Windward is a maritime data and analytics company bring unprecedented visibility to the maritime domain. It has built the world’s first maritime data platform, the Windward Mind, which analyzes and organizes the world’s maritime data. An industry solution, Windward is making maritime data accessible and actionable across the maritime ecosystem for the first time, from flagging criminal threats at sea to identifying new market trading opportunities.
Ami Daniel & Matan Peled, Groundbreakers Behind Windward
Ami Daniel and Matan Peled, co-founders of Windward, founded the company in 2010. Both of them are former naval officers who saw a huge opportunity in bringing visibility to the historically opaque maritime domain. Windward uses data sciences powered by deep shipping expertise to make sense of today’s maritime big data, making it accessible and actionable across industries.
Maritime Data Impact Across Sectors
Windward’s data and analytics are in wide use by governmental clients – navies, coast guards, customs and intelligence agencies – who use its data to preemptively identify threats at sea, even without any prior intelligence. Windward is now exploring how its unique data and analytics can be used in the financial world, including by hedge funds, commodity traders and other financial institutions for whom understanding the reality of the world’s global commodity flows is key.
Windward’s unique maritime data platform, the Windward Mind, takes all of today’s maritime data – over 100 million data points per day from different public, commercial and private sources – fuses and cleans the data from noise and manipulation and then organizes it into the individual ‘DNA’ of each vessel worldwide. This DNA is a full account of each ship’s history, including all voyages taken, ports visited, cargoes loaded, etc. With this depth of information about each vessel worldwide, and a similar mapping of maritime geographies and areas, Windward is able to offer unprecedented visibility at both the individual ship and the aggregated cargo levels.
Initial Difficulties make Success Base Strong
Ship activity across the oceans impacts nearly every sector – 90% of the world’s trade is transported by sea and there are huge security and environmental stakes as well – and yet the oceans remain one of the last analog markets, resulting in very limited visibility for decision makers across industries who are impacted by ship activity worldwide. Windward’s mission of bringing unprecedented visibility to the maritime domain is ambitious, and it is made possible by the team’s passion for taking on a global challenge that will have a real impact in the world and having the best people on board for the journey.
All Set for Future Implementations
Windward is seeing a lot of interest in its unique data and analytics across industries. Its next frontier is the financial sector, from hedge funds looking for new datasets to find trading opportunities to commodity traders who want to better understand the actual physical flows of the world’s commodities.
Advice On the table for Startups
Perseverance is the name of the game. Any company doing something worthwhile is doing something new, and people are skeptical of new concepts and ideas. As an entrepreneur, you and your co-founders may well be the only people who truly understand the value of what you’re doing. Stick with it. If it’s a good idea, if you are truly moving the needle, people will come around.