Ep. #60: Jin Stedge, CEO & Cofounder of TrueNorth

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (01:16):
Welcome back to another episode of Freight Pod.

Speaker 1 (01:33):
I'm your host.
Andrew Silver joined today by,per usual, a special guest.
Today's guest is Jin Stedge,ceo of True North.
Jin, did I get your name right?

Speaker 2 (01:44):
You did.
I realize you probably neversaid my name out loud.

Speaker 1 (01:49):
I have not in any setting other than right now.
You're right, and I typicallyjust try to get it.
I throw one guess out there andthen I ask the guest if I did
it right and I think I'm battinglike 75%.
Pretty good, your name's nothard, but there could be a miss
there.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
Yeah, I get mistaken for Jim Stedge.
A lot over email and thenpeople expect to meet Jim Stedge
and they see me and it's fun.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
You don't look like a Jim.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
I sure don't.
Thanks for having me Excited tobe here.

Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, happy to have you.
So let's start with yourbackground, and I mean you don't
have a traditional freightbackground and I think that's
fair for a lot of people in yourshoes in the kind of tech space
supporting transportation, notalways coming from freight
directly.
Yeah, but how did you end up infreight?

Speaker 2 (02:44):
So I'll start with where I started, which is not
where I intended to end up, Iguess, which is my whole dad's
side of the family are owneroperators.
So my grandparents started inthe 80s and then my whole dad's
side of the family, so very bluecollar working class.
My dad enlisted in the armywhen he was 18, went to Vietnam

(03:06):
when he was 20, if you canbelieve it.
Like such different times backthen.
And I came back to the familybusiness and so by the time I
came around, it was all my like,uncles and cousins in trucking
and I wanted nothing to do withit.
I don't know if it was likethat for you with your dad being
, you know, like a legend intrucking and I wanted nothing to
do with it.
I don't know if it was likethat for you with your dad being
, you know, like a legend intrucking.

(03:28):
Did you want to work in freightor did you want to get out?

Speaker 1 (03:33):
I was very interested early and most of my career
that interest stayed at a highlevel, Like I just was.
It wasn't like I wanted to doit cause he did.
It was more.
I was 16.
I wanted to work, I wanted tomake money and he had a business
that coyote had just startedand they could use interns, and

(03:56):
so I kind of jumped on thebandwagon that way and you
interned in high school my ownkind of yeah in high school, oh
cool.
My first job was I was actuallya baseball umpire when I was 13,
and I did that for a couple ofyears.
I always wanted to work, though, so I just wanted to make money
, yeah.

(04:17):
So I was an intern.
I mean, Julian Haynes was theother intern.
We were the first interns.
He was three or four yearsolder than me.
We went to high school together.
He works for RPM now, but had along career at Coyote, moved
out to Europe for them, but,yeah, it was one of those things
where it was an opportunity,jumped in, fell in love with it
kind of deal.
Is that similar to your worldor no?

Speaker 2 (04:38):
No, I wanted nothing to do with it.
I was a total nerd growing up.
I also wanted to make money andso the best way was tutoring.
So I would like tutor under thetable all through, like middle
school, high school.
And then I told my parents Iwanted to go to Harvard and they

(04:59):
were like, okay, I guess youbetter study more.
And they were super open to it,even though, you know, they
didn't go to college themselvesand didn't know anything about
it.
So I got as far away from thetrucking world as I could.
I studied.
I started in neuro and thenswitched to aerospace.
Neuro was really cool.
Neuroscience.

(05:20):
I worked in this lab where weexperimented on rats and we
studied the basal ganglia, whichis the very like center of your
brain, um, and it's it controlsa lot of addiction and ocd, and
so I like tortured rats.
As a freshman in college it wasreally, really tragic.

(05:41):
You could, like you know,measure the brain, brainwaves,
as you, as you you know, gavethem OCD problems, and so I
couldn't handle the lab stuff,so I switched into planes and
rockets, which is cool.

Speaker 1 (05:54):
So so you were actually in.
You were trying to createaddictions for the rats.

Speaker 2 (05:58):
Yeah, yeah, it was sad.
So what we did was so you getthese rats and you input, like
put a bunch of stuff on thebrain like electrodes, and you
measure their electricalactivity and we would simulate
OCD.
And the way we did it was weput them in this maze and when
we would give them food we wouldplay this sound.

(06:18):
And what we started to do wasfirst it was good because, like
food sound, you associate thosewith good things.
What we started to do was firstit was good because, like food
sound, you, you associate thosewith good things.
And then we started droppingwater on their nose every time
we played the sound and theywould like wipe it.
And then after a while you playthe sound and you don't drop
the water and they're wipinganyway, and so they become to
associate the sound withsomething good food and

(06:41):
something bad, like stuff ontheir face and they just like
have problems.
It was really really tragic, um,and, like you know, the
postdocs got to experiment withmonkeys, um, and I think they
gave like cocaine to monkeys.
It was just like all this crazycool stuff.
But I couldn't handle the labwork, so I changed one major

(07:01):
yeah, I don't know if I lovethat.

Speaker 1 (07:03):
Once you get into the monkeys and the cocaine I think
it feels a little too human andI don't know, I don't really
like it it is, but that that's agood thing you changed yeah,
that's how you make progress,though I think addiction is
really interesting.

Speaker 2 (07:15):
Um, like a lot of like OCD is really tied to
addiction, and especially inlike really high performing
people.
They're like a high correlationand it's just this whole dark
side of the human brain that'sfascinating, but other people
can study it.

Speaker 1 (07:31):
It's also highly correlated to ADHD.

Speaker 2 (07:33):
Yes, it is.

Speaker 1 (07:34):
And people with ADHD.
There's an often a side effectof both OCD and addiction.

Speaker 2 (07:39):
Absolutely.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
More naturally wired to end up down that path.
Yeah, I don't know if you gotinto that.

Speaker 2 (07:44):
They're more naturally wired to end up down
that path.
Yeah, I don't know if you gotinto that.
It sounds like you know thisfrom a personal experience.

Speaker 1 (08:02):
I'm also very prone to being addicted to things and
going all the way in, and so Iwanted to study it.
Yeah, I mean, I have highlyaddictive tendencies, and when I
learned about ADHD in the lastyear and in learning about ADHD,
I learned about the connectionto addiction and OCD, and I have
Tourette's too.

Speaker 2 (08:17):
So it all kind of winds together into this kind of
chaotic being.
I guess that I am, but like Iappreciated how honest you were,
especially like someone like me.
I've always felt an outsider inlike almost everywhere, every
situation, and I see you, you'relike the ultimate insider,

(08:37):
especially in this industry.
And to see that you grew up youknow like well-to and you're
successful and you're athletic,sports, whatever.
But to hear the personal side,I felt really connected to you,
even though I, on the face of it, have nothing in common with
you, and so I thought that wasspecial and, yeah, I appreciated
it.

Speaker 1 (08:58):
Thank you.
I guess that was the point ofit, right To some extent, was to
try to connect with people andput myself out there in that
fashion.
I guess, yeah, you could callme an insider, in that I've had
plenty of opportunities and havemade the most of, have made as

(09:19):
much as I could with them andnetworked, and certainly a
different path to how we got towhere we are now than yourself.
But back to you and I willpreface this because I will
mention for the audience thatdoesn't know Jen didn't ask me
before we started if it was okayfor her to ask me questions and

(09:42):
I said 100%.
I said it's always okay for theguests to do whatever they want
.
Oftentimes the conversation isjust me asking questions and the
guests answering them and kindof telling their story along the
way.
And Jen was like is it okay ifI do something different?
And I said by all means so.
As you've already noticed inthe first few minutes here,
there may be a bit of a back andforth as we go through this,

(10:04):
but we will get through all ofJen's story, all of True North's
business and all theinteresting things that are tied
in there and there may just besome bits and pieces of my own
nonsense tied in, so figured I'dshare that, as people are
trying to figure out what we'retalking about today.

Speaker 2 (10:21):
Yeah, it's fun for both of us.
Okay, so back to.
So I wasn't.
I'm in college, I have no ideawhat I want to do.
I joined this major cause.
I thought airplanes were cool.
I it like kicked my ass.
I mean MIT.
I was a medium fish in a very,very, very small pond in high

(10:43):
school.
And then you get to MIT andeveryone is like the biggest
fish in the biggest ponds, andso I got my ass kicked.
But it was a really good doseof humility for me.
Learning I wasn't the smartestand it opened like every door
for me after that.
You know, having a degree fromMIT really, really helped my
career.
So after MIT I still didn't knowwhat I wanted to do and so I

(11:07):
like sold out completely andwent into management consulting.
I figured, you know, I'll learnsome stuff, make some money.
It was fun.
We did get to concentrate inaerospace and defense projects.
So, like for my internship,they sent me as a 20 year old to
this rocket manufacturing plantand they got to see how the
like the rockets were made andlike find efficiencies and

(11:31):
whatever, and it was.
They really hooked me.
So that was super fun.
For a little bit I got to likebe in rooms.
I didn't deserve to be in.
You know, like CEOs of Fortune500 companies didn't deserve to
be in, you know, like CEOs offortune 500 companies, and I was
, of course, like just in theback taking notes, but you get

(11:51):
to observe all those things and,um, it was super cool and I
lasted 18 months and I had toget out of there.
So, um, I moved to SanFrancisco and I joined a company
called Zenefits, which is nolonger around, but, um, it was
started by Parker Conrad, whowent on to start Rippling, which
is another big company now.
I don't know if you've everheard of either of those
companies.

Speaker 1 (12:11):
Well, I've certainly heard of Rippling because of a
fascinating lawsuit that they'renow a part of oh yeah, it's
spicy.
With their biggest competitor.
I mean, that is corporateespionage and for those that
don't know, we're talking aboutrippling suing their competitor,
deal del, and I guess the waythis went down is like deal put

(12:32):
an undercover employee intorippling, accused or supposed as
, part of the lawsuit.
That's what it says allegedly, Ishould add, and rippling,
caught on to this like createdthe leverage slack to create, I
think, like fake.
They created something fake aslike a, a paper trail that they

(12:52):
wanted to see.
If this you know traderemployee, would you know walk
down the trail, and they did andit got so far, as I think.
When they caught the personthey brought in I don't know if
it was the cops or like someoneto like a court person to like
take this person's phone, andthe person hid in the bathroom
and was like I will not give youmy phone.

