Dawn Salvucci-Favier, CEO of Greenscreens.ai, shares her transformative adventure from an administrative assistant to leading a pioneer predictive pricing platform in the truckload spot freight industry (soon to be beyond spot). Her narrative is a riveting tale of seizing opportunities, the impact of mentorship, and the evolution of logistics from a world of manual route planning to the cutting-edge technological advancements that are reshaping how we think about transportation and supply chain management today.
Tune in to uncover the behind-the-scenes of the logistics software industry and what it takes to build a successful startup in this competitive space. Dawn's candid recount of her transition from retail giants like TJX Companies and Staples to the startup world paints a vivid picture of the flexibility, talent acquisition, and sheer determination required to not only survive but thrive. Trace the steps Dawn took in helping to build 3GTMS and learn how she navigated her career through emotional and practical challenges, ultimately finding her resilience and support network instrumental in joining Greenscreens.ai.
This episode isn't just a career chronicle; it's an education in the power of data, strategic partnerships, and the foresight to stay neutral for future growth. Delve into the intricacies of ecosystem collaboration in TMS, the strategic significance of neutrality for start-ups, and how Greenscreens.ai's platform uses big data and machine learning for real-time pricing predictions. Whether you're in the logistics field, fascinated by startup cultures, or looking for inspiration to pivot in your career, Dawn's journey offers a wealth of insight into the continuous innovation driving the freight industry forward.
Dawn Salvucci-Favier, CEO of Greenscreens.ai, shares her transformative adventure from an administrative assistant to leading a pioneer predictive pricing platform in the truckload spot freight industry (soon to be beyond spot). Her narrative is a riveting tale of seizing opportunities, the impact of mentorship, and the evolution of logistics from a world of manual route planning to the cutting-edge technological advancements that are reshaping how we think about transportation and supply chain management today.
Tune in to uncover the behind-the-scenes of the logistics software industry and what it takes to build a successful startup in this competitive space. Dawn's candid recount of her transition from retail giants like TJX Companies and Staples to the startup world paints a vivid picture of the flexibility, talent acquisition, and sheer determination required to not only survive but thrive. Trace the steps Dawn took in helping to build 3GTMS and learn how she navigated her career through emotional and practical challenges, ultimately finding her resilience and support network instrumental in joining Greenscreens.ai.
This episode isn't just a career chronicle; it's an education in the power of data, strategic partnerships, and the foresight to stay neutral for future growth. Delve into the intricacies of ecosystem collaboration in TMS, the strategic significance of neutrality for start-ups, and how Greenscreens.ai's platform uses big data and machine learning for real-time pricing predictions. Whether you're in the logistics field, fascinated by startup cultures, or looking for inspiration to pivot in your career, Dawn's journey offers a wealth of insight into the continuous innovation driving the freight industry forward.
Welcome back to another episode of the Great Pod. We are joined today by a wonderful guest whose name I'm gonna try not to pronounce incorrectly as we get going here. Miss Dawn Salvucci, favor, that was close.
Speaker 1:That was really good. Salvucci favor. I saw the eye, I just wasn't sure if it was pronounced or not so, dawn.
Speaker 2:Thank you for joining us today. How you doing, I'm doing. Great Thanks for having me, andrew so as we get started as I was looking at your career.
Speaker 2:You've had quite an illustrious career in the industry dating back to I mean today you're the CEO of Greens Greens, a top vendor to our space, recently recognized in the FreightTech 25 via FreightWaves, which is an awesome accolade. But before we get into that, let's take it all the way back. So you started your career on the shippersaw of the business, am I right? I did yeah, way back in 1992. 1992, so you?
Speaker 1:joined TJX companies as a transportation administrator. What was your job as?
Speaker 2:you kind of got into that role, yeah, so it's funny because my resume has my first position there as a transportation administrator my first job.
Speaker 1:There was actually the administrative assistant to the VP of transportation. So I started as an admin and I was a very good assistant. I was a transportation administrator. So I started as an admin and you know, typing up his letters and doing his filing and approving check payments and doing all of that. But through working for him for about a year I started learning more and more about the operations and about the business and he gave me.
Speaker 1:The first opportunity he presented me with was TJ Max was putting their national LTL business out to bid. Had been with Yellow Freight for years at the time was putting it all out to bid and he was like, hey, do you want to run this bid for us? And I'm like, okay, what does that mean? You know, first it was just typing up the bid documents that we're going to go out to all of these national and regional LTL carriers. But then, as the responses started coming back, he's like, do you want to do the analysis? And just kind of with a little bit of mentoring from him. So he gave me a lot of opportunities and you know, imagine me the admin to the department, then taking my findings and analyzing this multi-million dollar LTL bid, presenting it back to the executive team and saying you need to change LTL carriers and you just you need to make a change. It doesn't make sense to stay with this company just because you're comfortable with them. And so that was kind of my first entry into the operations side of it.
Speaker 1:So then I did move into the position, was called the transportation administrator and really it was managing TJ Max's inbound freight. We were one of the first retailers to take ownership of our inbound freight, so we were managing all of the freight from all of our vendors across the United States into our. I think we had four distributions. I think when I started three distribution centers for by the time I left, you know it was at a time when TJ Max was opening like 100 new stores a year, so they're they're huge growth period. You started as a, as a smaller retailer in New England and then grew nationally and actually globally by the by the time I left the company.
Speaker 1:So we were just working with the vendors in all of the different regions. We didn't have a TMS at the time. We were taking phone calls, you know. Hey, we had a routing guide Anything that was over 5,000 pounds or 750 cubic feet through most of the country. The vendors needed to call us for routing Right and you know if we thought that we might be able to consolidate loads again one of the first companies to build multi stop inbound loads we were doing that manually. I was talking to somebody else about it Maps on the walls with tax in it and sticky notes on the credences that had the order information from these vendors. We were, you know, typing stuff into a paradox database. This is like predated access even is how we were doing that and we were all incented as, essentially, load planners is what we were. To consolidate loads to save money. We use PC Myler to calculate out of route miles. It was crazy. There was no TMS, nothing, and that's how I started. So I just talked for a long time, but I'll pause there.
Speaker 2:So, dating back 30 ish years, you were, in a way, already starting to optimize data for better, I don't know. Decision making in freight. It's come full circle Absolutely Now our dreams could be the same thing.
Speaker 1:Absolutely Except. My technology is better than a map with some tax and some sticky notes.
Speaker 2:I would hope so, as a technology provider, that you have more than that today.
Speaker 1:And Lotus 123 pre-wizzy wig. That's how old I am, so I'll just say that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean those are words. I don't know what they mean Exactly. That went right over my head.
Speaker 1:Some of your audience will understand it.
Speaker 2:I was what you would call a toddler when you were taking this role.
Speaker 1:Oh no, that's not fair.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I was born in 90.
Speaker 1:That's okay.
Speaker 2:What did the landscape look like? I mean, were there a bunch of carriers calling you for business? I mean, I assume, if you were the admin to the VP of transportation, that you were getting solicited to some extent. What was that? What was that? What was it like back then? Was it just hey, can I offer you, and you're like sure there's not that many competitors? Or was it actually like you had to sell? Or how did that look?
Speaker 1:No, it was actually more competitive than that and TJ Maxx obviously being at, even at the time, a publicly traded company, right, there was a lot of financial. So I mentioned earlier that part of my job as the admin is I had to physically approve any check that our finance department cut. That was more than I think I want to say $5,000 or something where it was like it needed VP approval Any check. That was more than that. So there was a lot of financial controls in place and there were a lot of carriers that wanted our business and we probably had carriers every day, or at least many times a week, visiting us in person to try to win our business.
Speaker 1:And a lot of our truckload business was more regional, right, because we had regional distribution centers that were servicing our stores on the outbound. Now some of the inbound freight was moving more nationally, but we did a lot of intermodal at the time, right, did a lot of work with the hub group moving intermodal freight across country. But, yeah, I know there was a lot of carriers that wanted our business. And, you know, after I had spent some time just working on the inbound merchandise, our construction department, so, as I mentioned, we were opening 100 stores a year at the time asked our department to take over the management of deliveries into the new store construction sites.
Speaker 1:So store fixture deliveries, store supply deliveries, pre opening and things like that. So I actually got to create that program from scratch. We were not managing any of that freight and if you think about store fixture deliveries in its air ride blanket wrap for a lot of you know the glass cases and you know some of the laminated wood products, so you know, again I had to create this program. That was some LTL, it was some regular truckload but it was a lot of air ride blanket wrap. And that's when I really started getting solicited directly for our business was from. You know, we were using hustle goods carriers because they had the air ride blanket wrap equipment, things like that. So that was really exciting.
Speaker 1:So I got to move out of kind of the merchandise inbound freight and start a whole new program around store fixtures, store supplies and things like that. As TJ Maxx was expanding into the UK and then into Alaska and Hawaii, I also had the opportunity then to start our store delivery program for store fixtures and initial merchandising of the stores overseas. So then I had to get into some ocean freight as well. Right, so it wasn't import, export of merchandise, but it was moving those store fixtures and the store supplies into into those, into those locations, as, as we were expanding, so you got a very well rounded kind of education by Firestorm in the industry.
Speaker 2:I'm curious, I mean, did you kind of lock into that, like did you have intent on I want to be in supply chain or this was the job that was available, so you took it kind of that all come to be?
Speaker 1:And it was. You know what I like. I said I was the admin to the VP. That was my career path at the time. I look, I was a young mother. I had my first child at 19, my second at 24. I was working for benefits and food. I mean, that's essentially the way it was, and I just happened to land in, frankly, a really rewarding situation where I worked for someone who saw something in me, was willing to mentor me and willing to teach me. You know, I often say some of it was right place at the right time with the right mentor. But part of it is seizing the opportunities that are presented to you as well. And you know, as I got into it, I found I actually kind of have a knack for this right. I'm actually okay with it, which kind of led to how I ended up in tech as well, because while I was at TJ Maxx you know I mentioned we had no TMS, it was MapTax and but then the TMS has started to kind of be more common and of course they all wanted our business too. So I got to participate in the selection of our TMS and then the implementation of it and then the training of the rest of the staff on it and, you know, started realizing okay, I have a knack for technology as well.
