Pandemic-fueled shutdowns, labor shortages, supply-chain issues, and more managed to rock and nearly sink Zin Boats.
Riding a wave of enthusiasm nearly four years ago for its high-performance electric speed boat, the Seattle-based company was poised to get to work filling orders for its proof-of-concept machine: the super-speedy, zero-emissions, carbon fiber Z2R.
When COVID-19 hit in 2020, founder Piotr Zin and his dream were deemed non-essential and shut down, and he almost gave up.
‘While we may have been on hiatus, we’ve been learning, we’ve been building.’
— David Donovick, president and COO of Zin Boats
Now, with a core team of tech, engineering and manufacturing experience behind the longtime designer and inventor, Zin is recharging his company and setting his sights on a number of milestones in the year ahead.
The company is stealthy about its plans for 2024, but they did just raise $1.275 million in seed funding to bolster what’s coming, four years after Zin raised $250,000 in friends and family money to get things running.
“While we may have been on hiatus, we’ve been learning, we’ve been building,” said David Donovick, the company’s president and COO. “This stuff doesn’t happen overnight. There’s intentional learning and development.”
That learning will help Zin Boats compete with a number of companies in the emerging electric boating space, including some in Seattle and with ties to the region.
Pure Watercraft has been working on electric propulsion for boats for more than 12 years, and with backing from General Motors, unveiled its fully electric Pure Pontoon last year. Founder and CEO Andy Rebele accepted the Sustainable Innovation of the Year award for the company at the 2023 GeekWire Awards.
Jon Roskill, the former CEO of business technology company Acumatica, is also in the game, serving on the board of Swedish electric boat maker X Shore and hyping the company’s offering at last year’s Seattle Boat Show.
Valued at around $5 billion in 2022, the global electric boat market is poised for growth that could double that amount by 2030, as more companies and customers seek sustainable solutions on the water.
During a recent visit to Zin Boats’ headquarters space in Seattle’s Interbay area, Zin told GeekWire that he’s passionate about making the Pacific Northwest a destination for custom-built boats.
“One of the reasons why I started this is because I’ve been sailing and boating here for a good third of my life,” he said. “And we have an incredible pool of talent, people who can build anything — from carbon fiber, to upholstery, to woodworking to just about anything you can imagine. And it’s completely untapped.”
Zin, who serves as Zin Boats CEO, has a two-decade design background that stretches from tech to automotive to marine, with stints at Microsoft, GM, BMW, Brunswick Boat Group, and more.
He’s joined at the helm by Donovick, who spent nine years at Microsoft and previously founded and led Pivotal Living, makers of a wearable fitness tracker back in 2014. Donovick has a deep connection to boating in Seattle. His father was a commercial fisherman whose name is on the memorial wall at Fisherman’s Terminal, which honors those who have lost their lives in the industry and is just a stone’s throw from the Zin Boats HQ
“We are boat people. We grew up on boats,” Donovick said.
Originally from Poland, Zin was blessed to grow up on clean lakes, swimming, scuba diving, fishing and boating all his life. But the guy who designed gas-powered Mercury outboard motors and power boats for years had a greening of his heart when he held his new child and realized he needed to do something about the quality of the water and planet he was leaving behind.
“I have a lot to apologize for,” Zin said.
But even with his desire to remove gasoline, oil, emissions and excessive noise from the boating equation, he’s holding on to his other passion.
“I’m absolutely addicted to adrenaline and speed,” Zin said. “I wanted to build an electric boat, but I wanted to do it in the same way I build everything else in my life. In terms of the performance and everything else … this boat is insane.”
TechCrunch called the Z2R the “Tesla of the sea” in an August 2020 profile, and its a moniker that Zin has held onto.
“It’s the equivalent of a race car,” Zin said of the boat, parked on a trailer in the company’s HQ, sporting some of the scrapes and dings it earned as a demonstration model for potential buyers over the years.
“Tesla made the Roadster, and then they made a bigger car and a bigger car. So, this is our Roadster,” he added, comparing the Z2R to the Tesla sports car that was that company’s entry into electric vehicles and spawned production of its more affordable models.
The Roadster comparisons might have to stop there, as Zin Boats has no plans to blast the Z2R into outerspace.
But Donovick does credit the electric vehicle industry for paving the way for what’s happening in boating, saying that the market is ready to take off thanks to tech and battery advances, more available expertise, and a growing overall ecosystem.
“This was our boat to learn, to prove that we could do it,” Donovick said of the Z2R. “When we decided to relaunch the company, it was all about taking the learning from this boat and evolving that into a new production boat.”
And the company is poised to capitalize on advances in its design and manufacturing processes.
Along with Zin and Donovick, Zin Boats now includes VP of engineering Ross Carmichael, who has 30 years of boat design and building experience and even had a hand in BMW’s reimagining of the U.S. Olympic team bobsled, which won gold at the Vancouver Winter Games in 2010. And Pat Walker is Zin’s VP of manufacturing, with 40 years of experience across the boating and aerospace industries.
“We’re building the next generation of electric boats,” Donovick said.
