Work / 2020–2026
Searine
Electric propulsion, connected products and company building
Founder and CEO
Searine develops electric propulsion for sailing yachts. I founded it in 2020 and ran it until 2026, taking it from an idea to a company with products, a team, investors and a board.
It was the first time everything had to happen at once. Mechanical engineering, electronics, batteries, firmware and connected software had to work as one product. And with it came the other half of the job: fundraising, investor relations, board work and building an organisation.
My role
I was responsible for product vision, company strategy and the overall technical architecture, and for building the team across mechanical engineering, electronics, firmware, software and batteries. Compliance and certification were part of that too.
Alongside the product development, I led business development, go-to-market and partnerships, and everything that comes with outside capital: fundraising, investor relations and board work. My earlier software company had never had investors or a board, so that part was new to me.
As Undine, the company was a finalist for Climate Entrepreneur of the Year in 2021. In 2023 it won the Roskilde Business Award and was nominated for EY Entrepreneur of the Year.
What I learned
Most of the hard problems sat between disciplines rather than inside them: where mechanics met electronics, where firmware met software, and where the technical plan met the funding plan.
Getting those boundaries right mattered more than any single part.
Bridging what I already knew with what I had to learn is, to me, much of what innovation is.
I also learned what it takes to build a company around hardware. Everything takes longer and costs more than in software, and decisions made early are expensive to undo.
It took me deep into the physical side: propellers, cast metal parts, electric motors and battery systems that have to survive the sea. But the product was never just the hardware. Mechanics, electronics and software had to work together with manufacturing, certification, commercial functions and finance.
I had learned how to start and run a company in software.
What was new at Searine was learning how to make very different disciplines work as one product, one organisation and one business.
