I spent the better part of a decade in music management, and the job taught me one thing above everything else — artists almost never know what they actually made. They see the streaming numbers, the show guarantees, the brand deal totals, and they think they're doing well. Then you show them what's left after the label cut, the distributor fee, the manager commission, the booking agent, the publishing split — and the number is a fraction of what they expected.

My job was building that clarity. Taking fragmented revenue across a dozen platforms and fee structures and telling someone the one number that actually mattered: what hit your account.

In 2026, feeling somewhat burned out from a decade in the music business (who would have thought), I got my USCG captain's license — or tried to. The government shutdown froze approvals for months. I was already committed. The boat was financed. The insurance was paid. The slip deposit was in. The permits were filed. The season was coming and I had no idea if I'd make money or lose it.

So I sat down and tried to work it out myself. How many charters would I need to cover the loan, the insurance, the slip, the permits, the fuel, the platform fees — just to break even. Every time I thought I had a number, another cost I hadn't accounted for changed it. Platform fees eating into what I thought was revenue. Fuel per charter varying by trip length. Fixed costs that needed to be spread across however many charters I could realistically run in a Chicago summer.

The math kept moving. I could never land on a clean answer. I just wanted to know — if I get my license approved in time, can I make this work?

Artists and charter captains have identical financial blind spots — multiple revenue platforms, hidden fee structures, seasonal income, and no clear picture of what they actually kept. I'd built that clarity for artists my whole career. Charter operators deserved the same thing.

AboveWater is what I built out of that frustration. Not because I saw a market opportunity — because I was sitting at my kitchen table trying to do math that shouldn't be that hard and couldn't get a clean answer. Turns out every captain on the water has been doing the same thing. Guessing. Hoping the season works out. Finding out in October whether it did.

Now they don't have to wait until October.