Ep. #58: Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Andrew Silver (00:00):
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Welcome back to another episodeof Freight Pod.
I'm your host, andy Silver.

(01:34):
I'm joined today by a specialguest per usual, but this guy's
extra special, we'll say MrKrenar Kamoni.

Krenar Komoni (01:43):
Is that how I say your last name?
Yeah, definitely Krenar Kamoni.
Krenar kimoni, krenar kimoni umceo.

Founder of tithe, one of the more interesting
tracking businesses in the space, definitely, from a hardware
perspective, one of the few.
That's like going right intothe hardware, which is funny
because I remember when I metyou.
I think we met at a conferencesix years ago, maybe, probably

(02:11):
do you remember that at all?

uh, maybe it was a matter.
No, I don't think it wasmanifest.

No, I've never been to manifest, but we it was
um, I think it was cscmp.
Whatever it was, I remember me?
yeah, six years ago it was itwas early in the tithe days and
I remember you.
You told me a little bit aboutyour business and I remember
thinking like huh, I don'treally think that's gonna work.
Like who's, they're reallygonna put a tracker in every
single trailer.

(02:39):
Um, and here we are, six yearslater.
Your company just raised 40million dollars, has had a ton
of success.
So I was wrong.
Happy to admit that, becauseyou're a great guy and happy to
see you succeeding.
Why don't we start just give aquick, very quick, just

(03:00):
understanding of what thebusiness is?
And then we're going to go wayback.
I think it's better to startthese episodes letting the
guests know what the company is.
Then we're going to go way back.
I just I think it's better tostart these episodes letting the
guests know what, what thecompany is that we're going to
be talking about, but and thenwe'll go back and talk about
your journey.

Yeah, and I'll make it quick.
Tive is very straightforwardand I think all our customers
understand it, because I lovethat straightforwardness from
our side.
What we do is we help trackyour shipments and monitor your
shipments, and the way we do itis we ship you these trackers,
you press a button and you putit inside your trailer, inside
your container, usually on thelast pallet, and we give you

(03:33):
real-time data on where thatshipment is and also its
condition Is it hot, is it cold,is it wet?
Did somebody open the trailercontainer?
All in real time.
And it's the tracker, but alsoour software platform that then
connects to TMS and WMS and APIsand you can manage your
shipments in our platform, allof it.
That's it in a nutshell.

And for those that are choosing to digest this
episode through audio only, hedid just show us a tracker.
Can you describe its size, justso people have an understanding
?

Call it like a cigarette pack.
Uh sigh, you can hold in yourhands.
You have, there's one button,there's a light sensor.
That's great.
Well, what would you say?

yeah, it does look about the size of a
cigarette.
I don't know if I would usethat as the analogy, but it does
feel accurate.
Not the best marketing intoday's age, but but it is an
accurate description.

I mean it's marketing in today's age.
But it is an accuratedescription.
I can't say I saw it.
It's hard to find a.

Credit card, big credit card, where?

are you from Originally?
I'm from Kosovo.
And when did you come to theStates Kosovo?
I came when I was 17 years oldin 2001.
November 2001.
It was two months after 9-11.

Really what?
Okay interesting, what drovefirst of all.
Why did you come?

I always wanted to get better education and I
knew that in Kosovo.
I was in high school.
Back then I told my parents Ineed to go figure out a way to
come to America, because I knoweducation here so much better.
And then we figure out thisexchange student program I think
you've seen it like exchangestudent programs in movies and
things like that and we figuredout as an exchange student for

(05:20):
senior in high school and that'show I came.
And it's funny story.
I came because my first hostfamily was gonna be in Tulsa,
oklahoma, in a mobile home.
But I went to get my visa inAugust and I went to Albania to
get my visa and the US Embassysaid they, from today, everybody
coming from Kosovo needs to setup an appointment and they they

(05:43):
canceled my appointment and Ihad to rebook it and this guy
said you're not coming, I'm notaccepting you anymore, the high
school's not accept you anymore.
So I had to go find a new hostfamily.
It's a long story.
I found it through this guy,jonathan, that I met in Kosovo
for five minutes and he found ahost family in Vermont and then,
when I went to get my visa, Iwent on September 10 2001 and I

(06:06):
got my visa 4 p.
I went on September 10, 2001.
And I got my visa at 4 pm onSeptember 10th.
Next day they shut everyembassy down because of 9-11.
I had a flight for September22nd or 3rd to come to the
United States, but I flew toBoston on November 3rd and then
drove to.
Yeah, jonathan Hoffman helpedme a lot, drove me to Vermont
and went to high school inVermont, senior and then and

(06:28):
never left no, I've gone everyyear back to get the next visa.
To get the next visa.
Like, I went from high school,went to Norwich University, I
did my undergrad there in mathand computer science and I saw
math and computer engineeringand, uh, then I went to back to
get another visa to get mymaster's at tufts university,

(06:50):
did two years at tufts and thenI worked at bitwave
semiconductor, a company that'ssponsored me after my master's
how challenging is the visaprocess?
um, so that's a good question.
Actually, when we were in highschool, I remember it was
probably like 10 of us who wentto get the visa and only two or

(07:11):
three of us got it.
They rejected seven.
And you do why.
Maybe we had to submiteverything, grades, and and the
funny thing is, what I couldtell is they were the questions
they would ask and the way theywould look at you.
They really want to see yourpersonality.
Are you going to stay in USforever?
Are you going to cause troublein America?

(07:32):
You're like this is reallytough questions on the US
embassy.
But I a sec when I went for thesecond time after being
canceled on the first one onappointment.
I'll I've never told this story, but I'm'm gonna tell it.
I my wife knows it's up, but Iwas very confident and I was
very confident that I'm gonnaget it.
For some reason, I don't know,I really believed in myself.

(07:53):
And there was this lady thereand she.
She asked me like, hey, are yougonna come back?
Are you going to united?
Let me, yes, definitely gonnacome back.
And why are you coming back?
I'm like like I'm going to comeback because I'm going to get
good education there and that'swhy I'm going to come back and
I'm going to give jobs back toKosovo, which now I have 100
employees there.
I never went back 100%, but andshe's like okay.

(08:17):
And I said you know what?
And she looked green eyes and Ireally like green eyes.
I said you have reallybeautiful eyes.
She looked at me.
She's like what are you talkingabout?
She started laughing and shejust handed me my documents back
.
She's like come back at 4 pm toget your visa.

(08:38):
I was like at the US Embassy tobe able to say.
I was like wow, I uh, it was.
That was.

I, I okay, so I know this is a funny little
story, but I believe there's aactual lesson to be learned in
that commentary and I've donethis before at hotels, when I'm
checking into a hotel, and itwasn't necessarily intentional
at first, I think.
I think at first I was justbeing sincere and and I
complimented who I was on theother side of the table, and

(09:10):
when I complimented them, theythen gave me an upgrade.
And I wasn't looking for anupgrade.
It wasn't that I was lookingfor it or anything, it was just
in the moment.
And then I realized there'ssomething to that.
Like you know, something aboutjust being extremely kind and
sincere, nice to people, that itmight help you more than you
might realize and I don't meanto say that in a way that

(09:32):
someone should take advantage ofit, um no, and be disingenuous.
But like, people appreciatebeing told nice things and uh,
when you're in a weird positionwhere you know you're one of,
they're going to accept two outof ten or three out of 10 people
for a visa, it doesn't hurtthat someone appreciates
something you've said.

Yeah, I don't think many 16, 17 year olds
going to get a visa.
Said that to anybody on theother side.

So was your plan?
Your plan was to get a greateducation, and did you really
want to come?
Did you always want to be anentrepreneur?

yes, that is, uh, that is a funny thing.
Yes, it's always, I would say,13, 14 years old.
Um, I always hung out withfolks that were a little bit
older than me.
I had these two other friends,three other friends that were
two years, one year older thanmy was.
We were living in the same kindof apartment complex.
They were very smart kids withcomputers and like coding, and

(10:30):
we started building code andwriting software.
We're like why don't we try andsell it, this bag, in kosovo?
That bug of creating somethingout of nothing just has never
left me since I was a kid, sinceI was like 12, 13 years old,
and then I joined a startupcalled KTV, but it's a TV
station in Kosovo.
I joined them in like June.

(10:52):
I was 16 years old.
I built all their 3d animationsyou know when the news comes
out, the 3d animation, thingslike that and then in September
we launched it and, like,probably a million people saw my
animations.
I'm like, hey, like two, threedays ago there was nothing here
and now a million people arewatching the animations that I
did.
I can't.
I've never worked for a bigcompany, andrew, I've never.

(11:13):
It's just, it's been always.
I need to start something.
I need to build something, andI'll work with a lot of
entrepreneurs, work with a lotof startups, but tithe is the
first company that I 100 foundedmyself and built myself
obviously with amazing team, butI started myself, yeah, of
course.

Um.
So so you studied math andcomputer engineering after
college.
Is that when you know?
You were 16 when you went toktv, so you know you finished
college you didn't get yourmaster's, you know when?
I guess that would have been2000, probably early 2000, 2006
I 2002, 2006 college.

(11:52):
2006 to 2008 masters okay, andthen you had seven years before
time.
What did what?
What transpired during that?

time mostly startups.
Uh, bitwave semiconductor wasthe first one.
We built the world's firstsoftware-defined radio on a chip
.
It's a big mouthful but it's onesingle chip, it's one single
chip that goes on a smartphonethat does 2G, 3g, 4g, cdma,
wi-fi, everything in one.

(12:20):
But I worked on the actualtransistors like the actual
design one.
But we worked on.
I worked on the actualtransistors like the actual
design and that was just reallyfun because I wanted to go deep
all the way to the transistorlevel, not down to the atom, but
close enough to figure out howthese things work.
And I learned a lot and I fellin love with wireless there,
because you and I are talkingright now.

(12:40):
The microphone is wireless,especially our air pods.
We're on Wi-Fi together rightnow, transmitting, talking, and
we don't we can't see it, butall that data flows around.
And then, on my masters, I wentdeeper on this thing called the
mixer that takes these highfrequency waves and make some
lower frequency so you can turnsit into ones and zeros and now

(13:02):
we can see each other or talk toone another.
It's just a beautiful thing.
And I fell in love with call itradio frequencies and wireless
there.
That's what I did.
Then I worked with otherstartups, mostly in that space.

And I mean it's fascinating because it's just
complete like it's Japanese tome.
I mean, none of it makes anysense.
I've always been just baffledby how all of this works, how
the AirPod, how you and I seeeach other like all of it.
None of it I understand.
That's pretty cool that youactually understood it, fell in
love with it and I guess, whenthen did you think about the

(13:40):
idea of Tive, like how?

did that come to be?
So, working with companiesbuilding chipsets, working with
companies with, like, indoorpositioning, work with MIT
startup where one professor wasa MIT professor who was at
bitwave my first company callsme one day I was about to do my
PhD program is like, hey, youwant to join my startup?
Be the first employee?
I'm like what, I'm about tostart my PhD program in two

(14:04):
weeks employee.
I'm like what, I'm about tostart my PhD program in two
weeks.
So I turned my PhD to part-time, joined this company out of
devices and then we built theworld's most efficient base
stations, those things that arecell towers.
Have you ever seen those whiteantennas?
Yeah, like on roofs and places.
So I worked on that part again,more wireless, and the way I

(14:24):
stumbled into supply chain,logistics, transportation was
really through marriage.
I got married, okay, I was inand ten, but it really didn't
click until 2015 to start thecompany, when I kept realizing
that me and my father-in-lawbecame really good of those
friends.
But my father-in-law had a.

(14:45):
He was a carrier, he had atrucking trucking company.
Okay, he closed it last year,he retired, but he had a
trucking company and always whenI would go to his house, as you
can imagine when you're runningtrucking company.
He doesn't have been verytransparent.
He only had six trucks alwayson the phone.
Did they load?
Did they unload?
We're trying to have a glass ofwine, trying to have dinner.
He would just get up like hisphone nonstop ringing, ringing.

(15:09):
I'm like this is insane and mostof it is what is happening.
Where's the driver?
Did they load?
Did they stop?
Did they?
Did they move from the truckstop?
Did they just?
Are they hauling the load?
Are they going to get there ontime, which is the biggest thing
, cause otherwise he gets fees.
I'm like, how about I just makea gps tracker and put in your
trucks?
He's like, yeah, I have so manycompanies coming and asking for

(15:30):
30, 40, 50 bucks a month.
I'm like I'll just do it forfree.
And that's where I started.
I put it his trucks.
And then his friend, this guy,rasim, who's uh in in worcester,
massachusetts that's where Istarted in the basement building
this thing.
He's like can you track mytrucks?
I started tracking his trucks.
He had like 20 trucks and thenanother guy tracked my truck.

(15:52):
So I was starting track trucksin Worcester, but that was uh,
that was.
I realized that that's how Istarted, but I realized that
telematics was so crowded.
Samsara just started, keepTrucking just started, which is
Motive now, and my vision was Igot to build a really good user

(16:12):
interface, because the oldguards of telematics had shitty
user interfaces.
You remember, I'm like I'm justgoing to make it really look
amazing and easy to use.
But these other companiesstarted, but one time.
This is in 2015.
This is like two, three monthsin.
This truck driver, tony, who'salbanian, so this is all
albanian truck drivers.
By the way, that's how I wastrucks.

(16:34):
I was tracking.
He's like you know, they putthese temperature sensors on the
back of the truck.
He was hauling seafood from newbedford mass and I'm like what
is it?
He's like.
I'm like can you bring me one?
He brings it to me and is thislike box that's yellow?
And I'm like how do they getthe data out of this thing?
He's like they don't.
They just at the end of theship when they look at it.

(16:54):
If they have to, they have toplug into a printer and read the
data.

I'm like, wow, I know what I'm gonna do.

I wanna take that tracker, put it I'm gonna, I'm
gonna take that tracker and putit in the back of the truck, put
a battery and put a bunch ofsensors on it and that's it.
Okay, a lot of lessons fromthere on A lot of mistakes, a
lot of failures, but that's howit all started.

Yeah.
So once you realize, okay,there's a business here, what do
you do next?
Did you go raise money?
Did you go hire people?
Did you go hire people?
Did you go build?
What did that look like?

I tried to raise money but Karnarkamoni was
nobody.
I was because when you start acompany, right, when you're a
founder entrepreneur with nobackground, never started a
company before.
There is no for any investor,there is no precedence for you
for them to put 250, 500 000.

(17:50):
So I talked to quite a few butrealized I was getting nowhere.
I worked on pitch decks, I didall of those things and I'm like
you know what I think.
I told them what I want to do.
I got to go do it now and Ijust kept building.
That was the hardest part, Iwould say being alone, writing

(18:11):
firmware, going on a truck,putting a tracker, believing in
this that is going to be one daymillions of these are going to
get sold and keeping it justkeep going.
But then you get one customerwith a small po, um, for like 10
units, and then you get anothercustomer for another po for 150

(18:33):
units, which was nokia, whichwas a customer, and then you go
back to that investor and say,hey, remember what we talked
about it.
Now look what I got.
And they're like, oh, now I canconnect a and b and I can start
trusting Karnar as anentrepreneur, as a founder, as a
leader?
How about I invest?
But I've tried quite a bit inthe beginning, so I started the
company in June of 2015 and thefirst check we got was October

(18:56):
2016 when did?

when was the first?

customer.
Uh, first customer was March.
It was January, february 2016.
First customer was myfather-in-law, by the way, but
I'm not counting carriers ascustomers, like first customers.
That went on a pilot Because Ipivot.
We pivoted, and their carriersare not.

(19:21):
So that's the one right where Iwent to the back of the truck,
so I don't track the actualtractor.
So they were our firstcustomers.
But after the pivot, the firstcustomers were february, march
of 2016 it seems like.

So, part of the challenge again, when I met you
and we talked about it was 2018.
And I think part of the reasonI was looking at it through the
lens of being a broker.
And as a broker I'm thinkinghow could I use this?
Okay, I buy 1000 units and Isend it to my produce shipper or

(20:00):
produce shippers.
I mean, I know produce is agood product, probably for your
business, but produce they don'treally have like warehouses
necessarily in a lot of the likewhere I would, I would load for
onion farms out in las cruces,new mexico.
So, even using them as anexample, uh, I send a thousand
of them to my, my guy brandon atbarker produce.
That's a real person actually,and he's going to put one in

(20:26):
each truck I send him or eachtrailer I send him, and then I
might not use that trailer againfor three months.
That carrier, it just felt likea very one and done type of
business, and so I think that'swhy I was maybe down on it as a
broker when I first saw it andclearly I was wrong.
But, um, I'm curious like how?

(20:47):
How has the product evolved?
Like is it a lot of one anddone use cases or are are?
Who are you selling to?
I guess let me answer those twoquestions separately, kind of
like yeah, is it a lot of oneand done and then it is a lot of
one and done, as we.

We recycle a lot of them and we try to refurbish
and recycle them for environment, but majority, I would say, is
one and done.
Some customers reuse them andcharge them themselves or put it
on a something like a trailerthat's maybe charging constantly
and they have it charged, butmost of it is um, on and done
and then, when it's done, we tryand recycle it.

(21:25):
And customers, it's primarilyshippers and then it's logistic
service providers.
We have some brokers.
We, I mean we work with thelargest, like if you consider
tql and ch robinson and those,they they're, they work with
time, which is pretty amazing.

