Ep. #55: 9 Founders in 90 Minutes: Manifest 2025 Rapid-fire Interviews

Episode Transcript
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Andrew Silver (00:00):
Hey FreightPod listeners.
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Welcome back to another episode of the Freight
Pod.
I'm your host, Andrew Silver,and we are live from Manifest
the Future of Logistics, themost intense conference I've
ever been to, the busiest, themost people.
We're in Vegas, of all placesShocking, it's crazy here and
we're doing rapid-fireinterviews.

(03:03):
We've got our first guest, mrEd Burns.
Let's start with somethingsimple.
Just give us a quickintroduction where you're from,
your business, when you started.
We'll go from there.

Ed Burns (03:15):
Awesome, andrew.
Thanks for having me on here.
Ed Burns, out of easternPennsylvania, near Allentown,
the freight mecca of thenortheast, have a business with
my father.
We do outsource carrier sales,so we connect the carriers with
the shippers and we're veryexcited to be bringing a new
company to market where we dosomething very similar but in a

(03:37):
digital way.

What's the new company?

Ed Burns (03:40):
It's called Tru Sygnal .

And what problem are you solving?

Ed Burns (03:44):
See, carriers don't have a very high trust level
with a lot of the technologiesout there that let's say they're
digital freight networks,because at the end of the day,
it's a tech-enabled brokerageright.
So what we're solving is wehave a broker-free platform and
we focus on the contract side ofthe business, not the spot
market side of the business, notthe spot market.

(04:07):
So it's a way for shippers tofind good asset carriers and for
carriers to find shippers whowant to work with an asset
carrier.

So you're not a brokerage.

Ed Burns (04:13):
Not a brokerage.

Is this?
What is the unique kind ofsolution here?

Ed Burns (04:19):
I mean I think having that broker-free platform
enables a lot of trust, so we'reable to get a lot of carrier
interest pretty quickly.
That trust factor is reallyimportant, especially in the
tech space.
I think carriers arereputationally tech-averse.
They're just not comfortablewith it a lot of times, and so

(04:42):
bringing that trust there, Ithink, is going to allow a lot
of people to come on and put alot of capacity, and so bringing
that trust there, I think, isgoing to allow a lot of people
to come on and put a lot ofcapacity on the platform.

So is it similar to a brokerage, in that your
team has to be selling to theshippers to get them onto the
platform and then you also haveto sell to the carriers to get
them on the platform.

Ed Burns (04:57):
Yeah, but at the end, once they're on, it's a
marketplace for them to find oneanother.
It's a dating application forshippers and carriers to find
one another.

Where is the business right now in its
journey?

Ed Burns (05:10):
This is the first time I'm talking about it publicly.
Yeah, so we've done a six-monthtest with some shippers and
carriers.
It's cooking, it's working, andso we're ready to start talking
about it.

This is the public launch, so you're going
to make the episode, givenyou're the first guest and I
said this was going to becompetitive and the top
interviews would make it Well,you're the first guest and since
it's a public launch, we willmake sure you're in the episode.
What does your ideal customerlook like?

Ed Burns (05:37):
We're looking for fleets that have 50 to say 1,000
trucks.
They can offer some capacity tosay a thousand trucks, they can
offer some capacity.
Fleets that work with shippersdirectly and have a lot of their
trucks moving on contractfreight and want more, and
shippers who want to work withcarriers directly.
So the size and scope of thatwe can do drive-in, reefer and

(06:00):
flatbed in the domestic US rightnow.
So people who are movingfreight and looking for fleets
to do that for them and arewilling to do it not in a
transactional way but lock infor six or 12 or more months.

What is the revenue model?

Ed Burns (06:15):
Great question.
We do not want to get in themiddle of the transaction, so
we're going to have a verysimple subscription fee and
people sign up for access to theplatform.
And, because we don't want totell people that they have to do
business together or influencethe pricing, we want to have
complete transparency andpricing between the carrier and
the shipper and allow them tonegotiate with one another for
what makes sense.

And what about your team?
Positions you to win in thisspace?

Ed Burns (06:43):
We have a lot of old guys who've been in freight for
a long time, so we have a greatnetwork of people and we're able
to talk to a lot of people whowouldn't typically talk to a
company that hasn't launched yet.
We're able to show this topeople and get people on the
platform, because my dad's beendoing this for 30 years plus.

(07:03):
I've learned a lot from himalong the way and people know us
, so we're leaning into that.

So I know your dad.
I've met him a couple times.
I'm going off script here.
I've got these questions I wasplanning to stick with, but I
want to get into this a littlebit.
Your dad's one of the nicerguys I think I've ever met in
the space and someone who justkind of has this aura about him,
a, and someone who just kind ofhas this aura about him, a
light about him that resonates.
I met him at Food Shippers, Ithink, a few years ago.
So tell me about the bestlessons you've learned from him

(07:31):
that you apply in your dailylife.

Ed Burns (07:34):
Yeah, andrew, part of the aura is the bald head.
It just kind of you get thesheen going and it looks like a
halo.
When I was a kid, he alwaysbrought us with him.
He was doing LTL sales for atrucking company called Carolina
Freight, and then Pjacks andthen Jebik these are old brands
and he'd bring us with him askids and I think it was a ploy

(07:54):
to get more freight honestly,like, bring some cute little
kids.
But we were able to walk aroundon manufacturers' floors and
stand in the wheel wells oftrucks and crawl around in
trucks and just be around theindustry and he would always say
freight gets in your blood andI was always like what does that
mean?
And now here I am and it's inmy blood and it's not.
It's not getting out and onceyou're in, there's no getting

(08:15):
out.
Um, the other thing is his hisuh ethos has always been help
people.
Um, since we were kids as well,I'm here to help people, you're
here to help people, we're hereto help people, that's it.
It's about helping people.
It's not about transactions,it's not about making money,
it's about helping people.
And he just instilled in us abelief that if you help enough

(08:37):
people get what they want.
You'll get what you want.
You help people.
You do the right thing.
Money will figure itself out.

You don't need to lead with the sale that's a
great, great, very wise wordsand, uh, clearly you've learned
some great lessons there, solet's go back.
What is, what do you say, isthe kind of biggest competitive
advantage that the true signalteam has?

Ed Burns (08:59):
I think that it's.
It's the experience, um, it'sthe industry knowledge and I
think it's also that detachmentfrom the outcome.
You know the platforminherently in it.
If there's a match and peopledon't transact, we're not going
to have a heart attack about it.
We're not financiallyincentivized to make people do

(09:22):
business together.
We want to allow people to dobusiness together when it makes
sense and I think that lack ofpressure and not being beholden
to somebody for a lot of money.
Right now we're self-funded, wecan take our time to bring this
to market.
We can iterate and change veryquickly.
We're small.
It's a simple platform.
Changes are fast andinexpensive, so we don't have

(09:47):
pressure and I think that'sgoing to help us.

Definitely.
I agree with that.
I'm curious if I'm a shipperand I commit to use when I think
about.
I've spent a lot of timeselling to shippers and one of
the most important things theywant from me as a broker is
knowing that I'm going toexecute on whatever commitments
I make.
So if I commit to a six-monthdeal or a 12-month deal, they

(10:10):
want to make sure that I'm goingto follow through and execute.
How do you navigate that as thekind of detached, non-committed
party?
If you sell to a shipper andsay, hey, come on to our
platform, and then they contractwith one of your carriers and
the carrier bails?
What does that kind of looklike?
Is that a stain for you guys?

(10:32):
How do you navigate that?
Or how are you thinking aboutthat as you go to market?

Ed Burns (10:35):
Yeah, we're not afraid to kick a carrier off the
platform if they're misbehavingright.
If they're doing things thatthey shouldn't be doing, then
they're not a fit for theplatform.
Right now, the fleets that areon and the fleets that we are
continuing to onboard we've gota list of people who we know
still and know how they operate.
We have an integration with atool called eCarrierCheck to do

(10:55):
some simple background check.
We're still asking the shipperto onboard as they normally
would, whatever their vettingprocess is.
If it's to go through the RMIS,that's great.
If it's to go through the RMIS,that's great.
If it's something different,that's fine too.
Right now, we can vouch for thecarriers on the platform.
I think as we scale, this couldpotentially become an issue and
I hope I solve it before then.

So it feels like you know, my perspective has
always been like as the broker,it's my job to understand the
shippers kind of rules of thegame and then play by them.
To understand the shippers kindof rules of the game and then
play by them.
And it sounds like what you'reasking.
You're going to give the care,you're going to give them the
leash to set their own rules andthe carriers have to agree to
play by them.
I'm curious if it makes sensefor you also to kind of have

(11:36):
your own kind of code of conductfor the platform that you say
to a carrier hey, you know, hereare our 10 commandments for you
to participate in our bit or onour platform.
You have to follow these things.
Is that how you guys arethinking about the business?

Ed Burns (11:49):
Yeah, I mean I think that's a beautiful way of
putting it Absolutely, I mean,we were, we're looking for
people who will honor their wordand do what they say they're
going to do on both sides, rightand in our legacy business.
This is how we work.
We work with shippers who honorthe commitments and carriers
that honor their commitments.
So it's like you might win sixmonths worth of business, but
they wind up doing business for15 years or more.

(12:11):
So that's what we're looking toreplicate here as well.

All right.
Last question, as we're comingup on our 10 minutes what are
the biggest challenges you'recurrently facing as you get this
business off the ground?

Ed Burns (12:23):
This is new territory for me, right?
I don't consider myself a techguy by any means, so coming in
and pitching this and makingsure the messaging is right,
it's a little quirky, it's alittle bit different.
Carrier interest is excellent.
Shippers move a little slowerand for us it's like going
through the contracting processand getting them to sign a

(12:45):
license agreements.
Um, it takes a long time andit's like oh, we're sending it
to legal.
You know that's a new thing forme to navigate, but we're
getting through it.

Yeah, that part's never fun.
Um, but listen, man, I thinkwith your genuine nature, I
think I think you'll find somesuccess here.
Just keeping yourself and uhkeeping, keep kind of doing what
you can to support the carriersand shippers, and I think
you'll find a winning strategy.
So with that, thank you.
That wraps up our firstinterview.
Our first rapid fire, ed burns,thank you.

(13:14):
Okay, round two we've got mrtom curie is that right nailed
it yeah absolutely, tom curie.
President Curie, president of QD.
Founder of QD.
We have had your partner Prasadon the show for an in-depth
look at QD, but that was a whileago, so we've got you now.
Let's start with your story.