Speaker 1:It was at that time, though, that the gentleman who I was working for at TJ Maxx left the company and went to work for Staples. So both in the Boston area, both retailers they don't compete with each other except for talent. I'm not sure if it's still that way, but back in the 90s they definitely competed with each other for talent. So he left and went to Staples, and they, at that time, were not doing their own inbound transportation, it was all vendor prepaid, and they were starting an inbound transportation department. So he brought me with him to start the inbound transportation function at Staples, which was a very different distribution type of distribution.
Speaker 1:If you think about TJ Maxx, it's all opportunistic buying. You go to a TJ Maxx, you might find that the training that every employee needed to have when they started at TJ Maxx they called it the life of a red blouse back then, and it was essentially supply chain training for every employee that they understood the journey of that red blouse from the vendor to our store, to the consumer. But if you think about a TJ Maxx experience, it's all. Mostly, it's changed a little bit. But back then it was all opportunistic you go in, you find that red blouse. Today you may never find that red blouse again and you certainly might not find it at another store, right? So there was no inventory replenishment type of thing, where at Staples it was all inventory replenishment, right. Very different distribution supply chain process than what I had learned at TJ Maxx. But part of starting up an inbound transportation function, particularly one where it was all vendor managed freight, was we first needed to start negotiating freight allowances with our vendors. So that was another big analysis project of what are we?
Speaker 2:paying. Is that not being done prior? They were just delivering and charging.
Speaker 1:Pre-pay. It was mostly pre-pay and add, so they were pre-paying freight and adding it to the merchandise invoice, right. So you know, there was the, and the reason, by the way, they wanted to take control of their inbound freight was for inventory purposes. They wanted better visibility to when the freight was actually going to be hitting the dock so that they could do a better job of managing inventory and order cycles and all of that. So that's why we started it. But part of that was upfront negotiating with these vendors big vendors, right, and I think about, you know, ibm and some of the big furniture vendors and technology vendors and paper vendors that they were dealing with to allow us to take over the freight through a freight allowance where they would essentially give us an allowance to move the freight every month that we would deduct from the merchandise invoice. So that was the first part of it. And then it was hiring and building the team and actually starting to bringing the carriers on that wanted to run our inbound business, because most of the outbound business was either moving on a private fleet or a dedicated right. So we had to find the contract carriers that wanted to move our freight and so put the business out to bid again.
Speaker 1:And then it was the TMS implementation. So that was then the second cycle that I went through with selecting and implementing and training on a TMS. Working at Staples, we had a lot of support from the IT department during the implementation Once we went live. If it was a critical issue we got that support. But I, you know, my big eye opener was I said, you know, to our DBA, our database administrator, hey, I need this report, I need this data to be pulled out of the TMS. And she said, well, just write a sequel report, an SQL report. And I'm like what's that?
Speaker 2:You know, like I don't know, what that is.
Speaker 1:And she was like, oh, I'll teach you. So taught me how to write SQL. The TMS that we were using at the time ran on a Unix server. It was actually a server in our data room that ran and they gave me a key to the data room so I could go reboot the Unix server and taught me like the command line prompts that I needed to type in on the server, and that was my first introduction to tech. Was was then working at Staples, so I moved out of the transportation department eventually into IT at Staples as a business analyst. You're working on mostly transportation but across all of the supply chain applications at Staples in kind of a business analyst support requirements, project management type role.
Speaker 2:And this was, this was the late 90s, and you're working with the TMS and you know I can't imagine that technology then was robust in terms of its you know, the quality sort of speak. I'm just curious, you know, did it really get the job done, or was it kind of bare bones, like a lot of patchwork stuff, like what did the world of TMS even look like at that point?
Speaker 1:So I'll contrast the TMS that we initially bought at TJ Maxx which they've replaced later, which is another part of my journey, but that TMS was really I would call it more of a. It was a database with a nice front end for order entry and things like that. It did have some lightweight load consolidation capabilities. Right, it wasn't super robust, certainly nothing like what we have available today, but it did have the ability, based on parameters that we would set up in the system, to rather than us as load planners, using our maps and tax and sticky notes, building multi stop loads. It did actually have the ability to do that, but it was pretty basic, right.
Speaker 1:So the TMS we selected and implemented at Staples was actually from a company called Manugistix that was later acquired by JDA software, which is now Blue Yonder. So that was a much more sophisticated, much more robust TMS offering with more advanced optimization capabilities. It had automated load tendering, you know, auto retender. It had freight payment, not it capabilities, right. So it was, but I would say it was still the very early stage of TMS and optimization. They, at the time, there were really two competitors, two primary competitors in the space at the time, i2 technologies and Manugistix were really the two companies that were going head to head and both were full supply chain companies that happened to have TMS technology with optimization.
Speaker 2:So Manugistix stand for this, gotta be man. Manual logistics, less manual manufacturing logistics.
Speaker 1:Manuf that makes a little bit more sense than what I was saying. They actually started out in kind of the manufacturing floor right, optimizing some of those processes, and actually acquired a company called Ververt Technologies that had the TMS as they started building out their, their offering.
Speaker 2:You kind of make the jump from TGX to staples, kind of following your boss's lead, someone who you looked up to, who had been a mentor for you, who had probably taken you from someone who was just working to pay the bills and and, and you know, get the benefits to all of a sudden someone who sees a career for herself. Is that the right way to maybe articulate?
Speaker 1:that Absolutely.
Speaker 2:And then you make a jump from staples to manufacturing logistics, slash, manugistix. I assume that came from your familiarity with the product and interest as a result, like what, what? What led to that jump? I mean I assume you're leaving now the mentor who you'd worked for? What kind of buyer that?
Speaker 1:he had already actually left the company. So he left the company retired Prior to me leaving transportation and moving over to it. He had already left the move over to Manugistix. So we obviously were a customer and I was the super user of the system. So I was primary contact and we were also an early adopter of their freight audit technology.
Speaker 1:So I think, andrew, what it really came down to us I was a pain in the ass and they said do you want to just come work for us? Is really what it came down to, because they had an opening in their product management team. It was really early stage of their freight audit technology. I was an early adopter. I had a lot of ideas on how they could improve it. And it's funny because after I left staples and went to TJ max, the majority of the enhancement requests from customers were from me as a customer and we would have our user group meeting where that I ran were part of that and we would go through all the customer enhancement requests and customers would vote on them and could ask questions and but I would have to explain what the staples enhancement requests were for because said that that's really kind of how how that transition happened.
Speaker 2:And you had no background in technology that made you a good necessarily fit for this. Why do you think this was something that you were good at?
Speaker 1:You know, I think I just had an aptitude for it and I always had an interest. And it's funny if I go all the way back to high school. You know I took a word processing class and I took you know, my high school had Apple to e computers in the mid 80s. Again, I'm dating myself you. You weren't even a glimmer in your, your father's eye at that time, but you know we had a computer lab and I took a programming class in high school where I actually had to write code on punch cards, and so I always had an interest in technology and kind of an aptitude for it.
Speaker 1:But I suck at math. That's the thing that I could never figure out is I sucked at math. I geometry, forget it, like algebra is okay, but just kind of had an aptitude for it. I didn't have a background in logistics either and you know, literally when I started as the admin, I was like which one pulls the truck and which one gets pulled, the difference between a tractor and a trailer, like legit, I am not lying, that's. You know, when I first started there and it was just, I guess it was just a hunger to learn, right there, it was just really looking to learn and absorb, and just an aptitude for it.
Speaker 2:What would you say? Maybe some lessons that you've learned? I mean, there are a lot of people who probably followed a similar path or seek to follow a similar path of you, because you, you know you move to manage logistics and you spend really 10 years at the company rising the ranks from senior product manager to a VP, and I guess you know it's got to be inspiring for people who maybe don't have the pedigree or some you know super fancy college degree of saying that you know they've done this, that or the other but still want to rise the ranks in a company. Like what are some lessons that you think you could take away from your experience that others could follow in in a lot of themselves to see that same kind of trajectory growth?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, I mean, I had the opportunity to one of my former employers. They started a mentorship program and and they actually did ask me to come back and speak to the employees about it. And I think that's the key thing and and it's, you know, recognizing when you have somebody who is taking you under their wing and is willing to mentor you and listen to them. You know your mentors may come in places that you wouldn't expect them to write. So that first mentor that I mentioned, that that is kind of an expected place to find a mentor.
Speaker 1:But if I look back in my career, some I've had many mentors at different stages in my career and they haven't always been that you know someone in a higher ranking position or someone superior to me.
Speaker 1:Sometimes it's a peer, sometimes it's somebody who reports to me where I'm learning from. And then there's the mentors that are outside of work. Right, you've got your your. You know your personal spirit guide, the people who help you kind of work through some of those professional standards that that you you come against, and that might be a friend or a family member. But but I think the key point there is is recognizing the opportunities that you're being presented with and seizing them and working hard and, you know, taking the help that is offered to you. I still, to this day, I say I never, ever, go into any situation believing that I'm the smartest person in the room. I think that there is something that I can learn from every experience, every conversation, specifically professionally, in my personal life. There are some times where I'm like, oh, I am definitely the smartest person in this room, but no, but.
Speaker 2:I'm feeling that was a jab at your husband.
Speaker 1:maybe no, no no, no, my husband is a musician, though, so he plays at a lot of local bars. So it's really, and I live in Florida. So Florida man, you know that it's, but anyway, no, but professionally it's. You know, there's a lot that you can learn, and it's not just from the people who are higher up than you or have more experience than you. Sometimes it's things that you learn from your peers, from your customers, from the people that you are supposed to be mentoring. Sometimes you can learn a lot from that. So I think it's really just work hard, recognize the opportunities, seize them and, you know, keep your head up, don't let your head get too big, don't take yourself too seriously.