Speaker 2 (13:14):
You read all of the notes.

Speaker 1 (13:17):
I read through the whole thing.
Yeah, I mean I was fascinatedbecause I also saw there's a
similar case.
There's a similar case I don'tknow if I should say similar but
there is another case in ourown industry right now where
Flexport is suing two of theirold employees claiming that they
did something similar, wherethey downloaded a shit ton of
their data and used it to buildtheir own product.

Speaker 2 (13:45):
It's an interesting thing, I guess, going on in the
space.
I mean, parker parker is anabsolute savage um, and what I
really uh admire about him ishow fast he moved, because a lot
of this happened in january andfebruary.
Like stuff doesn't move thatfast a lot of the time, like you
often hear about these casessix months, a year after they
happened yeah, I guess, like, ifyou think about it, though,
like a a you know an, thoughParker's an entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (14:07):
I don't know him at all, but I'm just speaking as
someone who's been a CEO ifthere's something on your mind
that has got your mind, you'regoing to go after it very
aggressively.
If it's something as ridiculousas corporate espionage, with
your competitor employing aperson under your own roof,
you're putting 100% of yourattention on that and you're

(14:28):
figuring it out in the mostcreative and aggressive ways you
can.
Totally, and that's what he did, and he was probably very happy
to be publicly putting thatlawsuit out there, feeling like
he's got this person caught.

Speaker 2 (14:40):
A real life honeypot, if you can believe it.
This is like movie shivs it'sso fun, very spicy.

Speaker 1 (14:46):
It is like straight out of a movie.
So I'm excited to see wherethat goes, but it is beside the
point.
So back to you.
I actually had a questionbefore you go further.
You talked about management.
You did management consultingfor 18 months and I just am
curious.
You were straight out ofcollege.
You said you're at a rocketmanufacturer looking for

(15:09):
efficiencies.
As a 21 year old, or howeverold you were coming out of
college, is this kind of greenmanagement consultant?
Are you in any position to belike giving advice to these
rocket manufacturers onefficiencies you're finding?
Or is there even a real playbookfor how this makes sense?

Speaker 2 (15:25):
I personally, and the interns absolutely not, but my
role there was like a datamonkey for the more senior
people who did make thoserecommendations.
And so they would say the toolsrotation breaks down at these
three places and there arebottlenecks here, and I noticed
that you know if you move tothree shifts instead of two, you

(15:47):
could be more efficient, andyou know your pipeline doesn't
make sense compared to how muchcapacity you have, whatever.
And then they turn to someonelike me and say here is
gadillions of data, go crunch itand I, like, do this.
And then I hand it back to themand then I learn how they draw
insights from the data and thenthat's how, eventually, you work

(16:08):
your way up in managementconsulting.
So to start with I wasn'tmaking recommendations, but I
learned so much during it.

Speaker 1 (16:16):
So am I crazy?
Or is what you just describedthe perfect example for how AI
will be applicable in terms ofchat, GP, know, chat, GPT and
all these models?
I mean?
That's their goal.
Right Is to digest like massivequantities of data and make
sense out of it.

Speaker 2 (16:33):
Totally.
I think I like I'm gonna soundold saying this, but I feel like
the younger generations are ata disadvantage because people
like me you could go just likebe in a sweatshop and learn and
work your way up, but now wedon't really need that.
Ai does it for you.
Like I did a market sizingresearch thing with the you know

(16:57):
it was a one deep research inlike one hour when it previously
would have taken me 20 hours um, and so the people high up who
can draw those insights andwrite good prompts, I think will
really benefit.
But the like the peons in theworkforce, um, who who need to
do the you know the brute workto get there I think are at a

(17:17):
bit of a disadvantage now.
Same with coding, right, it'sall.
Junior engineers have a toughtime now, but the best senior
engineers are more productivethan ever.

Speaker 1 (17:29):
Yeah, it's interesting, Cause it's hard to
say that a younger generationwould be at any disadvantage to
you know our generation or theolder ones, Cause it's the
younger ones always end upsmarter and more adept and
capable.
It's just we just haven't yetenvisioned the world in which
they're going to have to be good.

Speaker 2 (17:46):
Yeah, I hope so.

Speaker 1 (17:47):
Whatever they will be very good at won't make sense
to us is what I'm prettyconfident in.

Speaker 2 (17:52):
I know, and I don't want to get left behind, so I'm
trying to keep up on everything.
But yeah, you're probably right.

Speaker 1 (17:59):
All right, so back to your story.
So you went and worked atZenefits.
And Back to your story.
So you went and worked atZenefits and you were just a
normal entry level employeethere.

Speaker 2 (18:12):
I was just a grunt.
I came in on like productoperations and I took a big pay
cut because I thought thiscompany would like go somewhere.
You take some equity Right andyou you make a bet that way
where you take some equity rightand you make a bet that way.
And I think I guess, if I thinkabout it, every job I've taken
has been like one, a referral.

(18:32):
So like I knew somebody thereand I believed in the company
and I took a paid cut or I justwent lateral.
So it wasn't like a huge likestep up, but the company itself
went like this and then I wasable to kind of grow with a
company and so I think the, theboss and the company really made
a difference in my career.
But yeah, as benefits it waslike the Silicon Valley darling

(18:54):
at the time.
It grew super, super fast, itattracted a ton of ambitious,
really smart people and then itkind of collapsed very fast.
So it spit all those people outacross the whole industry and
like created this network, whichwas really cool.
And Zenefits is actually whereI got the idea for True North.

(19:14):
You know, fast forward to whenwe started True North, parker
was one of our first angelinvestors because we said we're
building Zenefits for freight.
You know, everything connects.

Speaker 1 (19:31):
At that point I was saying Rippling for freight, but
it's the same concept, yeah,explain the concept, though in
layman's terms, without thefunky names of the company.

Speaker 2 (19:38):
So when we started True North, this was 2019.
And we were kind of at thedepths of the last freight
recession.
I don't I don't know if molohas started at that point, but
like it was rough for carriersout there.
Yeah, we were 2017, so we wereyeah, we were two years in um,
and so we said there's a ton ofwaste in the industry.
A lot of it is at the carrierlevel but nobody's building for

(20:01):
carriers.
Because, um, at that time,softank was dropping like
billions into autonomous trucksand all that Everyone thought
autonomous trucks would be heretomorrow, so nobody was building
anything for the driversthemselves.
So we said we want to build the.
Everything for the smallcarrier and everyone else is a
spoke, so load boards andfactoring companies and all

(20:25):
trailers and safety andcompliance and everything that
it takes to run a truckingcompany just plugs into the like
.
Essentially, the TMS is what wehad built and it's not easy but
you have to do everything andthat's what we're building.
So, and that was a concept of,like Zenefits and Rippling is
they run on the payroll systemand building a payroll system is

(20:49):
super complex, it takes a longtime and has to plug into
everything else.
Think of all the integrationsthat Rippling has today.
So that was a concept weapplied to YC, which is the like
a tech accelerator, and welaunched in December 2019, you
know, learned that, like, nobroker wants to work with a

(21:11):
carrier with an authority under90 days, so that was really hard
for a while YC is three months,it was January through March,
and so in the most, in the timewhen you're like trying to be
growing the most and showing allthese good metrics, we were
just trying to get brokers towork with us even.

Speaker 1 (21:28):
But help me understand.
What was the company?
Was the company meant to be acarrier?
Oh, yeah, yeah, you wanted tobe a carrier and you were
onboarding drivers to work foryou as a carrier, or you were
trying to be a vendor ofcarriers.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (21:44):
Help me understand that piece.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
So we started as we pitched it, as we will be a
vendor of carriers but we'lllearn how to do it all by being
a carrier ourselves.
And so we had an MC, weonboarded.
We go to 300 trucks in like 18months.
It was, it was nuts.
And we, you know, built our ownload board and had our own
safety and compliance team andall that stuff and we said

(22:08):
eventually we want to be themarketplace for all of freight.
I even wrote about, you know,the big load boards in that time
and we've actually come backaround to being that now, where
we took a bit of a detourbecause the carrier grew so fast
.
Honestly, we said this isworking, we're going to listen
to what's working and maybewe'll just be the biggest
freaking carrier out there, takedown Landstar and have all the

(22:37):
owner operators under our MC andrealized how difficult that was
.
Running a profitable carrier isreally hard.
It's so hard.
Yes, it is Like I literallystudied what is a rocket science
at MIT and by far the hardestthing I've ever done is run a
trucking carrier.
I still like wake up thinkingabout it.
It's so brutal.

Speaker 1 (22:56):
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(23:18):
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(23:40):
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If you move Mexico freight orare planning to reach out to
Cargado today at cargadocom,that's C-A-R-G-A-D-O dot com.
So take me back again.
You applied to YC.
You had not yet raised anymoney or you had I guess you

(24:01):
couldn't until after the YCprocess.

Speaker 2 (24:03):
Yeah, we had raised, like friends and family, like
angel investors, small, a smallamount Um.
But the way YC works is there'sthis thing called demo day and
the end of the three months, um,and you get, you know, up on a
podium in front of a bunch ofinvestors and you pitch your
company and you're supposed toraise a bunch of money, Um, and
so we had just crossed our 90day mark, I think.

(24:25):
At the end of February,beginning of March, we were
starting to pick up.
I think we had like seven oreight trucks at that time and
then COVID hit and everythingfell apart, and when you say you
had seven or eight trucks,you're like out buying trucks.
No, no Going out to market andbuying trucks.
No, these are owner operatorswho leased onto us under our mc

(24:46):
okay, yeah, helpful information.

Speaker 1 (24:48):
Okay, didn't understand that.
So you and mc, you werebuilding the technology to be
this kind of back-end yepplatform for owner operators
yeah just owner operators,mostly small carriers just owner
operators at that time.