(13:35):
Introduce yourself where you'refrom.
When did you start the business?
Why did you start the business?

Tom Curee (13:41):
Yeah, so I've been in .
I've been in transportation forabout 18 years, spent the
majority of my time out there,living the 3PL life, the carrier
life, lived on both sides ofthe spectrum, and my good friend
, prasad Galapoli, had reallycome to me as we started talking
about challenges that existedin supply chain that hadn't
properly been really solved atthis point, right, and so we

(14:04):
came together to say, hey, look,how could we address
appointment scheduling and whatwe need to do in this space?
So we launched out.
In April of 23 was when Iofficially said, hey, we're
going to start doing this.
We worked together, startedassembling the team and now
we've got 75 different customersand 3PLs that are actively
using us for appointmentscheduling and finally to kind

(14:25):
of fix that old beast.
I mean, you've scheduledappointments right.

I have scheduled appointments.

Tom Curee (14:30):
Yeah, yeah, many More than one, I bet too.

More than one.
Explain exactly what theproblem is that you're solving.

Tom Curee (14:36):
Yeah, so the reality is we are in a world of
connectivity, but the problem isthere are so many different
systems that exist out there anddifferent ways to connect to
these different locations thatexist out there.
I mean, you're talking abouttens of thousands, hundreds of
thousands of locations thatexist out there that require
appointments of some sort, andso the problem has been this has

(14:58):
been a project that a lot ofpeople have tried to solve.
We have seen that.
We talked to very largecompanies that have said, hey,
this was a project, we tried it,it failed.
Why are you any different?
And the reality is we liveappointments.
It is all that we do as anorganization, and so our team
you know Prasad has severaldecades of experience in this

(15:19):
industry, understanding how toserve, understanding how to
bring these differentorganizations together, and that
is really what we are we're aconnector.
I think a lot of my history andmy experience in the industry
has been one of being aconnector, from things that I've
done with TIA and otherassociations, and so it's really
given us an opportunity to say,hey, we've got a path to bring

(15:41):
these systems together andcreate one unified experience
for the end user, and that'sreally the focus for us is the
end user.
How do we make sure that theirlife gets better and they get to
really reap the benefits of thespeed of these appointments, as
opposed to someone out theretrying to do this all manually
by themselves?

Describe the solution.
What does it look like?
What is it?

Tom Curee (16:02):
Yeah.
So the interesting thing aboutour product is we're a product
that we hope that you never see.
We're not trying to give youanother widget, another Outlook
plugin, another extension,another web portal.
What we do is we build into theworkflow of what the users are
already doing in your TMS, so wego directly into TMS.
A lot of people say, well, whatTMS?

(16:23):
It really doesn't matter.
So we go directly into TMS.
A lot of people say, well, whatTMS?
It really doesn't matter.
We've built with anything fromthe AS400, mccloud software, new
API, proprietary TMSs that havecome to us.
We've built with Excel sheets.
I mean, we've literally builtthis connection through various
different ways.
But we allow as soon as thestop is created in your system,
whatever that system is, we canimmediately identify, based off

(16:46):
of our tens of thousands oflocations, where it needs to be
scheduled, how it needs to bescheduled.
We can immediately go out,process that appointment and
push it back.
So users don't have to doanything, they don't have to be
involved in the process.
We can allow them to be.
But reality is we use all ofthat historical data to be able
to know what your preferencesare and go after those prime
appointments as soon as they'reavailable.

And where is the business right now in its
journey?
What key milestones have beenreached thus far?

Tom Curee (17:12):
Yeah.
So you know key milestones forus.
There's been a couple of bigones.
First off, reaching 75different customers.
That's a big deal for us andyou know we're talking about 75
diverse customers.
You know we're talking aboutsome of the largest logistics
companies that are out therelargest cares are out there to
some of the smaller, I mean Ican remember we had a smaller

(17:36):
care that came to us and theysaid, hey, we want to do this,
we want to fix appointmentscheduling, but you're going to
have to work with Donna and, tobe honest, donna hates
everything.
She hates every new piece oftechnology.
She doesn't like anything.
So good luck, right.
And so, fortunately, donnaloves it and it worked great.
And so those are the momentsRight.
And like, I can remember one,one significant milestone for us

(17:59):
we were at the McLeod userconference and there were
customers there that I had sold,but I wasn't involved in
onboarding at that point.
We had brought on CarrieHodnett.
She's our customer successdirector.
She does a phenomenal job withour customer and that team, and
it was the first time that I hada customer walk up to me that
we had sold to and they said Tom, I just want you to know we

(18:22):
love this.
This has been the easiestintegration we've ever done.
We've absolutely loved it.
Your team has been phenomenaland that was to me that was a
real milestone because you heardit directly from a customer.
I wasn't involved in that, Ididn't do any of that.
It was literally the teambuilding that.
So to me, those are the moreimportant milestones.
Are there revenue milestones,absolutely All those things that

(18:42):
matter in terms of the business, but at the end of the day,
it's that customer coming to youthat says, hey, this has been
really impactful for the waythat we run our business.

I mean, nothing feels better than having a
customer tell you that you'vesolved a problem for them.
So I can definitely appreciatethat.
Talk to me about what yourideal customer profile looks
like.

Tom Curee (19:01):
Yeah, so in our world a lot of times we're looking at
logistics companies, carriers,even shippers, who are
scheduling their ownappointments, okay.
So we run in a lot of thesescenarios where the appointments
have to be manually intervenedat some point.
We built the full cycle ofappointment scheduling so it's
not just, hey, I need toschedule an appointment, it's I

(19:22):
need to schedule, I need toreschedule, I need to change
dates, I need to change time, Ineed to schedule an appointment.
It's I need to schedule, I needto reschedule, I need to change
dates, I need to change time, Ineed to do PO changes, any of
the back and forth that existsaround that appointment and
you're involved with it.
What's interesting about thatfor us is we run into some
companies that if I looked onpaper and I said here's a target
account, I would look at thatand I would say they're too
small.
But then we find out that 95%of their business is in two of

(19:44):
the most heavily used schedulingplatforms that exist.
So they're actually a betterclient than some of the big
clients that you might see.
So anyone who has thisopportunity where you've got
users that are actively goingand schedule, same thing If
you've got your sales teamresponsible for scheduling
appointments.
I mean, I don't know, I kind oflike my sales team selling and

(20:05):
not scheduling appointments, but.
But you know, everyone's gottheir own way of doing business.
But any of those scenarioswhere you've got users tied up
doing these same manual,repetitive tasks around
appointments, they're a good fitfor us.

Yeah, I mean, you know, in my I don't know 15
plus years of brokering freightscheduling appointments was the
thing that we always looked atand we're like why can't we
automate this?
And it feels like we're finallyreaching that point.
Talk to me about what?
About your team positions, youguys, your team, to be like the

(20:37):
winners in this space.

Tom Curee (20:39):
So I think there's a couple of things.
First off, our team has over 70years of transportation
experience.
Okay, so we're not, we're notcoming in from some coast and
saying, hey, we're going to fixtransportation because they
don't know what they're doingand we've got a bunch of really
strong nerds that are that aresmarter.
That's not it.
I mean, we, we come withindustry background.
We've experienced it.
I've scheduled severalappointments in my life, several

(21:01):
, several, at least.
At least five, at least five.
Well, I always tell people youknow, I started in this business
scheduling appointments, I'mjust going to die scheduling
appointments.

That's just what I've decided.

Tom Curee (21:11):
But in that same thing, our process is what makes
it different.
We aren't trying to send yourusers to a new place.
We're not trying to teach thema new tool and a lot of times
when people hear that, theystruggle with that because they
want to touch and see.
And of course, we've gotback-end visibility.
We can show them some deeperlayer of what's happening behind
the scenes.

(21:32):
But our user adoption is over90 plus percent.
So when you can talk about anew solution, a brand new
technology, we're not teachingsomeone something that, oh, we

(21:52):
had a previous vendor and nowwe're switching to Qt.
This is brand new to them.
To have over 90% user adoptionas quickly as we do with
customers, that is a huge, hugedifferentiator.
I believe in what we'rebringing to the industry for
appointment scheduling.

Yeah, I mean, that's a big number.
Talk to me about your toppriorities for 2025.

Tom Curee (22:03):
Our top priority right now is additional
connections.
So we are going after everyscheduling type that exists.
We don't want you to use us for3% of your appointments or 80%
of your appointments.
We want to handle 100% of yourappointments.
So it doesn't matter whichconnection it is, it doesn't
matter how it exists in themarketplace, we're going after
it.
We have over 100 platforms thatwe are aggressively reaching

(22:27):
out to right now to work with tobegin scheduling, because what
we've learned is they don't want150, 250, 300 different
carriers and brokers coming tothem saying please, let me
connect with you.
They love the idea of going toa single source, letting that be
queued, us bringing thatconnection to all of the other
partners that exist in the place.

Last question what are the biggest challenges
you're currently facing in thebusiness?

Tom Curee (22:51):
I think the biggest challenges that we face in this
business is continuing to openup more connectivity.
Right, like, because we want tobe as aggressive as we are, as
we have been, with our customers, about adding new connections.
There are still some obscuresmall connections that we may
not know about yet, right, andso you're going to run into, you
know, abcdschedulingcom thatmaybe we haven't heard about yet

(23:14):
.
The nice thing that's helpingas our customer base continues
to expand, we start uncoveringmore of those different types of
connections so that we trulycan get to 100% of every
appointment that ever comes intotheir TMS today.

Last one, I just thought of this, I just want to
hear it because I like you andI'm curious your leadership
style.
What's the most importantelement to leadership in your
mind?

Tom Curee (23:36):
To me it's authenticity.
I have always been very big onthat for team members that I've
worked with, the team that we'vebrought around.
I believe that if they're goingto be authentic, you're going
to get a more honest approach toeverything that they're dealing
with, every problem they dealwith, and it just brings a level
of transparency.
I think when people are forcedinto these environments where

(23:59):
they have to look a certain wayor act a certain way or fit with
this certain crowd, I justdon't believe that they're going
to be as effective as theywould be if they were their
authentic self.

I love it.
Thank you, that's your 10minutes, well done, good job,
all right.
Next man up, mr Omar Singh.
Returning guest.
Returning guest second time,this time for a new business,
though.
Returning guest, second time,this time for a new business,
though we're going to talk aboutGet Real Rates, so why don't we

(24:36):
start with Omar kind?