Speaker 2:So something that you didn't exactly say, but I'm just kind of picking up on it as a theme is kind of leaning into curiosity, and it just seems like with each of these roles it doesn't necessarily like, hey, your job description to do this, this and this, but you saw something that you were interested in, you saw an opportunity and you kind of jumped at both. And the reason I bring it up is because when you talk about mentorship and I think about my own path and you know being, when I was CEO of Molo, there were people that I found I was more interested in trying to help than others.
Speaker 2:Not that I wasn't interested in helping others. But the people who I felt like I was always most interested in trying to help were the ones that kind of showed the most initiative and curiosity, and the people who were speaking up and saying, hey, I'm interested in this, can you tell me more about it? And it's when those people kind of do that that you just think, as a leader, like this person's really showing initiative, I do want to help them. So it's kind of self-fulfilling in that like as an individual and a company. If someone's listening to this and they're thinking about their own path, it's like show that initiative, show that curiosity and there's a high likelihood that that will attract leaders to want to support you and want to help you get that next step in your career. Does that kind of jive with how you feel like your experience has been?
Speaker 1:Absolutely, absolutely, and I think you're right on with that, and I think you know be inquisitive, ask questions. You know, sometimes it's not even a matter of show. Well, I think sometimes by asking the questions, you show that you're interested, right or so?
Speaker 1:what is that? Why are we doing that? Why do we do it that way and not in a snarky way, though I would say, another thing that I think has really helped me along the way is being able to speak truth to power. If you will doing it in a respectful way, always right. So I'll go back to that story about the LTL bid, where it was like we had this leadership team that they had been working with Yellow Freight for seven years. They were very comfortable in that relationship, but we stood to save $35 million by changing, right, I mean, that's a lot of money and it's like, why are we not changing? And I was just the admin, right, but I was like but I looked at the data and it doesn't make sense right, you work great at math, but you could do that math.
Speaker 2:This was a change we should maybe consider.
Speaker 1:Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So I think you're right on with that.
Speaker 2:So you ended up spending what 12, 13 years at I guess the combined companies that became JDA is that right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was 10 years at Manugistix and then, through the JDA acquisition, I did leave there in 2010. They acquired I2 technologies. I helped with that transition and then I was actually offered the opportunity to go be COO and president of a small boutique TMS company based out of Charleston, south Carolina. Best move of my life was moving to Charleston. It's a wonderful city and I worked with them for a while, but then we were acquired by Red Prairie. So we were a reseller of Red Prairie technology and we were acquired by Red Prairie and I stayed on with the company. We actually became a business unit within Red Prairie and I ran that business unit as general manager and then moved into a global strategy role for Red Prairie. So altogether three years between being at that small boutique company and then being acquired by Red Prairie. So that kind of took me from 2010 to 2013. And then JDA and Red Prairie merged, acquired I'm still not sure exactly what that was, but so, yes, total of 13 years with companies that are now Blue Yonder.
Speaker 2:And so 13 years there, and then you make the well, I guess 13 combined years there with the kind of little side quest before being a member of the founding team of 3G TMS. So what was the impetus there to leave and do your own thing or start a company? I mean, what a vast change from becoming an admin to this. What was going through your mind as that part of your journey was beginning?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the merger of Red Prairie and JDA. I would be lying if I didn't say it was a complete shock. I will actually never forget. I was chaperoning my son's. He was auditioning for Allstate Choir or something, and I was chaperoning and my phone started lighting up. Wtf, what happened? How do you feel about this? And I'm like I have no idea what anybody's talking about because I'm on a school bus full of high school kids and so I opened up my email and so, anyway, it was a real shock and clear to me that, okay, I've been there, done that, left there, not something that I wanna do again.
Speaker 2:Not that.
Speaker 1:I had any hard feelings and just I didn't want to go back there. So I made the decision to leave and kind of had socialized that with some of my network and I had a friend who called me and said hey, I wanna introduce you to somebody who is thinking of starting a new TMS. Are you interested? And I said why the hell would anybody start another TMS company? Right now the market is so saturated with TMS vendors the market doesn't need another TMS. But yes, I'll, I'd be happy to talk to them. What the fuck? So but you know, I went in again, going in with an open mind, but I was kind of like I don't know if the market really needs another TMS, but sure I will talk to him.
Speaker 1:And as it turned out, the gentleman who I was being introduced to was a man named Mitch Wesley, who the name 3G comes from. It being the third generation of TMS is that he had founded. So Mitch was the original founder of a company called Wesley Software which was acquired by McHugh Software which became Red Prairie. So the Red Prairie TMS was essentially originally founded by Mitch Wesley as Wesley Software. So he had started that TMS back in the 90s. He also then went on to found a company called G-Log which is now OTM, oracle Transportation Management, and he, after selling G-Log to Oracle, had left the company and went and did some other things for a while and then 3G was kind of his next venture and in talking to him about the mission of that company and really we were very much aligned on the fact that we felt at the time the mid-market shippers and 3PLs was grossly underserved by the Oracles and the JDAs and the large companies, large TMS providers out there.
Speaker 1:So we really kind of had a mission of bringing a TMS solution to market that was truly cloud-based right, because it was early cloud days, I think a lot of the TMSs still hadn't made that migration. So a truly cloud-architected, cloud-based, multi-tenant TMS that was really geared more towards the mid-market shipper and 3PL, because the cost of some of those other TMSs was just so exorbitant and they were not at the time cloud-based multi-tenant right, all of those economies of scale that you get from that. And he just had really such a compelling vision, a compelling story and background and we were really aligned on what the market needed. So it really kind of became a no-brainer for me. Now, coincidentally, as that would happen was happening, I did get laid off, so it made it really easy to make the decision, and I was only out of work for like three weeks, right in between being laid off and starting.
Speaker 2:And so help me understand. You know you're part of the origin team there. What did that look like? What was your role? Yeah, and what was? You said that the market was so saturated with TMSs. I understand that you were gonna target the middle market, but at that point, what was gonna be different? What was the differentiator for 3G TMS versus competitors out there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean look, and in the TMS space in general, and I believe still today it is hard to differentiate in the TMS space. But so I'll kind of go back to your question, my role there. So I was, I believe, when the company actually was started. As far as 3G employees, I believe I was employee number three or employee number five and as the company was formed they acquired a company based on a rally that had a really powerful LTL rating engine and a lightweight TMS. So essentially the acquisition was made so that we didn't have to completely start from scratch. We were acquiring a very powerful LTL rating engine which is very hard to build right. So we got that head start.
Speaker 1:My role in the company was essentially had a product strategy, product management. I did have a counterpart who was the head of engineering development, so more of the technical side, but the two of us worked very closely. I was really more requirements strategy, go-to-market, where he was actually the technical side of it. So as I started there was a team of executives that were coming from SAP, from Oracle, from others. They had to stay at their previous jobs because bonus payout, things like that. So we kind of worked for about two months with just a skeleton team of people kind of putting our heads together and strategy, and we had an architect that was working to build the architecture of the but we weren't writing any real feature function at the time. It was just building the architecture before the entire executive team then joined and we were able to really strategize and put together a business plan.
Speaker 1:But the differentiation for us was going to be the multimodal, powerful optimization, powerful rating, fully cloud-based, at scale for the mid-market right, because there were some mid-market solutions out there but they didn't have the powerful route optimization right. Multi-stop, continuous move consolidation all of that that the bigger, more expensive TMSes did really, really well. But guess what? The founders of this company were the ones that built those bigger, more powerful products. So that was really gonna be. The differentiation was cloud architecture from the ground up, scalable, powerful optimization with LTL with really what we felt was one of the best LTL rating engines in the market at the time. So that was kind of how that all started.
Speaker 2:And were you selling more into shippers or 3PLs?
Speaker 1:We thought we were gonna sell more into shippers. That was kind of the plan. However, just like we're in a market cycle now where the shippers are buying technology and the 3PLs and brokers are not, we were on the other side of that cycle when we started the company in 2013. So it was 3PLs and the brokers that were actually spending money on technology at the time. So we sold our first six customers all of whom were 3PLs or brokers before we had written a single line of code. So the architecture was there, but as far as functionality.
Speaker 1:Those six companies bought in on the vision. They signed a contract on the vision. We might have had some wire frame mockups of what a user experience might look like or whatever, but it was really the vision of the company and the expertise of the team that was running the company and building the product that those first six customers bought in on.
Speaker 2:And so you helped grow this organization over a what seven year period is that right?
Speaker 1:Seven years, yeah, I was there.
Speaker 2:And was this your first foray into really leading the whole org in terms of product and that scale? From inception in terms of building it right.
Speaker 1:From inception, yes, so from inception. I had, let's say, my last two or three years at JDA and then my entire time at Red Prairie was in a product strategy, product leadership position. But, to your point, it was not building the product from scratch, it was maintaining and enhancing a product, a legacy product that had existed.
Speaker 2:What did you learn from that kind of entrepreneurial journey of building from scratch, like? What are some of the lessons from that in building technology that people who haven't yet done that maybe wouldn't quite understand?
Speaker 1:Startups are not for the faint of heart is what I learned, and it's funny because when I had yes, yes, when I had that initial conversation with Mitch, I actually said to him I was like, look, this opportunity does not fit my risk profile. I was like I have two children in college, or I'd one in college, one about to go into college. So tuition bills, just all of these things, and I'm like startups are so risky, they're so dangerous. This does not fit my risk profile. But again, he had a compelling story and a compelling vision and it didn't hurt that. He was like I'm going to make you a millionaire and I was like, okay, you're going to make me a millionaire, but we're going to make us a millionaire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, exactly. So what did I learn? I mean, look, working for a startup is very different than working for a large corporation. I mean, I said it at 3G, I was employee number three, number five. When I joined Manugis, I think I was employee number 1200. Right, Very good.
