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Boating News

Jeff Foulk has had a crazy few months. Developer of the navigation app Argo, Foulk saw his creation go from modest success to viral sensation after daughter Megan posted a video of Dad trying to pitch the app to Chicago Boat Show attendees. That video now has an astonishing 28 million views—and Foulk’s Argo briefly ranked above heavyweights Google Maps and Waze on both app stores. But let’s let him tell it.

boating magazine logo

When I started Argo Navigation, I felt that a company could really focus on crowdsourcing in a lot of different ways,” Foulk said. “And by crowdsourcing, I mean taking advantage of boaters’ knowledge or data that they’re collecting to benefit the community, and that could be in terms of dropping pins used to identify hazards or providing reviews of good anchorages and things like that.

Power & Motoryacht

You may have seen that Chesapeake boater and Argo Navigation boating app creator Jeff Foulk went viral on TikTok after his daughter Megan, a college student who decided last minute to attend the show with her dad, posted a video of him at the Chicago Boat Show in January. Argo, sponsor of PropTalk’s Club Notes section, was doing well, but things shot to a whole different level after the TikTok post.

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From navigation to finding friends at the sandbar or checking into customs, there’s an app for that. For boaters who want to find out where all the cool kids are hanging out on the water, the KnowWake and Argo apps combine navigation with social networking. They are like the on-land navigating app Waze in that they show the locations of the other members of the app.

Soundings

The upper Chesapeake Bay has so much to offer”, says Don Elwell. “We’ve explored all the small inlets from Rock Hall to the C&D Canal — Fairlee Creek, Worton Creek, Still Pond, Sassafras River, Bohemia River. We love those inlets and will often go up just gunkholing for a week or so. And this year we’re doing it with Argo.

Upper Bay Boating

Argo is now available for socially minded mariners looking for an app that allows you to connect with other boaters, plan out your voyage, and navigate to the next destination. […] The really unique feature, however, is the ability to tap into community reviews and gain some insight into local beaches, marinas, waterfront restaurants, and other places and ports you might visit. The best part? The price. Free.

BoatUS

The pandemic made for an uncertain start to boating season, but with restrictions gradually easing up (and canceled land-based events leaving us with extra free time), plenty of folks are back on the water. A nautical navigation app made just for the Chesapeake launched last October and is gaining traction during the return to boating.

Chesapeake Bay Magazine

“I get asked all the time about where to go and how to get there,” said Weatherstein, a marine master technician at All Star Marine in Essex, Md. “I tell them to follow such-and-such a creek and they say, woah, we’re new to boating. We don’t know where that creek is. How cool is it for them to punch it into an app and it takes them there?” Think of it as having a first mate in your pocket.

Chesapeake Bay Magazine

One key use [of Argo] was when we were moving a 37-foot Sea Ray from Middle River to the Gunpowder, which needed to be at the bridge at low tide. It was a cold rainy Saturday morning and we headed out around 7:30 a.m. only to find that the GPS was not functioning. Then the wipers went out. Thankfully we had the Argo app. I was at the helm, the boat owner held the app and kept us within our boundaries…

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Foulk, CEO of Harford County, Maryland-based defense contracting company SURVICE Engineering and founder of Argo Navigation, has been boating on the Bay in a series of Grady-Whites over the past 40 years. He realized the best hidden anchorages and dockside restaurants come by word of mouth, and was inspired to create an app that allows boaters to share insider knowledge with each other.

Chesapeake Bay Magazine

Jeff Foulk wanted to be able to plan a boat trip on the Chesapeake Bay the same way he plans a road trip — using an app on his phone. But no one had yet created an app that would allow boaters to easily navigate waterways and figure out the best spots to visit. So Foulk created his own app. Argo launched in early September and already has nearly 200 boaters signed up.