Omar Singh (24:37):
of where you're from , the business you've started,
when did you start it and whatdoes it do?
Thanks for having me on.
It's good to see you, andrew.
So Get Real Rates is a spin-off, sort of like what you're
seeing in the industry with someother brokers who built some
tech that create all of Surge'sintegrations and business
opportunities and make itavailable to really every

(25:09):
logistician, every broker, everycarrier.
For you know just the tech thatwe've got.
I'll tell you more about it inthe next few minutes but that's
what we're doing iscommercializing multi-tenant
SaaS model of the tech thatwe've built, similar to you know
, transfix got rid of theirbrokerage.
They're focusing on their tech.
Flexport's taking over theconvoy platform.

(25:30):
I think Freightvana andLoadsmith are doing something
with their tech to focus on that.
So what I decided to do wasmake this available to everybody
and hope that the entireindustry benefits from it.
What is the problem you'resolving.

Entire industry benefits from it.
What is the?

Omar Singh (25:43):
problem you're solving.
I'm enabling small andmedium-sized brokerages and
motor carriers to participate inany what any shipper TMS is
going to call dynamic ratediscovery, dynamic pricing,
dynamic rate tree, dynamicrouting guide, whatever they
call it.
There's usually a high barrierto entry in order to be a

(26:06):
partner with the TMSs and tobuild the tech that's capable of
providing those real-time APIprices to the shippers within
whatever the TMS is, and there'sa very high barrier to entry to
building that, and so we'remaking it.
Just buy it and make it superaffordable at the level of each
customer or each bot we havebots also, um so that small,

(26:30):
medium-sized businesses don'thave to invest, you know,
hundreds of thousands of dollarsin this tech what makes your
solution unique?
well, from an onboardingperspective, we're going to have
the fastest onboarding in theindustry.
Most, most people who are sortof doing what we're doing do
what you would call back-endaccounting.
You sign all the paperwork, youbecome the customer and then

(26:53):
you get invoiced monthly andthat all contributes to a longer
onboarding process.
So we set it up for front-endaccounting.
So literally even though Idon't expect people to do it in
the very beginning up forfront-end accounting so
literally, even though I don'texpect people to do it in the
very beginning you canself-service on board.
Go to the website, make apayment, sign up for monthly,
sign up for annual.
You'll immediately get a linkto your login page and, like,

(27:15):
there's a couple things you haveto do.
You'd have to put in your rateengine credentials.
You'd have to put in your tmscredentials, whether it's
louisiana or mercury Gate orUber Freight or whatever.
There's a few things you haveto learn, but literally you can
be onboarded in five minutes.
That's one of the excitingthings I hope that people will
find In terms of the uniqueness.
I've spent six years alreadybuilding this.

(27:36):
So we have TMS integrationswith all of the major TMSs that
are participating in any kind ofdynamic price discovery program
and then it's also superscalable.
So very, very low barrier toentry from a pricing standpoint,
from an onboarding standpoint,the most, I think, robust list

(27:58):
of TMS integrations that are outthere, and it comes with years
of experience as my experiencewith search, transportation and
building all of the variablesthat work and make sense.

journey?

Omar Singh (28:14):
So this is sort of, I guess, what I would call a
soft launch.
We're probably two or threeweeks from going live.
We're finishing rateintegrations with green screens
and truck stop and the cloud andsonar, and so we're polishing
those up.
We have TMS integrations withgreen screens and truck stop and
the cloud and sonar, and sowe're polishing those up.
We have TMS integrations inplace already with some of the
large shipper TMSs.
We just finished the wholepayment gateway onboarding, sort

(28:35):
of self-serve automatic liketenant creation.
Once a payment is made it takesa couple of minutes to get your
logging credentials emailed.
So, yeah, two, three weeks fromgoing live in full production.

What does your ideal?

Omar Singh (28:48):
customer look like.
I think it's going to be smalland medium-sized businesses.
Certainly we can, you know,compete at the enterprise level
if you have enough customers.
But it can be any small,medium-sized broker carrier who
wants single lane quoting,multi-lane quoting, bots, you
know, and then, of course, apiintegrations.

(29:10):
So you could have literallyjust two customers, three
customers who have spot bidboard.
You could have two or threecustomers that are using dynamic
pricing, with whatever theirtms is, whether it's an on-prem
TMS or it's one of theenterprise level ones.
But you don't have to spendhundreds of thousands of dollars
to build it or to be a partnerwith those TMS organizations,

(29:33):
because some of them requirethat.


Omar Singh (29:38):
So the revenue is going to be subscription-based
for me.
There'll be a super small setupfee for each bot, super small
setup fee for each customer, tmsintegration and then just a
monthly subscription.
You can pay annual at a 15%discount on, like the tier one,
which is single lane pricing$250 a month.
In my mind that's just likegiving it away $500 a month for

(30:02):
multi-lane pricing, which isalso you could get an annual
discount for that.
But then the bots and the APIsand the carrier TMS integrations
for setting automatic buy ratesare going to just be monthly
and I don't think and thosewould be $1,000, $500 for bots,
$1,000 for TMS integrations andI think at that price point

(30:23):
people aren't going to leave.
I don't need to lock inmulti-year contract.
I don't need to lock inlong-term pricing.
I think you're going to seevalue every single month and
you'll just stay our customerevery single month.

What about your team?

Omar Singh (30:38):
I mean I think that we have the integrations built.
We have a product that has been, you know, tried and tested by
me and and my team for the lastsix years.
It was built, you know, Iremember I come from the agent
background.
I was at some of the largenational firms for a while, so
it's built for scale.
It really, like legacy, hasbeen built for, you know,

(31:01):
different agents.
It's been built for, uh,multi-user within the tenant, so
a large brokerage could enableit for 25 of their broker agents
or just sort of smallerorganizations can just have one
user.
But it has all of the tools forenterprise level scale while

(31:22):
also being just super easilyaccessible to smaller,
medium-sized companies that justwant to dip their feet in or
have a customer that says Iwould like for you to
participate in this.

What are your top priorities for 2025?

Omar Singh (31:37):
Well, I want to get the word out, you know about Get
Real Rates.
I want to be able to gain theconfidence of brokers and
carriers to try out the product,learn that it's good and then
also help the large shipper,TMSs.
I want to be able to gain theconfidence of brokers and
carriers to try out the product,learn that it's good and then
also help the large shipper,tmss.
I mean, one of the reasons thatwe're able to build these
partnerships is that they tellus they have a lot of customers
who want to participate inwhatever they call their dynamic

(31:59):
freight marketplace, dynamicprice discovery, digital freight
matching they all have a adifferent name for it, but some
shippers are reluctant to turnit on because they only have
about 50 people who canparticipate, right?
So the large cms's havecustomers saying we want, we
want hundreds of people to beable to participate and those
cms's don't have the bandwidthto onboard everybody.

(32:22):
The smaller, medium-sizedcompanies don't have the
bandwidth to onboard everybody.
The smaller, medium-sizedcompanies don't have the
resources, the financialresources, to pay for those
partnership alliances.
So I want to get the wholeshipper community benefiting
from hundreds of brokers andcarriers being able to do this.
I want those hundreds ofbrokers and carriers.
To be able to get an easy ROIat our price point, I think you

(32:44):
just have to win a couple loadsa month and it pays for itself.
So everybody should really, Ithink, move the industry forward
.

What are the biggest challenges you're
currently facing?

Omar Singh (32:57):
I thought that this was unique to me, but as I talk
to people I've learned that itjust takes a little longer for
these integrations to get built,for the partnership agreements
to get put in place, for thedifferent rate engine
integrations to sort of also getput in place.
So it's taken a little bitlonger than I thought it would,

(33:18):
but I mean we're very close.
We're very close.
I'm happy about that.

What lessons are you taking from your experience
with Surge and applying to thisnew business venture and Get
Real Race?

Omar Singh (33:31):
Well, I think the industry has probably seen that
an over-reliance on tech didn'tgo well for us in terms of
making it the ultimate strategy.
It didn't go well for some ofthe larger firms and some of the
medium-sized firms Of course,we know some of their names.
I think being able to bringbalance to where we're assisting

(33:54):
a traditional, existingbusiness model that's successful
and enabling them with techthat doesn't have to disrupt the
way they're doing things, butjust enable them to do things
with their customers that theyweren't able to do before, I
think is going to be the rightbalance for the industry.
So don't change your businessmodel, but let's give you a tool

(34:16):
that is going to maximize ROIfor you very quickly and give
you a much more stickyrelationship with your shipper
customers.

All right, your 10 minutes is up, well done,
thank you.
Thanks for having me Next manup.
We got Mr Chip Reeves.
Start with something easy whenyou're from, what's your
business?
When did you start it?

Chip Reeves (34:45):
Currently live in Nashville, Tennessee.
Lived all over North Carolina,Atlanta, Chicago for a long time
.
Made it down south back toNashville.
Started the company Enablersofficially in November.
Soft launch happened back inAugust, but using Manifest as a
good event to really launch ourname and start pushing.

What problem are you solving really?

launch our name and start pushing.
What problem are you solvingRight now?
Logistics companies, freightbrokers, third-party logistics
companies.
They go through higher firecycles.
When the market's bad, theyfire everybody.
When it kicks back up, theyhire everybody.
I think in this upcoming swingthat we're going to get the
market's going to pick up.
It's inevitable at some point.
I think hiring managers isgoing to be a little bit more

(35:27):
smarter.
They're not going to want tohire a ton of people, but they
are going to need that extrahelp to help the influx of
business.
So that's where we come in,offering our highly trained
offshore logistics folks.
We have offshore and nearshore,but it's really blending,
taking operational processesthat are long, complex, a lot of
clicks.
Put some AI on top of it, whatthe AI cannot do.

(35:49):
That's where we put our humanintelligence, our AGI, to fill
in those operational gaps.

So what is the unique solution you're providing
?

Offshore staffing and then automated custom
workflows.
So we can build a workflow.
You answer two questions,upload one example document or
file a lot of different formats,then you have a workflow that
you can run by as many differentusers as you want, as many
times as you want.
So the custom AI really comesin handy to eliminate some of

(36:19):
those mundane tasks billing,tracking requests, quoting
requests from shippers.
It can do it all.

journey?
What key milestones have beenreached?

Yeah, so officially launching in November.
So we have just shy of 30people placed right now.
We had a three-month goal to dothat and we did it in two
months, so we're ahead ofschedule.
Long way to go.
We want to place 300 this year.
So throughout the course of theyear we're going to have some
different milestones to help getus there, but 300 by the end of

(36:53):
the year is our goal.