Speaker 2 (25:02):
So my cousin was actually our first and you know
I was on like Facebook groupsand, like you know, we did some
Google ads and people would callthe number and get my cell
phone and I would convince themto join and then I would type up
, you know, the PODs at the endof the day and like send

(25:22):
invoices and do it manually thePODs at the end of the day and
like send invoices and do itmanually.
And then every time somethinggot to where I couldn't do it, I
would go crying to myco-founder and he would automate
it.
So we just worked that way.
I slowly learned how to run atrucking company, how to
dispatch, how to handle loaddocks all of that how to factor.

Speaker 1 (25:40):
So the thesis was essentially, or the idea was hey
, drivers, owner operators, allyou got to focus on is driving
and I'll take care of the rest.

Speaker 2 (25:52):
Exactly.
We paid them 85%.
We said we'll always treat youfair, We'll always be honest,
and we just said we're going tobuild a good carrier, kind of as
simple as that.
Help you find brokered freight.
We eventually expanded toshipper freight.
We'll get you trailers for afair fee.
We'll never trap you into leasepurchase agreements, that sort

(26:15):
of thing.
You'll see where every dollargoes, yeah.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
And why was this enticing for owner-operators?
Yeah, In terms of what wasavailable in the market.
What was enticing about thisoffering?

Speaker 2 (26:29):
So owner-operators, I think you know it's definitely
still the case, but it was morethe case even five years ago
they really felt left behind andthey feel like people are out
to screw them.
It's tough with the brokerrelationship because it can be a
zero-sum game, right Likewhatever doesn't come out of

(26:51):
your pocket comes out of mine,and so they're just really
suspicious of everything, and tosome extent they're still like
that today, I think.

Speaker 1 (27:02):
Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think that's a product of
historical behavior, totally,and one of the bigger challenges
in the industry is every sidehas a reputation that they
probably wish was better, notnecessarily as a result of their
own behavior, but as a resultof the collective behavior of
people with the same title.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
Job function, yeah I mean it's funny going to carrier
conferences and then brokerconferences and seeing the, the
rhetoric, you know, carriers arelike you know, brokers are
making so much money, likehere's how you don't get taken
advantage of.
And then brokers are likecarriers think we make a million
dollars per load and like they,they're stupid.
Um and the uh.

(27:43):
I think where I met you is theBroker Carrier Relationships
Conference, where I think it wasthe first Broker Carrier Summit
yeah, yes, exactly, and it wasthe first place where I actually
found the two sides comingtogether and trying to build a
relationship, which, in our newset of the product, is what

(28:04):
we've really tried to focus on.
So, yeah, I had a question foryou around Molo, because you
were.
This was like COVID times werethe thick of it for you guys too
, and I remember something aboutyou guaranteeing rates wouldn't
change, or something, for wasit for shippers?
Or do you remember what I'mtalking about?

Speaker 1 (28:23):
Yeah, I mean it could be a number of things.
So COVID was an explosive timefor our business.
We were, you know, we were veryheavy food and beverage grocery
retailer and enterprise, andthat was other than a two-month

(28:48):
period in 2020 when things wereall dead.
That was the part of theindustry that really exploded
and so our business nearlydoubled overnight.
With some customers it tripled,yeah, and so we were very busy
of guaranteeing rates.
I think part of our MO was toexecute on any commitments that

(29:10):
we had made, and that could beon a spot basis or on a
contractual long-term basis, andwe did go pretty far in pushing
that idea to at scale where,you know, even on a 20 million
dollar annual contract, we toldour customers, like, if we told
you, we will hold the rate forthe year, we're gonna hold it

(29:32):
for the year.
Covid was an interesting timebecause it certainly put that to
the test and it put it to itsstrongest.
Test is probably what I wouldsay and what what I mean by that
is.
You know, the essence of thattheory in in building your
business that way, is that youfeel you can get a pretty good
product idea of what yourpricing is or what your cost is

(29:57):
going to be annually.
If you're going to make anannual commitment on a rate
let's call it Chicago to AtlantaIf I say I'll move it for you
throughout the year at $2.50 amile, no matter what, then if
I'm going to run a profitablebusiness, I have to have a
pretty high level of confidencethat I can move that lane for

(30:17):
less than $2.50 a mile, enoughso that I can even make money on
it not just make gross marginbut net margin.
And why COVID was the strongesttest is because it saw the
greatest volatility in rates.
It saw rates drop the most fortwo months.
Well, first it saw the rates gothrough the roof, then they

(30:38):
dropped for two months and thenthey went right back through the
roof.
And so you saw both ends of thevolatility.
And in the two down months ourrates were.
We were making money hand overfist.
Our margins were as high asthey'd ever been In, like August
, when August and September,when truck rates were at their
highest, our margins were as lowas they'd ever been.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:02):
And so it was like the true test, or the most
significant test we'd ever seen,and we pivoted after that.
To be honest, I mean, we didn'tstand by that through the end
of my tenure.
Through the end of my tenure,and not because we didn't want
to more, so because we wanted itto be more specific to the

(31:25):
customers we were working with.
I didn't think it was fair if Ihad this policy that said I
will live up to every rate Icommit to that we agree on, and
I do that for 10 customers.
If seven of the customers, whenthe rates are up or down,

(31:45):
continue to give me the loads atthe rates we agree to, I would
continue to do what I said.
Three of the customers, though,would only tender us the loads
when the rates were really high,and then, when the rates would
drop, the loads would disappear,and that became a disadvantage
strategy for us, and becausewhat was happening was the rates

(32:10):
would go down in the market and, rather than continuing to pay
us what we'd agreed to, theywould just find someone 20 or 30
cents cheaper than us, andmeanwhile, I'm not getting the
loads when it's profitable to me, and then, when the market
turns, all of a sudden, theloads are coming back to me.
That was why we made a pivotfrom just saying blanket any
commitment we live up to or weput out there we'll live up to,

(32:32):
to saying we're going to play bythe rules that our customers
play by Totally.
The customers set the rules andif 100% of our customers are
willing to ride the wave with us, commit to a rate and stand by
that rate through ups and downs,we'll play that game yeah.
But if a customer is going toplay the market and when things

(32:53):
go down they're going to go downwith them, as in they're going
to find the cheapest capacityavailable, we're just getting
screwed at that point.
Then we're offering themcapacity when the market's tight
, at rates that aren't supportedthroughout the whole year.
They're only supported duringdown markets when we're not
actually getting the load.
So that was kind of does thatmake sense?

(33:13):
Kind of how we thought about it.

Speaker 2 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, it definitely.
It has to go both ways for itto work.
What was it like telling thatto your team and making that
pivot?

Speaker 1 (33:26):
Well, for one, I don't know that the whole team
loved the original strategy tobegin with, because in some
cases that was money out oftheir pocket Right.
In some cases that was moneyout of their pocket right.
And if you're the sales rep forX account or you're the account
manager on X account and thataccount is, let's say, that
account has a lot of consistentfreight shipping out of Florida

(33:49):
going to Chicago and we agree toa rate that, whatever the rate
is $1.70 a mile For nine monthsof the year, that freight is
making money For three monthsduring produce season.
It's not.
It's going to lose money and alot of brokers during those
three months will do whateverthey can to not haul those loads
and my sales reps probablywould have in some cases liked

(34:14):
to find a way out of those loadsor find a way to get more money
on those loads.
My problem with it was if we dothat, we're just like everybody
else and then I don't reallyknow what we're selling here,
how much, how much.

Speaker 2 (34:25):
Oh, go ahead.

Speaker 1 (34:27):
Go ahead.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
That made me think, like how much loyalty is there
in freight Cause?
You know carriers have the sameproblem with brokers that
brokers have with shippers.
You know everyone's looking toput food on the table, but they
need these relationships tosurvive.

Speaker 1 (34:45):
Yeah, I mean it's a great question and I should
actually spin it the other wayif we're talking carriers,
because we have the samesituation on the carrier side.
That was very heavy inenterprise freight.
It meant we had a lot ofcontractual business, which gave
us a lot of wiggle room tocreate a really good environment
for carriers to partner with us.

(35:05):
Because I had contractualfreight, I had systems that
allowed me to create routingguides Like the mastermind
system.
There's a reason it's the topTMS in the industry is because
it allows you to be as efficientas possible in that we could
set up contract contractuallanes with routing guides and
never touch the system again,never touch the loads again.
So if I get that florida tochicago lane five times a week

(35:28):
and it's sent to me via edi, Ican order however it's sent.
If it's sent, my system canautomatically build the loads
and then it can actually tenderthem out into a waterfall
routing guide.
And I might have three carriersthat I agree to contractual
rates for and I say I'll giveyou each one load a week.
They each get sent their load.
They pick it up or they, they,they accept it and then they

(35:48):
pick it up, deliver whatever, Um, by having that we were, we
were able to do the same thingon the carrier side that we were
doing on the customer side, andthe deal was just kind of
reverse in that for a carrier,they might want to take the load
from us nine months of the yearout of Florida and then, as
soon as produce season hits, allof a sudden their trucks are

(36:10):
disappearing and they're like,oh, we don't have a truck down
there this week.
It's like you don't have a truckdown there this week or you
don't have a truck for me downthere this week at $1.50 a mile.
You have a truck for threebucks a mile like produce.
And so it put us in the sameposition where we would say to
the carriers the way we wantedthe relationship to work with
the carriers was if you stand byus, we'll stand by you.

