Blueseed has decided to charter a cruise ship, the MS Island Escape, with a passenger capacity of 1540. It’s 190 meters long and 27 meters wide.
Blueseed is a project to accommodate tech startups from outside the U.S. in a ship in international waters 12 miles from the California coast. Thus non-U.S. startups can be located somewhere next to Silicon Valley and have no worries about startup visas. When a startup grows big enough it can apply for E1 Visa and move into Silicon Valley. Blueseed would take a 6.5% stake in each company and charge every passenger $1,200 rent.
The ship is not big enough to accommodate all the startups that have signed up, according to Dan Dascalescu, the press officer of Blueseed. 1284 entrepreneurs from 409 startups in 67 countries have registered as of writing.
Blueseed raised seed funding from investors including Floodgate Fund in the US and ZhenFund in China last year. The project has got a commitment for $9 million, one third of the launch cost of $27 million. Now they are launching a crowd-funding program, starting at $1000, for Chinese investors and entrepreneurs.