If I consider them what brokers?
Brokers, yeah, they're thebiggest brokers.
Two of the biggest and bestbrokers out there, exactly, tql
CS Robinson.
Yeah.

Then we work with a lot of 3PLs too and shipping
lines a little bit too on thelarger side Maersk and folks
like that.
But majority is shippers,direct customers who ship loads.

Are you looking to grow your brokerage?
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(22:32):
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(22:54):
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If you move Mexico freight orare planning to reach out to
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At the end of the day, is itjust okay that it's a
one-and-done type of product?
Can you get the cost low enoughthat it makes sense as a

(23:17):
one-and-done product, or do youneed it to become this very
circular type economy where it'salways getting recycled for it
to make sense as a business welove it when it's recycled,
obviously, uh.

But it makes sense with msrp is call it 50
bucks and then with volume itjust it.
We can drive down costs quite abit.
So I'm not gonna say it on thispodcast, but obviously we can
drive down the cost and then ifyou start refurbing and
recycling and sending back to us, then the cost goes even down.
We give you credits Starts tomake a lot of sense.

Yeah, what were some of the biggest challenges
those first couple of years, asyou were getting going?

I would say the biggest challenges were Okay, I
tell folks sometimes, but Ithink it's good for every
entrepreneur to hear it you fallin love with your tech and you
think your, your, your techdoesn't stink and it's the best
thing out there.
But try and do get on coldcalls and call a lot of

(24:18):
customers.
You'll figure out how to, how,how much it stinks.
And then there is competition,competition and there's other
players that are out there andyou think you're the only
sheriff in time, but you're not.
So in the beginning we built atracker that was larger, like
this big.
It was 250 bucks and we wouldcharge 50 dollars a month, so

(24:40):
that one obviously doesn't makeany sense unless you are reusing
it over and over and chargingit yourself.
It was the longest lastingtracker.
It lasted one year in batterylife, but people didn't care
because they had to reuse it andI didn't know that People were
buying ten, a hundred, but Iwanted them to buy thousands of
them.
So I started doing a bunch ofcold calls.

(25:01):
This was when we werestruggling quite a bit, which I
can talk about.
But I hired two, three SDRsright out of college.
We started just cold callingcustomers, starting sending 100,
200 emails a week, each SDR,always on calls with them.
I would listen and the feedbackI would get well, there's these
.
We just use passive loggers,the ones that are shared.

(25:23):
I'm like why, well, these?
We just use passive loggers,the ones that are shit.
I'm like why were they like 20,30 bucks?
Like okay, what if it was realtime?
Well, they'll pay more, but Idon't want to return it.
I'm like, okay, he's like I'mshipping potatoes from a to b.
You want me to return a trackerfrom b to a?
It doesn't make any sense atall too much work I'm done too
much work.
So that was the biggest lesson.
And then I flew to china withmy VP of technology Like there's

(25:47):
no way we're building this frommy basement or anywhere here.
Let's go to China and figureout how we can make the cheapest
tracker in the world.
And we went and visited eightfactories.
It was like it's going to thesource Eight different factories
who make only trackers or somekind of trackers.
And we found a partner thatwould work with us and we built

(26:09):
a 2g gsm 2g tracker.
It was pretty cheap and we dida press release 29 2g tracker.
It was a pretty big deal.
I was so proud.
But what was interesting iscustomers started buying 200,
500, a thousand.
I'm like what is happening?
This is real.
But 2g went dead because allthe people started shutting down
2g.

(26:29):
At&t and Verizon and I thinkT-Mobile pretty much is about to
shut it down.
We said I gotta make the first5g ready tracker in the world,
or LTE tracker in the world, andwe did it.
We were the first single-usetracker in the world in end of
December of 2019, so since thenwe've been growing non-stop.
It's been amazing.

(26:50):
But the biggest lesson issometimes and listen to this
right 2018, when you met me.
That's when I'm actually in thecold.
I started the company in 2015.
I talked to a lot of customersfor really getting with sales
team on cold calls three yearslater because I thought, oh, I
had raised money, I'm a CEO, Ican other people do this, like
it.
Just don't let that ego get notego.

(27:13):
It's not ego.
Don't let that get in your wayor think you're too high up to
make a cold call or too high upto talk to a shipper anywhere.
Just since then I've been doingit nonstop and it always in
that feedback loop.
But some ceos sometimes stepaway too much and I've realized
the company is big, they raise alot of money and next thing you

(27:33):
know, they lost touch withcustomers.
Man, that's like the death.

To me that's the carnal sin.
It's funny because one of the, Ithink, best lessons I learned
from my father was around thevalue of a CEO that can sell,
and his perspective, frankly,was that you shouldn't be a CEO
if you haven't sold the productthat you're running.

(27:57):
And it's hard for me to disagreebecause I've seen now CEOs who
come from accounting backgroundsand this and that, and it
doesn't mean they can't be goodin certain areas.
But I think if you're not a CEOwho's spent a little bit of
time in front of your customersselling the product,
understanding the nuance that asales rep has to go through to

(28:20):
get you from the first call tothe final sale, and
understanding what is it that acustomer loves about our product
, what is it that they hateabout it, what are the things
they're struggling with, that'sinformation that's so valuable
for driving the business forwardand defining the vision and how
you want your team to operate.

(28:41):
And I just don't think that'sinformation you want to
necessarily be passed fromperson to person to person.
I think, as a CEO, especiallyin the early days, get out on
the phones with, get out infront of your customers and or
potential customers and find outwhat it is that you need to do
to make them happy.

Yeah, and even now we're, I mean, pretty large
company.
We just raised a series C of$40 million.
We're $120 million totallyraised confidentially.
Obviously you can put it there,but we're in the call it $40 to
$60 million revenue range lastyear and we're growing very fast
with almost 1,000 customers.

(29:21):
We have 950 customers, butproduct roadmap was kind of
getting out of control.
I would say in 2022, 2023, 2020, 2023.
So in 2024, myself and our newVP of product now we went and we
talked to a hundred customersfor three months one hour, two
hour calls, just getting there,and I probably myself talked to

(29:43):
50 and we just like here's ourusing a product.
What are you doing with ourproduct?
What can be better?
Here's our using our product.
What can we do better?
How we can improve.
We learned so much and we builta completely.
We just threw the roadmap intrash.
The old one, put a completelynew product roadmap and I'm

(30:03):
really proud of it and whatwe're doing now in 20 for the
next 18 months, it's, it's um.
You still got to do it.

I want to say, even at this stage, as a ceo,
I'm curious what were some ofthe takeaways from that kind of
experience of getting out infront of the customer?
What were some of the thingsthat you felt you needed to
improve or they felt you couldimprove on your core product?

one thing.
The biggest feedback that waspositive was that we honestly
have the best trackers in theworld and just the connectivity,
the reliability when theycompare it to the rest.
Like that works really, reallyhard where we put so much effort
.
But then, when it came to thesoftware side, we got a lot of

(30:47):
uh feedback, a lot of feedbackon usability.
They're like we go to this mapand we just see all the numbers
but like I cannot do anythingwith this.
Like I see 100 shipments, 500shipments.
Where are the issues?
Why can't you show me iconswhere the issues are?
Why can I see an icon wherethere's a light alert?
Why can't I see an icon on atemperature sensor when I
shipments?
Can I filter my shipments basedon date range?

(31:09):
I just want to see completed, Iwant to see incomplete, I want
to see the ones that are late, Iwant to see the ones that are
on time.
I'm like we just show a list.
I mean there's such simplethings, right, but we never paid
a lot of attention to it.
And now we do and we took allthose things that they asked and
then analytics and insightsthey want to see built all of

(31:29):
that in our roadmap and welearned a lot.
But it's the best to hear whenyou hear from customers.

I mean that does seem so all like fair feedback.
Frankly, you know if I'mputting myself in, if I'm Nokia
you mentioned as a customer andI want to not anymore, but they
were yeah.
So anyone, if I'm, if I'm ashipper and I'm using your
trackers, I definitely could seewhy the software expectation
would be that they can sort byload date and all that stuff.

(32:00):
But that doesn't seem like toochallenging of a challenge
addition for you to plug in,right?

no, we're, we've built it now, right, but it just
wasn't there yeah, I get it.

I get it.
I mean, I'm curious like, again, it's such like a simple
concept, right, like a physicaltracker that's going in each
trailer and then you knowdesigning software around it so
that there's action that anindividual can take given the
data that it has been providedfrom the tracker.

