Casey Sapp was on the typical startup track — he had a stint in China before landing in Silicon Valley and bopped around to a few rising companies. But when he came across the Oculus headset in 2014, he changed his trajectory.
“I put one of them on and said, ‘This is the future,’” he said. “This will reinvent learning and how we process information.”
After some research, he realized the wearables themselves were far from being profitable but saw a gap in the virtual reality technology itself. He taught himself how to build the tech and began contracting his services and the tech to media giants like National Geographic and the BBC.
But Sapp found a more sustainable model through contracting with military agencies.
“Just like the autonomous driving industry needs cameras around the whole vehicle for perception and awareness, we knew this would fill a need [for the marine industry],” he said. “It combines marine tech and virtual reality and the startup world.”
What came to fruition is Blue Ring Imaging, which launched with a new name and focus in 2019. The company offers 360-degree underwater camera operations used in military vehicles.
“It’s about the pilot experience and enhancing it to peak performance, where they can do things with their hands, eyes, speech, vision,” he said. “It’s being able to do more complex tasks with a lower cognitive load. That’s the goal and mission of the company.”
The company is going to be focused on remotely operated vehicles and aerial drones for the next 18 months, Sapp said, then move to unmanned surface vehicles, ground vehicles and hardware.
The company was launched in San Diego, but when the Covid-19 pandemic began in 2020 and essentially shut down California, Sapp began looking elsewhere. Sapp, a University of Florida graduate who landed at the now-defunct Bank of St. Petersburg, returned to his old stomping grounds based on his positive memories of the city.
“I had a good experience in St. Pete and thought it was one of the best cities in the state,” he said. “I wanted to be in St. Pete and near the water; I didn’t consider anything about the tech space or that U.S. [Special Operations Command] is here out of MacDill. There was no consideration of that, so everything has been icing on the cake.”
The company is now nestled in St. Pete’s Maritime and Defense Technology Hub. It has roughly 10 employees and estimates $2.5 million in gross revenue by the end of the year.
“We have SOCOM and have water; we have the ingredients you need for great minds and tech to be experimented with and proven in St. Pete,” Sapp said. “There are only a handful of cities that have the ingredients to build a marine technology company, and this is one of them.”
