Serbian startup Molo, whose marina management software supports marinas in organizing their clients, berths, and handling of boats, has been acquired by Storable, a Texas-based self-storage software and technology provider.
Molo’s technology helps marine businesses increase their revenue, decrease administrative burden, and better engage with their customers. Its co-founders Rodoljub Stojiljkovic and Lucas Isola, both boaters, founded Molo intending to bring powerful and easy-to-use tools to the marina industry.
“The marina industry is rapidly evolving to require more sophisticated technology and Storable will leverage the best practices they’ve honed in storage to help Molo accelerate technology innovation for the marina industry”, the company said in a press release.
Molo is also one of South Central Ventures’ portfolio companies, with the fund investing in the startup back in 2019.
According to SC Ventures, the €40 million fund, dedicated to investments in startups, small and medium tech-companies in Western Balkans, the deal is another testament to how founders from the SEE region can build globally successful businesses.
“Rodoljub and Lucas had a vision of bringing innovation to the boating industry by digitizing workflows, processes, and payments in management of nautical marinas. They set up a development team in Serbia while focusing commercial efforts in the US market. On their journey, they raised financing from friends, family, business angels, and venture capital funds”, Jan Kobler, managing partner at SC Ventures, tells The Recursive.
For Kobler, the story of Molo is a textbook example of how to build, grow and sell a technology startup.
“In retrospect, it all looks quite simple and logical – the founders identified a problem in an industry they were familiar with, built a solution, started onboarding clients, and stayed very lean and efficient while doing all that. In reality, every entrepreneur will know how much hard work and personal sacrifice lies at the back of it”, Kobler explains, adding that SC Ventures will continue to support and invest in companies such as Molo.
In its portfolio, SC Ventures also includes companies such as AdScanner, InPlayer, and Cognism.
As part of the acquisition, the Molo team will remain in place to continue leading the marina business unit within Storable, the company said.
According to Molo’s co-founder Lucas Isola, the company will now look forward to leveraging the Storable model to build a powerful suite of products in the marine industry.
“Storable not only supplies a huge portion of the storage industry with software, but they also have a marketplace, a payments product, insurance, and a new IoT, access control product,” Isola said in a statement.
“There are so many natural opportunities to achieve great economies of scale and provide our customers with enhanced capabilities to optimize their businesses. This is just the beginning and great things are to come”, Isola concluded.
