We are excited to announce the latest investment out of the Slow Ventures Creator Fund: Alan Blanco and the team behind Center Consoles Only (CCO), reshaping how boats are marketed, bought, and sold in America. We are investing $2.5M to help grow CCO's community, content, and portfolio of marine-industry businesses into a category defining enterprise.
Known for authentic, high-signal reviews and a tight feedback loop with the boat community, CCO has built deep trust with over 1.5 million followers across platforms — and, importantly, their trust converts: a previously undiscovered brand logged 80+ orders after CCO coverage, SeaPen's website crashed following a CCO walkthrough, and Sailfish Boats saw monthly numbers 4x after working with the team.
Beyond content, CCO builds and operates various business lines, including Orion Boatworks and recently launched BoatsOnly.com, a dealer marketplace designed to give OEMs and dealers a modern, social, and creator-powered alternative to legacy listing platforms. A much needed destination for dealers and consumers alike.
Center Consoles Only was born from Alan’s deep-rooted passion for the water and a vision to build a dedicated, community-driven brand focused exclusively on center console boating. Launched in 2016 and officially incorporated as a full-time business in 2018, Alan and his co-founders Brian Gonzalez and Eric Taggart built CCO into one of the most recognized and trusted names in the boating industry — and now, are building the marine industry’s home base.
You can watch their announcement video here.
Below is our abridged investment memo outlining why we decided to back Alan, Brian, Eric, and the CCO team. We couldn't be more grateful and excited to be alongside them on this ride.
— Megan
Creator
Alan Blanco is the founder and creative force behind Center Consoles Only, which he built alongside co-founders Brian Gonzalez and Eric Taggart into the most trusted independent voice in the center console boat community. Through review videos, walkthroughs, and on-water content, CCO has amassed ~1.5m followers across platforms. The team has turned audience trust into measurable commercial outcomes for the dealers and OEMs they work with.
What started as a content channel has grown into an integrated business: CCO Media (the content and agency engine), Orion Boatworks (their in-house boat brand which has driven millions in top-line sales), and BoatsOnly.com (a recently launched marketplace), among other ventures. Alan, Brian, and Eric are deeply iterative and experimental, unafraid to try projects to better serve their community. They lead a multi-person team across content, sales, and product, and have rolled all entities into a single holding company to operate as a unified business and best serve the marine industry.
Community
CCO's core audience is obvious: boating and marine enthusiasts, especially those who own or are looking to buy a center console boat. They are research-intensive buyers who spend hours comparing models, reading reviews, and watching walkthroughs before a purchase, and CCO has become a default stop in that consideration journey. The team is now extending that reach through a vetted creator network seeded inside BoatsOnly, with dozens of creators already signed on to act as a distributed marketing layer for launches, boat shows, and model reveals. Through their agency work, CCO’s audience also extends to boat dealers and manufacturers given Alan’s powerful storytelling ability and consumer pulse.
Category / Market
Americans buy and sell over one million boats annually — roughly $26 billion in combined new and pre-owned sales, with pre-owned boats accounting for nearly 80% of all transactions. Layer in financing, insurance, maintenance, and dealer services, and total U.S. boating expenditures exceed $55 billion annually. Center console boats, CCO's home category today, are among the highest-ticket segments of the market and attract a passionate, research-driven buyer.
The market has long been dominated by a single online marketplace incumbent, Boats Group (Boat Trader, YachtWorld, boats.com), which sold for $2 billion in late 2025. That incumbent recently pushed through aggressive pricing increases, in some cases attempting to 4x dealer listing fees, creating real frustration among OEMs and dealers who feel locked in without alternatives. CCO is building BoatsOnly to fill that gap: a modern, creator-powered marketplace with better pricing, richer community features, and a built-in content engine that no legacy listing site can replicate.
Business Diligence
CCO has profitably operated its media business while using its content and community as the distribution flywheel for other ventures including BoatsOnly, a two-sided marketplace with verified buyer/seller profiles, a social/community feed, and tools for dealers that the incumbents don't offer (and potential additional upside from embedded financing). With a credible path to meaningful dealer penetration in a fragmented market, CCO has the audience, the industry knowledge, the operating track record, and the category timing to build a market-defining ecosystem of businesses.