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Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

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Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#21

Post by atlasunshrugged »

I have a bit of an out there question but maybe you know the answer as I see you've done some piracy mapping. Is there any tech that's addressing the piracy issue that you think is just phenomenal (also thinking about unlicensed fishing in poorer countries territorial waters they can't defend but maybe the overlap isn't that great)? My understanding is basically this has been resolved by 1) ships routing through well controlled seas or 2) ships hiring additional private security for staffing on ship or as escorts. Is that correct?

Edited because I have no manners - congratulations on the launch too, I didn't see your pitch but the product sounds really cool and I'm sure shipping is top of mind for everyone right now!

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#22

Post by jhgb »

hrishi wrote: post #10
beansontoast wrote: post #9

Could you tell me in a sentence what the product does?

We take all the information you (a ship manager) have about a vessel (route, plans, crew composition), with all the information externally available (piracy, flights, fuel costs), and tell you where to route your vessel and what the best choices are for the crew, and the purchases you're making. Does that help? Happy to try again, it's a pretty complex piece of software that simplifies a complex job: unfortunately we…

> unfortunately we're not as good as our software at simplifying the explanation

You mean the software provides explanations for its outputs and decisions, in the classic AI style? Or did that mean something else?

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#23

Post by hrishi »

heuroci wrote: post #15
deanebarker wrote: post #2

I remember that the main, central example in "Domain Driven Design" was basically software like this.

The domain is also ripe with algorithmically interesting problems. One issue I have seen though is the mindset of the business user may not be very tolerant of probabilistic results.

Completely agreed - and it's something we've had to work very hard at.

A rule of thumb that's worked for us is that the more information you show, the more tolerant your users are. However, that's also directly in opposition to the fact that the more information you show, the less user-friendly your product becomes.

Our approach has been to pyramid up the information we have. When we integrate a new source of data, we initially run customer engagement and have internal sanity checking algorithms to make sure we have a decent confidence about the data that we present. At this stage however, we give the user more information than less - so a full cost breakdown of a port call, instead of indicative total estimate, for example.

User engagement and testing will then help us understand which pieces are being used the most, and how we can best condense the data down in a way that best helps the user. This also gives us more time to refine our backend so that we have a higher degree of confidence about our methodology and results.

This often results in big changes - a twenty paragraph statement of restrictions may be condensed into a traffic light on whether a certain nationality is accepted into a port, or a fuel table may be condensed into a single estimate of cost based on estimated weight of the ship. This approach has worked well for us, and it might help in similar fields.

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#24

Post by hrishi »

jhgb wrote: post #22
hrishi wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We take all the information you (a ship manager) have about a vessel (route, plans, crew composition), with all the information externally available (piracy, flights, fuel costs), and tell you where to route your vessel and what the best choices are for the crew, and the purchases you're making. Does that help? Happy to try again, it's a pretty complex piece of software that simplifies a complex job: unfortunately we…

> unfortunately we're not as good as our software at simplifying the explanation You mean the software provides explanations for its outputs and decisions, in the classic AI style? Or did that mean something else?

I meant we're not as good at simplifying the narrative, as we hope Greywing is at simplifying the task of vessel operations :)

We don't currently use any AI - we're yet to exhaust deterministic knowledge-based algorithms, but it might be something we look at in the future.

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#25

Post by jhgb »

hrishi wrote: post #24
jhgb wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unfortunately we're not as good as our software at simplifying the explanation You mean the software provides explanations for its outputs and decisions, in the classic AI style? Or did that mean something else?

I meant we're not as good at simplifying the narrative, as we hope Greywing is at simplifying the task of vessel operations :) We don't currently use any AI - we're yet to exhaust deterministic knowledge-based algorithms, but it might be something we look at in the future.

Classic AI can definitely be deterministic and knowledge-based. It just sounded from that phrasing like you went down the "explainable outputs" route that is sometimes a part of such approaches (see expert systems, for example) and that is commonly missing these days (which may lead to people using outputs of complicated decision-making systems asking questions like "why would we want to do that?").

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#26

Post by hrishi »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #21

I have a bit of an out there question but maybe you know the answer as I see you've done some piracy mapping. Is there any tech that's addressing the piracy issue that you think is just phenomenal (also thinking about unlicensed fishing in poorer countries territorial waters they can't defend but maybe the overlap isn't that great)? My understanding is basically this has been resolved by 1) ships routing through well…

Thanks! Nick can chime in here once he's up - I'm the night owl (we're on SGT) and he's up in a few hours.

But the way I see it, most of the problems around piracy are systemic. I'll skip going into too much detail, but when economies are set up to benefit from a rise in pirate activity in their borders, you've created a loop that removes incentives to find a long-term solution.

The solutions have been exactly what you've suggested. One option for highly trafficked routes (like the Gulf of Aden) is to control a narrow part of the route well, so ships can use it. The IRTC[1] is a good example.

The other option is security. However, security may not always be possible. One reason is price (when we started Greywing, the per day cost of a security vessel sometimes exceed that of the tanker it was guarding!). The other is that security is still a volatile market, especially since suppliers always have to be located in the countries you're closest to. Security companies can pop in and out of existence, and the service is often a far cry from what you pay for.

There has been some work in the technology on the vessels - better training for the crew, better citadels, nonlethal deterrents, etc. However, these can only go so far when you're comparing the resolve of a pirate vessel to that of the crew on a tanker to survive.

From a software standpoint, routing makes a difference, but not as much as you might think. If a vessel needs to call at a port, there are often unavoidable routes that need to be taken. However, some of the early work we were doing focused on making sure that the captains and crew had a good idea of high and low alert days, as well as an idea of the mitigation measures to undertake to prepare for them.

