Shipwell Raises $35M to Fuel Growth
[Stay on top of transportation news: Get TTNews in your inbox.]
Shipwell, an Austin, Texas-based startup focused on managing trucking and shipping logistics for businesses, has raised $35 million to continue its growth, the company said Oct. 24.
The startup offers a suite of software that acts as a logistics management hub for business shipping. The company plans to move its headquarters from downtown Austin to a larger office in the Domain area. As part of the expansion it plans to add about 200 employees within the next year and a half.
We just announced that Shipwell has raised a $35 million Series B funding round led by @GeorgianPrtnrs to continue centralizing supply chains into a single pane of glass! https://t.co/6pxYiwodwq pic.twitter.com/GV4OAyDyUH
— Shipwell (@justShipwell) October 24, 2019
The funding round was led by Georgian Partners. Other investors include Fifth Wall, Global Founders Capital, Box Group and Aspect Ventures. To date the company has raised $47 million in funding.
CEO Greg Price and president Jason Traff founded Shipwell in 2016 to streamline the commercial shipping industry. The company now services about 41,000 customers a month.
Shipwell’s platform integrates a company’s existing shipping relationships and the data stored in spreadsheets and paperwork into structured digitized data in one place to be managed from a phone or computer. The streamlining allows customers to improve shipping performance and reduce overall costs, Traff said.
“We want to continue building that product and delivering a delightful and seamless shipping experience, which are words no one ever really uses about shipping,” Traff said.
Unlike shipping for consumers, Traff said, the business shipping market typically has few tools to keep track of and streamline shipments. He said Shipwell wants to let every business ship as well as Amazon.
“It’s very disconnected. It’s very fragmented. It’s very common for people to spend $50 billion a year on shipping and still really never know where anything is or how much they’re spending on it,” Traff said.
The company has offices in Austin and Chicago, with 88 of its 95 employees located at its Austin headquarters. The new positions will be across the company but especially in product development and engineering, company executives said.
Shipwell also is expanding its platform to allow for parcel shipments with a FedEx Compatible partnership which allows customers to now ship through FedEx. Previously the company had been focused on freight shipments to get supplies to the manufacturing stage. The addition gives customers the full range of shipment capabilities from freight to parcel.
“It brings us closer to our vision of connecting supply chains and putting them into a single pane of glass,” Traff said, in reference to the company’s mission statement.
Want more news? Listen to today's daily briefing:
