Case Study: Dorsal

At Glasshouse Venture Studio, we’ve been building and scaling businesses for over a decade.

In that time, we’ve worked on some pretty cool platforms, Dorsal being one of them. 

Dorsal? You might be thinking. Isn’t that a fin? 

Well, yes. 

But in this case, we’re talking about a community-led shark report and alerting service that goes by the same name. 

In 2015, there were a series of shark attacks along the east coast of Australia. Many reports spoke of how people had seen these sharks before but there was no central way of warning others. Being a regular surfer himself (with a family who was concerned about where he was surfing), the platform’s founder created Dorsal. 

Fast forward to 2024, Dorsal has 480k+ app installs and operates in four main regions: Australia, Mainland USA, Hawaii and Reunion Island. Not only that, the community Dorsal has amassed since its release is quite remarkable. From surfers and swimmers, to families and beach-goers, water-sports enthusiasts and divers alike (not to mention those who just love sharks), the Dorsal community is a diverse and positive bunch. And it’s been built by the community, for the community. Glasshouse Venture Studio helps power Dorsal’s back-end tech stack and manage the API feeds that serve community users shark watch alerts. 

See what we mean by our clients being pretty cool? Dorsal is no exception. And with former pro surfer Sarah Beardmore at the coalface of this platform, it is bound to go from strength to strength. 

Want to see what all the fuss is about? Dorsal is available to download on the App Store and Google Play and there’s a full UX/UI overhaul in the pipeline to make this community-founded initiative even better.