What is your ideal customer look like?

Yeah, small, mid-sized brokers who have good
business, constant business, andthey are starting to ramp, but
they don't necessarily want tohire a ton of people to operate
the tasks that can be operatedmore cheaply, a little bit more
smartly.
So we're planning on doing that.

(37:17):
Subscription-based for the AIand then for the humans, just a
monthly price.

Positions you to win in thespace.

Yeah, so right now it's myself and one counterpart
here in the US, but we have ahuge team over in Pakistan.
That's where the bulk of ouroperational workers are going to
be, and I've actually workedwith these individuals at two
different employers in the pastworked for Keep Truck and Motive
Technologies in the past andthey have a huge operation in

(37:51):
Islamabad and Lahore.
So I was able to make a lot ofconnections.
I trained all those folks overthere about five years ago and
stayed in touch with them.
So those folks have stayed inthe industry working for
different freight brokerages,fuel cards, factoring companies.
So they have touched a lot ofdifferent aspects of the
business.
So it's not just, you know,experience from a Western call

(38:12):
center.
These come, these reps comeheavily armed with training and
at least one year logisticsexperience.

What is unique about the Pakistani culture that
you've learned?
That has added value to thebusiness you're building.

Yeah, humble society.
They're grateful for the work.
They love the type of work thatwe're having them do, highly
trained workforce over there.
Lahore has about nine millionpeople and there are over 20
universities in Lahore, soeverybody has college degrees
that we hire.
So these folks are hungry andthey are the most hospitable

(38:52):
people in the world.
I've gone to lots of differentplaces and these people are
willing to bend over backwardsfor customers and logistics.
That's what we need.

What is your biggest competitive advantage?

Competitive advantage is our speed to market
.
If you need somebody, we havepeople that are already trained,
they've already gone throughour certification program and we
can deploy people in days, notweeks or even months, so we can
get there very quickly, verycost competitive.
We're new, so we're notingrained in our ways, so I'm
willing to get creative on thesolution side and the deal side.


Top priorities grow revenue, get our name brand out
there.
Those are our two biggestthings.
So, since we're new, peopledon't know who Enablers is, so
we've got to make a name forourselves, put it out there and
make sure people understand.
You know the type of work thatwe do.
And then, obviously, justgetting more organic customers
outside of just kind of ourfriends and family network and,
you know, start getting someorganic customers.

currently facing?

I mean, ai is coming in hot and heavy I think
we've all heard that term, atleast you know, 20 times in the
past hour but it's not going tosolve everything right, like
there's still need for humanintuition intervention.
The bots aren't going to doeverything, so, but that's
something we're up against.
You know.
There's, you know, voice agentsout there.
There's, you know, automatedworkflows, you know, similar to
the ones that we offer.

(40:14):
So I would say AI is ourbiggest competitor, but
nothing's ever going to takeaway a relationship or that
human intuition.

So AI is your biggest competitor.
How do you think about AIwithin your business?
What, where, when, why?
Explain how you're thinkingabout using it.

Yeah, so we want to partner with AI companies that
are solving some of these toughproblems, because humans can't
do it all.
Robots can't do it all either,so we're actually looking to
partner with folks.
We have a couple partnershipsin place already where we're
reselling each other's products,so we want to do more of the
same.

And what about your own background?
Talk a little bit about whatyou've learned that's helped
kind of get you to this placeand what lessons you've brought
with you into this business yeah, of got, get you to this place
and why you, what lessons you'vebrought with you into this
business.

Yeah, you know it started out like like a lot of
us in traditional brokeragehouse, you know, floor with
hundreds and hundreds of carrierreps, customer reps, ops, reps
um, I think those days where youliterally have a floor of
hundreds of people are kind ofgone.
Um, but I've been at otherfreight tech startups that have
kind of opened my eyes.
There are smart solutions outthere where you can have people
and you can have greattechnology and a fine balance

(41:24):
there.
But, like I said before, youknow I worked with Motive for a
while.
I met all these people over inPakistan, realized that there's
an opportunity to really dosomething special over there.
So, between my traditionalfreight background and then all
my freight tech startupexperience, I think Between my
traditional freight backgroundand then all my freight tech
startup experience, I thinkmeshing kind of these two

(41:47):
solutions.

It's a perfect time, as the market's going to
swing up here pretty soon.
There's something I've alwaysbeen curious about as someone
who's a big believer in having avery intentional culture and
wanting people the more boughtin you can get your employees to
your own culture, your values,what you stand for, I think, the
better product you'll have.
One of the challenges of abusiness like yours is you hire

(42:09):
these employees who they do kindof work for you, but they also
are more directly working foryour customer, for the company
that you place them with.
So how do you think aboutbuilding culture in an
organization where youremployees don't really work for

(42:29):
you as much as they, or they dowork for you, but they also work
for another company?
How do you think about that?

Yeah, I think we're very selective on the types of
customers that we bring on.
If it's a customer that justwants to grind these people 200
phone calls, they don'tincorporate them into their own
culture.
That's not something that wewant.
We want a customer that's goingto embrace these individuals,
embrace our team into theirteams, because I mean, they're

(42:54):
managers, they're coworkers.
They're not gonna be with mycompany, they're gonna be, like
you said, they're gonna be withour clients.
So we vet people, make surethey're going to treat them
properly.
We look at their social mediapresence, see what type of
activities they do outside ofthe office, how they incorporate
culture outside of justT-shirts and raises every
quarter.

And how are you thinking about this?
Is this is your first businessthat you're?
It's your business, and how areyou thinking about your
leadership style?
What are you doingintentionally to try to build
the best organization you can?

Yeah, it's interesting.
So I've been on the operationsside.
I've been an operator since dayone so I've never had to sell.
I guess you're never notselling but it's never been, you
know, my top priority.
So this sales motion is new forme.
So it's stretching me a littlebit there and I like it.
It's forcing me to do stuffthat I absolutely would not do
in the past.
But I'm a people person.
I understand that operations istough, it can be frustrating,

(43:52):
so I always take care of people,make sure that people are happy
in the work that they do.
If they're not, see what leverswe can pull to either change
the situation or find adifferent type of opportunity to
make that individual a littlebit happier.
So always looking out for theindividual and after that
business comes second.

All right, thank you.
Our 10 minutes is up.
Well done.
Next man up, alex Bezubitz.
Did I get that right?
Yes, you did.
Welcome to the show.
Let's start with a quickintroduction where you're from
the name of your business whenyou started.

Alex Bezzubets (44:26):
Hey guys.
So Alex, founder and CEO of myMechanic, we founded the company
almost three years ago and,yeah, what problem are you
solving?
So, essentially, we arebringing every roadside incident
online.
We are a pure SaaS platformthat connects the mechanic with
the service provider, with thefleet or the owner-operator that

(44:47):
has broken down, and so we wantto replace the phone calls and
be pure SaaS that connects theparties together in real-time
updates, tracking, messaging,photo uploads, invoicing.

What is the actual problem?
What does that look like in themarket today?

So let's say, a company like Warner.
They have 10,000 trucks, theyhave about 65 dispatchers
sitting in one office in threeshifts and they're playing phone
tag with the driver and thenwith the mechanic and the
mechanic's mechanic for statusupdates.
And so somebody like a Warnerwhat with value prop we want to
offer to them is be able to fromthe driver submitting a

(45:21):
breakdown VR platform to thedispatcher, getting notification
of the driver's location,messaging, photo sharing, what
have you.
And then the mechanics on theother side, the service
providers, them too.
They get status updates, theyget notifications.
They have a management softwareas well, and now we're
eliminating the need forwondering and replacing it with
data-driven analytics and stuff.

journey?
What key milestones have beenreached?

Yeah, so we launched last year Q4.
We have a little over 8,000trucks in the pipeline and then
an additional almost 20,000 inpilots.
We're talking to some of thebiggest service providers to be
featured on our platform.
But we started breaking revenuelast Q4 and just been growing
ever since.

What does your ideal customer look like?

On the trucking side, any fleets owner-operators
and, on the service side,service providers, roadside
assistance companies,dealerships that have shops,
towing companies and partsdistribution as well.


So on one side, we are charging either a
successful road call fee or thebigger fleets are wanting to pay
per asset.
If you use our platform tofacilitate the payment, we
charge 1% for the conveniencefee.
And on the service side, we arecharging per technician to be
featured on the platform or perlead.

Positions you to win in thespace.

I think, starting with our leadership, we
just brought on James Lovecamp,who had a significant role at
FleetNet, and he brought hisexpertise 22 years of experience
in the industry.
We have a great advisory boardand then we got a couple other
people that are about to bereleased and announced that are
coming on board as well.
But we did a really, reallygood job of listening to the

(47:06):
industry and the industryproblems and we took those
questions, problems, concernsand we put together a SaaS
platform that has good UI andare offering that solution back
to them.

So this is a space that is pretty unfamiliar
to me.
I mean, obviously, as a as abroker, we had trucks break down
all the time, but we never.
I mean, we did occasionallyhave to get involved, but it
wasn't certainly a corecompetency.
Can you talk a little bit moreabout what that problem really
looks like Without your product?
If I'm a truck driver and Ibreak down, what does that look

(47:40):
like in terms of?

getting a solution.
So I'll give you a primeexample.
I was two weeks ago.
I posted this on LinkedIn.
I was driving to a meeting andthere's a truck on the side of
the road with his hazards on.
So I pulled over, I recordedthe incident and asked the
driver how long have you beenhere?
And he said two hours.
And so I was like call yourdispatch.
He calls his dispatch and theyhave not even started looking
for a mechanic at that time.
And I was like I can havesomebody out within 20 minutes.

(48:02):
And then I called one of ourcustomers.
They were there within 15minutes.
So just in a MVP quote-unquote,this is what it looks like,
what it looked manually right,but drivers will sit on the
phone average up to four hourswaiting for someone to come by.
And that's not because thedispatch was able to find the
closest mechanic.
It's because they found someonethat said yes first.
So they didn't know that Mikewas down the road with qualified

(48:26):
experience to be able to getthat truck off the road.
But we, having that marketplacedata, are able to help people
make those decisions and getthose trucks off the road as
quickly as possible.

What are the biggest challenges in building a
marketplace?

