Ever wonder what’s going on underwater when you’re fishing?
That’s what piqued Brandon Austin’s interest. He grew up fishing in Canada and Costa Rica and he always wanted to know what was happening in the water. So, he created a company to find out and became flounder of GoFish Cam.
“Growing up fishing, always like everyone else who has ever held a rod in their hands, I wondered what was going on underwater,” Austin said.
GoFish Cam is a small cylindrical wireless underwater video camera that sits on a fishing line near the lure and works with a mobile app and allows anglers to have a fish-eye view of the water.
“It’s become a great tool that every time you reel in, you have some insight into what’s going on,” Austin said.
Founded in 2015, GoFish Cam raised $750,000, according to CrunchBase. It was part of the Central Texas Angel Network’s portfolio as well as a member of Capital Factory’s accelerator program. Capital Factory also invested in the startup.
In March of 2018, Unorthodox Ventures acquired GoFish Cam and brought the organization inside its offices. That’s when Adam Kahn, sheepshead of operations and a member of Unorthodox Ventures’ The Kitchen, joined GoFish Cam to bring the product to an even larger market.
On this episode of the Ideas to Invoices podcast, Austin and Kahn talk about how customers are using the camera and plans for market expansion.
Early on, GoFish Cam effectively used crowdfunding to get its customers engaged early on and to raise money to manufacture the product. The company raised $101,000 from 563 backers during a 2015 Kickstarter project and $120,189 from 631 backers in 2017 from an IndieGoGo campaign.
In addition to anglers, the U.S. Navy Seals began using the GoFish Cam cameras for underwater research, Austin said. Other marine researchers also use the cameras, he said.
“That just shows you a cool part of the entrepreneurial journey, you develop your product for one use case and out of nowhere you find out that you accidentally developed it for something else,” Austin said.
The cameras have captured some amazing underwater footage and GoFish Cam has posted some of them to its YouTube channel on its website.
For more on the company, listen to the entire podcast. Also, please rate and review our Ideas to Invoices podcast on iTunes and support Silicon Hills News by becoming a patron on our Patreon site.