Like it's a pretty simple business, right it
is very simple business toexplain to the buyer and I love
that part man, and I thinkthat's something that probably
we should get back as an advicethat I sometimes like to give
people.
if you cannot explain this toyour nine-year-old kid my son or
my daughter is 12 now, but theywere younger they would know

(32:52):
what Tive does.
Your business is verycomplicated.
You need like consultants, youneed like hours of sessions to
explain it, but you cannot sitdown with a buyer and say this
is why we do ABC.
Do you want to get started?
It's hard for you to scale andI think that's one thing we've
done very, very well and we keptfocusing on that doing that

(33:14):
simple thing well, and a lot offounders and entrepreneurs
sometimes get too distractedfrom many shiny objects out
there because like, oh, this issimple, but we got to build all
these other things and the nextthing, you know, while they're
building, another thing theyforgot about the basics, and the
basics are what killed thecompany yeah, it's, it's.

I'm mentally struggling with this idea
because I think there's a, Ithink there's a lot of truth in
what you just said and I thinkthere's like some gold to take
from that, because as anoutsider, you see this very
simple business and it's unsexy.
It's not like it doesn't seemlike it's this super exciting

(33:54):
thing that someone would want tojump in and get involved with,
but so crucially necessary.
I mean the ways in which we'vetracked trucks for the last 5,
10, 20 years.
I mean you mean no offense, buta lot of those providers.
There are a lot of flaws.
There are a lot of issues inhow tracking is done, whether

(34:18):
it's tracking with the ELD,because you never know if a
large or mid-sized carrier isgoing to have a different
tractor pickup or differentdriver pickup below that drops
it off.
Same concept with the driver'scell phone tracking.
That way, if you have differentdrivers operating the load,
it's like at the end of the day,you need to track what's in the
trailer and there just aren't aton of great solutions to do

(34:41):
that other than yours as far asI know.

Yeah, so I guess, I don't know.

I guess I, as far as I know yeah, so I guess I
don't know.
I guess I guess the question isjust around the simplicity of
the business Is there, is there,there's gold in simplicity?
I guess is is what I'm tryingto get to there there.

There is gold in simplicity and um also focusing
on like.
When we started we just had oneskew, one product, solo 5g, and
just built solo 5g, solo 5g,solo 5g, that's it like a.
And we learned so much from thedata we were getting on how we
would display it on, how wouldwe like put it through our data

(35:24):
pipeline, what we would need todo to show the most accurate
location to the customer Justthat part of the data
cleansiness and what's comingfrom the tracker.
We learned so much that nowthey can trust it 100%.
And if customer is turning10,000 trackers, if one doesn't
work and they just put anotherone, that's okay.

(35:44):
But if they're working with acompetitor and they have 1,000
and 200 are not turning on or200 are not working, that's a
problem.
Right like that.
That.
That reliability always needsto be there.
It sounds simple but it's hardto get to that 0.01 percent
reliability on trackers, onhardware, and then we just keep
focusing on that and keep doingthe right thing and improving

(36:06):
and improving, cutting downcosts.
That every time we cut downcosts we bring it to the
customer reduces.
Like we went from solo 5g tothis new one called solo light,
with less features.
Now we have more shippers usingit and I believe that today I'm
not going to give you thenational number we shipped.
It was the largest month thatwe shipped in january, I think

(36:26):
you know from the press releaseswe shipped two million trackers
already as of november.
But I believe we're the largestreal-time tracking company on
shipments in the world.
I don't think anybody else hasshipped more real-time.
There's more passive loggersand these usb loggers with
temperature that people ship,but real-time with cellular
connectivity you can see theshipment.
I don't think anybody hasshipped more real time trackers

(36:49):
in the world than us and that isjust growing exponentially
because the just the thirst, thedemand for this is so big and I
think it's going to startgetting.
What I'm excited about is onceit starts permeating and cross
workloads and workflows withother customers and what they do
and how they use it and theystart putting into into the

(37:09):
systems they try to do proof ofdelivery.
Maybe they they try to reallyunderstand how carriers are
working.
They start to get our someother tertiary actions from this
.
I think this is going to grow alot.
But back to simplicity, likeyou had molo right, ship molo.
What would you think was themost basic thing you had to get
done right?
Ship Molo, what would you thinkwas the most basic thing you
had to get done right?

(37:30):
Because your business wasn'tthat sexy either.
Right, it was brokerage.
But you had to do one thingreally well, we had to deliver
the loads Exactly.
But sometimes the brokersforget, like some startup
brokerages that start, theyforget about that simple thing.
They start building tech andsoftware and all these things

(37:50):
and then the customer is likefrustrated because the load
didn't make it, the carrierdidn't show up well, what's
interesting about that?

now that I think about my own situation there is,
I feel like the biggest problema lot of brokers have is trying
to stand out too much andtrying to make it sound so fancy
and so different and so uniquethat they kind of lose the plop
a little bit and certainly, youknow, end up investing too much
in trying to build things thatare different, where, like,

(38:21):
there's still just value indelivering the freaking loads on
time and, uh, you know, I thinkpart of what I think shippers
appreciated about us andcertainly when I was going in to
talk to shippers is like itwasn't a bunch of fluff, it was
just like hey, here's the deal,you tell us what your
expectations are around pickupand delivery and we're going to
meet them and if there's anyissues on the front end, we will

(38:44):
let you know and communicateeffectively.
Wasn't the sexiest pitch, but,um, it catered to exactly what I
think a lot of them werelooking for and I think that's
why we were able to grow quicklyis because we kind of
understood their problems andbrought them simple solutions
yeah handled it?
I'm curious, because you have abusiness that's both hardware

(39:07):
and software.
Yeah, what does the team looklike?
Where's the org structure in abusiness like that?
You mentioned 100 employees inKosovo.
What does the wholeorganization look?

like.
We have 250 total.
100 are in Kosovo, around 60,70 probably in Boston.
Here we're headquartered whereI am right now, and then we have
companies.
That's the global scale of thebusiness, even though the size
is in tens of millions ofdollars.
It's quite astounding.
Actually we have an office inNorway, office in Kosovo, office

(39:42):
in Mexico, office in SouthAfrica and in Boston.
So have five offices.
We have employees all over theworld Switzerland, germany,
south Africa, mexico, chile, youname it globally, australia and
we are warehouses all over theworld California, chicago,

(40:02):
boston, mexico City, hong Kong,netherlands, rotterdam, just
South Africa, kosovo.
It's all over.
It's quite complex as a businessto be able to meet Because
supply chain is not justdomestic right.
When people ship, they ship allover the world, they ship from
every country to every country.
So we have to be able to meetthat demand.

(40:23):
But as far as hardware,software, it was actually very
small on the hardware side,quite large on software and that
has stayed proportional.
Maybe it's one to two, maybeeven one to three, one hardware
engineer per three softwareengineers.
But that team is pretty nimbleright now on product and

(40:45):
engineering side.
And sales go-to-market team islarge like almost 50 people.
I have 30 salespeople.

Why do you have an office in South Africa?

We have a team there and we have quite a bit of
sales there.
A lot of citrus comes out ofthere.

Really.

Yeah, interesting .
No-transcript.
Yeah, interesting.

A few million bucks a year.
So is that like you've kind offollowed the customers to create
offices around that process?

Yeah, well, follow customers, acquisitions,
all of that.
So Kosovo was obviously naturalto me because I was born there
and I wanted to build an officethere, and cost also makes a lot
of sense and we've been able togrow that team and I'm very,
very proud of that, like that isa huge accomplishment.
And, top of all, the servicingcustomers and being able to show

(41:38):
I mean, we're looked upon as agreat company back home and
people really want to work forus and I love that and we're
going to continue to keep thatculture.
But Norway Office is because webought tag sensors.
Was a company that built thesetags that are the world's
thinnest temperature sensor?
Oh wow, south africa, becausewe started growing there, mexico

(41:59):
, a lot of produce.
You said yourself, don't you?
Uh, for example, a lot ofproduce comes out of mexico.
We have to have a warehouse.
We have to be able to invoicefrom mexico just a lot of
customers there in Latin America.
So we built it there and then,yeah, that's it.

What have been the biggest challenges in
building such an internationalcompany?

Biggest challenges, I believe, are
finding the right people, as Idon't think is anything else.
It's the right people to leadthose departments, those
countries run under them,operationally effectively, to be
able to trust them on whatthey're doing.
To be able to find people whoknow what they're doing.

(42:45):
Find people who know whatthey're doing.
They know how to bring inproduct in and out, they know
how to run a business there.
Obviously, they're all part ofTive, but that's the biggest
challenge.
I've tried it in Turkey, I'vetried it in Brazil, I've tried
it in Spain, I've tried it inother countries.
They've all failed because ofpeople, but these ones have
succeeded quite a bit because ofpeople.

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I mean, I just was on a callright before you and I started

(44:09):
this with two of my ypo forummates and oh, you're helping
nice for a couple years.
I love it.
My forum is great, it's.
Uh, there's six, we're adding aseven person now.
But, um, anyways, me andanother guy were helping a third
person prepare for anexploration he was going to do
and he was talking about theidentity of his business and the

(44:30):
culture of his business and howhe made some changes at the
executive level.
Blah, blah, blah.
But the reference that one ofmy friends made was to the book
good to great, but I think JimCollins.