I think the biggest challenge obviously is
the chicken or the egg problem,right, like how do you bring on
all the drivers and all themechanics?
What have you?
So what we did really well waswe created two SaaS management
softwares that they can't livewithout, and they can also
operate without having the otherparty online.
For example, if you're atrucking company that is on
board with my mechanic andyou're using our software the
mechanic you can still call themoff Google, ntts, truck down,

(48:59):
et cetera, but then you emailthem the road call ticket
without them having to downloadan app or register.
They will be brought on forthat road ticket online and vice
versa.
So we created in a way that themarketplace is being built by
our customers, and we've beenhaving great success doing so.

What has been the biggest competitive advantage
for your team?

I think, just industry knowledge and being
very, very open to listening towhat our customer wants,
customer needs.
If our customers respond with arequest, what have you?
If it's something that we see,that's general, we jump on top
of it.
And even if we can't, I thinkthe most important thing is
responding and setting and beingresponsive and communicative
with our customers and I thinkus listening and being truly

(49:41):
agnostic is what's helped uskind of grow and talk with some
of the bigger customers that wehave right now what is the
competitive landscape look like?
so the beauty of it is and Iknow everybody like we don't
what we're doing nobody has isdoing.
For example, loves connect hasa great platform, but loves is
not going to bring on TA ontheir platform because they're

(50:01):
competitors.
But we can bring on LUVs, taand so forth and our fleets will
have the convenience of usingone seamless platform to connect
.
And on the flip side, we drivetraffic to all those customers
and they're competing by theirown against themselves.
Right, they're doing a greatjob.
The customers are always goingto come back, they're getting
great reviews, the pricing isgreat and they're driving their
own business, and so we're justbringing that exposure and

(50:23):
allowing smaller businesses aswell to come on board and
compete with them.

What are the top priorities you have for 2025?

Top priorities.
Number one is team.
We want to keep growing ourteam.
We have a great team right now.
Number two is make sure thatcustomer support is always there
.

We're hoping to close a round of funding, I
think next month, and besidesthat, just growth at all costs.
And what are the biggesthurdles you're dealing with
right now in the business ingeneral, not just, you know, I
asked about a marketplacealready but just in this startup
business that you've got going.
What are the biggest problemsyou're dealing with?

You know, I think the first problem I
experienced as a first-timefounder was funding, and I
thought that you can't doanything without funding and I
did things to get funding andthen we just turned around and
said screw it.
And we started building aplatform that's enterprise level
ready and said, hey look, iffunding comes along, it'll come
along, but we're going to getobsessed with our customers.
We're going to start focusingon revenue as quickly and as
passionately as possible, and westarted doing that and it
turned around really quickly.
But I think that incident inthe beginning was the funding

(51:25):
part was what's really screwedus up.

So have you secured funding at this point,
or are you still bootstrapping?
What does that look like?

We're still bootstrapping.
Right now we're at a pointwhere we're talking to some
serious conversations with someVCs to close our seed funding,
but we're still opening.
That round is still open.

So if someone wanted to invest right now, what
would you tell them?

I would tell them this would be the best
investment they've ever made andwe would love to give them a
pitch, a demo, and share some ofthe progress with the pipeline
that we have.
We have some very, veryexciting stuff that's going to
start coming out in the nextcoming weeks of the customers
that are coming on board, someof the bigger fleets that are
going to start using us, some ofthe bigger dealerships that are
going to start using us as well.
So I'm very, very excited for2025.

(52:05):
And why are you the right guy?
I would say our team is theright guy.
Our team is right.
The problem, the solution thatwe're offering, is right.

I would hate to put it all on myself because I
would disappoint anybody, but Iwould say the solution we have
and the team we have, those twoput together it's prime.
And how do you think about yourrole as the CEO, as a leader?
What are the most importantthings for you?

to be successful in your role.
I live by leading from behindas much as leading from the
front.
Day to day, we're in thegutters with the team, with the
trenches, I'm knocking doors,I'm driving around, you know,
visiting trucking companies,pulling over on the interstate,
talking to drivers that havebeen sitting for a while.
I think it's important to bescrappy to earn the respect of

(52:57):
the industry as well.
I'm 30, coming into an industrythat's extremely outdated and
extremely you know.
You got these guys that havebeen in there for 20, 30, 40, 50
years, and so for me to come inas a know-it-all would be
extremely deceptive, and so Icame in trying to learn, and
aggressively, you know, learningthe industry, asking people
questions, never being thesmartest guy in the room, and I
think that helped us createcredibility in the industry.

(53:20):
And I guess the last thing issurrounding our team with people
that have been in the industryand allowing them to guide the
platform.
Listening to our customers,which you know you get on a demo
.
They're like this is what we'vebeen looking for.
I'm like, yeah, it's becauseit's we built it for you, you
know.

It's a great feeling.
I think having that kind ofhumility will go a long way and
you pair that with the rightcuriosity to go ask the
questions, understand what yourcustomers need, and I think
that's how you get to a placewhere, when you show a potential
customer something, they lookat it and go like holy cow, this
is what we've been looking for,this is what we need.
So with that, that's our 10minutes.
Your time is up.
Well done, thank you.

(53:56):
Thank you for having me Allright.
Next one up let's do a quickintroduction.
Your name where?

Shan Wu (54:07):
you're from your business and when you started it
.
Hi, this is Shine here when I'mfrom.
What are you asking?
Are you talking about where mymother's from, where my business
is from?

Where were you born and where are you from now?

Shan Wu (54:21):
What do you look like?
I'm born in China, shenzhen,china, big poor city, and I live
in Canada right now.
I've been, you know, snowingMontreal, my business.

Thomas Mella (54:29):
Your business.

Shan Wu (54:30):
Four Labs.
We build precise shipperprospecting tool for brokers,
carriers, 3PLs as well.

When did you start the company?

Shan Wu (54:39):
We've been almost two years now, so two years ago.

And why did you start the company?

Shan Wu (54:45):
Honest answer.
I started the company because Idon't want to be an employee
anymore and I believe so.
I met my co-founder in aprevious startup.
Luckily, the startup now is abillion dollar company.
We were like you know what?
Why don't we make that forourselves and give it a try?
That's why we started.

And what problem are you solving?

Shan Wu (55:07):
We are helping sales teams sell the problem I'm
trying to solve right now.
And, Andrew, I don't know ifyou relate, but a lot of broker
sales reps tell me they're stuckin prospecting hell.
Have you been there?

Yes, tell me what prospecting hell looks like.

Shan Wu (55:25):
This is what prospecting hell looks like.
You got a quota.
You need to hit your 2550,right, whatever your target is,
and you know you need to pick upthe phone.
But you can't get to it becauseyou need to find new shippers.
How do you know who got freeright?
Where do you search Google Maps?
Some folks I heard walk downthe aisle in the grocery store
do all that.

(55:45):
That's not your job.
Your job is sales rep, notprospecting rep.
So our tool is get them out ofthere as quick as possible and
pick up the phone as quick aspossible.
I love that.

So tell me about your because I've done that.
I I love that.
So tell me about your cause.
I, I've done that.
I've walked the grocery store.
I've been a sales rep for mostof my life or most of my
professional career.
There's there's some levelthat's kind of fun about, like
the the prospecting journey ofthe creativity, but I actually,
like you, know what I.
Just I don't like having tofind the customer.

(56:16):
I love the creative.
From once I know who I'mreaching out to, like the
process of how do I get theminterested.
But I agree it's a huge pain inthe rear end to try to find who
I should call.
Talk to me about what is yourunique solution that you're
bringing to the market.

Shan Wu (56:33):
Our unique solution is we.
First let me tell you whatwe're not.
Not because there's a lot oftools out there.
We are not a data provider.
There's a lot of data providersthat tell you you have a huge
list of 10,000 shippers.
We're not that.
We're not an AISDR, one ofthose which I think really is
automating spam.
We don't do that.

(56:54):
Our unique solution is, at theend of the day, andrew, you tell
me tomorrow I want to findlocal LTL reefer white wine
producers in my area, andtomorrow you wake up with a list
of 50.
That's what we do.

So is it like a transactional thing where I have
a consistent relationship withyou, where so, okay, let's say,
my new brokerage wants to workwith 4Labs, and is it every day
I send you a message that says,hey, I want to find 20 companies
that ship heaters, and I'mhoping to find them in the
southern half of the UnitedStates, and then you go do that.

Shan Wu (57:35):
Yes, that's what we do In the back.
We build a tech tool thatallows for that Right, but we
actually limit it to a dailylist because my experience as a
sales rep I've been selling notfree, unfortunately, but I sold
donation, which means I soldnothing for money, I sold
payments, consulting, and what Ilearned is that a sales rep

(57:56):
actually doesn't want a list of100 or 1,000 prospects.
I want my daily 10 and 20, andI want to focus on that.
Everything else is noise, sothat's what we do.

journey?
What key milestones have youreached?

Shan Wu (58:11):
We are two years old, but we are also new again,
because this product is new.
We spent the last yearautomating operations for
brokers.
The brokers tell us great, nowyou free up our rep so they can
sell more, but why don't youjust help me sell more?
So this product is new.
We are now in the testingprocess.
We have a beta test where wehave these innovative brokers

(58:34):
who are willing to try newsolutions, to test it out.
So that's where we're at.


Shan Wu (58:42):
Right now our ideal customers.
They're a domestic broker doingfull truck load LTL, and they
are aiming to grow double digit,even in today's weather.
It's those who want to growthat are who we are helping.

What is your ideal?
I'm sorry, I just asked that.

Shan Wu (59:04):
The revenue model is we are providing you something
that's better than ZomaInfo forcheaper, so similar to ZomaInfo
or PoloDees.
There's a seat, there's atransactional fee, but right now
we're giving out free trials,so right now it's free.

Free is good.

Shan Wu (59:25):
uh, if I give myself credit, uh, I'll say I've been
selling a lot and I love sales.
I just hate the tools.
Well, luckily, I got aco-founder who loves building
tools, so I think we got we gotsomething going on to make this.
We want to make salesbrandlessly easy for folks,
right?
So I think we got the rightteam to get it done.

What is your biggest competitive advantage?

Shan Wu (59:49):
I think our advantage is we understand sales reps
don't want to be data reps.
We understand that more data isactually more noise, right.
I think that's a uniquecontrarian hopefully right
approach.
But that's the risk we'retaking to say we're actually not
giving people 10,000 leads andthat will help people.

(01:00:12):
So that's our advantage.

