‘Full gas’: Inside the rise of Boatsters Black
Nick Gelevert is the CEO of Boatsters Black.
At the farewell party in the office in Amsterdam some of the parents urged him to take care of their sons.
Nick Gelevert was only 25 himself but was leading eight young Dutchmen to a new life in Palma, Mallorca. “Of course I will,” he promised.
The mission was to place their new superyacht firm Boatsters Black at the heart of the market and build the business, a “small brand with a big dream”. For the first few days they worked on laptops on the floor of his unfurnished rented apartment.
They would lap the marinas and talk to every single boat owner they could find. Every afternoon they broke for a swim, then worked until 9pm or 10pm. They ate together, drank together, went to bed and the next day repeated it all over again. “Full gas,” says Gelevert.
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One lunchtime he got chatting to some vacationing Americans at the next table in the restaurant. A few weeks later Gelevert was on his balcony when his phone rang. An American lady had got his number from a friend in Miami who had recently visited Palma. She was interested in chartering a large yacht, could he help. She was the then daughter-in-law of Robert de Niro.
“That’s how life can go,” says Gelevert.
Boatsters Black completed the sale of a new-build Amels 80 for launch in spring 2029.
He kept his foot on the accelerator and his industry “disruptor”, now approaching its 12th year, is an established full-service sales and charter brokerage, management and advisory firm with eight offices worldwide. Gelevert says its charter fleet is in the top five biggest in the world.
Last week the company, alongside Kasper Jakobsen of Bjorn International Brokerage, represented a first-time owner in the “rather large deal” of a new-build Amels 80 from Damen Yachting for delivery in spring 2029.
It is the latest in a series of significant closings. Late last year, it sold the first hull of the NL 52 Plus at Mengi Yay for launch in early 2027. And it signed for the construction of a 34.5m Baglietto DOM 115 for a long-standing client.
Reflecting demand across the business, Gelevert and general manager David Ramljak have added five new hires since January, bringing the cosmopolitan team to about 20.
“It’s a nice roller coaster,” adds Gelevert. “We’re doing things a little bit differently than the rest, I guess.”
‘We’ll give you a shot’
Gelevert’s nautical heritage stretches back to 1970 when his grandfather founded Lengers Yachts, the first brokerage in the Netherlands.
Nick set out on his own path in his early 20s, founding peer-to-peer boat rental company Boatsters.com, the “first Airbnb for boats in the world”, he explains. A partnership with Microsoft Holland lent development support and cloud infrastructure and the business quickly scaled to 63 countries and 12,000 boats for rent, according to Gelevert.
“I was building it all on their software, their network and their servers for free, so it was a good collaboration,” he says.
A US company came “quite rapidly” to buy the “inner shell” of the business, but Gelevert says he inserted a clause to retain the Boatsters name. Alongside Boatsters, he had already set up Boatsters Black to leverage his network and begin chartering in the luxury yacht segment. “It started buzzing,” he says. “Owners would say, ‘you’re young, we’ll give you a shot.’” The name was a nod to luxury brand extensions such as American Express Black and Uber Black. “So people can relate to what you’re doing,” he adds.
A render of the NL 52 Plus from Mengi Yay which Boatsters Black sold in 2025.
Early growth was slow, but building on the expertise gained from the first business, Gelevert “quite confidently” suggests Boatsters Black is ahead of most of the industry in terms of its digital technology. Its new AI-powered application Yacht Album, a yacht intelligence platform which aggregates in real time the boats available for sale globally, is at the forefront of this revolution.
“Luxury yachting is very bureaucratic with a traditional way of operating,” he suggests. “Everything goes by email. Everything is a PDF. Everything takes time. If I have a client sitting next to me, I need to show them [what’s available] now.”
Speed, efficiency and “looking from a different perspective” in every aspect of the business – from charter through to sales – are the keys, he says.
“I looked at the problem, I opened it up, to see if we could make it quicker, more precise, less human failure, if possible,” he adds. “That’s somewhat the direction you have to go if you want to scale up without increasing your overheads too much. That’s the challenge from an entrepreneur’s perspective.”
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All this while remaining “client first” with a “boutique approach”.
“The yachting industry is about people. That’s never going to change,” he adds. “But that broker has behind them that ammunition of data and information, which is unparalleled with the speed of it.”
Presentation and details matter too, he adds.
“Why is Nike better than Adidas? Or Puma?” he asks. “They both make beautiful shoes. It is all the little details, it is how you present it, how you communicate it. Sometimes we lose, sometimes we win.” Deep knowledge to back it up is also crucial, which is why every member of the central agency team has had at least three years’ experience as chief stew on a 60m-plus yacht.
“You can have a lot of data, you can be super-fast, but if you don’t know what you’re talking about, you lose the game as well,” he says.
Cheese sandwiches…with butter
Gelevert reckons not having a background in one of the traditional brokerages gives him an advantage. “If you learn to play soccer with your right foot it becomes difficult to learn with your left when you are already 40 years old,” he says.
Plus, his network, particularly among the Dutch shipyards – “we all eat cheese sandwiches with butter, not the fancy salads with langoustine like in Monaco” – and the team around him are helping to drive the burgeoning new-build aspect of the business. He works very closely with former Amels engineer Hans Konings and yacht lawyer Anthony Galea to review potential projects.
But alongside the exciting parts like selling boats or meeting clients, Gelevert acknowledges that with his role comes added responsibility.
“The hardest thing about being the CEO is sometimes you have to do things you don’t like too much, like sitting down with finance and other issues,” he says. “But they come in a package, apparently.”
With a new Mallorca head office at the Club de Mar development, the ambition is to push into Monaco and Miami. The company’s website claims it has transitioned from “industry disruptor to the global benchmark for excellence and scalable innovation”. Each stage brings it challenges, but also its rewards, says Gelevert.
“I haven’t worked a day in my life,” he adds. “Every phase is fun, you have to enjoy it. I would do it all again tomorrow.”
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