One Month In: What We've Built, What We've Learned, and What's Next

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It's been an exciting first month at BrightBoard. We set out to fix the way USCG-credentialed mariners find work, and we've been heads-down doing exactly that. Here's a look at where things stand.

What We've Done

1,000 page views in the first month. Not Netflix numbers, but we'll take it.

Created a company directory so mariners can browse Jones Act companies and access their career’s pages directly

Launched a WhatsApp Group so mariners can get updates straight to their phones without having to open a browser.

70 LinkedIn followers, up from zero. Technically an infinite percent increase, but we won't push it.

Refreshed the site's layout and design. We'll just say it: it's looking good.

Introduced featured and premium job postings for vetted companies we work with directly — bringing more tailored opportunities to the board.

Continued refining our aggregation to pull in as many legitimate maritime jobs as possible in one place.

What We've Learned

Content still matters. Our blog posts on the state of maritime job searching have driven some of the strongest engagement we've seen — on the site and on social. People in this industry have opinions, and they're reading.

Cutting through the noise is hard. Mariners get hit with information from every direction. We believe there's real value in what we're building, but earning attention means the product has to earn it. We're working on that every day.

Aggregating maritime jobs is genuinely difficult. Even with a team dedicated entirely to pulling jobs into one place, it's a grind. To us, that confirms there's a real problem here worth solving. It shouldn't be this hard. ✋

What's Coming Next

A few ideas we have in the works. Some of these will ship. Some may not. But here's what's on the board:

• Tailored job alerts — set your search parameters once and get matching jobs delivered straight to your inbox
• Improved aggregation tools for broader, more comprehensive results
• A mobile app — most people are already browsing on their phones, and a native app would unlock things like push notifications for job activity that matters to you
• Better employer tools — so companies can post jobs and connect with mariners directly through the site
• AI-assisted job matching — we're exploring how to use AI to surface the right opportunities for the right mariners faster. More on this soon.

Have an idea? We'd genuinely love to hear it: contact@brightboard.us

For You The Mariner

If you're a mariner who's job hunting — or one with a sea story to tell, preferably about the job search and not that time something went sideways offshore — we want to hear from you. And if you or someone you know found a job through BrightBoard, please let us know. Understanding what's working (and what isn't) is how we keep making this better.

Thanks to everyone who's come aboard so far. Happy sailing. ⚓