Jim Collins.

And he's like one of the first things he talks
about is it's who over?
What is a priority?
And like getting the rightpeople is way more important
than what the hell you'rebuilding or selling or anything
like that.
So just kind of an ode to yourcommentary right there, because
I think I agree with it.
At the end of the day, it'slike you have to have the right
people on your team.

(45:06):
When you look to your left andyour right, are these people who
you trust implicitly?
Are these people who you knowwill do whatever it takes?
Are these people who, like, aresmart and creative and problem
solvers?
It just makes your life a loteasier, um, if you have a team
like that.
So how have you kind of goneabout building culture in this

(45:29):
business?
You mentioned culture a fewminutes ago and I'm curious,
like I feel like it would bereally hard to.
I think building culture in aremote environment in general is
close to impossible to get towhat you really want.
But especially, you know you're, you're, you're, you're, you're
, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're.
It's got to be hard.
When you're globally remotelike that, with offices in South

(45:51):
Africa, in Kosovo, in Mexico,how do you keep people connected
.
What does the Tide culture looklike?

Culture is a big, big piece here, and I would say
every business has culturewarriors and protectors, and I
have a few in my company thatwould die to protect our culture
.
Otherwise it doesn't work right.
It's not only me being thewarrior of our culture and
trying to defend it, becausecultures can get destroyed by

(46:23):
toxicity by people, by otheragendas that don't make any
sense and that ruins companies.
So how?
Communication?
Making sure that those leadersare the ones who embody the
values that company has?
Sometimes people don't have100% the values that are aligned
to you as a human, but as faras the company's values, you

(46:46):
want to make sure that they'realigned to those, and we have,
like, our number one value istransparency, which is very
important.
I still remember when I wasyoung, before I even started
time, I read ray dalio's likeprinciples and transparency was
a huge thing.
And now we build bridgewaterhouse.
I'm like one day when I build acompany uh, bridgewater

(47:06):
associates one day when I builda company, I'm gonna build it
with transparency being thenumber one thing, and that's
what we've done.
But you want those folks, theleaders, to protect.
And then you want tocommunicate.
I have quarterly all meetingjust with the kosovo team just
with the norway team, just withI mean they keep in touch quite
a bit with south africa's note,those teams are not as big with
south africa and mexico andother employees and just get a

(47:29):
pulse of.
And then I mentioned there's afew culture warriors in my
company that I can call and knowexactly how the vibe is and
what's happening and howeverybody's kind of feeling the
way the company should feel.
You don't want to lose touchwith that as a CEO because
sometimes you just are focusedon numbers and the results and
trackers and product andsoftware and selling but you

(47:53):
want to get on the touchy-feelyemotional stuff of the company
and how that is affectingeverybody's moods because that
remotely is hard.
But with those warriors I thinkyou can keep it going.

And they don't have to be leaders by the way
they can be.
They have to be leaders, theydon't have to be managers.
Correct way.

They can be.
They have to be leaders.
They don't have to be managersCorrect, yeah, they have to be.
You're right.
They don't have to be titleleaders Correct.

I'm with you there.
I want to dig in on thetransparency piece for just a
second because I'm a bigbeliever in transparency and
I've seen the value of it in mybusiness and there's something
really special about seeing amoment in time where you like
recognize how much an employeeis appreciating like a very

(48:43):
intentional thing that you'redoing for your business, Like if
you're intentionally overtlyexplaining why you did this or
why you do that.
There's an example where you'rebeing very transparent and you
can see how much a teamappreciates that and then you
see the benefit of that.
So I'm curious if you have anyof those examples where you kind

(49:06):
of leaned into transparency andyou actually saw the benefit of
that and how your teamresponded to whatever that
situation was yeah I mean thehardest ones.

I think you know they're.
They're layoffs sometimes.
Sometimes, when you makeleadership changes, those are
the hardest ones to to explain,and leaders and ceos who just
wash them out or brush paintthem and put some fluffy words
around what's happened.
I think they just everyemployee can detect ingenuity.

(49:38):
I mean, we're all smart peopleand you want to be genuine, you
want to be transparent aboutwhat's happening.
I think that goes a long way,but as a perfect example,
honestly and I know we were asmall team, but but as a perfect
example, honestly and I know wewere a small team, but in 2019,
we were running out of money.
I'd raised $5 million.
Our trackers weren't sellingthat much.

(49:59):
This is like that old tracker.
And in 2018, I did layoffs.
I went from 16 people down toeight or seven or something like
that 16 to eight or 16?
Yeah 16, one six.
Like it's not, it was not a hugeteam back then Half the company
Still, and then we were likekind of went down to almost six

(50:19):
people in 2019.
But July of 2019, we had$20,000 in the bank.
And then in June I told thefolks like guys, team, everyone,
next month we have $20,000 inthe bank.
I am going to work day andnight to raise money.

(50:41):
But if we do not raise money,you guys will go to half pay.
I will get no salary.
And then I'm confident, like ina month I'll figure it out, but
next two weeks and two weeksafter that is going to be at
least half pay just to survivebecause we get.
We had some accounts receivable, right, but it was tiny like
five thousand four thousanddollars, nothing.

(51:05):
They and I told them I'll giveyou some stock options to stay.
And I didn't get any stockoptions for myself, which I
maybe should have, but that'sokay.
But I was really believing indoing the right thing.
I gave stock options to theemployees and they really
appreciated the transparency.
But those times, man, I'vetalked to 150 angel investors,

(51:28):
vcs, in a matter of a few weeksand I finally raised like a
hundred thousand dollars on asecured convertible note.
Secured Like the guy could takethe company over if I failed.
And it was, the valuation washalf the valuation of the
previous round, but we survived.
But the team stuck.
And the biggest lesson Iremember and I've told this to

(51:51):
lennon he's our vps software nowwatching lennon and I and I've
told this to the team come intothe office during those two
weeks.
Right, this is like pretty muchnothing.
It's.
It's like we're we're about todie almost yeah, and he's coming
and he's watering the flowersthat we have in the office.

(52:12):
I'm like man, this is like this, is it?
The guy believes everybodybelieves we're still keeping
this thing going.
I'm gonna fight every singleday.
And I also asked myself like,if this company goes bankrupt
bankrupt, am I willing to figureout a way to buy back from

(52:32):
investors with whatever money Ihave in the bank to start it
again?
And the answer was like yes.
And if the answer is yes, I'mjust going to keep going.
But that's that was, I think,the pinnacle of transparency
that's incredible, that's justreally cool.

Just to see where you are now, nearly six years,
five and a half years later,having just raised $40 million,
doing that much in annualrevenue from where you were then
, I mean that's just exceptional.
It's a cool story.
What was the turnaround point?
I mean there's got to be apoint from there where you and

(53:12):
these six folks like somethingchanged what was it.

I think I already talked about that.
That's the cold calls, that'sthe product, that's building the
single use like one and donetracker.
That is like getting in thetrenches with your customers and
building what they are actuallybegging for.
And that's what changed it,because that's when we started
shipping thousand trackers likeHelmo Logistics I remember their

(53:41):
big 3PL in Germany.
They're like wait, we got toship stuff from Mexico to US.
We need thousand trackers.
I'm like what really?
They were a huge believer andthen Ball Logistics and a bunch
of 3PL started also using us.
It was that was the turningpoint.

What are the products that make the most
sense for your product to beused for, for your trackers to
be used for.

So many Andrew, you won't believe like it's most
sense Produce so high level.
It's like four categories thatwe produce food produce, pharma,
life science, high value,industrial and 3pls, right
logistics companies, brokersthat use us on on as far as

(54:25):
verticals.
But produce makes sense becausetemperature sensitivity, life
science, pharma makes sense fortemperature sensitive.
High value makes sense becausetemperature sensitivity, life
science, pharma makes sense fortemperature sensitivity.
High value makes sense becausethey need to know theft, all
those issues and logisticscompanies.
They're trying to provide muchbetter value across all those
verticals and also stay on topof their game by providing this
to their customers.

(54:46):
But what do we track?
Track strawberries, raspberries, bananas, lettuce, servers,
laptops, smartphones, cards,expensive cards, credit cards,
expensive documents.
We track spacex, space parts,rocket parts for both biggest

(55:08):
players in the world.
We track.
Come on some other fun examples.
Well, vaccines, astrazeneca,shipments in Australia we tried
those.
We try various drugs.
We track.
I can keep going on and on.
But those are the like glucosemeters that people use it.
They're there, their houses andtheir bodies.

(55:29):
Uh, we track those.
We track um things that do arand vr glasses that people use
these days.
I can keep going on and on.