Andrew Silver (01:00:15):

Shan Wu (01:00:18):
2025,.
We want to get our product to aplace where it's amazing, where
people want to shelf money inour hands to use it.
That's why I gave it all forfree, because I believe I can.
We've been charging last year,we've been charging and we can
do that right now.
But what's the point of havingpeople pay us but not love it?
So our one goal is to makesomething so good people love it

(01:00:39):
.

currently facing?

Shan Wu (01:00:45):
This premise of cutting through the noise sounds good.
It's hard to execute.
There's so much niche tech wehave to build in the back to
make this a technology play, notanother rep doing this
overnight type of thing right,and so that's hard.
So, for example, something asspecific as we got a user who

(01:01:08):
want to find constructionroofing material shippers.
Now if you go on Zonminfo andall that you search for
construction, maybe you're luckyto get to construction
production, but you get a lot ofengineering from design firms,
stuff like that, people whodon't got freight right, so just
building out that qualificationto make sure you don't get
noise, you get shippers.

(01:01:29):
It's actually a lot of hardwork that luckily, not me but my
co-founder and our engineeringteam are working hard to solve
every day.

How does a small team like yours provide a better
solution than ZoomInfo that'shad hundreds of millions, or
however much, invested, withhundreds of, if not thousands of
people to build it out Like itfeels like they have such a leg
up and advantage, how do youcreate a better solution than

(01:01:59):
what they have?

Shan Wu (01:02:01):
Two things.
Number one we use them.
They're in our back.
So Minfo is in our back, Apollois in our back, Seamless AI is
in our back.
We don't want to replace orcompete with them.
What we do is we say they havea great team, they are large,
but they don't care aboutlogistics providers, Because
they want to sell to everybody.

(01:02:21):
But if you sell to everybody,you sell to nobody.
What we say is let's aggregateall these amazing data sources
but cut through the noise.
And we got the right team to dothat, specifically for
logistics providers, for freightbrokers, for truckload, for LTL
.

Given you're in the sales and prospecting
business, I want to spend aminute here before we wrap up.
What advice do you have forpeople about prospecting in
freight?

Shan Wu (01:02:47):
Number one I want people to not listen to my
advice, because I believe inthis principle called
believability-weighted advice,which means if me and my mother
give you advice about givingbirth, you should listen to my
mother.
Now, I never sold freight.
I learned everything from ourusers customers.

(01:03:08):
That's my experience.
So, with that, my advice isdon't spam people.
That's my advice.
There's a lot of tools todaythat can help you send 100,
1,000 emails a day.
You can automate.
You don't even need to writeanything.
There's AI, there's this, andthat my read is more noise and

(01:03:31):
more touch doesn't mean moreconversion.
Focus on creating genuinerelationship and actually, with
more spam happening today, theperson who does the hard work,
who pick up the phone, whoactually write that message that
is handwritten, will stand out.
That's my advice.

Great advice, and with that your 10 minutes is up
.

Shan Wu (01:03:52):
Thank you, Sean, Thank you Andrew.

This has my advice Great advice and with
that your 10 minutes is up.
Thank you, sean.
Thank you, andrew.
This has been fun.
Well done, all right, we'reback.
Another guest.
Let's start with a quickintroduction Name where you're
from, the name of your businessand when you started it.

Sadie Frank (01:04:06):
Sure, my name is Sadie Frank.
I work at N4EA.
We are from New York, I'm fromNew York, I live in Portland,
oregon, and we've been inbusiness for about a year now,
mostly in stealth mode, butpreparing to launch some new
products in the next couple ofmonths.

What problem are you solving?

We are solving for the climate risk gap in supply
chain analytics.
So we're a predictive analyticscompany developing global
disruption models for climateweather and any other supply
chain risk anywhere.
So we're a predictive analyticscompany developing global
disruption models for climateweather and any other supply
chain risk anywhere in the worldat any time.

Explain it to me like I'm five.

We will tell you where your shit is and when it's
going to get there.
Doesn't matter if it's twoweeks from now or 30 years from
now.

Okay, that's different than what I was
hearing.
What's the climate element ofthat?

Sure Well, my background's in climate-related
financial risk, which isbasically the risk that the
global economy crashes becauseof climate change, which is
shocking news.
It probably will.
So what we do is basically takeweather data.
We look at how the supply chainreacts to weather data, but
we're also able to look longerterm and use projections of

(01:05:10):
drought chain reacts to weatherdata, but we're also able to
look longer term and useprojections of drought rainfall
in the Panama Canal, in the EUcanal system.
Basically, any waterway in theworld is going to be disrupted
by climatic changes and we'lltell you how and why and how you
can get ahead of that.

What is your unique solution?

We have a very cool proprietary geospatial database
that enables us to runsimulations of how the supply
chain interacts with weatherreally, really quickly.
That allows us to look acrossany time period.
So we're looking operationallytwo weeks into the future, or 30
years into the future if youwant to know what happens when,
say, two massive hurricanes hitthe Gulf of Mexico back to back.

But like what's?
I mean it's 30 years in thefuture.
I mean that seems hyperbolic.
But like what is the what isthe value of knowing what's
going to happen in two years?
Is there anything actionable todo with that?

Yeah, sure.
So strategic planning right,like if you want to have a plan
in place when disaster occurs,you need to know what the impact
will be on your operation.
So it's not necessarily like 30years, here's a crystal ball of
what's going to happen, butit's when the climate changes,
when these disruptions occur.
What do you do then?
So we're talking to VPs ofintermodal, we're talking to
folks that are thinking at theCFO level about how they can

(01:06:21):
build better operational planswhen disaster strikes.

journey?

So we are like I said.
We've been about stealth modefor about a year.
We're preparing to launch ourfirst API, which is global
congestion risk ports, routes,choke points anywhere in the
world, assessing routecongestion.
We're preparing to launch thatin three months.

And what will that look like?
Global congestion Like?
Help me, help me visualize fora customer what that solution
looks like.

Sure, so picture a heat map.
So we're familiar with heatmaps, weather heat maps.
But what we have a heat map ofis vessel congestion.
So how many vessels are in oneplace at one time.
It's super dynamic.
We can look historically.
We can also look into thefuture.
So if you want to know whatport congestion really
accurately looks like, in twoweeks we'll be able to tell you.


So we are developing a platform that is an
enterprise software solution.
We're also developing APIs, asI mentioned.
We're going to surface thoseAPIs for about subscription
annual subscription fee forclients that want to access the
data.


Right now our ICP, our BP is intermodal.

So if you're a train company, if you're rail,
if you're freight, if you'redrayage anybody that's paying
attention to stuff coming off ofa boat we want to talk to you,
why not trucking companies?

Trucking companies as well.
But what's interesting aboutrail is that they're asset-based
right.
So they're dealing with raillines, rail cards that are fixed
into the ground, highly exposedto weather, and climate risk.


We are both dorks in the exact places that we need
to be so.
But the team is actually abrother sister team.
My brother is a supply chainquant, so he was working at a
top 20 global importer duringCOVID trying to develop their
optimization algorithms andwatch the whole thing go to shit
.
And my background's in climateand as climate related financial
risk.
So I've spent my careerthinking about how climate and
weather data impact Fortune 500companies, how that impacts the

(01:08:15):
global economy.
So we're sitting right at thatintersection and we also have an
awesome supply chain team thatare really focused on
understanding supply chainoperators.
We're not trying to be thoseyoung kids on the block that
come in and tell you how to doyour job.
We want to work with you tohelp you do your job better.

What are the biggest challenges to working
with your brother?

Oh man, if he watches this I'm going to keep
my mouth shut.
Not very many.
You know he's my youngerbrother, so it's hard for me to
admit that he's really smart,but I've had to really get my
head under my ass about that alittle bit and recognize that
he's a really smart guy.


Sleeping, I would say, personally trying to get
more sleep.
But no, we're looking forclients, we're looking for
partners.
You know, we're looking to getout there and solve real world
problems because really thesupply chain is about as
grounded in terms of the earthas it possibly gets.

Do you have active customers on the platform
today?

So we are working in partnership with some big
clients, but the platform iscoming soon.
We do have clients for the APIdata solutions.

And what has been the reception?
What are you hearing when youreach out to customers, like
prospects, and say, hey, we'rethis climate company or risk
prevention company?
It feels like this is a veryniche or kind of unique
potential solution which can bea good thing, but also not

(01:09:35):
something that anyone is used tobeing sold to, I imagine.
So what like does you know?
I'm sure there are challengeswith that.
Can you talk a little bit aboutwhat that experience has been
like?

Yeah, it's a great question.
You know climate maybe people'seyes glaze over a little bit,
but weather, you know, thesupply chain operators have been
dealing with weather since thebirth of this industry, right,
and people are starting to seethe impacts of changes in
weather patterns affecting theiroperations day to day.
So you know, maybe we're nottalking about climate, but we're
talking about hurricanes, we'retalking about what just
happened in Los Angeles with thewildfires, and you know.

(01:10:08):
Also, I just want to say oursolution is climate focused, but
we capture any risk.
If something is happening inthe global supply chain, our
model will pick up on it and beable to model that disruption as
well.
So, you know, we try to frameit more as an enterprise risk
management solution, less so aslike a climate specific thing.
Climate comes into it whenwe're really thinking about,
like, explaining the tech,explaining the unique value
proposition.

(01:10:28):
But we try to meet people wherethey're at and try to
understand their risks.

What are some of the other types of risk or
exposure that you guys arecovering or that these companies
are running into?

Yeah, well, I mean, obviously geopolitics is huge
right now.
You know you're looking at theimpact of tariffs, impact of
labor strikes, all of that.
You know the supply chain isone giant network.
That's the approach that wetake from a tech perspective is
looking at this sort of networkanalysis, and what happens in
the Suez Canal impacts whathappens in Los Angeles.
So you have to be able to modelall of that at once.

(01:11:01):
We do that, but then we justinteract it with weather data,
which allows us to be moreaccurate than pretty much
anything that's on the markettoday.

I'm just curious because you led with climate as
you were describing it.
If that's not the only kind ofpart of the solution, why lead
with that as the in kind of likethe?

description of the business.
Yeah, it's a good question.
We try to frame it like I said,because it's the novel hook
that we're bringing and it'sreally where we want to grow.
From my background, you can'twalk into an insurance
conference or a mortgage marketconference without climate being
top of the list in supply chaina little bit less so, even
though the supply chain is beingaffected by climate.
So we frame it as a climatesolution and then once you sort

(01:11:43):
of start to hear from people howthey're thinking about their
risk, then we'll adjust a littlebit.

You mentioned, like in a modal provide the
provider.
Seems like it's more of the,the, the ICP.
Did you also mention shippersthemselves?
Are you selling directly toshippers?

We would like to you know, um, their needs are a
little bit more specific, sortof, to their own network and are
what the advantage of whatwe're doing is.
We're tracking uh, we're notsort of like locked into one
single provider, so not at thispoint.
But we're really interested intalking to more shippers to
understand what their riskswould be as we sort of grow and
strategize about the longer termvision.

Makes sense.
What are the biggest challengesyou're currently facing?

What are the biggest challenges we're
currently facing?
Capacity, our team capacity.
So you know, like we're a techcompany, we're a tech team, but
software engineers are expensive, and so, as we think about
capital planning from our end,that's what I'm thinking about
as a CEO every morning is howare we going to get the team to
unblock us to achieve ourmission?

How do you think about?
Have you raised capital or areyou bootstrapped?

We have raised a small amount of capital, but
we're mostly bootstrapped.
My brother is currentlyprobably eating ramen and Shane
to his desk as he's coding.
I have a wife who kind ofrequires me to bring some more
money to the table, so we'rescraping by, but we're looking
to raise a seed round in thenext year.

And what do you think is like the hook to get
people you people, if they'repotential investors sitting here
watching right now, how do youget them hooked?

So we are a data-first company.
The data that we have isextremely valuable and, as we
think about expanding, one ofthe huge markets that I'm really
interested in tackling isfinance.
So, supply chain folks, youhave a lot of great data at the
tips of your fingers that isinteresting to hedge funds, that
is interesting to insurancecompanies, that is interesting
to anybody who's trackinganything on the water, and the

(01:13:34):
supply chain could benefit fromthinking more strategically
about finance.

Last question what have you learned as you've
started to engage with thesupply chain industry, these
providers that you'reprospecting with?
What have you learned about ourindustry?

A lot of things.
It's a really cool industry.
Two things that come to mindit's relationship based, so you
need to understand who the mainpeople are that you need to talk
to and you need to talk to themand get in front of them.
And then the second one is thatnobody wants another software
platform shoved down theirthroats.
So you know if you're usingExcel, that's great.
We'll send you a CSV at 9 am inthe morning and that'll be on

(01:14:08):
your desk when you wake up.

Boom, your 10 minutes are up.
Well done.

Thank you.

Next man up.
Here we are.
Let's start with some quickintroductions.
Name where you're from, yourbusiness's name and when you
started.

Thomas Mella (01:14:24):
So, Thomas Mella, I'm born and raised in
Scottsdale, Arizona, but I livein Chicago now and I have
founded two companies.
The first one is SightlineFreight Partners does consulting
and integrations andimplementations for 3PLs and
freight brokers.
And then we have a spinoff, asister company called TrackFlow
that is a track and traceplatform for BPOs and freight

(01:14:45):
brokers.

I was not prepared for a double business
approach.
Which one are we going on?

I don't think we can do both we were talking
about track flow.

Okay, track flow it is.
So what is the problem you'resolving?

Sure.
So if you are a freight brokerand you have a tracking team, or
even if you're cradle to grave,knowing what an exception is on
a load and then being able toaction it in one platform is not
typically possible in a TMS.
And in order to automate usingthings like text, ai voice, you

(01:15:18):
have to know what the issue is,and this platform tells you what
the issue is, assigns it to auser and then helps you automate
and resolve the issue on aparticular load.

What is the unique solution there?

Sure, so it is basically taking the data,
integrates with the TMS andarticulates a specific problem
on a load.
So if you have a load that isfour hours to delivery and does
not have an update, it willbubble that up with an assigned
user.
So I'll say this user isresponsible for getting an
update on this load thatcurrently does not exist in the
market.

journey?

Sure, we started building it two years ago
because a consulting customerasked us to build it, because we
went to market to findsomething, and today we have
about a half dozen customers,and so we are fairly early stage
.
But we're breakevenprofitability and we're excited
to have opportunities like thisto go into the market.

What is your ideal customer look like?

this to go into the market.
What does your ideal customerlook like?
So ideally is a call it 50 to$250 million freight brokerage
with a BPO that they're usingfor track and trace and they do
not want that BPO accessingtheir TMS or getting into the
TMS, because the TMS is builtfor many different things and so
they want to optimize thattrack and trace team.

Is that a thing where brokerages don't want
their BPO to have access to theTMS?
I've never heard of that.

Sure.
So I would say there's twoelements to that.
One is if you have a BPOgetting into the TMS, I would
agree there's nothingnecessarily or inherently wrong
with that, but a TMS is built todo a hundred different things.
One of those things ispartially solving track and
trace.
This tool is built to only workon track and trace, and so if
you have a tracking team, theydo not need access to TMS, and

(01:16:58):
so you can have them have astandardized workflow and a
separate solution.


So the revenue model right now is well.
One thing I learned aboutconsulting and helping select
and integrate freight techproviders is we do
month-to-month contracts, no feefor an implementation, and it's
based on load volume.
So really, that reason we'refocused on load volume is so
that that is typically how theROI is based.
What we see with folks usingTrackFlow is they're able to

(01:17:25):
double the number of loads thattheir track and trace team can
track without any automation.
And then we layer on automationand they get even more than
that.

Talk to me a little bit about the team.
What's the makeup of the teamand what does it look like, and
what are the special talentsthat everyone has?

Yeah, so that's my favorite part.
So the team is all fromForkites, including myself, and
the reason that is, I think, areally important part is when we
go into a consulting client, wehelp them implement Forkites,
project 44, macropoint, truckerTools, and typically we see them
top out at about 80% tracking.
Then the question becomes whatabout that 20%?
And so that is what thissolution solves for.

(01:18:05):
But I think the reason we'reable to solve that final 20% is
because the team's backgroundand combined 25, 30 years
experience just in real-timetransportation visibility.

So I didn't.
Okay.
Fork Heights is an interestingcompany, one of the leaders in
the tracking space and a companythat's been implemented by a
lot of shippers had a lot ofsuccess there.
What I'm curious about is, as abroker we've seen, seen, and I
guess I haven't been in thebusiness for a year and a half
or almost long, to almost twoyears, but the challenges we had

(01:18:36):
, and I think they still have,is that we could get to a very
high percentage of loads trackedbut the consistency percentage
could never get that to a reallyhigh number that shippers were
happy about, unless, frankly, Iknow brokers that lied about it
and manipulated the system.
But does your solution addressthat piece, the consistency

(01:18:57):
piece?

Yeah.
So there's two components tothat.
You want to have a strongintegration into the visibility
platform that your shippers areusing, but then, in addition to
that, you need to say okay, thisload has not had an update on
the middle third of a shipment,which is how I get super
tracking on fork guides for myshipper.
What tool is going to bubblethat up and say this person is
accountable to getting an updateon this load where the driver

(01:19:20):
has disabled the macro point appas an example?
That is what track flow solves.
It says this load has not beenupdated in six hours.
Here's the person responsiblefor solving it, and I'm also
going to automate a text orphone call or an email to the
dispatcher to get thatinformation before a user has to
get engaged.
But there's clear articulationon who is responsible and what

(01:19:40):
needs to be done to improve yourtracking metrics on shippers
systems and is your solutionmore of a notification system or
it actually executes the youknow?

okay, so the notification is this order needs
to be exception managed.
There's a tracking issue here.
You need to get involved.
Does your solution actuallyfollow through and take or like
execute that, or is that notpart of it?

Yeah.
So today there's big numbers onwhen a user logs in.
Let's say they're on theschedule from 7 am to 4 pm it
will assign them loads.
Typically we see tracking folksmanage 100 to 150 loads.
It'll assign them all thoseloads and they'll say, hey,
these 10 loads are the eta islate, so you need to go and
manage them.
Now what we're doing is today wehave a simple set of ai phone

(01:20:30):
calls, texts like text forlocation, text to drivers to
make sure they're empty, andemails to dispatchers.
We're layering on more and moreAI so that the AI can call and
say I don't just want to know alocation, you've been at the
receiver for 90 minutes.
I need the AI to call before ahuman manages it and say, hey,

(01:20:50):
we noticed you've been at thereceiver for 90 minutes, are you
unloaded yet?
And the AI to call before ahuman manages it and say hey, we
noticed, you've been at thereceiver for 90 minutes, are you
unloaded yet?
And the AI is only able to havea human-like conversation with
that context and it is a cleardescription of what the issue is
.
And so in order to do that, youhave to have a platform that
says here's the exception thatneeds to be managed.

What is your?
Biggest competitive advantagethat says here's the exception
that needs to be managed.
What is?

your biggest competitive advantage.
It is our 25 years combinedworking on track and trace
automation in the space.
There's a lot of greatproviders out there who are
working on things like this.
We have, unfortunately, thescars to prove how challenging
these problems are.
And the other thing I will addon is there are a lot of good

(01:21:31):
solutions out there that requireintegrations Sightline Freight
Partners.
That is, 80% of what we do isintegrations, and so we really
excel on the integration intothe platform to make sure that
it is a two-way, effectiveintegration.
Your tracking team only needsto log into TrackFlow.

So, in essence, one business can feed the other.
That's correct yeah, I likethat.
What are your top prioritiesfor 2025?

Yeah, so today I mentioned we have about a half
dozen customers.
We would like to double that.
Things that are different aboutus is, again I mentioned, we're
pretty much break even.
We want to build a healthybusiness.
We don't do a lot of marketing.
These things are pretty muchour marketing effort and we want
our marketing engine to behappy customers.
That's how we want to grow.
We have some mutual connectionswho are happy customers.

(01:22:20):
They refer customers to us.
That's how we want to be ourgrowth engine and I think if we
continue to grow with Fnaticfans as our customers, we should
be able to double in size andcustomers and really gain the
most market share out of anyonedoing this.

What are you hearing when you're soliciting,
because I know it's becoming avery crowded space.
So when you send an email andit's a needed solution I mean
the tracking has been a problemforever and it seems like a lot
of the solutions that have shownup in the last 30 years or so
they kind of fix it but don'tget you all the way there.

(01:22:56):
And now the company is showingup seems to be focusing more on
trying to get the whole solution.
But it's competitive.
There's a lot of companiesdoing it.
So when you're reaching outsoliciting new opportunities,
what's kind of the receptionyou're getting from brokers in
the space?

