The Entrepreneurs
Ethan Reistad, 21, Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer
Ahren Reistad, 20, Co-founder and Chief Revenue Officer
Boats and Buyers, Fort Myers
For brothers Ethan and Ahren Reistad, boating has made a big splash in their lives since they were kids growing up on Prior Lake about 20 minutes southwest of Minneapolis, Minn. As teens, they became competitive wakeboarders and learned about promoting themselves through social media while pursuing that sport. In high school, among other entrepreneurial pursuits, older brother Ethan co-founded a marketing company, and Ahren served as its social media manager. They both also worked for a boating marketing company.
The family moved to the boating paradise that is Southwest Florida shortly after Ethan graduated high school and enrolled in Florida Gulf Coast University, majoring in entrepreneurship. Ethan developed the brothers’ startup idea for a marketplace that connects buyers with their dream boats as part of FGCU’s Runway Program, which provided mentorship and a $10,000 grant. Ahren, who is finishing his entrepreneurship degree at FGCU in May, joined him as a co-founder of Boats and Buyers, along with their father Jeff, a longtime sales executive who is a part-time CEO and advisor for their startup.
“Boats and Buyers, simply put, is the first auction-style marketplace for boats. We primarily service dealerships, and we generate a unique way to attract and engage buyers, basically offering dealerships a ton of leads. And then ... we offer the only solution that is different than the typical, what we call the post-and-pray model,” says Ethan, who graduated from FGCU in 2023.
“The post-and-pray model is inefficient. On average it takes over seven weeks to sell a boat, and our standard is seven days,” he adds.
Growing up, the family bought and sold a half dozen boats while in Minnesota and a couple more after moving to Fort Myers. This gave the brothers a good understanding of the frustrations in the buying and selling process, where the major problem for sellers is time to sale.
Although there are plenty of boat-buying sites, Boats and Buyers brings an innovative twist: Let the bidding begin. Its auction-style format drives engagement and generates a fast-paced environment and an excited, engaged community around boating, the brothers explained. “People can let the market decide what a boat was worth, and then you can comment on the listings. You can ‘like’ them. You can save them for later. You can compete against each other,” Ahren says, adding that they are bringing people together with an emotional connection, rather than just to analyze a set of data.
The startup services two markets: the sellers — today, that is primarily boat dealerships but also private sellers — and the buyers. Boats and Buyers makes revenue through an upfront fee to sellers, which starts at $59. But as the startup develops new offerings, there will be additional revenue streams, the brothers say.
They began building the marketplace in 2022 and soft-launched it in 2023, featuring just a few boats on the site to work through the kinks before fully pivoting in 2024 to focus on servicing dealerships, a massive market. Boats and Buyers may lure in the buyers, but the platform also becomes essentially a lead generation tool for dealerships, Ethan says. “We do try to stay true to the auction model. ... That’s really where the value is built in.”
Today, the young company has more than 150,000 community members. Boats and Buyers has showcased more than 1,500 boats on the marketplace and has logged nearly 1.5 million website views. While the brothers wouldn’t disclose revenue, “every month, we’re running around $6 million in volume through the auction format,” Ethan says, and they were projecting a 15% increase in volume between Q3 and Q4 2024.
While Ahren works out of the Fort Myers office, Ethan moved to Tampa and joined Embarc Collective, an entrepreneurship support organization in a metro area rich in investors and fellow entrepreneurs. Their company roles came naturally, with the detail-oriented Ethan enjoying the operations side, including overseeing the product, while Ahren specializes in sales and marketing. Their tech team is outsourced.
Of course there have been rough startup waters to navigate. Along with wearing many hats while building a startup and learning along the way, building trust in a marketplace is tricky, especially in the boating community, where some owners try to sell boats without disclosing their true condition. Boats for sale on Boats and Buyers all come with a boat history report, and before money changes hands, buyers can inspect the boat to whatever extent they’d like, Ethan says. “We’re very, very big on customer service, and that’s all props to our dad. From day one, he’s drilled into us a customer-first mentality, to the point where it drives us crazy, but really that’s been huge for us.”
Boats and Buyers has brought 10 dealerships aboard. The startup is now beginning to see business come in organically from social media. “There’s a lot of word of mouth that’s starting to happen, where the business is starting to grow itself. That snowball is starting to kind of move on its own,” Ahren explains.
“We’d love to get 100 dealerships on board in 2025 — I think that’s a big pressing, burning number on the wall — and grow from there,” Ethan adds. Ultimately, the brothers see “a really big opportunity for us to expand to all the powersports.”