Speaker 1:And then, having worked for Staples and TJX I had come from a big corporate America background publicly traded companies and now suddenly working in this startup very, very different. Not for the faint of heart. I thought I worked hard before that. No, never worked as hard in my life as I have since I've moved over into the startup world. You have to be flexible, right, I think that's critical, is flexible in many ways. Flexible like, in my mind, a product roadmap. It should be a three-year roadmap and that's what you go to market with when you're in a startup, you can't possibly produce a three-year roadmap.
Speaker 1:And, frankly, I'm at the point now where I'm like nobody, no matter how established you are, should have a three-year roadmap, because the world and the market just changes way too quickly that anything. And, frankly, if I look back at the three-year roadmap I had, how often did I actually execute on anything I thought I was gonna do three years from now? Maybe at the highest level, like, oh, in three years we're gonna go into ocean freight, maybe I don't know. So I think flexibility is key in what you think you're gonna build from product, what you think the market is gonna need. Who's buying?
Speaker 1:Like I said, we founded the company thinking mid-market shippers were gonna be our core customers and it ended up being that it was really brokers in 3PLs that were our core customers for the first 18 to 24 months. Right, there was that. And then even hiring people and attracting talent. When you're a startup A you don't have the money to pay the salaries that some of the more experienced and talented people in the market want. B you don't have the credibility, the risk profile. As I said, it didn't fit my risk profile. Why would I wanna leave a really stable company to come work for a startup, so you have to be really flexible in your expectations and just be able to adapt to where the market is taking you.
Speaker 2:So you're coming on hiring and credibility in the early days. That's so valid and I think about it from my experience in building Molo. You know Brokerage granted it's a different type of company, it's still a startup and I remember the hiring we did. Our worst hiring was in our first year. I mean we did get plenty of great people in that first year but we also had some of the I guess I don't wanna say worst, but like the most that didn't fit because you just people don't believe you. I mean, people don't think you're gonna be able to pay your bills, they just don't think you're gonna make it whatever. And it's funny because I've had people ask me recently like, would you start another Brokerage whenever your non-compete ends? And I'm like you know, I think about it like a baby. But as I think about, like you know, the early days being some of the hardest, what would it be like to do that again? And I'm like, damn, you know what would be a lot easier.
Speaker 2:The second time around is hiring and the credibility is obviously 100X when it was the first time around and it'd be a lot easier to get the right people on the bus early, versus the first time around when you have no idea what you're doing. I mean I just I feel like a lot of it in the early days of building a startup is trying to solve problems that a week ago you didn't even know existed. And so I just when you think about that too. In building software it's not like you know, for my business, for example, for MOLO, when there was a problem, it was often fairly easy to throw bodies at it to solve it. So it's like you're not executing this one of okay, quickly add bodies and we'll service the customer better. You can't exactly do that in software. Like, if it takes time to build something, like, how do you navigate that when something breaks early on and you have customers expecting things to change? Like, how do you navigate that from your end?
Speaker 1:Yeah, look, my favorite saying in software and I usually say this when I'm addressing my board is nine women can't have a baby in one month right.
Speaker 1:It is not to your point. You just can't throw bodies at the problem and solve it faster in many cases. In some cases you can, I think. Really, to answer your question is you know there's pressure coming from a lot of places. So I'll address the customer something breaks issue. I think you know the first thing that we try to do when something breaks and we realize, oh shit, it's gonna take a long time to fix this is to identify a workaround. Is there a suitable workaround that is sustainable for the customer until we can give a more permanent, full solution? Right, and it might even be that, okay, there's a temporary workaround. Then there's a midterm solution. That might not be the 100% solution, but we can deliver X in three weeks, right, or whatever, but the permanent solution is gonna take us two months.
Speaker 1:The good news is that I don't. I'm trying to think. I don't think I've ever had an experience where something broke where it was like we're not gonna be able to fix it for two months. Right, it could be a bug that might take us several days, but that the first thing is is there a workaround? If there's not a workaround, the priority and the severity of that issue for your engineering team needs to escalate immediately.
Speaker 1:It also depends on what is the issue. Is it a nuisance issue that you know users are just complaining about it, or is it broke, like they can't run their business right? Yeah, it's code red, but you know immediately, is there a workaround for it? I think the other part on the customer side is maybe it's not necessarily broke, but you know the customer weather, because and I've not had this at green screens, I may have had it in other places where sales may have mis-set expectations with a customer on what something can be, and then the customer gets into implementation and they're like well, wait a minute, that's not what I expected. No, that's not acceptable, right, that is the other area where it's like okay, is there a workaround that we can get you through temporarily while we build out, because new functionality will generally take longer to build than just fixing something that's broken. Right, and there could be features.
Speaker 1:I mean, look at green screens today. There's some features that we've been working on for six months, especially with kind of what we do today with data science and machine learning. I like to say, you know, in R&D, research and development, the R often takes longer than the D, right it's the research. To understand even how to solve the problem takes 10 times longer than once we've identified how to solve it, writing the code to do it right. So there's that part of that. So, and then there was a second part of your question I don't think I answered. So something broke. Customer expectations weren't met. Yeah, same.
Speaker 2:You answered the question so I appreciate that and you know, I think as we kind of navigate moving from, you know you've kind of introduced green screens now into the conversation. Then I think that's the meat of kind of why we're here. So I think you spend seven years building 3G TMS, so that's your first foray into kind of entrepreneurship or at least kind of founding or being a part of a founding team in a business, and then you make the jump to green screens. But it's not right away. You're gonna walk the audience or walk us through kind of that process. You know you leave in what was essentially a baby for you that you spent seven years at, and what'd you do next before making the commitment to join green screens?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was interesting how that happened.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it was early 2020 and I had really just gotten to the place. I still have many friends, I have no ill will, I love 3G TMS, we're partners with them, but I really just gotten in a place in my own head where I gotta be careful how I say this, because I'm not by any means saying that the company was toxic, but I had become toxic, like it was toxic to me right, it wasn't a toxic environment, but it was toxic to me and I just it had been building for a long time and I just got to the place where I was like I can't do this, I cannot do this anymore, and thought about it for a long time and then, end of February, I just decided to resign, didn't have another job, because that was the other thing is. I was kind of like what's my next move? I had a horrible non-compete agreement that essentially said, because we had an equity event, so we had a private equity firm make a major investment in the company the year prior and through that restrictive covenants with that agreement from the date of the investment event, I could not work for another TMS provider for four years. So, as I was sitting there, knowing that I was really unhappy and in my head saying I have all this equity built up, 20 years of equity built up in the TMS space, in tech, what am I gonna do? Right, because I can't do this anymore.
Speaker 2:That's what you know. Yeah, that's what I know.
Speaker 1:And I had convinced myself that my skills were so specialized that there was nothing else that I could do other than TMS, and but I eventually talked to myself out of that and I did resign. I didn't have another job and in my head I was gonna take some time to kind of figure out what is my next move gonna be. I know I can't work in TMS, but there's plenty of adjacent opportunities, adjacent technology that I think I could add value in, and sure I could even go into I don't know CRM or ERP or something like that, but I'm not gonna add the most value there. Right, my expertise is in freight and in transportation and, yes, product strategy is a thing for me too, but I'm gonna add a lot more value if I can stay in this industry. So what I decided, andrew, at that time was, you know, I had a little bit of cushion, a little bit of flexibility. My kids were grown, no more college tuition bills no more bills.
Speaker 1:No more college tuition yeah they can pay their own bills now. So I decided to start a consulting practice, and what my plan was was to work to offer my services to either freight technology companies that needed interim CPO chief product officer or just needed, on a contract basis, help with go-to-market strategy roadmap things like that or freight companies 3PLs, carriers, brokers that needed to establish a technology roadmap Cause, if you think back, you know and, by the way, when I decided to resign, covid happened two weeks- later right.
Speaker 1:So, didn't know it, I had already decided to resign, but then two weeks later it was like, oh shit, what did I just do, right? But anyway, it was at a time where digital transformation started to become a thing in our industry, right? People were talking a lot about digital marketplaces and digital transformation. So that was my plan. My plan was I was going to offer consulting services and hey, I'm kind of tired right now, so that would be a way that I can pick and choose my customers. And I actually figured out financially that if I worked eight months out of the year, or the equivalent of eight months out of the year I could make the same amount of money that I was making and take four months off every year and just kind of work when I felt like it. So I was like this is great.
Speaker 2:I'm gonna do it More easy math you could figure out. Yeah, right, the easy math.
Speaker 1:You're saving 35 million and I can make the same amount of money in eight months. That math is easy. So that was my plan. I was gonna go to market, kind of put that out there to the world that, hey folks, this is what I'm doing. If you hear of any opportunities, let me know. I stayed on with 3G as a contractor for a few months because again, covid happened. They were on a hiring freeze, transition was gonna take longer so I stayed on as a contractor. So we made it a long breakup, long friendly breakup.
Speaker 1:But in the interim I was introduced to Ben Gordon. So many people in your audience probably know Ben. He's the founder of Cambridge Capital and BGSA advisors. My intent in kind of meeting with him it was to pitch my consulting practice as to work with his investment banking firm right as they were doing M&A activity or working with companies that were already in his portfolio, doing tech due diligence, helping them out with go-to-market strategy when he makes a new investment and things like that. So I kind of went met with him the first time, heard his story, told him a little bit about myself and he said well, look, I've just recently become involved in a company called Green Screens.
Speaker 1:There was actually two companies that he had just recently become involved in that he asked me to take a look at and kind of meet with them and you know I said would love for you to take a look at them, let me know what you think. So looked at both companies. They were both great companies, both are still part of the portfolio, obviously. But Green Screens was the one to me that I was like wow, okay, and at the time I would say that the company and the product was post-hypothesis, pre-mvp product, right. So there was the beginning of a product there. They had actually already engaged the first three beta customers. So NFI, gulf Relay, rds Logistics were really the first three, so they had already started working with them. But and there was a product that was in development but it wasn't two minimum viable product yet.
