We’re Joost, Hannah, Raja, and Guy, the co-founders of PlanBlue. We’re based in Bremen, Germany, and started the company back in 2017.
Joining forces was a combination of chance, and our complementary backgrounds. We were all motivated to use our knowledge to solve real-world problems. We all wanted to make an actual difference. And we all wanted to improve the environment.
Before PlanBlue, Joost was working as a marine biologist. He’d done his PhD and postdoc on the effects of climate change and pollution on the seafloor. He was also an active diver and dive instructor, and spent a lot of time looking at our fascinating underwater world. He was becoming increasingly disturbed by what he saw, and realised how few people knew how bad it was.
“One of my students and I dived a coral reef together. It was her first time, and she thought it was amazing. But with my experience, I saw it was completely degraded, with only a few percent of coral alive. Everything that was colourful was actually algal and bacterial slime, which is not what you want at all. This experience highlighted how differently we saw the same underwater scene. That moment always stuck with me.” — Joost
Hannah was a marine scientist, researching human impact on the ocean, at top institutes around the world. In her work she’d experienced the effects of pollution, climate change, and biodiversity loss in the oceans first-hand. She saw one beautiful coral reef crumble away in three years. Combined with the lack of action she was seeing, Hannah felt she had to do something with her knowledge. She loved being a scientist, but she wanted to have a bigger impact, so she had her first idea for a startup in 2013.
“Witnessing the destruction firsthand was something I couldn’t ignore. I’ve always believed that true, lasting impact can only be achieved when commercial solutions are aligned with tackling global challenges. We need to build on the structures that exist — but build something better, something bigger, with real and meaningful impact" — Hannah
Joost and Hannah's passion for and knowledge of ocean conservation served as our catalyst. After a talk Joost gave at the Max Planck Institute, they started collaborating on how to visualise the seafloor in an easy-to-understand way. But some key parts of our team were still missing.
Raja came to Germany to do his Masters, and had been working at Max Planck since 2015. His years of research and experience included working with underwater camera systems.
“My background is in electronics and communication systems. I was very much into building and programming hardware. I've always been interested in the application of technology, and in doing that very well." — Raja
Raja had the exact hardware expertise we needed, and was happy to join and use his tech to solve real-world problems. Guy was working as a control engineer on weather satellites. He liked the space industry, but found it too slow moving.
“I wanted to build things. Complex systems that could have a big impact." — Guy
Guy was excited about doing field work in the ocean, and to work on something to help the environment. After he joined, we secured our first public grant, officially launching PlanBlue. We’re a very diverse team, each bringing unique backgrounds, perspectives, and personalities to the table. But our complementary scientific, technical and business backgrounds and skills are all essential to our mission.
“We work on the seafloor, underwater. Nobody lives there, so very few truly understand it. But, when people can see something, they are far more likely to grasp its importance.
That’s why we focused on visualisation. People understand maps and images, they make the invisible visible. So we built our company around this idea. At PlanBlue, we use underwater remote sensing to reveal a world that’s largely unknown, yet absolutely critical to solving some of the biggest challenges of our time, like climate change.” — Joost