(36:31):
You want the lane for the year,you can have it for the year.
This is the rate.
If you disappear six months inbecause all of a sudden the
market is favorable to you, thatdoesn't work for us and part of
my philosophy was we were goingto get burned more than most.
We had to accept that as areality, that if you want to

(36:51):
build trust, you have to putyourself out there first,
knowing that there's a chancesomeone's going to take
advantage of you.
To put yourself out there first, knowing that there's a chance
someone's going to takeadvantage of you, all you can do
is, you know, pick up yourstuff and keep moving forward.
If someone takes advantage ofyou, you're not going to sue
them for, you know, three weeksof the Delta on your expected

(37:12):
cost versus your true cost.
You know I wasn't going to bethe one who went on to like
carrier 411 and like blastedthem and tried to ruin their
reputation.
My perspective was listen, youlive and learn Every day.
Our network should be gettingbetter on both sides of the
business.
We should be learning moreabout our customers to know who

(37:32):
our true partners are, and weshould be learning more about
our carriers to know who ourtrue partners are, because every
day we all get an opportunityto show the world who we are,
and that's in how we acceptloads, how we communicate, how
we pick up and deliver.
And you know, our job as thebroker is to manage the
relationships on both sides.
And again, you're going to getburned, probably more often than

(37:53):
you want, but like, you onlyneed to get burned once by a
carrier to know not to do thatagain and then find someone else
to do it.
Um yeah.
So I don't know if I answeredthe question you had.
I may have gotten lost in myown thoughts there.

Speaker 2 (38:06):
I mean, it's the, it's the same problem we've been
dealing with on the carrierside is, you know what I've?
What I've learned, you know,maybe I've spoken to a couple
thousand different carriers atthis point is there are just
some people who want to bechasing you know spot rates, and
that's just who they are andthey're going to work really,

(38:26):
really hard when they have to Umand they're going to burn out
pretty fast.
And then there are the peoplewho really value regularity.
You know they have, you know, a, a bowling meet every Thursday
night and they want to be home.
So we make sure they get homeand it's just consistent.
And so finding those carriersand matching them to brokers who

(38:46):
value that as well, I think, iswhere we've we found our sweet
spot.
And so actually, the newestevolution of TrueNorth is, you
know, so we started as a carrier, then moved to just all carrier
tools.
We took everything we built forourselves and said, okay, let's
open source it to all thecarriers.
And so, you know, a load boardwas a big part of that.
Factoring and load docs is abig part of that.

(39:08):
And what we learned is thebiggest problem repeatedly is
finding brokers, finding freight, and when we started.
You know there's so manyincumbents.
There's all the major loadboards.
Uber Freight was coming up.
At the time we were convincedthe problem was going to be
solved.
But like fast forward fiveyears, it's still not solved.

(39:28):
And so we just said you knowwhat we're going to build the
biggest, the best load board.
It's going to be native AIfeatures built for the carriers,
and now we go sell directly tobrokers.
So that's the newest thingwe're doing is we're taking
everything we've built for thecarrier and we're letting
brokers kind of look, in the waywe have been, to what the
carriers are doing.
So what we have today iscarriers.

(39:52):
Call our virtual dispatcher.
Her name is Lodi.
She'll ask you your preferences, where are you now, where do
you want to go next?
She'll post your truck for you.
She'll look at load boards andfind loads that fit your needs
and then she'll recommend thoseto the trucker.
So that's a very basic form ofour AI and we're giving Lodi

(40:15):
more skills, which is really fun.
And we started from the carrierside, but as we start working
with more brokers, we findbrokers also want AI tools.
Of course there's Happy Robotis crushing it and Fleetworks
and all of them, but they'rereally native to the broker side
, where we started from thecarrier side.
So a question our team has foryou is pretend Lodi is just a

(40:43):
smart dispatcher who can beeverywhere at once.
What skills would you give herto help reach small carriers in
a better way?
I'm going on parental leavenext month and I wrote a memo to
the team and their wholeproblem statement for the whole
month of April is to find funways to solve this problem

(41:06):
Bookloads using Lodi and AI.
So any ideas you give willprobably incorporate into our
roadmap.

Speaker 1 (41:14):
Okay, okay.
So the question is how do wecreate?
What are the skills that thebest possible dispatcher would
have?
Okay, so they would haverelationships with numerous very

(41:35):
good freight brokers, and byvery good, I mean they're
sizable.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (41:41):
Big enough.
They don't have to be likeRobinson's size because you run
into different issues as you getbigger.
There's a sweet spot, I think,where brokerage has enough
volume to keep a smallowner-operator busy.
Oak Ridge has enough volume tokeep a small owner-operator busy
and that's like probably atleast $500 million of revenue.

(42:04):
It might be more, wow, andthere are ways to patch this
together.

Speaker 2 (42:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (42:08):
There are ways you could find more smaller ones.
It just gets harder to navigatethem all.
Yeah, so I was a carrier repfor five years and worked almost
exclusively with owneroperators.
I had a few bigger carriersGold Country based in Eagan,
minnesota, and Classic Expressbased in Cleveland, tennessee.
Shout out, sherry Smith, I missyou.

(42:30):
She will never hear this.
But whatever, she was the best.
She was like a mom.
A lot of good trucks.
It was Coca-Cola's old privatefleet or one of them.
Sorry, I'm sidetracked, but mypoint is I worked with a lot of
small owner operators in thesoutheast and we got to a point
with some of them where theyalmost exclusively hauled my

(42:50):
freight and that meant anywherefrom 15 to 20 loads a month.
Pick up in Atlanta on Monday,deliver Tuesday morning in Tampa
.
Pick up Tuesday afternoon inOcala or St Pete, anywhere in
the central Florida area.
Take a load back north to SouthCarolina, tennessee, alabama,

(43:14):
to deliver Wednesday.
Pick up another load in Alabamaon Wednesday, deliver in
Florida on Thursday and thenpick up on whatever Florida
going home for the weekend,whatever.
I'm just giving you an example.
But my point is a goodbroker-owner-operator
relationship.
There has to be enough to keepthe driver busy.
Because if it's a small brokerthat you're partnered with, they

(43:36):
might have the load for youfrom Atlanta to Tampa but then
you're stuck in Florida unlessyou go to another broker.
And it's okay to work withmultiple brokers.
There's no reason you shouldn't.
It just gets a little morechallenging when you want to
create a trip like a full week'sworth of loads for a carrier or
an owner operator, if you'reworking with three different
brokers to make that trip work.
If there's one issue now you'reworking on numerous points of

(44:01):
communication to get thesolution resolved and that's a
lot harder than if it's allunder one roof.
Because my at least the way Ifelt was if I sent a guy from
Atlanta to Tampa and he had anissue getting unloaded in Tampa
that was going to make him missmy other load for him from
Florida going back north.
That's on me to help him figurethat out.

(44:22):
I feel accountable to that IfI'm the second load from Florida
to back up, but I wasn't thefirst load and someone else's
load screwed up, that's not myproblem and it's not to say I
don't care enough to try to helphim.
But I certainly don't feelaccountable to it If he's like
I'm going to be four hours lateto your pickup in Florida

(44:43):
because my last load was delayed, my customer sales rep might
say to me Andrew, I don't care,I've got to be on time for my
pickup or I'm not going to getthese loads again.
So there's a lot of nuance thatgoes into the inner workings of
making these loads workeffectively and there are a lot
of issues that come up and theway to put yourself as a carrier

(45:05):
in the best position to win inthese scenarios where people
want to help you and take careof you is to be very aligned and
partner with the right brokers,and you want the brokers to
feel accountable to resolvingthese issues for you.
So again, this is a long-windedanswer, but just the start of
the answer is having severalbrokers that you are very well

(45:28):
connected to, and there's twoparts to a broker.
One is the company and theother is the individual.
So the ways I think about thatare I want to understand what
are like the rules that acompany like operates within,
and at Molo I just kind of gaveyou some of those rules.
Some of it is if we commit todoing something with someone, we

(45:49):
follow through on it.
That's for a carrier, for acustomer.
There are exceptions.
You know, if I commit to movingthis load with you but you're
going to be late, my priority isno longer making sure that
you're still on the load.
My priority is making sure thatwe follow through on our
overarching customer commitmentto get the load picked and
delivered on time.

(46:10):
So you want to understand therules of the game and how
brokers operate.
You especially want to know howthey operate under duress or
when things are not going well,and that's something that you
kind of have to live and learn.
You don't necessarily find thatout on the front end.
You can certainly try to.
You can try to talk about it onthe front end and get aligned.
I think one of the mostimportant things brokers and

(46:31):
carriers should be doing beforepartnering with anyone, before
moving a load with someone, ishaving a very thorough, upfront
conversation around how you'regoing to operate.
What are my expectations of youand what are your expectations
of me.
So if I'm Lodi, or if I'mbuilding Lodi, I want to build
something that has the absolute,perfect principles, or the

(46:53):
principles that I feel are mostaligned to a strong, performing,
carrier-centric or carrierdriver-minded dispatcher.
And you want to becarrier-minded and broker-minded
because you want to make, yougot to keep both sides happy.
If you can't keep both sideshappy, you can't keep either
side happy.
Totally.

(47:14):
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Speaker 2 (48:13):
So okay.
So to distill that down, it'slike, instead of a spray and
prayer approach where we try toget all brokers in, pick a few
and get really, really deep withthem, that's thing number one.

Speaker 1 (48:29):
Kind of At scale.
You want a bunch of the brokers.
I just mean, if I'm thinkingfor a specific driver.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Ah, okay.

Speaker 1 (48:38):
I don't need every broker.
If I'm one driver and I'm basedin the Southeast and I stay in
the Southeast, I need three orfour brokers that have dense
business in the Southeast tosupport my needs.
If I'm True North and Lodi andI'm accountable for 500 drivers,
you probably need a ton ofbrokers.

(48:58):
And just because a broker can'tsupport a full driver on its
own doesn't mean he can't bepart of the overarching support
that one of your drivers gets.
You might find a small brokerwho only has $10 million of
annual revenue, but they have aniche from we're just sticking
with the Southeast, I guess fromSouth Carolina to Atlanta, and

(49:22):
that might pair very nicely withanother small broker that has a
niche from Atlanta to SouthCarolina.
And your job as Lodi is tobring all of these routes
together, all theseopportunities together that
brokers have, and create anefficient network for drivers.
I mean that's an interestingthing to think about.

