wireless inter low-power
970 megahertz technology, right, but there’s only a handful of guys that do that stuff.
So we pull in this deep expertise where we need it, to build what we believe is absolutely the
Most advanced marine IOT system available, but really because boats are hard too. They’re they’re battery operated
There’s 12 volt, 24 volt, 36 volt, 110 volt , 240 volt
They’re all different Yamaha, Yanmar, Perkins, the propulsion systems, everything’s different
You’ll have five Hinckley 36’s, you’ll have different electronics, probably different motors, different stuff.
As it turns out marine IOT is really hard.
We’ve been at it for ten years now much longer than most any other company and we’ve continued to evolve and build now our third generation product.
We feel like we can say we really are
Not just the best, but the best by a considerable margin.
and right here in Newport, so that’s Fabulous.
Right here in Newport!
Right how many employees do you have now since you started?
23
Started with one myself, and over the years we went to
three kind of a study state for a while, and then five for a study state for a while then
three for a little while, and five for a while, and then seven to nine, eleven and twelve and then
Twenty-three is where we are at today.
Do you have any insightful things you can tell us that might be coming or on the way for next year’s Boat Show?
behind the scenes?
I can!
Next year’s boat show will be an entirely different thing.
So this is actually the Boat Show as you guys know being Newporters.
There’s a building going in so the show has been redistributed this year.
so our booth is half the size as it usually is because everyone’s is.
What you’ll see next year will be an
different look and feel for Siren Marine because we’re introducing
really some new products that involve bringing data off of the boats
really powerful useful data that we believe is going to transform the marine industry.
It’s gonna allow boat builders, engine manufacturers
industry stakeholders the ability to now provide
services and products that they’ve never been able to provide before based on
the kind of information and data that we’re gonna be delivered.
Do you have a very sentimental testimonial from any of your clients that really pulls at your heartstrings ?
A ton of them actually.
Makes you feeling proud?
Just just before you came into the booth. I had a customer here that came through the first,
this was the first boat show we ever did, the Newport International Boat Show and 20 it was either 2010 or 2011
About 10 years ago.
This customer came through and has had all of our products to date and loves them
and ten years later is still coming to our booth and saying how much he appreciates the product and
watching us grow and I think to sum all of the great testimonials up that would be one that was just five minutes ago.
We just missed him!
I know !
A decade long customer that just keeps,
you know, upgrading with our new products and just
comes every year to say how much he appreciates the peace of mind he gets from having a Siren Marine device.
What about celebrities? Do you have any good celebrity stories for us?
Well besides Jay Leno, well ya know!
Just kidding
But Jay if your out there. We would love to hook up your cars, or boats, or anything motorcycles, bicycles… antique cars…
We do, we actually have quite a number of….. I don’t know if we can actually say who…
You don’t have to, but you can if you want…
I would if I could
Thank you so much, really appreciate learning more about you,
Learning more about Siren Marine and
We look forward to seeing you on
Newport Living and Lifestyles