Yeah, no, that's cool.
What?
What works like?
When I think about you calling,I don't know any one of these
customers trying to get in totheir network as a tracking
provider.
I guess this isn't necessarilysomething they're doing today.
It's like my brokerage mindsetis, when I call the shipper, I

(56:01):
was trying to replace someone.
In a lot of cases it feels likeyou're not replacing someone,
you're like a whole newinvestment they have to make.
How challenging is that to getbuy-in from decision makers?
Because it seems like it's anew spend category to some
extent to some, but 40 it'sreplace, by the way and when I

(56:22):
say replace huh yeah, becausethey're putting some kind of
temperature sensor.

they have to know the temperature of that load.
Maybe it's not real-time, sowe're replacing passive to
real-time Got it 40%.
We're replacing somecompetitors that we have which
are literally large out there.
I mean it's Carrier and Emerson.
Those are our competitors.

Interesting.

So we're 40% of the time replacing, but more
than half of the time like closeto 60% of the time we're new
and we have to show value.
We have to do like a quickpilot and a trial and they see
the value.
They're like oh my God.
Then during the pilot they'recatching issues.
They're seeing delays, they'reseeing brokers doing things or

(57:07):
maybe that they were notsupposed to do.
They're seeing sometimes theftlive during a pilot and
obviously then they sign up.
But a customer that ships metalcopper they used to be on phone
calls nonstop with theircarriers, with their brokers,
with their logistics companiestrying to find them with a load,
and they would get back a calltwo, three hours later.

(57:28):
Not ship them all, obviously,but there's like there's so many
out there and they would getfrustrated like you know what.
I'm just gonna put this trackeron top of the load.
I know where my copper is and Idon't have to worry about it.
If there's a delay I can see it.
Now I can be proactive, sendsomebody to pick up a load if it
fell over or something happenedand save thousands and
thousands of dollars.

that is um, but 60 of the time is new and is it
just game over if you get to apilot?

nah, eight to nine out of ten, yeah, but one
out of two to one to two times.
Either they just can't figureout the spend, or the champion
is not really fully bought in,or the key Kent, or she can't
get everybody bought in thecompany.
But I would say seven, eight,nine times out of 10, it's,
we're locked in.

(58:16):
Yeah, I mean I believe it'saddictive.
Imagine it's like it's, it'saddictive.
Why?
Because if you see, do you wantto unsee.

Yeah, I get it.
That makes sense.
Do you?
I mean, do you run into?
Are you competing with fourkites?
Macro point no, or is that a?

whole different.
It is really different.
Four kites, macro point, shipio, project 44.
They're not different, it'sjust it's.
It's, I would say, different.
Right now we really don'tcompete.

Interesting.

It feels like it's similar enough but the best
way I could say it is in a highlevel, without going obviously
condition monitoring,temperature, shock light, they
can't do Well they can't docertain things you can do for
sure.
Right, if you forget that andyou just say location.
If you are a shipper and youwant to know 100%, ground truth

(59:18):
data on what's happening withyour loads not 60, not 70, not
80, not 90, but 100% you have touse Triders.

Because the alternative.
Why are they?
Why are the alternatives like a60, 70, 80%?

I mean because you're using a lot of different
carriers, right?
How many carriers do you workwith at ShipMulti?
Probably thousands, yeahthousands.
They all have differenttelematics.
And then maybe last minute, thetractor that's supposed to pick
up a load, you have to bringanother carrier to pick up that
load, because now, good luckconnecting to that LRAPI, it's

(59:54):
too late.
You put something wrong in theTMS.
You don't get 100%, you justcan't.

Well, yeah, I mean that was always.
The challenge is a lot of theshippers used like a Forkites
Forkites is a great company as abroker you could not get to
that 100%.
You could get 100% tracked oryou could get high, 90% tracked.
You could not get to 100%tracked on consistency, at least

(01:00:22):
in an earnest, honest way.
The consistency piece of fromthe point it was put on the, the
freight was put on the truckuntil it delivered, there was no
brakes in the tracking.
It wasn't possible.
The drivers made it impossible.
So I definitely see why puttinga physical tracker in the

(01:00:42):
freight itself is as close towell, it is as ground truth as
you're going to get.

Krenar Komoni (01:00:48):
As ground truth as we're going to get.
Yeah, how do you think aboutthe future?
How do you think about whatyou're going to get?

Andrew Silver (01:00:51):
as ground truth as we're gonna get.
Yet how do you think about thefuture?
How do you think about whatyou're building like?
Is it enough, I guess, to thinkof it from two perspectives.
Is it enough to just keep yourcore product, keep updating it
and keep improving the softwareand just sell until sell to
every possible company out thereand that's the path?

Or do you need to be developing new products to
go in addition to what you havetoday?
Yeah, think of us as I knowit's in the consumer space, but
think of us as Apple, and Applehas the whole ecosystem.

That's a bold claim to start with.
I mean just because of hardware.

Yeah, thank you, because of hardware, software,
ecosystem, right, the wholething.
It's not just software, it'snot just hardware, it's the
whole ecosystem and our big betis that, as trackers become more
cost effective, because one daythere'll be $10, one day
there'll be 10 bucks, one daythere'll be five bucks and I'll
tell you a story, by the way,with your father when he reached

(01:01:54):
out to me and how I met him,because it has to do with
low-cost trackers.
One day they'll go down.
I think they'll be in more andmore and more shipments and
it'll be more and more intoworkflows of brokers, shippers,
carriers, so that the supplychains, right can be, be more
automated, because now you haveground truth data and that
software gets built up, whetherit's through APIs that we build

(01:02:16):
and connect to other systems,because there's a lot of systems
out there.
That's why there's so many TMSs, that's why so many WMSs, or
the systems that we build aretools and workflows that make
people's lives easier.
But our bet is that thisecosystem, that being very well
hooked between hardware andsoftware, is the best way to go

(01:02:36):
instead of just having hardware,that's, any kind of hardware
with any kind of software, thattissue starts to break down and
you don't know who to blame.
You don't have one throat tochoke as a customer.
Is it the tracker that failed?
Is it the platform that failed?
You don't know, but where it'sgoing.
You have to build new products.
We're going to build morecost-effective products.

(01:02:57):
We're building a tracker nowthat's going to be specific for
life sciences, which willannounce soon.
We're building we we did thisone, which is a really low cost
temperature tracker, which isnot real time, by the way, right
now, but eventually probablywill turn for those on audio.

Again, he's showing us a piece of paper.
Essentially it is a piece ofpaper, and I'm surprised that it
can somehow track temperature,but it is.
That is what it is.
So just for those on the audio,that's what he's showing.

It stores 5000 points of temperature.
You can read it with a phonedoesn't send it because there's
no sim card or cellular here butit stores 5 000 points.
It lasts for more than a yearon a battery.
It's and you can reuse it ifyou want to.
But yeah, we got a constant,continuous innovation on
hardware, continuous developmentof software.

(01:03:48):
And why the analogy of apple?
You're not using iphone 2gright now.
You're not using the 3gs andthe 4s and the 5s and the 6 of
the 7.
We're an iphone 15 pro, max, 15,16 pro now and we're gonna have
to be doing the same thing solo5g, solo light and it's gonna
be after that, another solo 5gand another solo light, and

(01:04:10):
every year, two years, we'regonna innovate, um, and I think
that builds a very big moat, isvery difficult and it builds a
lot of trust with our customersand I think we're we're gonna
build a pretty big company yeah,that's good.

That's awesome.
I'm curious, like you mentionedthe moat, I'm how easy would it
be for someone to just rip thisoff as costs get cheaper and
cheaper and just create the sametype of concept?

um, it's not as easy as it looks right, because
if you think of we can start,when I started the company I'm
like like, oh, it's just a GPStracker.
Let me just build a GPS trackerin my basement but it took five
, six years to really get toproduct market fit and then to

(01:05:02):
really scale about almost 10years, I would say on hardware
and software, certifications andknowledge and base based.
Like, even if I started acompany from scratch myself with
all the knowledge that I have,it would take close to two years
to even get close to where weare Not with customers and
everything, but maybe likesomewhat close to the product.

(01:05:25):
But software has evolved somuch now.
Trackers have evolved andknowledge that we have has
evolved so much.
On all the failures that we'vedone and all the intricacies
that we've learned.
You can't that's something.
It's like almost a lot of tradesecrets build up.

At Molo we built a great company and I'm proud of
the work we did.
We knew when to ask for helpand sometimes that meant going
outside of our own company.
I'm proud we built an ecosystemof trusted partners like
Metafora.
When we needed differentiatedindustry expertise in business
consulting or technologyservices, we looked at Peter
Ryan and the team at Metafora.
They've consistently deliveredvalue in the transportation and

(01:06:03):
logistics space for over adecade for mid-market and
enterprise brokers, for shippers, carriers, private equity and
freight tech companies.
At Molo we use Metafora tosolve problems we simply
couldn't on our own.
Metafora is the only partner youshould trust to help you win,
whether that's doing ops andtech diligence, growing revenue,
optimizing spend or selectingand building software.

