Vane
Ship compliance readiness from the inbox: Vane reads the incoming mail, pulls the vessel's history from the operator's own systems, and has the reply and the evidence ready before the inspector asks.
Mission
To make a small shore team as capable as a large one. Vane removes the manual coordination work that sits between a regulatory requirement and fetching the data to comply with it, so the people accountable for safe operation spend their time on judgement rather than retrieval.
Profile
Stage
Minimum Viable Product — working product in daily use inside Microsoft Outlook, with a first pilot contracted and structured evaluations completed at three top tier owners and managers.
Fundraising soon?
Yes
Problem
Shore-side compliance has become a heavy, repetitive workload for DPAs, superintendents, HSEQ staff and commercial operators. The work arrives as email, and it is answered by hand.
Most of the working day is spent in the inbox. Vane's 2026 interviews with owners and managers put 60–80% of superintendent time on email, checklists, defect lists and manual evidence gathering.
Regulation lands on top of existing work, not instead of it. SIRE 2.0 is now routine — more than 22,000 inspections, 460 inspectors and 2,100 ports in its first year (OCIMF) — while PSC, TMSA and EU ETS reporting run in parallel.
Shore teams have not grown to match. In a 10–50 vessel company the same handful of people absorb every oil-major query, vetting request and port-state finding, each answered by searching across mailboxes, the ERP, certificates and inspection history.
The cost of getting it wrong is not software-scale. One day of off-hire on a product tanker is USD 20–30k; a port-state detention typically costs two to five days plus rectification; a failed vetting can cost a fixture. Daily vessel operating cost averaged USD 7,474 in 2022 (Drewry) and has risen since.
Solution
How we fix it. Vane works inside the shared mailboxes compliance teams already use. It reads incoming mail, attachments and inspection documents and extracts the key detail; it applies vessel data, manuals and inspection history drawn from the customer's own internal systems to establish what the request actually requires; and it prepares draft responses, evidence lists and the documents needed, for the team to review and send. There is no migration, no new system of record and no change to how mail arrives.
Key features and advantages
Inbox-native. Deploys on a shared mailbox. Nothing to learn, nothing to move.
Proactive by default. Gaps are flagged and actions drafted before anyone asks, with no prompting — the distinction evaluators drew against general-purpose inbox assistants.
Grounded in the customer's own systems. Vessel particulars, certificates, inspection history and manuals are retrieved from existing ERP and document systems, so every draft carries its evidence.
Maritime-aware workflows. SIRE 2.0 preparation; oil-major and vetting queries; PSC deficiency response through to close-out; pre-fixture technical queries; cross-department follow-ups; regulatory deadlines.
A daily fleet brief. What changed by vessel ranked by what needs attention, upcoming port calls and inspections on one map, and open commitments pulled out of email threads — management visibility without the operational workload.
Human in the loop. Vane prepares; the DPA decides. Nothing is sent without review, and the mailbox stays the customer's own.
Market Opportunity
Market size:
TAM — €2.7bn. The global commercial fleet: 100,000+ merchant vessels above 100 GT (Clarksons Research; UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport 2025), against €8–12k of annual compliance spend per ship.
SAM — €500m. The 50,000+ vessels actively triggering the workflows Vane handles — SIRE, PSC deficiency response, EU ETS and pre-fixture vetting.
SOM — €6m. Year-one milestone of 500 vessels under contract.
Target customers:
Primary users: DPAs, superintendents, HSEQ and vessel managers, vetting coordinators.
Secondary users: commercial and chartering teams using Vane for pre-fixture technical queries, and MD/director level taking a light view of fleet compliance status.
Go-to-Market Strategy
Founder-led direct sales to the economic buyer. Two founders sell; the first meeting is with the budget holder rather than the end user, which is what converts a trial into a contract.
Distribution partnerships. A joint go-to-market agreed with a maritime communications platform used by 500+ shipping companies, which reaches ship management as an underserved segment of its own base. Second partnership under negotiation.
Exit Strategy
Who might acquire Vane, and why. Vane sits in the shore-side coordination layer between the inbox and the systems of record — a gap the 2026 consolidation has moved toward from both sides without closing. Likely acquirers:
Maritime communications and operations platforms consolidating toward an operating system for shipping, which own the inbox but lack the compliance expertise behind it.
HSEQ, fleet-management and inspection suites, which hold the onboard and system-of-record side of the same workflow and have stated intentions to keep acquiring.
