Oriana Schneps founded Moby Maritime Media after more than five years as a crewmember. While most yachties starting a business go straight from the deck to entrepreneurship, Schneps’ path took her to New York to work with Gary Vaynerchuk and then back to the yachting life to star in “Below Deck,” before finding her niche in the industry and creating Moby Maritime Media. Triton spoke to Schneps about her journey to becoming a founder, how she intends to revolutionize the yachting marketing space, and how her crew skills helped her along the way.
What was your journey into yachting and what made you want to become a crewmember?
I started working at the New England Aquarium when I was in high school, and I really got exposed to what it meant to work in the marine field. I also worked on expedition boats, so we would take boats to the Bahamas for a week at a time and live on board. I was one of the youngest people ever invited to be a part of that research and liveaboard experience with the aquarium in an educational capacity. While I was there, I learned about yachting. Fast forward to graduating college — I realized that I did a lot of being on the water and yachting seemed like a great way to do that.
In conjunction to working at the aquarium, I also had a lot of hospitality experience and my Divemaster. I really loved that client- or guest-facing element and I wanted to find a way to utilize all those skills and passions in one setting. The only thing that I can think of on the planet that lets you serve cocktails, scuba dive, live on the water, and travel the world is yachting…