Speaker 2:But you know my the hypothesis.
Speaker 1:The hypothesis was that the pricing technology that was available to the brokerage spot market was inadequate, that it did not react quickly enough to changing markets, that it was not predictive right.
Speaker 1:That I think we've all heard from you, know from Wall Street, that past performance is not an indicator of, or past success is not an indicator of, future performance, right? So it doesn't matter what happened three days ago or a week ago or a year ago, right? What's gonna happen when that truck actually needs to move? What are you gonna pay for a truck, right? So the hypothesis was A that the technology that existed for the majority of the market was inadequate. That there were a lot of companies out there at the time Convoy, obviously, not anymore, but companies like Echo, like Uber, freight, like Coyote, like others that had invested literally hundreds of millions of dollars in technology, and part of that was building out the data science and the business insights and the analytics to give themselves a competitive advantage in and around pricing right Through pricing intelligence, through connectivity to the shippers for more instantaneous pricing, right, dynamic pricing. So that was the hypothesis Sorry, I'll take a step back, but that most companies don't have hundreds of millions of dollars to spend on developing that technology, right?
Speaker 1:There's very few those don't have one million dollars to invest in, exactly exactly. So how can we give the market that data science and machine learning at scale at an affordable price and serve the mid? Again, it was a mid-market play. It was okay the guys at the top they've got plenty of money usually but it was initially a mid-market play. So again, post-hypothesis, pre-mvp product, I was really impressed. I was like, wow, these guys, yes, yes, they're onto something. But the folks that at the time were running the business had never really they were freight people, they knew freight, they were super smart people, but they never really launched a commercial software product into the market before Go to market strategy and just understanding the markets and how to price it, all of those things that go with bringing your technology product to market.
Speaker 2:So all of a sudden, that 3G TMS experience you developed the last seven years was starting to look pretty enticing for them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, well, I guess, because here I am, but no, and I went back to him with a proposal for my consulting services. I said here's a proposal for eight week or 12 week engagement and here are my deliverables and here's the framework that I use to find a go to market strategy and do all of these things. And this is what I'm gonna do and here's what it'll cost. And he was like I'm not interested in that, we're looking for a CEO. And I was like oh, and he was like do you want the job? And I was like no, actually, why not?
Speaker 1:Well, because remember that thing I said about I can work eight months out of the year and make as much money as I was making before and I didn't really have a lot of bills. So that would be a yeah, that's yeah. I like nice things, but at the end of the day, there are things and stuff I like to go sit on the beach and read a book and so anyway. So initially I was like I really don't. But Ben is a persuasive guy and we kind of went back and forth for a couple of weeks on it.
Speaker 1:You know where I was like no, I don't think so and I was talking to another company that was in you know, adjacent, tms, about opportunity as a chief product officer with them, I saw the writing on the wall that my career as a consultant was gonna be pretty short lived. But regardless of what I did, but because after three weeks of not working I was bored to death, I was like I need to go back to work. I better find a project to work on real fast. So, anyway, we went back and forth for a while and so I, the compromise Andrew, when I joined the company and here was my concern and this goes back to being self aware and never thinking you're the smartest person in the room is, as a startup and having worked at 3G, yes, I helped build the product and I helped build the company, but I was never the sales leader. I participated in the sales and worked very closely with the sales leader. I never raised money Right, never. And again, I participated in the fundraising process to represent the product and the strategy, the company, but I was never the one who went out and sold the company to investors of why they should invest in us. And I knew, as a startup where the company was at at the stage we didn't have a product to sell yet, we didn't have any intention of raising money in the short term, right? So at the time I was like, ok, this makes sense now, but we will pretty quickly, once I get my hands on the product and the strategy, get to the point where we need a sales leader and we need somebody who has experience and knows how to raise money with investors. And I've not done any of those things. And kind of my thought process at the time, andrew, was it's not a good look for me to be the CEO and then not Right, it's like so. But I also know my weaknesses and it was like someday this company is going to need somebody who knows how to do these things, and that's not me.
Speaker 1:So the compromise that Ben and I came to as I accepted the position as interim CEO and chief product officer so if you're wondering why I have that and chief product officer as part of my title, I'm still holding on to it.
Speaker 1:But so I was interim CEO for a while. But you know, eventually we launched the product and we started selling the product and, going back to that curiosity that we talked about earlier, I learned a lot about running a sales organization and say and I learned a lot about raising money and, by the way, I have one of the best teachers in the world, you know, standing behind me to teach me about raising money, right, so? But I learned a lot about raising investment money and and running a sales organization that I didn't know before and was probably after about a year or so that the board was like are you ready to be the CEO? Like, drop the interim. And I said yes. And they said you need to drop the chief product officer too. And I said no, because that's still my passion, right? The product is is what I'm most passionate about.
Speaker 2:So is. Is any of that, you think, imposter syndrome, to an extent of kind of not having the confidence that you could do it, or like did the initial piece of, rather than just kind of saying screw it, I'll figure it out and I'll get the right team around me. What do you think some of that was?
Speaker 1:Um could have been.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I don't know that it wasn't necessarily imposter syndrome, but I mean, look, 30 plus years doing this kind of tired. You know, I think part of it was the question of do I really want to work that hard for that? Because I know, I know how the sausage is made. I know it takes five to seven years to take a company from a startup to really that growth stage larger company. You know you want to get to 10, 20 million dollars of revenue where before you're really kind of comfortable, right? So I think at that time it was do I really want to work that hard for the next five to seven years, right? Because I feel like I'm at the tail end of my career, right? I mean, back in my 30s I said I want to retire at 55. I'm a year away from that. I'm not going to retire next year, maybe in four years, but I'm also I'll never fully retire, like I will always work. But you know, do I want to work at this level, in this pace, for 15 more years? Hell, no.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:What did you know? What you want?
Speaker 2:So I guess, what was it that changed your mind to say I'm ready, I'll take, I want the reins and I want to keep my Chief Product Officer role. What changed?
Speaker 1:Well, I think it was the confidence right. So I don't know that it was imposter syndrome, but it was a lack of confidence.
Speaker 2:Can I?
Speaker 1:do this, right, it can, I do this. But once I saw that, yeah, I can do this, like I just raised a ton of money, right, and didn't do it by myself, right, I had a lot of help and you know, it was interesting what I I'll go back to Mitch Wesley because Mitch, as I said, he had founded three companies. He was really really good at raising investment money when we raised our A round last year. You know, mitch has moved on from 3G and is now he's retired, but he's on the board of another company that was raising money and he he reached out and he said I'd like you to introduce me to some of your investors. And that, to me, was like, yes, I've done it. Like the student becomes the master, right. So it was like just validation for me. It was like, okay, this is a you know one of, again a mentor, right.
Speaker 1:Somebody who I learned about startup life and growing a business from was now coming to me and saying could you introduce me to some of the investors that you talked to as you went through the process? And then later on he followed up to say, wow, they were really great investors that you introduced me to, right. So it was validating and I think it was just having lived through it. Honestly, andrew, it was.
Speaker 1:You know, I hired Kevin Coombs as our VP of sales back in the end of 2021. And so he was able to take on some of that sales leadership role and has been building up a team there and you've met some of our team at least Charm made an impact on you, and Merrill and Ryan, so we've got a great sales team and that engine is just kind of running now. The fundraising, as I said, learned to do it, gained the confidence in that, just brought in a fantastic CTO, promoted one of my business analysts to be a product manager at the beginning of this year. So I think it's, you know again, the confidence, but also now feeling that I have the talent and I'm building a really strong team around me, that I feel comfortable in being able to lead the organization to.
Speaker 2:You know, I don't feel the weight of it is on my shoulders alone anymore because I have a really powerful team around me, yep, and there's something you said you know in them trying to, in your board, trying to take away your product officer role and you saying, nope, that's my passion. I love that because I think I think people make the mistake in building businesses of thinking that they have to fit a round peg in a square hole and say that, okay, well, an executive team must have the CEO do this, this and this, and the COO do this, this and this and the CPO do this and the CTO do this, and it's like the team should do what the team is best at. You take the players that are on the team and you fit them in the roles that they make the most sense.
Speaker 2:When I think about our business and Molo, it was shifting based on the team we had, but you know when, when, when my role and my partner's role shifted, you know, for the first few years he and I both spent all the time out selling.
Speaker 2:I mean, we were just running and got in and talking to customers as much as possible, and then we realized the business needed more from us than just that and, specifically, he was much better at kind of owning the day to day and I was much better at just getting out in front of customers, hearing what they had to say and what they needed and then communicating that back to him and the team and then them executing, and it's like I just didn't necessarily have the traditional role of what a CEO is, but I found the things I was good at and I did those and we filled the other spots with people who are really good at those things. It's just more fun that way, right, and I bet you are having a lot more fun now realizing you have someone like Kevin who just gets it with sales and let him run with that and you get to focus on the things you're good at. Does that make sense?
Speaker 1:It does, no, it doesn't, and I have to say, andrew, I am honestly having more fun right now than any other point in my career and I just I love it. I am having so, so much fun. Now I'll go back to my earlier statement that startup life is not for the faint of heart, but I am just having so much fun with it. And, to your point, a big part of that is filling in the holes with the right people and the right talent. And going back to our earlier conversation about, as a startup, having the credibility Now, the second time around, having the credibility to attract the talent.
Speaker 1:I mean, look, the CTO that we just brought in in October, matthew Harding. He was one of the early principles that chain analytics moved on to Transplace and he stayed with Transplace for quite a while, stayed on with the Uber freight acquisition. He was the head of data science for Uber freight and I, on a whim, just called him and said I'm looking for a CTO, are you interested? And he was like yes, actually I'd like to talk. And I was like, wait, what you said, yeah, like I fully expected a no, and now he's our CTO and I couldn't be happier. But it's you know, as we were saying earlier is look, green screens has a lot of brand momentum right now and I'm so excited for that. So that has a lot to do with it. But I think it's also that second time around of just having the credibility of you know, knowing where to find the talent and filling in those holes and surrounding yourself with just super talented people.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so let's talk about the product itself, right? So when did when did it first launch and how has it kind of developed? What does it look so consuming for the masses? You know, as far as you can, as far as I know, a lot of the people listening have no idea what greens really is, other than the hypothesis you just gave. So let me give you a chance to kind of sell it, so to speak, and help people understand what it is that you do.