Commercial and chartering platforms that have already bought email-based coordination tooling for the commercial desk and have no equivalent on the technical side.
Maritime ERP and system-of-record vendors, for whom an inbox layer above their own data is a natural extension.
Classification societies and assurance groups building digital compliance offerings around inspection and certification.
Evidence the category clears acquisitions. In 2026 Veson Nautical acquired Shipfix (email-based coordination for the chartering desk) and UniSea acquired Kaiko Systems (onboard inspection capture). Both stopped short of shore-side coordination.
Traction
KPIs
Product: working product deployed in Microsoft Outlook, reading mail and attachments, applying vessel context from internal systems, drafting replies and evidence lists, and issuing a daily fleet brief.
First pilot contracted (October 2026) with a European third-party ship manager operating around 20 vessels across several countries; its chief executive is joining Vane as an advisor.
Three structured evaluations completed in 2026 with tier-one tanker owners and managers. One rated the product around 80% ready, with the strongest value in crew matrix, class status, HVPQ and SIRE coverage. One estimated 30–60 minutes saved per user per day. One identified answering ad-hoc oil-company information requests — queries that require searching across systems and vessels — as the strongest use case.
Milestones achieved
Working product running in Outlook with live customer mail, 2026.
Structured evaluations at three tier-one owners and managers, June–August 2026.
Vane Technology Ltd incorporated in England, September 2026.
First paid pilot contracted and first advisor appointment from a customer, October 2026.
Advisory board in place; distribution partnership in negotiation; pre-seed round in progress.
Business Model
How we make money.
An annual licence priced per vessel, per year, with a minimum fleet commitment and a multi-year option. Pricing is per vessel rather than per seat: the compliance load attaches to the ship, and seat-based pricing systematically undercounts value in the small shore teams Vane serves. Paid pilots are credited against the first year.
Where we spend money
Engineering and product — connectors to maritime ERP and document systems, workflow hardening against real customer mail, multi-tenant and security work including EU hosting and an ISO 27001 readiness path.
Maritime compliance expertise — experienced DPAs and ex-inspectors who define the workflows, verify outputs and turn manual steps into automated ones.
Go-to-market — founder-led selling in the European clusters, paid pilots, cluster events and partner enablement.
Run cost — inference and hosting, which scale with usage and are managed against the licence margin.
Financials
Vane contracted its first pilot in October 2026 and is at the beginning of its revenue ramp. The model is recurring per-vessel licence revenue, with paid pilots converting to annual contracts and expansion coming from additional vessels within the same fleet.
Team
Founders
James Paisley — Co-founder and CEO. Twenty-five years in maritime, from deck officer on LNG and tanker fleets to chief executive of a ship manager. Experience with Wilhelmsen, V.Group, Shell and Exxonmobil, based in 10 countries to date.
Nana Afriyie — Co-founder and CCO. Twelve years in commercial and investment management; former co-founder of a venture-backed battery technology company. At Vane he owns customer development and the commercial relationship with owners and managers.
Muneeb Shahid — Co-founder and CTO. Exited technical founder with more than ten years as a software engineer, specialising in machine learning and large-scale distributed systems. At Vane he turns complex technology into something a superintendent can use without training.
Advisors
Former senior Digital Transformation Manager to energy major
Former CEO of a top-ten ship manager
Founder and CEO of an enterprise maritime software platform
Funding
A pre-seed round is in progress with a lead investor in place.
Use of funds
Engineering capacity for ERP and document-system connectors, security certification and multi-tenant hardening.
The first maritime compliance hires, who both deliver for customers and define the automation backlog.
Founder-led go-to-market across the European clusters, converting paid pilots into annual contracts.
Runway to a seed round, measured in reference customers and vessels under contract rather than features shipped.
Type of investment sought. Institutional pre-seed venture capital, both generalist and maritime or supply-chain specialist; angels with maritime or enterprise software backgrounds; corporate and strategic investors from maritime technology and classification; alongside non-dilutive national and EU innovation grant programmes pursued in parallel.
Contact Information
· James Paisley, Co-founder and CEO — james@runvane.com · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-paisley/
· Nana Afriyie, Co-founder and CCO — nana@runvane.com · LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nanaafriyie/
Company:
Vane Technology Ltd · runvane.com
Vane Technology Ltd · incorporated in England, September 2026
This article was written by a third-party business or organisation.
marinn.ai has not conducted due diligence on the company or organisation.
This content is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or a solicitation.