(49:42):
That none of the load boardshave done is, if I'm a load
board, how can I and so I knowwhat these brokers I'm getting
enough of a broker's data toknow a lot of their lanes, or I
should be trying to get as muchof their data as possible to
understand all their lanes.
And if I can pair that withother brokers to create the most

(50:06):
efficient routes for a driver,then I have something
interesting for a driver.
Because if I'm a driver, that'sprobably one of the hardest
things it is.
And they have to piece theyalways have to piecemeal it
Right.
So I'm based in Atlanta.
Again, that's our example.
I'm getting ready for the week.
I don't have a ton of greatrelationships I've.
I've saw them that I can calland ask what loads they have.

(50:27):
But by and large, for my loadout on Monday, I see that RXO
has a load posted from Atlantato Tampa.
And this was literally whatwould happen with me sometimes
when I was at Coyote.
I'd say, hey, calvin, my guyCalvin was based in Orlando, mc
Martin Trucking and I'd say, hey, cal, I got a load, he's based

(50:49):
in Orlando.
I'd say I got a load tomorrowout of Atlanta going to Tampa.
Can you pick it up for me?
And he'd be like, well, do youhave anything to get me from
Orlando to Atlanta?
And I'd say, no, not today.
He'd say, okay, let me call afew guys and see what they have.
And so that's what a lot ofthese guys are spending their
time doing is trying topiecemeal routes together to
create something that is morecircular, at least gets them to

(51:11):
and from where they're trying togo.

Speaker 2 (51:13):
I'm grinning like an idiot because literally, what is
it?
A week ago in our innovationweek, the team came up with
something like this.
They call it, I think, like,just like route planning.
But they take from a carrier,they say, how long do you want
to be on the road?
And they take intoconsideration hours of service

(51:34):
and whatever, and they patchtogether a route from multiple
brokers and suggest it and youknow if halfway through a load
falls through, it recalculatesand helps you find a new load.
But we could really easilyadapt that and just say let's
find you a permanent two-weekrotation based on the brokers we
have and where you want to go,and we stitch this together for

(51:58):
you.
Yeah, we can do that, supercool.

Speaker 1 (52:03):
Yeah, so there's two ways you want to think about
that.
Permanent's a tough word on atwo-week.
Is that an oxymoron?
Permanent two-week.
Unless you're sayingperpetually two-week yeah,
rotation, yeah, yeah.
But there's two ways to thinkabout that, because the
interesting thing is, most TMSproviders can't even do that
internally.
Really, this is somethingMastery recently oh yeah, my old

(52:23):
system before Mastery we couldnot create routes.
The system certainly would nottell us what a route was I mean
most of the TMS that brokers arebuying off the shelf if they
have a load from Chicago toAtlanta and then literally from
the same facilities going fromAtlanta back to Chicago two days
later a perfect route.

(52:44):
There would be no way to knowthat that is a perfect circle or
route that you could set up to,from and then back.
It's wild.
The systems aren't designedthat well.

Speaker 2 (52:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Mastery came out with that.
But even that is justinternally.
So yes, internally.
If I know I have a driver inChicago and he wants to go out
for two weeks, I can plug inChicago two weeks and it'll give
me like 15 options of here'sfour loads together that make a
route to get you home in time.
That's great, but that's notsolving the problem at scale for

(53:23):
someone like you in your worldor for a driver.
It helps a driver with whateverbroker they work with that uses
mastery, but it doesn't helpwith any of the other brokers
and it doesn't help give you abigger like.
If Molo is an example is onmastery.
That's a billion or something.

(53:43):
Dollar brokerage.
That's good.
But if I'm an owner operator, itdoesn't mean that that billion
dollars of revenue is enough togive me the perfect setup every
week, moving in perpetuity.
I want not I want to leveragetheir billion.
I want to leverage Arrive's $2billion and NTG's $2 billion,
whatever I'm making up thesenumbers.
But if you could get anintermediary that plays among

(54:07):
all the brokers and can bringall their freight together, then
you maybe have something there.
And the other thing I was goingto say that you have to keep in
mind is there's kind of twoways to think about it.
One is on the contractual basis, where most of the time you
don't know, you can't guaranteeunless you have contractual

(54:27):
lanes, you can't guarantee thatyou'll be able to create the
same route every two weeks.
If you have contractual lanessay an annual committed lane
from Walmart over here andanother one from Kroger over
there you can then createsomething that you could run
consistently over and over again, and that's what you want to do
.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Yeah, Shout out to Jeff Resch who's now at Uber
running Powerloop.
Actually, he built out ourfleet planning org back when we
had a bunch of small carriersrunning under factoring and
we've toyed around with thisidea a lot over the years and I
think finally, voice AI didn'texist back then, but now we can

(55:07):
actually call carriers, ask themfor updates, get it and
reschedule it on our own withoutemploying a bunch of
dispatchers.
So I think now is the time Cool.

Speaker 1 (55:16):
Yeah, I'm curious for you.
I feel like your initialcapital raise was like how much?
60 million or what was thefirst?

Speaker 2 (55:27):
I think we did a 50 million series B and everything
before.
That was roughly 10 million, so60 total.

Speaker 1 (55:34):
So when was the series B?

Speaker 2 (55:36):
2021, november 2021.

Speaker 1 (55:40):
I want to say and am I right that Sam Altman was
involved in that?

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, sam.
Um, he led our seed and then uminvolved in our a and then
co-led our B, so he's done everyround for us.

Speaker 1 (55:57):
So that's an interesting nugget that I feel
like we have to talk about, evenfor just a minute, right?
So Sam Altman is now basicallythe face of AI yeah, one of the
faces of AI and is an investorin your business.
What was that process like?
I guess maybe back then hewasn't as famous.

(56:20):
Yeah, he wasn't the face of AIthen, yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
And I think he's definitely taken a step back
from investing since, because hehas a lot on his plate, as you
can imagine.
But back then he had been theCEO of YC and then had already
started OpenAI and was multipleyears into it and was angel
investing.
So, yeah, sam is a prolificangel investor.

(56:44):
He's known for taking bets onreally big ideas, and so he was
one of the few people who werenot scared of trucking when I
came to him and said I want tobe the marketplace for all of
freight.
And he was one of the fewpeople who were not scared of
trucking when I came to him andsaid like I want to be the
marketplace for all of freight,and he was like great, here's
some money.
Like really had convictionreally fast and, yeah, he's been

(57:06):
a great investor.

Speaker 1 (57:09):
And talk to me about the process of raising.
I mean, $50 million is a lot ofmoney.
So you know you are a youngentrepreneur or budding
entrepreneur.
You were barely at thebeginning of becoming one, yeah,
and to raise that kind of moneyis some serious stuff.
Can you walk me through whatthat process was like, what you

(57:31):
learned through that process too?

Speaker 2 (57:33):
Yeah, oh, my gosh.
Fundraising is really crazy,and this was all in the 2020 to
2021 era, which was particularlycrazy for fundraising, I'm sure
you heard of tons of peopleraised then and we got off to a
really hot start and that's whatinvestors look for.

(57:54):
So, coming out of YC, we weregrowing super, super fast.
We hit a million ARR in sixmonths.
I think we hit seven the yearafter that.
People see the trajectory andreally like that.
They see the market.
You know how much opportunitythere is in freight.
It's an enormous market.
There's tons of waste.

(58:15):
It's getting bigger every yearand also it's really affected by
technology shifts.
Right, like think about when westarted in 2019, there were
still owner operators who hadflip phones and like that
wouldn't happen today, like wesaid, sorry, you can't use us
because we're an app and youneed a smartphone.

(58:37):
And they'd be like, well, Iguess I can't use you.
And now everyone is embracingGen AI and it's actually quite
already pretty deeply embeddedin most of the broker side and
carriers are starting to warm upto it.
So it is very tech friendly.
Despite the, I think,stereotype that truckers hate

(59:00):
technology, it's really impactedby tech.
So, anyway, investors like thatkind of huge market and I think
I was lucky to build a reallygood team too.
I had execs who were much moreexperienced than I and helped me
with with all of that Cause.
What do I know about?
You know finance and productand engineering and all of that,

(59:21):
yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
And I mean, was there any intimidation factor?
I mean it's just, you know,being such a young CEO in a, in
a pretty, I mean, other thanyour family had worked in the
industry, but it was foreign toyou to some extent.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (59:37):
And taking so much capital, how did you decide what
to do with it and how did youfeel like you were making smart
decisions on where you weredeploying it?

Speaker 2 (59:47):
Yeah, I again will say, like hiring executives who
know what they're doing made ahuge difference, and feeling
like there were adults aroundthe table made a huge difference
.
But it is.
It was a shit ton of money andI feel like I wasted a lot of it
.
But here we are, what, four orfive years later?

(01:00:09):
And we still have quite a lotof it left.
And so I think we've managed tonot waste it all and give
ourselves enough shots on goalto really grow this to where we
want to go.
But I often think like what if Ihadn't raised that kind of
money?
Maybe we would have had to bemore scrappy, maybe we wouldn't
have built a carrier and gonedown that path for so long.

(01:00:32):
You know, and owned 300trailers and all the all the
capital that is involved in thatCause.
We had to raise debt to buytrailers and it was.
It was a whole thing.
What if no one had given memoney?
Maybe I would have had a reallytiny team and gotten really
good at one small thing andexpanded from there.
So raising a ton of money isnot necessarily good, but I

(01:00:55):
think we've made it work for us.

Speaker 1 (01:00:58):
I mean, I will say it feels like you have had a lot
of different focal points, atleast early on, and you were
trying to do a lot.
And is that what you mean bylike wasted?
Some of the money is like wekind of applied it to areas that
didn't end up being part ofwhat the business is today?

Speaker 2 (01:01:17):
yeah, and like wasted is.
It is my, like you know,regretful look backward.
We learned a ton in running acarrier, but it was capital
intensive.
we did, you know carriers.
We didn't make money runningthe carrier, but it's not a
ultimately scalable tech, ahundred billion dollar business.
And so you know, on the onehand, um, like our entire team

(01:01:42):
really understands carrierssuper well, um, even though
they're engineers, like they'veall spoken to hundreds of
carriers and understand the, the, the pain, the customer pain,
um.
But on the other hand, you know, we, we had a hundred employees
at one point, a lot of opspeople, um, and I I had to do
layoffs and that's just like thefucking worst.