Baltimore Business Journal

I wanted boaters to have the ability to find out where their friends are on the water and share experiences with friends and family. I wanted Argo to use crowdsourcing to not only get the latest hazards, weather and map issues, but also find interesting places to go and see. I also wanted Argo to offer a clean, customizable map with point-to-point navigational capability.

Upper Bay Boating

The app is intended as a social platform to connect with others while out on the water, plan trips with fellow boaters, learn about popular boating spots and read reviews, and even log voyages and share them with family and friends. The app also has some navigational features so that you can plan the quickest and safest route, customized for your boat.

Podcasts

Local News

One man’s marine navigation app is riding a new wave of success. This all comes after his daughter posted a 12-second TikTok video of her father Jeff Foulk at a boat show in Chicago. No one was taking the time to look at his flyer in person, but online, those 12 seconds have been seen by almost 23 million people. A sad dad is no fun. But to Megan Foulk, 20, her dad’s sadness proved to be a business opportunity.

wink

A Harford County man’s boating app is cruising to a new level of success after a little help from his daughter and a whole lot of TikTok users. It took just 12 seconds for millions of people to see Jeff Foulk’s hard work. The Havre de Grace business owner has been trying to get the word out about his boat navigation app for three years. So, his daughter spread the word to more than 20 million people on TikTok.

wbalTV 11

His goal for years, was to promote his boater navigation app and now he’s navigating a whole new wave of success. The success is all thanks to a viral TikTok post by his daughter Megan that’s new now moving through millions of phone screens and hearts. The seconds-long video was an honest snapshot of the father chasing his dream that would birth a dream itself.

National & International News

His Boating App Needed a Boost. His Daughter’s TikTok Audience Came Through. Jeff Foulk spent years working on Argo Navigation, a GPS app for boats. After a TikTok video, it became one of the App Store’s most popular products. Jeff Foulk spent four years creating his version of the perfect boating app. By his own estimation, he spends 80 to 100 percent of his time retooling and reimagining the GPS app, Argo Navigation. He made it easy to use. He color-coded routes based on depth.

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Jeff Foulk’s free boating navigation app, Argo, soared to the top of Apple’s navigation apps chart after his daughter’s viral TikTok video promoting it gained more than 20M views.

CNN Logo

Make my dad famous’: A daughter’s quest to showcase her dad’s artwork. Jeff Foulk’s free boating navigation app, Argo, soared to the top of Apple’s navigation apps chart after his daughter’s viral TikTok video promoting it gained more than 20M views.

CNN Business

Welcome back to CBS Mornings. Time to bring you some of the stories that are talk of our very low coffee table this morning. Nate is up first. All right, my “Talk of the Table” is a daughter stepping in and stepping up to help her father achieve the success that she says he deserves. I love this. Megan Foulk posted this video of her dad Jeff unsuccessfully trying to hand out pamphlets for his boat navigation app at a boat show earlier this month. She wrote, “Help blow up my dad’s boating app.”

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For three days, Megan Foulk watched thousands of people walk by her father, Jeff, without a glance. Jeff Foulk had traveled to Chicago to advertise his marine navigation app for iPhones and Androids, but few people stopped at his booth. Feeling sorry for him, Megan secretly recorded onlookers ignoring her 62-year-old dad as he tried to distribute pamphlets.

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A father’s new navigation app, Argo, has soared to the top of the US App Store charts after his daughter helped it go viral on TikTok. Earlier this week, Argo’s official TikTok account shared a video of its owner, Jeff Foulk, at the Chicago boat show. In the clip, Jeff’s daughter Megan asked viewers to help her father’s navigation app for boaters go viral. “Help blow up dads boating app,” she wrote in the text over the video.

Independent Logo

A video about a dad attempting to get customers to try a new app “he’s worked so hard on” has gone viral on TikTok, where it got 8.5 million views at the time of this writing. A message overlaid on the clip posted from the TikTok account @argonavigation read: “Help blow up my dad’s boating app, he’s worked so hard on it and just wants people to try it out.

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