Dan Cowens & Paige Holden: Startup Snags Success with Hotels.com for Boaters

Dingman Bootstrapped

After an eight-year career in the military and 20-plus years of experience in hospitality management, Dan Cowens entered the Smith School of Business’ Executive MBA program. He completed the program with an MBA degree and a new startup. The company, Oasis Marinas, provides high-quality marina management services in Annapolis and around the world. When pitching the idea in his entrepreneurship class, Dan was joined by fellow classmates including Paige Holden, who is now the VP of Marketing & Communications. On this episode of Bootstrapped, Dan and Paige talk about founding not one but two startups targeted to boaters. The founding team talks about discovering a pain point experienced by many boaters and deciding whether to buy, build or outsource a solution. In their case, there was nothing to buy so they built Snag-a-Slip.com, which acts as a Hotels.com for boaters looking to book a boat slip. Challenges included building the market on both the supply and demand side; determining a business model that works for both the marinas and the boaters; and ensuring a replicable and scalable model before launching in new markets. Hear their story and play along with this episode's installment of “Kickstarter or Not.”