Bryan Petro

Chief Executive Officer Getmyboat

Last Reviewed: September 18, 2026

Executive Summary

Bryan Petro is Chief Executive Officer of Getmyboat, the marketplace that rents out boats, yacht charters and on-the-water experiences in the way Airbnb rents out rooms. He became CEO on 19 February 2025, succeeding co-founder Sascha Mornell, and his claim to the job is unusually literal: he was the company’s first employee, hired in 2013 to handle product design and organisation, and he built every department the company now has. Getmyboat’s own framing of the succession was that there is no Getmyboat without him. The business he now runs lists more than 180,000 boats across 184 countries, has served over 2 million customers, and has been majority-owned since 2021 by Yanmar, the Japanese marine and engine manufacturer — a capital raise Petro himself brokered.

Career Highlights

• Promoted from Chief Operating Officer to Chief Executive Officer on 19 February 2025, succeeding co-founder Sascha Mornell, who moved to the board.
• Getmyboat’s first employee, joining in 2013 in product management and operations.
• Established the company’s marketing, sales, customer service, product, engineering and design functions from nothing.
• Facilitated Getmyboat’s first outside capital raise, bringing in Yanmar as majority owner in 2021.
• Grew the platform to over 2 million customers served, more than 180,000 listed boats and operations in 184 countries, with roughly 70 percent of trips run with a professional captain.
• Earlier, at iSport.com, drove more than a million visitors in the site’s first two years with no advertising spend, and managed localisation work on products built by Google, OpenTable and CheapFlights.

Professional Journey

Petro’s pre-Getmyboat work was in the mechanics of getting consumer internet products in front of people and making them work across languages and markets. At iSport.com he managed projects and growth, credited with over a million visitors in the first two years without buying a single advertisement, and he ran localisation programmes on products built by Google, OpenTable and CheapFlights. That combination — organic growth plus internationalisation — turned out to be exactly what a marketplace intending to operate in 184 countries would need.

He joined Getmyboat in 2013, shortly after Sascha Mornell and Raf Collado started it on the observation that marinas are full of boats nobody is using. As the first employee he was hired to build and oversee product design and company organisation, but in practice the job kept expanding: marketing, sales, customer service, engineering and design all came into existence under him as the company scaled. Over twelve years he moved up to Chief Operating Officer and then President and COO.

The pivotal commercial moment was the company’s first outside capital raise, which Petro facilitated and which brought Yanmar — a Japanese multinational with deep roots in marine engines — in as majority owner in 2021. That gave the marketplace an industrial parent rather than a purely financial one, and tied its growth to the boating industry itself.

In February 2025 the board promoted him to Chief Executive Officer, with Mornell stepping back to a board seat. He inherits a marketplace that has already reached global scale and describes his mandate as building on that foundation rather than redirecting it.

Education

California State University, Chico

Business degree in administration and marketing, with minors in international business, e-commerce and localisation