Yeah.
So I think when we talk tofolks at the top of the market
so billion plus in revenue theyare working on this themselves.
They have a solution like thisand we met with one and they're
like we showed them the platform, like, oh, that's actually a
really good exception, we'regoing to steal those ideas,
that's fine, we're happy to dothat.
I think the most pushback weget is if they're cradle to

(01:23:32):
grave.
It is challenging for thosefolks to have to go and manage
out of two systems.
I think the solution is reallybest fit for someone with a
tracking team and you're able toget hyper efficiency out of
someone managing automation andmanaging a set of exceptions
where their only job is trackand trace.
So I would say those are thetwo things we hear is I have

(01:23:53):
folks who need to do otherthings on load than track and
trace, or we're building thissolution ourself.

What are the biggest challenges you're facing
as you build a business?

One of the challenges I have is I want to
make sure on the consulting sidethis is a personal problem,
Andrew.
On the consulting side I remainimpartial, right.
So my job there is to recommendthe best technology, integrate
and implement the besttechnology for 3PLs and freight
brokers.
The only reason this businessexists is because there wasn't
anything that solved thisproblem.
That may change and so that's apersonal challenge, but I think

(01:24:27):
when you look at otherbusinesses raising outside
capital, I'm happy we don't haveto do that, because then you
start to do other things.
We just want to do track andtrace and be the best provider
for solving those problems.

I like that If you want to get something done.
Sometimes you got to do ityourself and with that your 10
minutes is up.
Thank you, sir.
All right, we're back.
Another interview.
We're live, joined by Annalise.
Let's start with a quickintroduction.
Give me your name, where you'refrom, the name of your business
and when you started it.

Annalise Sandhu (01:25:00):
Yeah, so my name's Annalise, I'm from Chain,
I'm from San Jose, california,and so we got started in 2019.
And I can kind of give you thebackstory.

Let me ask it first what problem are you
solving?

Yeah, so in terms of the problem that we're
solving, we have AI automationthat works across freight broker
and carrier workflows.
So there's a lot of manual workon the carrier procurement side
, on the visibility side, manualcheck calls, carrier
procurement side, on thevisibility side, manual check
calls.
So we have essentially AI thatkind of works across these
different workflows andalleviates some of the manual

(01:25:36):
work for freight brokers.

What is your unique solution?

So the unique solution is really that today,
both in terms of the freightbrokers and carriers, they're
having to hop between a bunch ofdifferent platforms to do work.
So the carrier will come on toDAT to book a load, then after
that they're tracking on adifferent tool.
Communication might take placeon email, gchat kind of whatever

(01:26:02):
the carrier is using.
So we kind of combine thedifferent workflows into one
tool and it allows us toautomate the work, really have
omni-channel communication.
That works a lot better bothfor the carrier and also the
freight broker where is thebusiness right now in its
journey?
um, so you know we've been.
Uh, so my husband and Ico-founded it.

(01:26:24):
Uh, we're both softwaredevelopers.
Uh, so the first few years wewere actually like heads down in
our garage writing code andthen, more recently, I would say
, we're focused on thego-to-market.
So past year so a lot of youguys have probably seen us out
at conferences so we're in,we're in growth mode right now,
getting the brand out there whatare the best and worst things

(01:26:45):
about partnering with yourhusband?

so?

I would say the the best things is best things
is like you're just on the samepage with, like, the other
person, right, like we're bothgoing towards the common goal
which is to grow the business,um, and it just makes it a lot
easier from that angle that yourco-founder is also your partner
.
Um, I would say like the worstpart is like sometimes you get
tired of each other.
You know we're sitting in thesame office all day, um, but

(01:27:11):
it's both pros and cons to it,so we get to spend time with
each other it's tough.

You get tired of each other being in the same
office all day, because thenyou're are home together after
that too exactly it's like oh,let's go to work.

Okay, yeah, you're still here by me.

So what are some of the key milestones the
business has reached thus far?

Key milestones.
I mean like we spent like a lotof time iTrading with our
customer base.
So we like built out like afull-on, you know,
enterprise-ready platform thatworks from businesses that are
small like all the way tobusinesses that are large.
I would say like now, like alot of the initial part is built
out.
We're focused on milestones,like you know increasing the

(01:27:51):
daily active users for carrierson the platform and really like
doubling down on some of likethe AI functionality.

What does the ideal customer look like?

The ideal customer.
I mean, we focus like we have alot of midsize freight brokers.
I think like it works very wellfor them to kind of gain that
operational efficiency and beable to compete with some of the
larger freight brokers thathave like in-house tech teams to
build out a lot of this stuffthemselves.
You know, we give those freightbrokers like the tools to be

(01:28:24):
able to compete and to be ableto operate like you know they're
a larger freight broker.


The revenue model, so we charge.
We have tiered pricing that'sbased on load volume.

And what about your team positions?
What are the kind of uniquecharacteristics of your team
that put you in a position to besuccessful here?

Unique characteristics of the team.
I would say it's just likecomplete customer obsession.
One of the unique things aboutChain in general is that, like
we've been bootstrapped sinceday one.
All of our growth has come from, like our customers loving our
product and recommending us toothers.
So, like we do like have a veryheavy like customer success
process where during theimplementation, we make sure

(01:29:09):
that it's successful, we act aslike tech partners for the
freight brokers, rather thanjust like customer success
process where during theimplementation, we make sure
that it's successful.
We act as like tech partnersfor the freight brokers, rather
than just like implementsomething and then it's done.
So I would say customerobsession.

So this is a really becoming a really
competitive space Like and thereare big, there are now
companies raising lots of moneyto build similar solutions.
How do you stand out from thecrowd in this environment where
everyone now is talking about AI, everyone is trying to automate

(01:29:41):
as many of the workflows andbrokerages as possible.
It's becoming very crowded.
How do you stand out there?

Yeah, definitely, ai is a hot topic
right now.
Audit how do you stand outthere?
Yeah, definitely, like, ai is ahot topic right now.
I think our approach is alittle bit different because we
have some of those core likefeature sets, like, for example,
if I take the visibility side,we have like a full visibility
platform where we have, like ELDtracking and mobile app
tracking.
I think what's powerful fromthat side is now, when you
combine that with AI automation,you have all the data there

(01:30:09):
that's needed to make decisions,know exactly what needs to be
done.
So I would say that's kind ofthe differentiator is like you
can piece together these tools,like you can have like a
visibility provider for yourvisibility and then like you
piece on, maybe like a voiceprovider for like the, for the
check call part, or you can usea platform like chain that has
all of that in one and reallykind of you know, go that route.

What is the team makeup Like?
What does the organization looklike as a whole?
I mean, I'm just curious, givenyou're talking about building
such a kind of robust productbut you bootstrap it, I feel
like that would be hard to haveenough of the staff you need to
get it all built in a timelyfashion.

Yeah, so I think we have our sales.
Our core team is based out ofthe United States, and then we
do have a team of developersthat are based out of India as
well.
I think where we have theadvantage is when both
co-founders can code.
Then we have a lot ofsuperpower there.
So, also, we've just spent alot of superpower there.
Also, we've just spent a ton oftime heads down in the
beginning, not focused as muchon the marketing side, which

(01:31:16):
allowed us to really build outsomething cool.
What are your top priorities for2025?
I would say our top priority iswe're right now heads down,
focused on making the visibilityaspect extremely robust and on
the AI side in particular.
Our approach to AI is takingone piece of the workflow at a

(01:31:40):
time and automating that,working with our customers and
make sure it's successful.
And then now what is the nextstep?
What is that next piece?
That's manual, so we're doubleddown really on like the user
experience and making sure that,like the AI is like collecting
like X percentage of milestones.
I think right now we're, withour visibility platform

(01:32:01):
implemented with the AI, we'reable to collect 85% of
milestones.
I think we're trying to getthat to like 90, 95%, so Wow.

currently facing in the business?

I would say it's just like we.
Sometimes it's hard, like interms of resources from, like
the engineering side.
I think we're looking to hiremore developers soon to kind of
be able to move faster on thatside.
I think it's always comes downto like resources.
But, that being said, I thinkwe're focused.

So is it your plan to raise capital at some
point?

um, I think at some point we might explore
raising capital.
Right now it's not somethingthat like we need to do.
Uh, we've been able to grow andbe profitable without taking
any funding.
Um, what that's allowed us todo is like, really, you know,
grow this business how we know.
We have background in theindustry.
My husband and I used to haveour own trucking company, so I
think it's unique from thatstandpoint.

(01:32:57):
We know what needs to be done.
So I think at some point we'llprobably take funding to go a
lot faster, but not right now.

Congrats on being a profitable business.
That's not what you hear aboutin freight often, especially in
freight tech.
So congrats on being aprofitable business.
That's not what you hear aboutin freight often, especially in
freight tech.
So congrats on that.
I'm curious about the truckingbusiness piece.
You guys owned a truckingbusiness.
Why did you pivot to this?
What was the kind of initiationfor that or catalyst for that?

Yeah, so my husband and I like have
interesting backgrounds.
So, like he was actually, hehad his master's in chemical
engineering.

I was on my way to medical school, um, so this
is a pivot chemical engineeringand you were going to be okay,
keep going, yeah.

Yeah, I actually was in medical school,
um, but he has a lot of familymembers that are in trucking.
He was just tired of, like youknow, having a nine to five so
he wanted to do something alittle bit different and get
into entrepreneurship.
So, yeah, he had that I washelping him to dispatch, even
into medical school, and I thinkthat really kind of opened our
eyes to some of theinefficiencies, especially like

(01:34:01):
the you know, the process offreight brokers and carriers.
Their interactions today andlike the way they collaborate,
is extremely, extremely manualand that was really like the
kind of inspiration, uh, behindchain initially.

So it's funny because I've heard this story
before.
I mean your story is veryunique in in kind of your both
of your backgrounds.
But I just last week wasinterviewing uh kreenar kimoni
from tithe um and asked him youknow his origin story for
getting into this was same thing.
He had family members that werein trucking and he just saw all

(01:34:35):
the manual stuff they weredoing all the time and it was
like I think I can fix that.
So it's cool how family andseeing them in trucking can lead
to this kind of I don't knowopportunity for you.

Oh, yeah, yeah, for sure.
I think like it helps, like wehad, it helps coming from that
you know, transportationbackground, like you get to face
the problems yourself and thenafterwards, like we had to, you
know, teach ourselves to codeand get that background.
So now we have like theindustry expertise and then also
the technical expertise.

Well, our time is up and that's our last
interview of the day, so thankyou so much.

You did great, all right, thanks, guys you.

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