Speaker 1:Awesome. I appreciate that opportunity. We, the products as I said, I joined the company in the summer of 2020, we did do kind of a soft launch of the product in December of 2020 just really to test the messaging, get some early adopter feedback, test the pricing structure, but for all intents and purposes, we launched the product to market in April of 2021. So the product's been in the market now about two and a half years. We have about 150 brokers on our platforms that all of our customers today are truckload brokers operating in US and Canada. So we're not into Mexican right yet, but US and Canada. What the product does is we are a dynamic predictive pricing platform for truckload spot freight today. Now we that is going to evolve. We have some really big plans for 2024 and beyond, but right now it's focused on short term spot freight market.
Speaker 1:We're using big data and machine learning to really do what truly what is going to happen, not what happened, right, what did happen. And the way we do that is we, when we bring a new customer on, we start with a historical data file of their book load transaction actions so one to four years and we will use that customers data to train a machine learning model about the buying behavior of that company as compared to the market, right? So all of our customers contribute their data into our network 150 brokers today. It's about $22 billion worth of clean, very clean, real time transactional load data. Every customer gets their own personalized model that understands their freight mix, their relationships, they're buying patterns, they're buying behavior, and considers that to tell that individual brokerage based on the current market conditions in this lane. This is the price that we believe you are going to buy it right now. What we also do is because we have that $22 billion of aggregated data which, every time we add a new customer, that data pool grows by whatever that company's revenue is.
Speaker 1:We have what we call our network rate, which is also generated through a predictive machine learning engine. But it's taking all of that aggregated data, not biased by any one company's buying behavior, and saying, okay, this is what the market is going to do, this is where we think you can buy, so every customer is really getting that. Here's my rate based on my buying power, and here's what the market is doing and very quickly can see how they compare to the market. Are they buying better than the market? Are they buying worse than the market. I mean, we have some data, some reports that we can give our customers to say look, here are your top 100 lanes where you're buying better than the market. Go win more freight there. Right here are your bottom 100 lanes or whatever where you are buying worse than the market. Put your carrier relations or your carrier sales reps on going and building some relationships with carriers in these lanes right.
Speaker 2:It's also seemingly giving them guidance on how to price their margins right, so it's saying, hey, you're buying 10% better than the green screens market on Dallas to Laredo. Then theoretically it's saying you have more wiggle room to charge a higher price on those lanes than your. You know, if you were typically going for a 14% margin, you can maybe go for 17% here, versus the converse lanes where you're 10% below market. It's like if you want that business you got to tighten up your margin profile on that way.
Speaker 1:Well, and we are also suggesting a sell price to the customer. So we're optimizing that by rate and then we're using again the data when quote, when rate, price elasticity right, what loads that have they wanted, what price, and using all of that data to then also suggest a sell price to the customer. So, based on what we think you're going to pay, this is what we think you should sell, it right, and suggesting a margin. And we give the customer sales rep tools where they can play with the margin if they want to Adjust it a little bit. So we're also giving them that.
Speaker 1:And what our customers have been able to do using green screens in conjunction with some of the workflow or quote automation companies like AVRL and Tabby and bit freighter, is really Increase the amount of freight that they're able to auto bid right.
Speaker 1:So they're using the workflow automation tools to Go out to Home Depot or PNG load board and instantly quote the loads that are out there without human needing to, you know, sit on the load board hitting the refresh key all day so they don't miss those opportunities. But they're using green screens as the source of truth and so the source of quoting that and we've seen our customers go from Single digit win rates on some of these load board you know, bid, customer bid boards to 30 plus percent win rate, just purely by switching over to using green screens as the means at which they're they're basing their, their bids on. And we've talked to some shippers out in the market where you know. One shipper told us I can always tell which brokers I'm working with, our green screens brokers, because they are quoting right on to the market like they she's like. The green screens brokers are usually the ones that I'm giving my business to because they are right on the market, like the way that they're quoting.
Speaker 1:So yeah, it was pretty interesting to get that feedback from a shipper.
Speaker 2:And so do you envision like what percent of the market do you envision you could capture in terms of the brokerage market Over time?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, look, the brokerage market is huge and again. So, going back to that mid market play thing, our sweet spot for our customers, let's say brokers between, let's say, 50 to 200 million in revenue, right? So I think there's a really big part of the market that less than 10 million in revenue that you know. Maybe it's the single agent, you know the one person, and I don't know that we, at least directly, are going to be a fit for that segment of the market. Now, that being said, however, we do have several customers that we work with that are I'll call them, pre revenue startups, right? So there are folks that have experienced that other brokerage firms have gone out on to start their own brokerage but they are not having any revenue yet. We actually have a startup package specifically for those. So we know they don't have any data, but we're giving them access to that network rate until they start booking free and then we'll start working with them. So there are those startups, but those are the companies that tend to grow very quick, right, those are the guys that are going to go from one to 10 or one to 20 plus very quickly, and we've already seen that with some of the starter customers that we started working with. The other side of that, we right now have six the top 25 brokers that are on our platform, and that's really all happened within the last six months.
Speaker 1:And what has kind of happened there, andrew, is some of them are companies that we talked to early on and they were like oh aren't you cute? No, we've already built this technology in house. Those companies that have attempted to build it in house, many of them have figured out that you know what we do is hard, expensive and, more importantly, they're always going to be limited to their own data. So, even if you're a three or four billion dollar brokerage Somebody said this the other day and I thought it was really cool it's like building a search engine using just your Google search history, right, I mean it's. It's like the only results you're ever going to get are your own results.
Speaker 1:Right, so that, because there aren't many brokers out there that are going to willingly give their data to another broker, but, as us, as a neutral Aggregator and anonymizer of data, right, being able to still provide them with that machine learning, high fidelity, high accuracy, very fast pricing that a lot of those companies have come back to us, and some of them, frankly, didn't try to build it on their own. But now that we have established credibility in the market and have shown that we're here to stay, we're not going anywhere and and we are actually delivering value of Come back around. So I know I didn't directly answer your question on what percentage of the market to we no, that's fine, I'm very well yeah.
Speaker 1:So I think there's a lot of applications on on both the top and the bottom, but you know, focused in the middle is where it is interesting thinking about that example of the top, because you know, using your own Google search history is as your search.
Speaker 2:I guess that that just makes a ton of sense. I'm curious, like, how real time is it like you're seeing as tenders are sent? You're you're seeing that influx? So if one shipper, for example, has a I don't know a, a I don't know fire sale going on and they ship out 400% of their orders that they usually would out of Dallas but it gets split amongst 10 carriers, if they all happen to be green screen carriers, there's a chance that a broker might actually catch that in advance before they price it at their normal rate.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I actually have a great story. So, yes, the answer is yes, we're pre integrated into 13 TMS. Is so just about every brokerage focus TMS we are now pre integrated into. So that means that, to your point, as soon as they book a load, that load hits our system and has the opportunity to influence the rate predictions we so. My favorite story there is we have a customer that runs a lot of free out of a remote manufacturing manufacturing facility somewhere in remote Iowa I don't know specifically where and the customer was remote Fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, okay, there you go so it's not to my it's not to my, but it's somewhere pretty remote and they run a lot of free out of there, so they know the market pretty well and they priced Elaine in our system and we came out with a prediction that was $500. $500 more than they believed the rate should be. So of course they called us and they said we think it's broken, you need to fix it. We were like, okay, let us take a look at it. And before we really even had a chance to dig into the data and look at it, they called back and they said never mind the ship or doubled production at that manufacturing facility that week.
Speaker 1:Didn't tell them, at least I don't know if they told anybody. So that $500 prediction was reacting to the fact that the capacity that's normally in that market has been consumed because the manufacturer doubled their production at that facility. So now the capacity is being sucked in from other markets and the price went up. So, and that was in a matter I think this was a Tuesday and they doubled their production on Monday. So in a matter of really hours, if you will, through the data, the algorithm picked up on the fact that, wow, okay, the capacity is dried up. In this market that's normally flush with capacity and the prices are going up.
Speaker 2:And it knew that because that shipper must have sent additional loads to another provider and the network rate then caught. That is that what it's essentially doing, interesting.
Speaker 1:And it's also so. It's, it's seeing that, but then it's also seeing Rates go up in surrounding areas, surrounding markets as well, right? So if you think about the fact, okay, I have this remote market that has, you know, a normal level of capacity, but then there might be some other major markets around it that suddenly Prices in volume in those major markets are starting to go up, right, so capacities being sucked out of those markets somewhere, where is it? And you know, these are the types of things that I like to say.
Speaker 1:You know, ai is just think of your best broker on your floor. And now, your best broker on your floor might not understand that, right, but In a normal pricing scenario, what are the mental Girations that your best, most experienced broker is going to go through when they're trying to price a load? Maybe, elaine, they've never priced before, right? They're going to go look at adjacent markets. They're going to go look at load history. They're going to go look at all of these other things. They might call a couple carriers to see where carriers are bidding, but it's going to take them I don't know at best 20 minutes maybe to do all that worst case, maybe a couple hours.
Speaker 1:The machine learning is doing exactly the same thing, right? It's? It's looking at adjacent markets and what's happening. It's looking at lanes that have similar characteristics. It's looking at all of these different things, but it's giving you an answer, a sub second response time with a lot more data. Then your most experienced veteran rep could ever process in Even a day, right? So you think about 13 million transactions is Kind of what's available today for that, that machine learning to to look at. That's one of the things we show our customers and when we predict a price and the network rate, we just we don't just show them that particular lane, that particular market, we also show them the pricing dynamics for similar lanes, right, so that similar could be adjacent markets or it could be a lane that's not even in an adjacent market but it behaves similarly from a data perspective to the lane that you're pricing and users can see that Visually in our user interface as well.