(01:02:04):
Uh, people who believe in youand they join and then you, your
business model changes and itjust doesn't make sense anymore.
So that was really hard and youknow, I wish I didn't do that.

Speaker 1 (01:02:19):
It's a necessary thing to survive in some cases,
and I'm curious from the lens ofhaving to go to investors who

(01:02:40):
have put millions of dollars inthe business and saying, hey,
what we're doing it's not goingto work, we need to pivot.
I want to understand what thatprocess is like and how you
navigate that.
And then let's start there, andthen I'll go to my next
question.

Speaker 2 (01:02:51):
Yeah, so investors have been really supportive.
I think it helps to sendinvestor updates and keep them
along for the ride and not justlet them know.
Don't talk to them for a yearand then tell them you've done
this thing, and I think it alsoapplies to the team.

(01:03:11):
Like every Sunday, I send aweekly reflection.
It has what we accomplishedlast week, our goals, some
learnings, and then how muchcash we have in the bank, how
much runway we have.

Speaker 1 (01:03:25):
So everyone knows that every single week that goes
to the whole team, whole team.

Speaker 2 (01:03:30):
I like that.
Yeah, it really keeps youaccountable and it keeps you
focused on the numbers for sure,and I think that kind of
transparency definitely helps.
Our investors also largelyaren't trucking investors.
Your brother, matt, is our onlyfreight related person on the
cap table.
Actually Everyone else.

(01:03:52):
Yeah, it's a Silicon Valley, um,you know, either an angel or an
investor.
So, um, most people saw whathappened in freight.
They saw, you know, uber andconvoy and flexport and all
these things, and they get it,and what they want is a huge
outcome, and so they wantanything that increases the
chance of a huge outcome.
So so, to them, if we're headedin that direction, it's okay.

Speaker 1 (01:04:21):
And then talk a little bit about the, the, the.
You know you went through alayoff with the team.
That must've been really hardand you know what, what kind of.
As you look back on that insome of your reflecting, how do
you feel like you can putyourself in a position to not
have to do that again?

Speaker 2 (01:04:34):
Yeah, so the the cause was our business model
change, and I think about this alot.
We were so.
We saw so much success, kind ofon the back of COVID, with the
carrier.
It was just growing so fast andcarriers loved it and we're
making lots of money and we were, um, everything was just

(01:04:56):
working that it was hard to sayno.
And raising so much money, um,investors want you to spend that
money right so that you cangrow and get a higher valuation
next time.
And so it was.
We just got on this cycle, andthis is where I think back and
think like if I hadn't raised asmuch money, maybe I wouldn't

(01:05:18):
have gone down that path, butit's, you know, hindsight is
2020.
Listening to customers andfollowing what's working is like
that's how you run a successfulcompany, and so I I don't
regret it.
Um, it was working at the timeand if I, yeah, if I could
change one thing, it would be tohave been much more careful
with hiring.

(01:05:39):
I still think we were quitecareful and quite conservative,
um, but it's still, we stillwere hiring, you know, multiple
people a week.

Speaker 1 (01:05:47):
It felt like for for months yeah, yeah, I get that,
especially when you feel like,when you feel like the, you feel
like you're attuned to yourcustomers needs yeah and you're
trying to support that.
I understand why that would bereally hard to keep going down
that path and then realizing youhave to pivot and understanding
the human cost to that yeah, itis tough, we were making our

(01:06:10):
drivers rich.

Speaker 2 (01:06:11):
you know, like I still remember, like I I
appreciate that you stillremember all the names of the
people you've worked with, likeit's like I remember it was
Steve.

Speaker 1 (01:06:18):
I can give you their phone numbers.

Speaker 2 (01:06:22):
Call.

Speaker 1 (01:06:22):
Calvin four oh seven, four, five, three, seven four,
nine zero.
If you need a good owneroperator out of Orlando.

Speaker 2 (01:06:29):
I hope Calvin's still in business, cause if he's not,
he's about to get so much he ishe is.

Speaker 1 (01:06:33):
I blasted him public.
He needs help, so that's why Idon't.

Speaker 2 (01:06:35):
Yeah, he should work with us.
Yeah, but it's like you know, Iremember the you know Corey
with five kids and he wasworking so fricking hard and to
provide for these kids and hebought like I don't know, we
were changing people's lives andit and ultimately it was just
like a huge carrier is hard tomake a big venture back to

(01:06:58):
business, and so we had to makethat call and, yeah, it's one of
the hardest things I've everdone at Molo, we built a great
company and I'm proud of thework we did.

Speaker 1 (01:07:10):
We knew when to ask for help and sometimes that
meant going outside of our owncompany.
I'm proud we built an ecosystemof trusted partners like
Metaphora.
When we needed differentiatedindustry expertise in business
consulting or technologyservices, we looked at Peter
Ryan and the team at Metaphora.
They've consistently deliveredvalue in the transportation and
logistics space for over adecade for mid-market and

(01:07:32):
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 partneryou should trust to help you win
, whether that's doing ops andtech diligence, growing revenue,
optimizing spend or selectingand building software.
Go check them out atmetaforanet.

(01:07:53):
That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-A dot net.
What's interesting is that yourcomment just there had me
thinking.
Earlier you asked about how tocreate the best dispatcher with
Lodi.
There's a piece that I justdon't know that AI can solve and
it does tie into therelationship.

(01:08:14):
I just don't know that AI cansolve and it does tie into the
relationship, and I think it'spossible that you can give a
carrier so many of the toolsthey need with an AI dispatcher
like Lodi, and those tools canbetter equip them to run their
business than a lot of humanbrokers can, if it's well put
together.
But there's just a piece that'smissing.

(01:08:42):
As we talk about Calvin, my oldbuddy, and my relationship to
him, he jokingly made me thegodparent to his baby girl.
There are elements to therelationship that forevermore,
if he calls me and needssomething, I will be, I will do
whatever I can to help him.
And similarly, if I called himright now and tried to help him,

(01:09:02):
he would.
He would do what he could tohelp me.
How do you get that with Lodi?
I don't know if that's possible.

Speaker 2 (01:09:09):
Maybe it doesn't need to be yeah, I don't think we
should.
Maybe it doesn't need to beyeah, I don't think we should.
I think loady and anything aior tech in general should free
the humans up to do what humansdo best, which is connect.
But, like you know, you're notconnecting with kelvin when you
need to call him to check wherehe is.
You know that that can beautomated and you're not

(01:09:32):
building a relationship with himwhen you want to know is he
currently loaded now?
Is he almost there?
Where does he want to go next?
That kind of thing.
Humans don't need to do that,and so our goal is never to
replace the human.
I think if there's one thingwe've learned, it's that
relationships really matter infreight Drivers.

(01:09:52):
Even company drivers, likedrivers everywhere, they're used
to being treated verytransactionally and like a
number, and they don't want that.
And if you, as a broker orshipper, can make that
connection, you've probably wonlike a lifelong or at least a
long term capacity solutioncustomer or whatever.
So our hope is let Lodi do allthe useless stuff, like right

(01:10:16):
now.
Lodi will call brokers andemail them asking them if a load
on the load board is stillavailable, and if it is, she'll
connect the carrier.
Little things like that, whereLodi can do 10 things at once
while a driver is driving andcan't be like messing on their
phone while a driver is drivingand doesn't, doesn't.
You know, can't, can't be likemessing on their phone.

Speaker 1 (01:10:35):
I mean that's a great example, because there's a lot
of time wasted of carrierscalling into a broker to ask if
a load still available and itjust isn't time wasted on both
sides, Totally.
So I definitely think that's agreat example of how AI can can
support a care and a broker withstuff like that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:54):
Yeah, you know, support a carrier and a broker
with stuff like that.
Yeah, eventually it's going tobe AI talking to AI, like we're
going to call a happy robot AIand ask this, it's still
available, and they're going totalk to each other and that's
fine.

Speaker 1 (01:11:05):
Yeah, I mean, that's that.
You know.
I had a conversation with DaveBell from clone ops and he said
that's what he said he'sbuilding.
He wants to build both sides ofit.
He said that's what he saidhe's building, he wants to build
both sides of it.
Yeah, I want my ai to betalking to my other ai on behalf
of the carrier and the broker.
Totally, um, and I definitelythink that there's, there are
that.
That's a perfect example of apart of the job for a broker or

(01:11:27):
a carrier that is a waste oftime, yeah, is trying to
understand if a load or a truckis still available because
people forget to take theposting down or somebody covered
it and didn't let somebody elseknow, whatever it may be, um,
and that's time you can't getback.
So I, you know, I just Iremember distinctly spending
time as a carrier up, thinkinglike how do I spend less time on

(01:11:51):
the phone with some of theseguys?
Because when, especially withowner operators, they don't have
anything else to do as they'redriving, they want to sit there
and bullshit with you.
If you're their primary, ifyou're the primary source of
freight for an owner operator,that means you are their
dispatcher.
Yeah, and they often don't havesome.
Like you know, calvin, forexample, his, his wife did his
billing but like that was it, itwas her and it was me, and so I

(01:12:16):
used to give him like 20minutes a day.
And then I distinctly rememberlike thinking I need to make a
time calendar, like, cut off,tell him, like you get 20
minutes today and you can't haveany more than that because I
can't do my job.
If I give you 45 minutes a day,cause that's you know, then I'm
only covering like nine loads aday.
If each of you gets 45 minutesto bullshit while you're driving

(01:12:36):
down, you know 95 or whatever,because you got nothing better
to do.
I'd love to bullshit with you,but I've got other things I got
to do.

Speaker 2 (01:12:43):
Yeah, but, and to him you might be one of the two
people that speaks to him thatday, and so we want to think
about how do we make the jobless lonely for drivers too,
because it's brutal.
I could never be a driver.
I would lose my mind and yeahit's a super tough job and

(01:13:05):
underappreciated.