(01:06:25):
Go check them out atMetaforanet.
That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-A dot net.
Yeah, do you have some kind ofvision for what you think
visibility looks like in supplychain over time?
Like you know, in 10 years,with like AI, iot stuff, where

(01:06:49):
do you see visibility going ingeneral?
I'm curious if you have anyinteresting or hot takes or what
your perspective is as one ofthe main players in visibility.

So I do, I do a lot.
The infinite game that I playwith myself and I think every
entrepreneur should play aninfinite game with their company
what happens 1,000 years fromnow, or 100 years from now, or

(01:07:29):
50 years from now, which isclose to infinity of our
business, if you think ofvisibility, if you think of
tracking, if you think ofshipments.
Imagine if, like even 50 yearsfrom now, every single truck,
every single trailer, everysingle container somehow has
internet of things and connectedthere.
If I asked you, would you beable to know that those

(01:07:52):
strawberries that I put in thatload or those onions that I put
in that load or those serversthat I put in the load are 100
in that load, in that trailer,in that tractor, in that
container?
You can't really say 100, evenif you're're connected to all
the APIs in the world, which isa very difficult thing to do,
like even 50 years from now.

(01:08:13):
I don't think that's going tohappen, but imagine if it
happened.
You still won't be able to saythese are 100% in that trailer.
But if you put some kind ofInternet of Things device on top
of that palette and you getground truth data, you can
almost confidently say 99.999 ofthe time.
That that is the ground truthdata, what is truly happening

(01:08:34):
with that palette and that, withthat infinite game?
When I think of it that way, Ibelieve a lot, a lot, a lot more
shipments are going to gettracked using devices.
Obviously the devices will getcheaper.
Obviously recycling will getsolved.
Obviously environmental thingswill get cheaper.
Obviously recycling will getsolved.
Obviously environmental thingswill get solved.
I mean, we throw a lot ofthings anyways today, but all
those pieces will get better andbetter.

(01:08:55):
So that's where I see andthat's the bet that I have with
time and with the company or inthat future.
Um, and I still remember, bythe way, jeff, your dad cold,
sending me a message on linkedinmaybe around that time, 2018,
ish, 2017 about trackers andhe's like how much chief, can

(01:09:18):
you get this?
And I really he built somethingspecial right with coyote and
then with what was the previousone, american backhaul, or what
was the call backhaulers.
Yeah, yeah, and I really wantedto learn from him and I flew to
meet him because his son, whoplays hockey, his name is brian

(01:09:39):
brian.
Yeah, he was playing in northdakota, I believe, probably, and
it was.
He's like I'm gonna be in northdakota, I'm watching my son.
If you want to meet me, comemeet me.
I flew to.
I forgot where, to be honest,maybe it was michigan or
somewhere no like another no,not another state.

(01:10:01):
What's the next?
The michiganers?
I still remember I drove forlike three, four, five hours.
It was a long drive and Istayed where he was staying.
We met and then I watched thegame.
But just being close to jeff uhfor a few hours and listening
to him, I got a lot of advicefrom him I uh on how he built
his business, how he thinksabout building the business,

(01:10:23):
what he wanted to do withmastery um wanted to create like
really, really large TMS to beable to satisfy the largest
brokers and largest shippers inthe world.
Um and I was like this I don'tthink anybody else can build it
on this guy, but just being inhis and he's doing it, but being
in his presence, I, um, I, Ijust he has, he has a presence

(01:10:46):
and I appreciate it a lot thathe took his time to and I
actually flew all the way thereto meet him.

That's pretty cool.
I appreciate you doing it.
I mean I think it's cool thatyou did that.
Um, yeah, I mean I remembertalking to him about you years
ago, I think he was, I think hewas there was something he was
thinking about a tracker for,and I think I gave him your name
and said, like you should talkto this guy, he's, he's building
some trackers.
I don't know if it's any goodbecause again, remember, my
perspective back then was like Idon't think this business goes

(01:11:15):
anywhere.

But but he was like when is this gonna be ten
dollars?
When is this gonna be tendollars?
I'm like one day, jeff, one day.

It's not there yet I actually remember that was
always his point back to me toois like, as he's like it's got
to be cheap.
Unless it's like really cheapit's, it's it can't scale.
Um, but clearly you've beenable to scale the thing at, uh,
by finding the right customersand and finding the right fit
within their business becausethere is a need for it, right,
yeah, so, um, where do we gofrom here?

(01:11:46):
How, like, when you think aboutwhere the company is going?
I mean, you talked about thiskind of infinite game mindset.
You talked about building somenew products, getting the
software to continue to develop.
Go ahead.
I was just going to say hey,hey on infinites.

I sorry man on infinite.
If you think of broke, where doyou think brokerage goes?
Infinite does.
Do you think everything getsautomatic?

everything gets automated I don't think
everything gets automated, but Ithink all these companies like
you, I saw you had drum kit andhappy robot and vuma and all
these companies doing ai stuffyeah, I mean there's a real
question around how much of thisai stuff can be embedded and
accepted and become an efficientpart of the process of moving

(01:12:41):
loads, versus what's a bubbleand what's just a hype cycle,
and I don't know the answer yetbecause, you know, I just
interviewed paul singer fromfleetworks last week.
Uh, his episode, I guess, willprobably come out before yours.
It should, I think.
Um, just based on timing, um,and like I listened to him talk

(01:13:03):
about his product and it's likeokay, it seems like it makes
sense, like it seems likedrivers are okay talking to your
ai agent and therefore there'sa path there.
But then, as I talked to himabout the future, I asked him a
question.
I was like so is it reasonableto think that in a few years, if

(01:13:24):
you're saying that your AIagent can call every trucking
company as outbound calling sonot just taking inbounds but
also doing outbound calls ifyou're saying you can do that
and every broker signs up to useyou, won't every single carrier
be getting like hundreds ofcalls a day by these ai agents?

and he's like a spam he's like, yeah, probably.

And then I asked well, I'm sure so and I know
david bell told me when Iinterviewed him from Clone Ops,
which is a similar type ofbusiness, he's just getting
started and Dave has had plentyof success building Lean,
staffing other companies, smith.
But Dave said I'm actuallybuilding for the carriers too
and in my future I see thecarriers.
Ai is talking to the brokers AIand they're just going back and

(01:14:07):
forth and having conversationsand conversations and Vlad and
dispatch is sitting back at hiscomputer just kind of looking at
the conversations happening andsorry I used the name Vlad, but
that's a fair dispatcher.

That is a fair one.

So I guess my point in all of this, in
explaining this stuff, is I seevalue in AI to alleviate a lot
of the work that a brokershouldn't necessarily or a
carrier shouldn't necessarilyhave to do with them like
manually.

(01:14:41):
Yes, but I still think there'skind of there's there's kind of
like you're the offensivecoordinator of your own team,
where you're like sitting up inthe booth kind of managing who's
doing what, um.
So I still think there's peopleinvolved, yes, but I also think
I think a lot of these thingsmerge together.

(01:15:03):
Like I think the assets andbrokers kind of come together.
I think the shippers startgetting involved in brokerage
soon, like I you know it makessense.
And what happens then?
What happens when the largestshippers in the world, the big
retailers, from the food guys tothe um, you know, like the home

(01:15:23):
depots of the world, if theyall decide they want to get in
bed with brokerage and startdoing their own stuff, what does
that future look like?

do you know why they don't do it today?
Because I've thought about itright, I've seen some shippers
that they manage their carrierslike they have 30, 40 carriers
that have really goodrelationships and they just
manage, but kind of acting likea broker.
But why would a large companylike home depot not just build
their own brokerage?
I guess it's a differentbusiness, it's not, though I

(01:15:54):
don't think.

I mean I I don't really think it is a different
business.
I think it's the same businessthey're already in.
I think it's tangential, Ithink it's it's, it's right
there, um, and they have theleverage to maximize the
opportunity within theirbusiness.
I mean they have therelationships with all their
vendors that they can say, hey,let us manage the transportation

(01:16:17):
for you.
They own the freight.
So they can say to carriers hey, if you haul directly for us,
you don't have to worry about uslosing this freight to another
broker.
That's one of the biggestchallenges is, as a broker.
I do all this work to get acontract lane from called Home

(01:16:39):
Depot Sure, and I find Vlad'strucking and Vlad agrees to be
my contract carrier on Atlantato Jackson Mississippi.
We set up a great relationship.
Everything's working smoothlyfor the whole year.
They execute, they do a greatjob.
Then bid time comes out and Ilose the lane to another broker

(01:17:06):
who's 10 cents cheaper.
Poor Vlad, his team did a greatjob.
Now I got to tell him I don'thave the freight anymore.
So you got to go find somewhereelse or call whoever got it.
But if you're the owner of thefreight and you're doing the
brokering.
There's some leverage there andyou can kind of lean on that
and I feel like carriers wouldbe more open to working with a
broker shipper because they doknow they have more confidence

(01:17:28):
They'll be able to keep thefreight long term more
guaranteed yeah yeah, so I mean,I don't know it's, it's but
it's talking about ai, right,and, and all this.