Speaker 2:I mean this is gets to the root of, I guess, kind of the Conversation around digital brokerage verse Traditional and kind of what I believed is a spectrum. You know, I never think, I never believed in the full digital brokerage model where it's you can kind of fully replace the a lot of those kind of human roles, because that relationship piece is so important and Both the carrier and customer feel like they need to have someone there to support them. And so my concept and what we wanted to build a molo was, you know, find and hire the best people and train them as well as we can and then arm them with the best tools possible to Make them as efficient as possible. Your business is what we're talking about here. I mean that's that and you know, gets into the concept of build verse by.
Speaker 2:But I guess what we're getting to here is that even if you were to build that, the three, four billion dollar mark your Google search history example starts to come into play there where you can only build so much verse. You've kind of created this weird not weird, but the very unique niche when it's kind of the green screens network and there's enough buy-in that there's a lot of freight there that that gives you more buying power, so to speak, or at least network understanding, than Even see a Robinson. I mean, they're not even that big, is as you think about that. So that's just fascinating to me. I don't know that I have a question tied to that comment. Yeah, no, it's pretty exciting.
Speaker 1:And going back to the automation and the digital freight workers thing, I'm 100% with you. I never thought that the process could ever be fully automated. To your point, relationships are just way too important. But you know, I like to say it's man plus machine, not man versus machine. And one of the favorite quotes I've seen I don't even know who said it, but it was look, ai technology isn't going to replace you. A Human using AI technology to make better decisions will replace you, right? And that's kind of the the have versus the have nots.
Speaker 1:And our job isn't to replace the human, it's to empower the human to make better decisions faster and to help our customers to Make better use of their human capital. I mean, from an automation perspective, yes, there are things, tasks, that can be automated, but that it's not everything. Right, there still needs to be that jackpot lane so that I can have a human conversation. But you know, take that seasoned veteran carrier rep or customer rep and Allow them to focus not on pricing freight but on building relationships with with customers and getting to better understand that customer's business. Or how can they Establish more synergies with the carrier, right, like those, those types of things. Those are the people that you want doing that, and you know. Think about the time it takes. So you've run a brokerage. You know how long it takes to train a new rep right to get them good at pricing freight.
Speaker 1:Long months a year, a long time. We have some of our customers that they now are to the point that as part of their SNOP they they can put a new rep in a chair, pricing freight in weeks, not months, right, because now those reps are told you must tell you do what yeah?
Speaker 1:follow what green screens tells you, and they will be monitored on that. But it takes that ramp up time on a new rep down so that you can start deploying your more seasoned people who you see now everybody would go to them Andrew, how would you price this, andrew? How would you price it? They? They can actually manage and be more strategic now instead of having to price everybody's freight right.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned integrations with 13 TMS is, and something that I've seen that I'm always curious about now is there seems to be this kind of partnership. I don't want to say war, but like this it almost feels like Game of Thrones ask where Everyone's kind of choosing sides and who they partner with. For one and there's a couple elements to this, so for one, it's like once a day I go on LinkedIn and I see a company announced their latest partnership with someone else and I, you know, I look at it and I'm like are you really doing anything between you two or do you guys just decide to say your partners? But two, I do feel like there there is some kind of side choosing happening. So what's your perspective on what? Where are you guys at and kind of your partnership arena? Are you guys defending the north or Just kidding? That's a game of Thrones? No, I know, I know we are exclusively.
Speaker 1:Non-exclusive Is what I would say to that. So, look, I think that working as an ecosystem and giving our customers optionality Is the way that we all win right? So think about my TMS 20 years and TMS trying to build A very deep, very broad TMS solution in many different places. That was all things to all people and did everything. And and I am here to tell you it's impossible you can't do everything. Well, right? So I think that the TMS of the future is really more TMS becomes the operating platform and there are a lot of best in breed tasks, specific applications that bolt on to the TMS right now. So that's part of it. The other part of it is, even within those best in breed tasks, specific applications, it's not one size fits all, right, I mean, the tracking product that is good for one company might not be good for the next company, and and so on. So our approach is really look, by working together, we're all going to be better together, right? If we connect.
Speaker 1:If you know, we're in the TMS ecosystem and just in TMS, we just recently launched what we call capacity on tab right, which we're working with highway and cargo chief and truck stop and Iso technologies, and yet and we have probably three or four more that are coming and I probably missed one, and if I did, I'm sorry if you're listening, but when it answers for us, the question that our customers would say is look, we love your pricing, we believe in your pricing, but I still need to go get a truck. Like I still need to go get a truck. So how do I get access to that capacity outside of my network, outside the carriers that haul for that? And Sure we, we could have gone and built a capacity solution or or whatever, but it's like there are people out there that already do this really well. Right, why don't we focus on doing what we do extraordinarily well and partner with the people who do what they do extraordinarily well? And and that's really what capacity on tap is is taking Green screens, rating intelligence and putting that together in a single pane of glass with all of these people who do capacity really well, right, allows them to hopefully ditch the load boards, reduce fraud, make their users more efficient, reducing clicks, reducing browser tabs, like all of these things and reducing app fatigue and kind of bringing that all together.
Speaker 1:And so what side am I taking? I'm not taking a sign not north, not south. It's really. We really do want to partner with everybody and you know it has to make business sense for both parties and add value for both parties. But Look my, my head of partnerships is has done a phenomenal job building. It's been our strategy since the beginning. But Matt Silver, the other Matt Silver Wait what?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, not not, not, not that Matt Silver. So Matthew Silver, formerly of trucker tools is, is our Matt Silver who has built out our partnership program.
Speaker 2:I know you had a Matt Silver. We do have a Matt Silver.
Speaker 1:It's confusing yes, so it's very confusing. It's funny when I, when I met Matt, your brother, I was like, oh, you're the other Matt Silver. I don't think he liked that very much. Anyway it was. It was a. He's done a phenomenal job of building out our partnership program and just really bringing it all together. So I In my past life there were a lot of what I called Barney partnerships I love you, you love me. Let's put out a press release that there was really no substance to them at all.
Speaker 1:Right, there was no integration there was no, yes, there, there are, but that is not. That is not our relationship. We are integrated. You know, again, the 13 TMS is AVRL, tabby, bitfreighter, cargo, chief Highway and the integrations are generally two way data and user experience right? So it's a really full, robust integration that we're pursuing and we've developed tools to make that easy for our partners, right? So we have a UI developers toolkit that allows for our partners or our customers that have a proprietary TMS to easily take our entire user experience, or even little pieces of our user experience, and plug it right into their TMS, right, without having to do a lot of development and coding on their own. We have a full set of APIs, but in the vein of meeting our customers, our partners, where they are, we also have less sophisticated, if you will, ways of integrating as well, because it's more important to us that we kind of proliferate that ecosystem and get the green screens right out there in front of everybody, then then it is to make it difficult to do business with.
Speaker 2:So you mentioned you've had conversations with shippers. Is that? Is there a product being built for shippers then too? Is that part of the roadmap, or so?
Speaker 1:we are, yes, but not the same product that we offer to brokers today. And that's our commitment to our brokers is we will never sell against you and we will always continue to enhance and better our product offering for the broker market, though I think that there's a huge opportunity in the market to get to more, to kind of change the way we do procurement as an industry, if you will right. I think if we learned anything from the pandemic, it's that you know we've spent decades optimizing our supply chain for reducing costs, but not enough thought about reducing risk and being more resilient, right to a black swan event like that, and I think that the astronomical rates that we saw in in 2020 and 2021, and then the trough that we're in now I think there is an opportunity to will never eliminate the volatility, but really reduce the volatility through a more collaborative procurement process that is able to look at long term markets, short term markets. Look, there are some markets that, regardless of the market conditions, are fairly stable. Right, there's always going to be some volatility, but they're fairly stable. Does this market, should it go to a long term contract based on that stability versus other markets that are a little bit more volatile, that in these market conditions, maybe negotiate a short term process contract or go right to spot with it.
Speaker 1:So those types of tools, but then also the tools that allow for the shippers to get more access to our brokers directly from their TMS right, so to be able to again some of the things that that goes in the convoys and the Uber frays through API connectivity into the shipper TMS is are able to instantly quote or, as a user at a shipper is rate shopping, the load right. Why not have the ability for green screens brokers to opt in to be able to share their pricing with green screen shipper right, who is also connected? So so that's the way we're looking at the shippers. It's not to Sell against the brokers or to give the shippers intelligence into what the brokers are, how they're pricing, but it's really more to help them, help each other and and through more collaboration right.
Speaker 2:So it's a delicate dance but it's one that I think you can do if you do it the right way. I think it's important to remain neutral. I think that's a mistake that a lot of company want to even know if it's a mistake, because I think some do it on purpose. But there are a lot of companies out there that they're not the world to think they're neutral and they're secretly doing stuff like running their own brokerage, you know, adjacent to a business that's taking in a lot of brokerage data, things like that. I assume you're comfortable saying that's never in your pipeline to start a brokerage 100%, because that would be foolish, given what seems like a really nice niche that you built my mouth to God's ears not happening.
Speaker 2:You'd be surprised. I've seen other interesting businesses that that you know, for whatever reason, feel like they should get into brokerage just because it's the easiest way to get revenue. And you know I'm hopeful that this recent wave of both the market and, you know, some of the bankruptcies or whatever that we're seeing, is Wising people up to kind of how they market their businesses and and and think about growing their businesses. And you know be a broker or don't be a broker, but don't try to do both.
Speaker 1:Well, here's the thing, though. I think that now the investor community has gotten wise to it, so I think that's helping that along as well, because when you had companies that were effectively freight brokers getting valuations as a software company because of the way they marketed themselves, that did not help the situation. But I think we've learned a lot this year, and the investment investor community has as well. You know, they know the questions to ask and they know what to look for there, for sure.