Speaker 1 (01:13:05):
So back to kind of True North.
The load board idea yeah, howdo you get to scale?
Because a load board is uselesswithout scale, is it not?
Like it's?
Just until you have enoughfreight to make it worthwhile,
nobody comes.
And if nobody comes, you can'tget to scale, and I think that's
why the few big boys havereally never had much

(01:13:29):
competition.
It's because it's too hard toget to that scale.
How do you think about thatproblem?

Speaker 2 (01:13:34):
because it's too hard to get to that scale.
How do you think about thatproblem?
Yeah, I think about thisproblem in my sleep, in the
shower, like every moment ofevery day, and there are a
couple ways we're approaching it.
First is the classic likemarketplace way, where you focus
on a region and an equipmenttype.
So we're finding that like outof the Midwest North area, like

(01:13:56):
you know Minnesota, chicagowe've got some of our core early
brokers and we look at wheretheir freight is and we go find
carriers for them.
So it's a very like conciergewhite glove service.
We have people actually likegoing to carriers and helping,
like alongside Lodi likesometimes Lodi calls, sometimes
Lodi calls sometimes ourdispatcher his name is Kelvin,

(01:14:16):
not Calvin, so it's very close.
Somebody's Kelvin will call andyou just like do everything
that doesn't scale until youmake that customer happy and
then you build the carriernetwork.
The second way is you buildtools.
So there's a phrase come forthe tool, stay for the network.
It's how Dropbox grew.

(01:14:38):
You didn't join Dropbox for thenetwork.
You joined because they helpedyou store files on your computer
, but you stayed because noweveryone else is using Dropbox
and it's easy to share and thatkind of thing.
And so, since we've built a lotof Lodi features for carriers,
we're since we've built a lot ofloady features for carriers,
we're thinking loady featuresfor brokers.

(01:14:58):
Um, will draw, will dropbrokers the same way.
You know, like happy robot is agreat example, they don't have
a network, but you don't need anetwork to be successful with
happy robot.
You just need to install themright and have them answer,
answer your phones for you.
And so we're approaching it inthose two ways.

Speaker 1 (01:15:20):
What do you see as like the biggest challenge to
getting to where you're tryingto go with this?

Speaker 2 (01:15:25):
Yeah, the market being so unfavorable for
carriers really sucks.
This would be easier to buildin the hot market, for sure,
because brokers, if they neededcarriers more right, they would
use more tools like load boards.
But that's kind of like anexternal challenge.
The challenge that I like don'tknow how to solve yet is how do

(01:15:48):
we get carriers to trustbrokers and to really want that
repeat freight versus you know,just staying on the spot market
and you know, just chasing thehighest rates and so like we're
approaching it again in a veryunscalable way.
Is we are happy right now if acarrier and a broker, if a

(01:16:09):
carrier finds 100% of theirfreight through a broker and
they leave the platform, likeright now we're just going to
like live with that becausewe've made that carrier happy
and we're learning along the way.
Um, but you know this, this iswhy the big load boards don't do
relationship contract type offreight is because they'll lose
their customers because of it.
So I think that that's aproblem we need to solve.

(01:16:30):
Does that make sense?

Speaker 1 (01:16:33):
Hmm, yeah, problem we need to solve.
Does that make sense?
Hmm, yeah, I'm just, I don'tknow the answer.
Yeah, I was contemplating,contemplating that.
What do you see as kind of thebiggest challenges with load,
the load board concept today,like, what are, what are the
things that you think you couldpotentially bring new solutions
to the table for to make loadboards a better option for any

(01:16:57):
of the parties participating?

Speaker 2 (01:16:59):
yeah, I think the transactional nature of load
boards is a big problem, um, so,like right now I'm like trying
not to say the names, buteveryone knows I'm talking about
right um, the big load boardsare incentivized to have spot
freight only again, and if abroker has contract freight with

(01:17:22):
a carrier, the load board losesthat carrier as a customer.
And so I think what we aretrying to build and actually the
first thing I pitched to you atBCS and you were like
thoroughly nonplussed by it isthis relationship management
tool where a broker finds repeatcarriers we called it trucking

(01:17:42):
relationship management and theykeep tabs on where all the
carriers are, where they'reempty next, and the broker can
be the first to rebook with thatcarrier and, ideally, set up a
contract lane.
Broker can be the first torebook with that carrier and
ideally, like, set up a contractlane.
And so that's actually whereour load board concept started
is on the relationship side, andwe kind of moved upstream to

(01:18:06):
connect the two.
And I think, as long as we haveenough brokers who will always
have a mix of transactional andcontract freight and enough
carriers who will, you know, yes, they have contract freight,
but they need transactionalfreight once in a while.
I think we can make it workonce you get enough density, and
so we're just betting that ifyou do both the transactional
and the relationship side, itwill work where the traditional

(01:18:26):
load boards don't do that today.

Speaker 1 (01:18:31):
What about fraud?
Because you can't say loadboard without fraud being
mentioned closely there behind.
It's arguably the biggestdrawback from load board usage.
It's a big reason why shipperswant nothing to do with load
boards.
So how do you navigate fraud ina way that makes people feel

(01:18:53):
comfortable?

Speaker 2 (01:18:54):
So there's fraud on the carrier side and there's
fraud on the broker side Becauseif you're a carrier, when you
get defrauded on the load youlose a lot more than a broker
does and one instance will bringyou down where, for a broker,
one instance will hurt you butit won't kill you.
And so carriers actually alsohave the same worries about

(01:19:18):
brokers.
So for brokers, right now we'relike demoing and personally
meeting every single broker whoposts, um, and that that is a
pretty good like we've.
We've had to turn away somelike.
We had some weird conversationswhere it's really clear that
you know like they're, they'reprobably not, they're probably
not right, and maybe we'veturned away more people than we
should, but we think it's worthit.
On the carrier side, I thinkthis is where us having been a

(01:19:41):
carrier, us having worked withso many carriers, really helps,
because we also apply that kindof vetting.
On the carrier side Right now,a simple thing we do is we make
all of them download our app,and if you're a dispatch farm
and like overseas somewhere,you're not going to download an
iPhone app.
So that's one thing.
We do the classic stuff youknow, like FMCSA, monitoring,
make sure they're legit and allthat stuff, but we're slowly

(01:20:05):
building, I think, a goodcarrier monitoring system.

Speaker 1 (01:20:13):
Yeah.
And when you think big picturefive years from now, what do you
want True North to be?
If this goes all the plan, whatdoes the business look?

Speaker 2 (01:20:26):
like for all things like small carrier freight.
So anytime you need a smallcarrier for anything, you go to
this marketplace.
A small carrier can find afactoring company through this

(01:20:47):
marketplace.
We've built partnerships andthat sort of thing fuel cards,
all that stuff but the corething that all carriers need is
business.
So that'll be the core of it.

Speaker 1 (01:20:58):
And how do you navigate the negative
connotation around the wordmarketplace?
Because it's it feels like it'sa term that there's been so
much investment in this spaceand poorly managed investment in
this space, totally, andcompanies that show up and are
gone a year, two years, fiveyears later, and marketplace
marketplace is usually.

(01:21:19):
If you had to give me the topthree words that someone's going
to use for a business that willbe dead in three years,
marketplace is one of them.
So how do you navigate thatusing a term that is most
commonly used among corpses ofventure past?

Speaker 2 (01:21:36):
So I was scared of that term for a really long time
and like I was scared of sayingwe're a load board and really
like tiptoed around it.
But like that's what we want tobe is, we want to connect one
party to another party and wewant to connect them over and
over and over again and havethem build a relationship, and

(01:21:57):
so maybe it's a marketplacerelationship product, but like
that doesn't really roll off thetongue and so like I don't know
why be scared of a term whenit's actually the thing we're
trying to embrace it here.
Yeah, what do you think whenyou hear marketplace?
Just do you hear convoy andcorpses and like- yeah, BS is

(01:22:18):
one of the first things.
I think of.

Speaker 1 (01:22:20):
For being perfectly honest if someone comes to me
and says I'm building amarketplace for freight, I'm
like, okay, here we go Totally.
And it doesn't give me a goodfeeling is half of the cold
emails that you send out tobrokers and carriers that say

(01:22:41):
like, hey, we're True North, thefuture marketplace of freight,
that's getting deleted at leasthalf the time.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
I would think I have learned not to say that in cold
emails.
For what it's worth.
Yeah, Maybe I'll turn it backto you Hearing what we are
building and want to build.
What if you're in the brokerseat and, let's say, you're
bought into this vision, you seewhere it could go.
What are the words you use?

Speaker 1 (01:23:11):
I want to be the one-stop shop for owner ops.
Okay, like I want to be knownas if I'm you, I want to be
known as.
If I'm you, I want to build aproduct that owner-operators
love.
There's so much opportunity foran owner-operator here to make
their business better that theycome in droves.
It's interesting to think about.

(01:23:31):
If you can somehow get a bunchof factoring companies
participating, you become anytool that I need as an owner op.
I know to come to true north toget the best deal yeah if you
can suck them in that way andgive them something.
I don't mean suck them in inlike a negative way, just being
like if you can draw them intoyour environment that way.

(01:23:55):
Now you have.
Something that's interesting tobrokers is you've got access to
capacity that they would liketo have, but they know it takes
a lot of lift to actually get iton their own.
Most companies don't go afterowner-operators.
Most brokers don't go afterowner-operators.
It's a lot of work.
It's a lot of time for one truckat a time.

(01:24:15):
I personally found successdoing that.
I moved a bunch of loads on aregular basis.
I made commission, I wassuccessful as a carrier rep and
most of my freight was booked onowner-operators.
Ironically, coyote tried tobuild a team out of that model
and it lasted two or three yearswhere people I had two interns.

(01:24:38):
When I went back to college Igave each of them half of my
carriers and they startedbooking and that was kind of how
they started this owneroperator group.
But after a few years it dieddown.
And I think it died downbecause it's a really hard thing
to maintain and and and besuccessful at.
It takes a lot of time andenergy and it doesn't make a ton
of money because each carrieris only worth one load a day.