I mean ai is hungry for one thing, man, it's
just it's really really gooddata and for ai to start working
.
Some of the like said there'ssome tasks that people do over
and over again, like maybe acheck call or figuring out where
the load is.
Did it make it, did it not makeit?
Ai should be able to just pullthat data from time and figure

(01:18:00):
out what is really happeningwith that load and if somebody
calls where's the load, airesponds it's right here or
what's happening with the load?
Any issues?
Ai responds no issues,everything is on, fine, it's
going to get there XYZ, based onthe timeline and ETA right now.
Do you want me to call thetrucker?
Do you want me to do something?
But if there is no good data,ai sucks right Like it just

(01:18:22):
can't.
You can't run AI on bad data.

Yeah, and it's funny because you talk about AI
with this sense of calm and, Ithink, a lot of business owners
who aren't the ones reallyselling AI we don't sell AI
right now, I know, but let meget there.
A lot of business owners whodon't sell it the ones who sell
AI, of course are hyped about it.
The ones who don't, who aretrying to bring it in their

(01:18:51):
business.
Somehow there's bit more fearand it's like can I be replaced?
But you've got a sense of calmand I imagine it's because you
did the point you just made,which is, without good data, ai
is useless and you are kind ofthe center of the data, right?
yes, you nailed it so I Irealized this as we're talking,
because you do have a sense ofcalm about you as you talk about
this.
So like talk to me a little bitabout AI, how you think about

(01:19:13):
it, fearful of the infinite gamethat I just played with you
Right, because infinite game isAI.

It eats us all alive.
I don't know you play a gamedifferently, but AI can't.
It just dies on its vinewithout very good data, just
dies on its vine without verygood data and being the primary
source of data and generatingthat, I believe that's gonna
that thirst, that hunger of AIis going to get bigger and

(01:19:58):
bigger and bigger and people aregoing to compete fiercely,
ferociously, whatever the wordis out there in the marketplace
to build, deliver best loads,have the best customer
experience and compete in thatmarketplace.
And as that starts to get, Iwould say, exponentially more

(01:20:22):
challenging and more demanding,demanding, I think this, the
need for this data, is going tobe there and that's why I think
we're really good position on AI.
And that's why I think we're ina really good position on AI
and that's why I talk with Calmabout it, because AI cannot
build a tracker and AI cannot goon a load and tell the load
what is, cannot tell what theload is doing without knowing
exactly what the load is doing.

(01:20:42):
But AI can call people, canprobably book loads, can arrange
loads, can tell you wheresomething is, maybe can do some
of the tms work can connect to,can be like a bot.
I mean there's startups outthere that are bots, that copy
paste stuff from your tms intospreadsheet and send it over
email and take it from youremail put it in tms book.

(01:21:04):
A low like yeah, becomes like ahuman, but you still need that
software.
But a lot of the human likemundane things are starting to
be done by ai, but at 10, 20years from now I think we're in
good place in 25 years there'sgoing to be an ai podcast with
an ai agent listening.

They're going to be playing that recording of you
saying ai can't build hardware.
It's just gonna be laughing atyou and me, as as we're both.
I'm pretty sure they are.

No, I'm sure they're gonna laugh because
think about it right, if aiwants the tesla, robots are
built, the optimus or whateverhe calls it.
And then you have figure thatthe bright guy that built is
building figure robots.
They start building things.
Ai starts building.
Imagine these robots buildtheir factories.
They build the factories tobuild bulldozers.
They build bulldozers to buildwarehouses.

(01:21:57):
They build other factories.
They start building their ownchips and start building and
transporting their own thing,not 25 years but 200, 300, 500
years from now.
Yeah, they'll build their ownhardware.

Yeah.
So one more question on AI toget serious for a second.
But I'm curious does it notmake sense for you to go all in
on AI as someone who sells it,leveraging your own data, like
incorporating it, embedding itinto your business more
aggressively?
Or you just feel like we arethe data center?

(01:22:31):
So if people want to plug intheir AI stuff to us, they can?

Not yet, but I think we will.
Right now we're dabbling morein data science, machine
learning, trying to get thatpart right so that we can really
provide the right insights toour customers on what's
happening with their lanes, withtheir routes, with their
carriers, with their shipments,with their products.
Once we get that right, I thinkthe next phase is starting to

(01:22:58):
delve a little bit on ai.
But there's a lot of goodplayers out there that we've got
to start integrating to.
Uh, but not immediately, Ithink.
Yeah, that's one thing.
I think, um, sequencing is veryimportant on product building
and company building, and what Imean by that as an example, is

(01:23:19):
if I went after pharma companiesfirst, I don't think I would be
here.
But I was like I'm going to goafter the most cost sensitive
shipper out there, which is foodproduce shipper, and if I
cannot meet that demand, Ishouldn't exist as a company.
And let's meet that demand,let's focus on that, and then

(01:23:39):
sequence after that is going tobe life science and pharma
afterwards.
But if I went the other wayaround, it's almost impossible
to go from a really high valuetracker shipper down to tracking
tomatoes and potatoes.
No way, with your culture, yourcompany, everything is
impossible to to reverse, butthe other way around, you could
do a great job at it well, theother reason that's what I would

(01:24:01):
say sequencing and ai is lateryeah, but the other reason
that's brilliant is because youknow produce is its own infinite
game.

You know produce is never going anywhere.
People will always be eatingproduce and it's and it's got a
short lifespan, so it's it's.
You know there's always moreand more.

You want to hear a funny one infinite game I was
like what if we're one dayconnected to matrix?
I was like, well, still, thosematrix things are gonna need
food to survive food's alwaysgonna be there.

Man, food is always gonna be there it's true
even in matrix I mean, yeah, weused to say that like one of the
things my dad said.
You know, this is all theselittle anecdotes.
I think about things he saidover the years.
But early in the coyote days Iremember him telling me like
yeah, our business is kind ofrecession proof, like we do a
lot of food and beverage and alot of beer, and he's like you

(01:24:53):
know the you know recession,people still got to eat.
They just might eat cheapershit, and then they certainly
tend to drink even more.
Um and so like.
As long as we're always haul abusiness, even in tough times,
there's still always a need forit.

And I would say the same thing at Tyve and
that's what I love about thebusiness man.
Since I don't know, six, sevenyears, every single quarter
we've grown, and it's becauseit's recession-proof.
People need to eat, people needdrugs.
Loads move, transportationmoves.
It's just nonstopstop.
You cannot not eat, and even inlike, if you think of, even in

(01:25:37):
the most tragic times of theplanet, right during wars, goods
move, man, maybe people don'tmove, maybe people are stuck in
borders, maybe people cannotcross countries, but trucks with
food, oh, they go through.
With cigarettes, with whateverpeople need, they will go
through.
And transportation always, evenin the most tragic times of the

(01:26:00):
world, will move.
As we wrap up here why don't yougive us some advice for any
aspiring entrepreneurs that wantto get into the tech or
logistics space, and or and or?

(01:26:20):
I would say what I said earlierjust get close to the customer,
talk to customers early on.
I didn't do as much early on Iand I paid the price for it
three years, four later, butthen after that I never stopped.
So I just get as close to yourcustomer as possible early on.
Learn as much.
Don't fall in love with yourtechnology.

(01:26:41):
Don't fall in love with yourproduct.
Constantly iterate and I thinkyou'll succeed.
Let's just know like if youjust keep doing that it's
impossible not to.
But you gotta believe and never, ever give up great well said.

That's a great one ad any part.
Should we call it there or yougot anything else no, I mean, I
think this was uh.

I really enjoyed it because you're a very real
andrew talking about you.
Remember?
We talked a little bit abouttransparency.
I used to watch your LinkedInvideos at Shipmolo quite a bit.
I got to tell you those videoswere so inspiring, even during
COVID times, do you remember?
You're always very genuine,you're very real and I just love

(01:27:25):
talking to you and I love beinghere.
So, thank you.

Thank you, man, I appreciate it.
I think you've got a similarapproach and it's been fun to
see.
It's just cool to see you, tosee you winning.
So I'm happy for you and theteam at Tive.
You guys have built a greatbusiness and more to come,
clearly.
So, yes, and with that Freepodaudience, we're going to call it
.
Thank you so much, and we'llFreepod audience, we're going to

(01:27:49):
call it.
Thank you so much and we'll seeyou next week.
You

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Ep. #58: Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive

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Ep. #58: Krenar Komoni, CEO & Founder of Tive

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