Speaker 2:You'd hope so you never know, we'll see. I'm hopeful we're past that point of all that stuff. So I guess, as you think about what else is there coming in the future here for green screens, as you look towards future growth plans outside of, I guess, the shipper approach, what more is in your pipeline?
Speaker 1:Yeah. So we've got a lot of really exciting things coming up next year. I mean long term forecasting. As I mentioned earlier, we're really focused on that short term spot market, but long term forecasting is an area that we're getting into, both for contract and for spot rates and strategic pricing. So today, from a pricing to the to the shipper perspective, we're pretty transactional right, so it's the customer, sales reps and more transactional usage. But we have some tools coming out early next year that really kind of elevated up to the next level of those who are setting pricing strategy and giving them the tools they need to be able to do that more dynamically.
Speaker 1:So, as an example of you this week want to optimize in a particular market for volume instead of margin, being able to kind of do some what if thing scenarios, pull a few levers, find the scenario that you like and really quickly optimize or operationalize that rather into the hands of those who are actually on the floor pricing freight or you know, maybe it's for a customer in a given market, or you don't want to take any more freight out of the Pacific Northwest because, for whatever reason, jack the margins up and push that out right. So those are some of the things that we have coming out Obviously, now that we've assembled so much data, it's it's really farming. The secondary value of, or the primary value of, that data is to give some more elevated market analytics. So, again, not being quite so transactional, but to really kind of give the bigger picture market, with the long term forecasting, to kind of ties back into pricing.
Speaker 1:Because you know, if you're a freight broker and you're bidding, you're participating in a shipper bid and you want to earn a spot on that shippers routing guide, you're most likely going to be betting against contract freight rates as well. So being able to kind of get that understanding simultaneously of here's what we think the spot market's going to do, here's what we think the contract market's going to do over the next year, so that you can price, so that, yeah, you're pricing according to the spot market but you're still pricing well enough to earn yourself a spot in that routing guide against asset based carriers, right? So kind of giving some of those types of tools to the broker community as well. I'm trying to make a summary we're going to continue to build out the capacity on tap solution we just released. We are the first and only pricing vendor that actually does multi. Stop pricing now.
Speaker 2:So yes, we do pricing. How do you do that effectively? Because routing and timing and appointments are really important and getting that pricing done right.
Speaker 1:Sure it is. So we're not optimizing the route, we're not creating the route right, but, as the route is input to us, using the data that we have available, and we're going to look at things like stop count, we're going to look at distance and we're going to look at time and again, using all of that data and the machine learning to do the price predictions and we can you get facility data in there to to a place where you know I'm just thinking big picture, long term if you get to a place where you understand all the facilities, you understand their regular appointment times, you may be able to place where you understand what these brokers get from these appointments, because then you can understand.
Speaker 2:Because, like, the problem is, if it goes, if it's a Chicago to Cincinnati, to Orlando, ideally I don't know if that's the right route to do it in so let's say it's Chicago to Chattanooga to Orlando, ideally, that's, I'm gonna pick Monday in Chicago, I'm gonna do Tuesday in Chattanooga and I'm gonna do Wednesday in Orlando. But if you find out Chicago only loads till noon or till two, and then what's it called, chattanooga is nighttime only and Orlando's morning only, then that's now a four day instead of a three day. Yeah, did you get what I'm kinda getting at?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I totally get it and we're not there yet. So, number one, we don't have facility information. We do predict to the five digit zip codes, right. So it's not just city, state, three digit or market, we are predicting to the five digit zip codes. So, in the areas where they're not dense right With menu or with shippers, getting to the five digit zip code is sometimes gonna get us close enough to understanding some of those dynamics.
Speaker 1:Now, that being said, we're not building the routes, right, we are pricing based on the information we're given. So if somebody says I'm picking up in Chicago on Monday at six o'clock and I'm picking up in Chattanooga on Wednesday at two o'clock and I need to deliver, so we're not validating the feasibility of that route and we are pricing line hall only, so we don't. We'll consider stop offs in that as well, but any other type of detention, layovers or whatever. But the presumption right now is we're not checking the feasibility of the route that we're being given. We're just assuming that the route we're being given is feasible and we're gonna price it accordingly.
Speaker 2:Got it. That makes sense. Okay, Anything else there in the pipeline? Sorry, I cut you off to ask that question.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, no. I appreciate it. I mean there is a lot, we are putting together our plans for next year, but it's really focused again about elevating the analytics to not quite the operational level. Oh, one more thing we have coming out. We're doing agent functionality. So being able to, if you're a brokerage with an agent model, being able to kind of still aggregate your data of your full brokerage and give your different agents visibility to it while not exposing customer information and things like that, right. So it's just another layer of security that kind of allows some of these bigger companies to still use all of their data but give tools to their agents that aren't gonna kind of give away somebody else's playbook, if you will right, another agent's playbook, but still getting an understanding of that. So I'm trying to think it's interesting.
Speaker 2:You mentioned the agent model. I was thinking about that as we were talking about kind of the builders buy concept. It's like there's a world where you could sort of brokerage these days and purely just build out the sales force and buy all of the tools elsewhere and start the part and create the partnerships Like you talk about. Capacity on tap is what kind of got that going. For me is like building a whole carrier network type thing. Eventually I feel like you'll be able to buy something like that or have a partnership with something like that. Who knows what that looks like in five years. But it's just kind of fascinating where the industry's going and how you have to make those choices of what do I wanna build internally versus what do I want to buy off the market, because one, either I don't wanna build the tool or, two, even building the tool won't give me the depth or breadth of buying power or network power that a tool like GreenScreens maybe has.
Speaker 1:So yeah, yeah, I mean look on that point. Going back to the capacity on tap and why we chose to not try to build it ourselves. Number one as I said, there are people out there that do it really well. But if you talk to the people that are in the capacity business that some of them have been in business for many, many years the one thing they all struggle with is getting the capacity to their platform. So kind of my position was we could build this tomorrow, but how long is it gonna take us for us to get enough capacity to be meaningful, right? Just like with GreenScreens as a rating engine, it took us a couple of years before we had enough data to be meaningful to some of these people. So I think you're right on with that. Sorry, I just looked at my roadmap One. A couple more things. So today we're VanReefer Flatbed.
Speaker 1:We're seeing a lot of demand from our customers to look at some other more specialized modes or methods of transportation. So in our roadmap for this year we're looking at partials. We're looking at hotshot, sprinter, van type stuff. We're looking at hazmat, specific predictions, right. So and the way we kind of go about this with the data science is we say, okay, how much data do we have? Okay, we have plenty of hotshot data. Let's test it right. Can we build a model for hotshot and is it within our quality standards? Right, are we comfortable with it? So those are some, and I also said earlier, the R part of the R and D sometimes takes longer.
Speaker 1:Those are the types of things that we're doing as we just study the data we have. Can we do something with the data? If not, what additional data do we need, and can our customers give us that and then start collecting that data? So those are some of the other things we're looking at, and Mexico Mexico is kind of the next thing for the end of the year-ish.
Speaker 2:Nice. So what will success look like to you in this business?
Speaker 1:That is a great question. Look, success in this business is, you know, we have a very large, we've captured a very large error of the market. Going back to your question about what percentage do we think we can? I don't know what that percentage is. Our win rate right now is like 57%, which is ridiculous in a good way, you know. But the market is so huge, right, with the 150 customers, we've just barely scratched the surface of what we can do. But success in this business to me is if we truly can be the catalyst for changing the way the industry does procurement and making it a more dynamic, collaborative process.
Speaker 1:that again, is never gonna eliminate the volatility of the market cycles but kinda minimizes its impact, right In these cycles where right now the shippers are, you know, have the upper hand and hopefully two years from now the brokers are gonna have the upper hand, and I mean that's stupid back and forth. It's ridiculous right. So I think success to me is if we can figure out a way to enable, give the technology that enables that change in the industry. That's my answer.
Speaker 2:That's a great answer. And one more question that I probably should have been at the front of the interview or at least the front of the conversation about green screens what? Why the name green screen?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Okay, everybody asked that question. So the name I inherited and I learned to embrace it. We can't change it now. We have way too much brand momentum behind it. But the thought process there is if you think about the fact that in general the freight industry or until pretty recently has been pretty antiquated from a technology perspective, right, not very forward thinking, so green screens being like an AS 400 mainframe computer, right dot AI, so the concept there is kind of taking some new novel technology to an antiquated, a technologically antiquated practice process. And green is the color of money too.
Speaker 2:so you added that piece.
Speaker 1:I did well, because we save our customers money or make them more money. So that's. Yeah, I did add that piece, but I think it works.
Speaker 2:I think green screen, I think the thing they put to behind you on television to change your background.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, when I first joined the company and started doing market research and search engine optimization type stuff, I would search it and we would get a lot of that, but apparently there's several marijuana dispensaries with that name too, or paraphernalia shops. So, yeah, I used to earn the early days. I would say yes, we are not a video production company, nor are we a marijuana dispensary. Don't forget the AI on the end, or you might end up somewhere you don't want to.
Speaker 2:So yeah, oh, that's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, listen, this has been really awesome. I didn't even realize we've been talking for almost two hours here. I know Good stuff it's been great, I think we can wrap it there, unless you've got anything you wanna add.
Speaker 1:No, sir, this has been a great conversation. I appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you so much to our listeners. I hope you enjoyed the show. I think this is gonna be a video episode. I'm gonna put that out there. We had no, I don't think we have any editing needed, so this could be the first time. We just go front to back, put the whole thing on the internet and let them see us live, because I've had a lot of people ask and the reason we historically haven't done videos because of the need to edit stuff, and I'm trying to get away from that.
Speaker 1:So it'll be first. So, all right, awesome man. Yeah, thank you and stay in touch.
Speaker 2:Will do.
Speaker 1:All right, thanks, take care. Registering for the 10th time with Dan's called for more tests and forbids. You have to be familiar with the new online commercial technology at mercury PMTorg you.