Speaker 2 (01:25:01):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
So if you could find a way to offload a lot of that
lift for the broker as TrueNorth, but still give them the
benefit of the quality thatowner-operators can be, because
let me tell you myowner-operators, they were
better service providers than99% of the market.
My owner operators, they werebetter service providers than
99% of the market.
They knew that that was allthey had to stand on.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:25:23):
Their service and their name.
That was it.
Yeah, they weren't going togive me better rates than the
big carriers.
They weren't going to give me amore efficient way of working
with them.
They didn't have tools thatmade it easier to do EDI or
anything like that.
They had their name and theyhad the service.
They provided their word, andso I think there's a lot you can

(01:25:46):
do with that.
It just takes a lot of effortto manage it, and if you can
find a way to be the effort inall of that, I think you've got
a solution that can make sensefor brokers to want to use.
It's just a matter of how doyou do that.
How do you actually get thecarriers, the owner-operators,
into your network on aconsistent basis?

Speaker 2 (01:26:06):
Yeah, there's a ton of pride in the best
owner-operators for providinggreat service.
You're right.
It's funny that you sayone-stop shop for owner-ops,
because that was on our YCapplication and the term
one-stop shop to me actually hasweird connotations and so I
dropped that.
But if I hear you know, maybethe trucking industry doesn't
have those weird connotations.

Speaker 1 (01:26:29):
I'll come back to it.
One-stop shop for every ownerout.

Speaker 2 (01:26:32):
It rhymes.
Yeah, that's great.
When I heard you say talk aboutthe team at C coyote, it made
me remember um, when we were acarrier, we were trying to get
coyote to to, you know, give usmore freight, and like, when
they get the ups right and allthis stuff.
And I visited and I rememberthis so clearly and I've thought
about it a lot in terms of howI build culture at true north is

(01:26:55):
I met with, like it was likethe lowliest of carrier reps and
he brings me into a room and hesits me down and he gives me
this 10 minute spiel on theorigins of Coyote and the
founders and how much they caredabout carriers and their whole
culture.
And like he let me like seewhat, like his tech and how they
, how they, how they doeverything.

(01:27:16):
And I was like man if, if youknow, in this hundreds of people
come, I don't know if you hadeven thousands of employees at
that point, if at that point,yeah, for sure thousands yeah,
because this must have been 2020.
If, like, one carrier rep cangive me that kind of you know
vision, um then, like, whoever,whoever set the culture of that
company, that was doing a reallygood job.

(01:27:37):
And so I think about that nowis how do I make sure everyone
at True North knows where we'reheaded?
And yeah, I don't know, did you, having you know, seen your I
think it was your dad and yourstepmom do that at Coyote?
Do you think about that much atMolo and instilling that kind
of culture?

Speaker 1 (01:27:54):
100% Culture is very intentional and the way it all
starts day one, it all startswith the initial onboarding and
training.
It actually starts before dayone if you're doing it really
well.
The HR teams, the talent teamsat Coyote and Molo we had Megan
Savelle doing this for us andher team and Kara Kinney, but
who had come from Coyote, but itstarted before in your

(01:28:17):
onboarding process.
I mean, you get fed all thisinformation about who the
company is and it's how peopletreat you, how they engage with
you, how they respond to you,and then when you started the
company and we had this at bothcompanies like you got exposure
to the executive team very early.
I saw my dad do this and how hewould go and meet with the
training class in their firstcouple of days and spend an hour

(01:28:40):
, hour and a half with them.
I did the same thing.
I went and I was just an openbook with my team and I would
sit there for as long as needed,introduce everybody in the room
that I'd introduced myself.
I'd let them ask any questionsthey want and I would tell the
story of who we are, why we arewho we are and how we win and

(01:29:04):
when.
You ingrain those things inyour team in the very earliest
of days and then you repeat thatin the stories you tell,
whether it's in a weeklyreflection, like you did or I
would do company meetings, townhall type settings where I would
just go for 15, 20 minutestalking about why we're winning,
like what examples I had wherecustomers were telling me how
happy they were with our serviceand who are the individuals
involved that got us there.

(01:29:25):
Giving that recognition topeople is something they so
greatly appreciate.
But you always have to remindpeople why and it might feel
redundant at times to say thesame concepts over and over
again at times to say the sameconcepts over and over again,
which is why you weave differentstories into these

(01:29:47):
conversations but the why isalways the same.
And so, years down the road,when the founders are long gone
that low-level carrier rep theyknow the story in and out
because they know it's who theyare, how they, how they behave
on a consistent basis and it'sit's what makes the company who
they are.
So I do think it's somethingyou have to be very intentional

(01:30:10):
about and any opportunity youhave to like weave in the
essence of who the business isin a teaching moment.
You've got to figure out a wayto do it.
It's just it's there's so manywasted opportunities, whether
they're failures or learninglessons or the biggest wins.
If you always kind of bringthose things back to the vision

(01:30:32):
and kind of the core values ofthe business, then there's no
second guessing why we got towhere we did or why we behave
the way we do.
People just know it becomeskind of ingrained into who they
are.
Well, we're coming up on our90-minute mark here.

Speaker 2 (01:30:51):
Wow, yeah time flies.

Speaker 1 (01:30:53):
Time did fly.
I don't have anything burningoff the top of my head that I
didn't get the chance to ask you.
Actually, let me go here forjust a minute.
You told me that you are, Ithink, eight days away from
having a child.
Yes, I am or close to your duedate.
I should say Congratulations,thanks, thank you for making

(01:31:19):
time, which is probably a verystressful uh time in in your
pregnancy, um, but talk to me alittle bit about like building a
business while kind of, I guess, walking into motherhood and
kind of what challenges comewith that.
And you know this is anindustry that has always been

(01:31:40):
you know, at the executive levelfairly male dominated.
Thankfully that is changing.

Speaker 2 (01:31:44):
But kind of the challenges of what you're going
through right now, yeah, well,okay, so I'm, yeah, I'm, I'm
doing a week, which is crazy, Ican't believe it.
But walking into at Manifest,for example, like I was like
heavily pregnant and already oneof the only women there it felt

(01:32:05):
like, and so it was really hardto miss me once you saw me, and
it's like that at mostconferences, even without being
pregnant, is I always stick outlike a sore thumb and I've
learned to embrace it, even likeI'll, you know, I'll send
emails to people I want to meetwith beforehand and I'll say
I'll be wearing a blue dress andeveryone always knows exactly

(01:32:27):
who I am.
I don't even need to wearsomething flamboyant because
there are so many people indresses, and so I've learned to
make it work for me, I think.
I think I mentioned earlier likeI've always felt like an
outsider in most places.
You know, aerospace is a verymale-heavy industry, so is

(01:32:48):
consulting and finance and techand so everything I've ever done
.
I've been one of the few womenand as a very like feminine
woman who hates golf, you know,and the stereotypical men things
, you just learn to embrace itand actually, since I've gotten
pregnant, I have found a lotmore to relate to with men,

(01:33:11):
because most people in freightare family people, I find, and
so people talk about their kidsand I've never been able to
relate to that before because Ididn't have kids and I don't
care, and now that I'm thinkingabout it, it's like I find a new
way to connect.
Um, so being pregnant, I think,has actually brought me closer
to you, know people whotraditionally I don't have a ton

(01:33:33):
in common with.

Speaker 1 (01:33:34):
Besides we're in freight and we like football or
like the two things yeah, andhow do you think about
navigating, running a business,a young, a startup?
I would call it, while having achild going through maternity
leave.
I mean that's gotta be prettylike stressful to navigate and I

(01:33:56):
just how are you thinking aboutthat and how?

Speaker 2 (01:33:59):
are you kind of?

Speaker 1 (01:33:59):
positioning yourself to navigate and just how are you
thinking about that and how areyou kind of positioning
yourself to navigate itsuccessfully?

Speaker 2 (01:34:03):
yeah.
So when I started true north, Iwas 27 and I said you know,
we're gonna ipo in five yearsand then I can have a family and
all of that.
And here I am five years later,um, and I I just said like I, I
have to prove to myself that Ican have both.
And yes, it's hard, but like,running a company is fucking

(01:34:25):
hard, having a kid is fuckinghard.
Is it like going to be twice ashard?
We'll figure it out.
And I have an amazing husband.
We have a lot of supportsystems and I've set up a lot of
support systems.
And you know I'm taking fourweeks, which isn't a lot, but
it's.
You know, I've never taken abreak ever from work.
Most often I've overlapped jobsin between, and so this will be

(01:34:50):
the first time I don't do workfor a few weeks, and so that
will be different and I thinkthat'll be rejuvenating too,
even though I'm not thinkingparenthood is easy at all.
I'm sure I won't sleep verymuch, but I won't be, you know,
talking to customers every dayand that kind of stuff.
So I'm excited for the chapterand I think I can do it, and the

(01:35:12):
team is, I'm sure you can.
Yeah, and the team is set.
I mean, like, the stuff theycome up with in these innovation
weeks is so fun, and now theyget a whole month of innovation
week because we have tons offeedback from our early
customers right now.
And so, yeah, I'm excited tosee what they come up with.

Speaker 1 (01:35:30):
Very cool.
Well, I'm happy for you and I'msure you'll do great at all
things with it, so you'll befine.

Speaker 2 (01:35:37):
Thanks, yeah, it'll be a big life change.

Speaker 1 (01:35:43):
Anything else you want to add, or before we sign
off here.

Speaker 2 (01:35:46):
That's all I've got no, I'm glad we got to talk
through um, like your, yourthoughts on ai and relationships
and all that.
Those are the questions my teamum wanted to ask of you.
They're fans of the pod, so, um, we're we're stoked that I got
to come on I appreciate themlistening if there's anything I
missed or things.

Speaker 1 (01:36:04):
they have further questions Wanted to ask of you.
They're fans of the pod, sowe're stoked that I got to come
on.

Speaker 2 (01:36:07):
I appreciate them listening, if there's anything.

Speaker 1 (01:36:09):
I missed or things they have further questions
about.
You know how to find me.
I'm happy to help.
Sweet Thanks, fun to be on andwith that, that's all we got.
Have a great week, listeners,thank you.

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