In the high-stakes waters of superyacht brokerage, a decade is long enough to watch a summer charter client evolve into an owner, an owner turn into a builder, and a vessel change hands more than once. It is also plenty of time to recognize the friction points in an industry that has long prized tradition above efficiency.
Enter Nick Gelevert, a third-generation broker who grew up in the business and now serves as founder and CEO of Boatsters Black. Entering its eleventh year, the brokerage spans sales, purchases, charters, and new builds, quietly carving out a niche where time-honored discretion meets digital innovation.
"I grew up with old school brokerage and there is a lot about it I wouldn't change," Gelevert says. “Knowing boats, knowing people, discretion, picking up the phone and getting something done. But that doesn't mean every process surrounding it needs to stay the same.”
While a modern superyacht boasts technology that would have seemed like science fiction a generation ago, the administrative machinery surrounding it has often lagged behind. Boatsters Black’s answer is custom-built tools designed to streamline the experience without diluting the human element. Among them is Yacht Album, an AI-driven platform that aggregates market data to surface on- and off-market vessels in seconds, transforming a tedious database search into an immediate market view.
"If the technology can do the searching faster and better, let it," Gelevert notes. “Finding the yacht is one thing. Knowing whether somebody should buy it is another.” That same pragmatism informs the firm’s digital ownership platform. Owners receive direct dashboard access to financials and charter performance, while captains utilize a dedicated interface to manage logistics. For clients accustomed to tracking investments with a swipe of a screen, transparency is paramount—even if yachting has historically treated it as a revelation.
Yet, Partner and Director David Ramljak—with the firm almost since its inception—emphasizes that these systems exist to enhance curation, not to scale the business into a volume factory.
"We don't need to show a client ten yachts when two are right," Ramljak says. “The longer you work with somebody, the more you understand what actually matters to them. That knowledge is part of the service.”
That philosophy often translates to playing the long game. A relationship might spark over a casual summer charter and mature years later into a complex new build. Along the way, the firm tracks the nuances of how a family lives at sea—who travels together, what they loved last summer, and which amenities went ignored.
Consequently, Gelevert remains distinctly unimpressed by raw scale as a metric of success.
"We want to grow, but I have no ambition to be the biggest brokerage in the world," he says. “I would much rather if somebody calls us for the next yacht, and the one after that, we've done something right.”
Sometimes, doing right by the client means telling them no. It can mean advising against a compelling listing, cautioning that a new-build opportunity is ill-timed, or suggesting another season of chartering over an immediate purchase. It is a philosophy that extends to contract negotiations, where treating a multi-year new-build agreement as a bloodsport is eschewed in favor of keeping all stakeholders—owner, shipyard, and project team—on amicable terms.
Ultimately, eleven years in, Boatsters Black has found its rhythm: leveraging algorithms to locate opportunities and streamline operations, while leaving the judgment, the introduction, and the quiet phone call strictly personal.
"That balance matters to us," Ramljak reflects. "Use technology where it makes the experience better. Keep the relationship where it belongs."