Dockwa Receives Strategic Growth Investment from PSG

The company plans to use the funding to expand its operations and accelerate product development.

For Dockwa, the investment comes at a key moment as the marina industry attracts growing interest from institutional investors. Over the past decade, many independently owned marinas have been acquired and combined into larger professionally managed groups, while boaters have increasingly moved online to manage reservations and services.

As a result, an industry that was once highly fragmented has become a more organized, and attractive investment sector. Dockwa aims to play a central role in this transformation by connecting marinas and boaters through its digital platform.

Dockwa was created to make it easier for boaters to reserve transient slips online without phone calls or paperwork. Over the past 11 years, it has evolved into a complete marina management platform.

Today, Dockwa helps marinas manage the entire customer journey, including reservations, long-term contracts, payments, billing, fuel and merchandise sales, electric metering, dynamic pricing, and accounting integrations. The platform supports both short-term visitors and long-term annual slip holders, giving marinas a single system to run their operations.

Today, Dockwa serves nearly 4,000 marinas, including 97% of the largest U.S. harbors, and more than 450,000 boaters. The platform also supports over 175,000 owners of large boats (40 feet and longer) each year. While these vessels make up only a small share of registered boats in North America, they account for most marina spending on dockage, fuel, storage, insurance, and maintenance services.

Through its consumer marketplace, Marinas.com, and its proprietary data platform, Marine Graph, Dockwa has built a large boating dataset over the past 11 years. The platform now includes transaction history from more than 800,000 boats and over 66 million nights of marina bookings.

“Dockwa was built to make it easier for people to get out on the water,” said Mike Melillo, Co-Founder and CEO of Dockwa. “What started as a simpler way to book a slip pulled us, conversation by conversation, into every part of how a marina actually runs. Eleven years on, the platform reflects that. PSG understands what we are building and why it takes time to compound. With their partnership, we can keep building the operating system this industry deserves — and get more people on the water doing what they love.”

“We have spent considerable time evaluating software businesses across the marine and recreational ecosystem, and Dockwa stands out for its unique combination of a strong marina operating platform and scaled boater network,” said Chris Andrews, Managing Director, and Chris Collins, Principal at PSG. “By serving both marina operators and boaters, the company has built a differentiated platform with powerful network effects that we believe will continue to strengthen over time. We are excited to partner with Mike, and his team for the next chapter.”

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“Going all-in on Dockwa produced one of the largest year-over-year growth stories in our history,” said Dan Jemal, investor in Brooklyn Bridge Marina. “Dockwa eliminated friction across seasonal and transient reservations, and Dockwa Deals opened the door to an entirely new pool of demand – boaters we never would have reached on our own.”

About Dockwa

Founded in 2015 by Mike Melillo, Tyler Kneisel, John Nagro, and Matt Fradette, and headquartered in Newport, Dockwa provides software that helps marinas manage reservations, payments, and daily operations. Its platform is used by more than 4,000 marinas across North America, while its consumer marketplace, Marinas.com, connects over 450,000 boaters with marinas and harbors. Together, these platforms power Marine Graph, Dockwa’s proprietary data platform, which supports a growing range of AI-driven tools for marina operators, insurers, boat manufacturers and investors in the marine industry.

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