Some of the products that were serving the security market when we started have since gone out of service, and I'm not personally aware of any yet that focus on operators, rather than nation-states and intelligence agencies. There's still open demand for services that focus on establishing trust and reputation around suppliers, aggregating good services, and enforcing due diligence.

This took me down a rabbit hole of our videos, but [2] is an example of what CRY4 looked like in the early days, when it was just piracy!

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Recommended_Tran... [2] - https://vimeo.com/393361342

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#27

Post by hrishi »

heuroci wrote: post #14
hrishi wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks! Our process has been client-driven from day one: we've got a good amount of technical and maritime expertise on our side, but it pales in comparison to the mountain of operational knowledge that our users have. What this means is that all of our clients came on for the solution we were offering at the time, but each has had a strong impact on what the tools became, and what modules we've offered since then. A…

This is indeed a great model that works well when the problems one client has can scale to others without a ton of customization. What has been the most challenging aspects technically and business wise for you so far? What has been the most exciting/rewarding?

The most challenging aspect for us has been getting integrations with client software done and out of the way. Unlike other industries, the existing software around crew, reporting and planning are often in-house and in some disrepair, from a first-wave of digitization. This has pleasantly not been the case sometimes, but often we need to build the pipes ourselves - sometimes on both sides!

Our integrations range from SOAP, REST, FDW as well as push, pull, batch, and almost all combinations of these. Getting them done can also mean cleaning and consolidating the data we receive, so the users have a seamless experience.

Integrations can make a big difference in the UX as it stands, and our work the past few weeks have been focused on building graceful circuit breakers for our modules so that the the experience works as well as it can even without automated data.

Another one is definitely customization, but it's been rewarding for us. We've definitely had to customize the product to better suit the workflows of our customers. Maritime is a pretty heterogeneous place when it comes to details, but I think we're now at a point where most of the requests we get are already built into the product - customization is becoming just a matter of config.

The most rewarding aspect technically has been to watch new solutions emerge as a result of having a clean graph of data with well built relationships. There are a number of zero-to-one problems in maritime tech (routing, ports, events, etc) that I believe prevent new entrants into the space - much like ride-sharing would not be as easy without a good map element, GPS and cellular data.

Once those are solved, it's been rewarding to take unrelated requests from clients (around withholding or corporate tax, for example) and realize that you've got 99% of the tech needed to deliver a good solution.

From a business perspective, it's been a harder journey than we expected to get parts of the industry to open up about data or collaboration. It's significantly easier once you've built momentum, so it's also been rewarding to collaborate across stakeholders - from port agents and crewing unions to marine travel companies - as of late.

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#28

Post by atlasunshrugged »

hrishi wrote: post #26
atlasunshrugged wrote: post #21

I have a bit of an out there question but maybe you know the answer as I see you've done some piracy mapping. Is there any tech that's addressing the piracy issue that you think is just phenomenal (also thinking about unlicensed fishing in poorer countries territorial waters they can't defend but maybe the overlap isn't that great)? My understanding is basically this has been resolved by 1) ships routing through well…

Thanks! Nick can chime in here once he's up - I'm the night owl (we're on SGT) and he's up in a few hours. But the way I see it, most of the problems around piracy are systemic. I'll skip going into too much detail, but when economies are set up to benefit from a rise in pirate activity in their borders, you've created a loop that removes incentives to find a long-term solution. The solutions have been exactly what y…

Ah, that's super interesting. The systemic issues make sense but I do wonder about incursions from foreign powers (e.g. Chinese fishing trawlers in W. Africa) but maybe these belong to a different category of issue.

RE Security & Pricing - that's fascinating. I would have expected this to be a standard business affiliated with the big insurers and run out of the big private contracting companies (e.g. Academi). Most of the tech I've seen is also for close proximity to the boat (e.g. water cannons, slippery mesh, stun grenades), is it because the ships can't engage until the pirates are very obviously going to attack? In my head I'm imagining patrols of swarm drones that drop boat trap nets before the boats can get very close to the ship

But all this is really cool, thanks for the response!

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#29

Post by corry »

hrishi wrote: post #6
corry wrote: post #4

Congrats on the launch! Wondering how much overlap you have with Flexport, which I've followed with great admiration through the years. Definitely seems like a sector in major need of continued modernization.

Thanks! Interesting that you ask that - we have very little (if any) overlap with Flexport. They focus on the cargo and the freight, and we focus on operations. We've definitely helped operate some of their vessels in the past! There is a future where the two parts come together, as their fates are always linked, but it's outside the scope of complexity for us today, and for Flexport as well I imagine.

Makes sense! Chalk it up to ignorance on the sector in general, when I think "ships and startups" I think Flexport. I bet a lot of VCs will too (which is great - they are absolutely stellar). Best of luck!

Re: Launch HN: Greywing (YC W21) – Automated ship operations focused on crew

#30

Post by heuroci »

hrishi wrote: post #27
heuroci wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is indeed a great model that works well when the problems one client has can scale to others without a ton of customization. What has been the most challenging aspects technically and business wise for you so far? What has been the most exciting/rewarding?

The most challenging aspect for us has been getting integrations with client software done and out of the way. Unlike other industries, the existing software around crew, reporting and planning are often in-house and in some disrepair, from a first-wave of digitization. This has pleasantly not been the case sometimes, but often we need to build the pipes ourselves - sometimes on both sides! Our integrations range fro…

I don’t know know your stack so take this with a grain of salt:

It may be very tempting at times to skip normalizing data and to just throw stuff in a document store. The downside will be code complexity and runtime that is less than performant.

I am sure you are familiar but the patterns “adapter” “strategy” and “interpreter” can be very valuable here

I am sure you also use dependency injection as appropriate . I wish you all the best. I will keep an eye on and think good thoughts

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