SemiCab Revenue, Valuation & Funding (2024)

[00:00] Hey, folks. My guest today is Ajesh Kapoor. He believes there's a better are better ways to do things. He rejects the status quo and is always looking to learn more so we can continue to improve each day. Numbers are constantly on his mind. Today, he's building semicab.com to make transportation a competitive advantage. Ajesh, are you ready to take us to the top? [00:18] >> Excited to do it, Nathan. [00:20] Okay. So who's paying for semicab right now? Who are your customers? [00:24] >> So customers are large enterprises like Staples and PepsiCo, Colgate, HP, some of the smaller midsize companies that are always looking to move goods in a truckload, full truckload. When you see those large trucks out there, they're moving goods, and they're not doing it very efficiently. So we are building this marketplace to make them much more efficient than they are today. [00:52] So let's talk about the marketplace. How many people that own a truck do you have on your platform? [00:59] >> That's a good question. It's a very fragmented market. [01:04] >> We have an industry that is dominated by these numbers where people talk about bringing in 10,000, 50,000, 100,000, a million trucking companies on the platform. The fact of the matter is US market is dominated by small carriers and owner operators, close to somewhere around 600,000 legal entities that are operating trucks. We try to be very targeted in how we bring in partners into the ecosystem, so we have about 1,200 carriers, but we try to create a [01:39] >> very long term relationship with them, so we are not just addressing the shippers who are paying for transportation, but these guys that we take good care of and build a more predictable revenue stream for them so they are taking advantage of the marketplace. [01:57] And over your entire company lifespan, how many shippers who pay for transportation have paid at least a dollar through your platform? [02:04] >> So we, again, on that side also, we try to bring in a small number of shippers that we want to create a core with, and once we have built the core up to a reasonable size, that's when we start attracting the smaller and mid sized shippers. So when we bring in a large shipper, [02:25] >> this large enterprise, we don't really have a good sense in the market of what kind of numbers they represent. So a large beverage company may spend somewhere around a billion dollars a year just on the truckload part of moving goods. [02:43] No, I get that, Ajesh, but how many do you have that have paid at least a dollar through your full lifetime? [02:48] >> Yeah, we started bringing on customers at the end of twenty twenty, and we have eight customers that we have brought on during this time. [02:57] Okay, got it. So '20 Now, when did you launch? 2020 is when you got your trucker, but when did you launch the business? [03:02] >> We launched the business in 2018. We wanted to build out the platform. Wanted to the first time we were introducing this kind of technology, the predictive optimization technology, so we tested that out over a very, very large dataset before we actually launched and went to the market. [03:19] And help us understand velocity today. Let's just look at January 2022. What's the total project value that went through your platform in those thirty days? [03:27] >> Yeah, so that has been a pretty crazy growth for us. So when we talk about April last year, April 2021, right in the middle of COVID when we are acquiring these customers and moving goods, we started with, let's say, five to 10 loads a week. [03:44] Woah, woah, woah. What's the dollar value of that? [03:46] >> Oh, yeah. So if you annualized it, it would be $400,000 when we look at January that we just finished. [03:57] Oh, what's going on there, YouTube? Good to see you guys. Now imagine this. You love watching these interviews with SaaS founders, but imagine if we took all of the valuation data out from over 2,807 interviews I've done manually. Saves you a lot of time. Well, we've done this, we've built it into the beautiful interface inside of Founderpath. Check this out. I'll show you how you can access this in a second. But you log in, you connect [04:20] your Stripe account, you see your valuation real time, you can see what it changed over the past eighty eight days and even set goals for valuation this year. Now the secret evaluation is there's many different ways to value a SaaS business. So the reason you're gonna see three or four different valuations inside of your Founderpath dashboard, this is all free by the way, is because depending on who's doing the buying of your SaaS company, you're gonna [04:44] get a different valuation. A VC is gonna pay a different valuation, Private equity firm is different. If you're gonna do a minority sale, that's different. And if you sell the whole business, that's a different valuation. You can see all those when I hover over here. Right? So the teal is what a VC would pay. Yellow is what private equity And red is if you sold the whole thing outright. Now what's cool about this is this is [05:06] not built off random data. Again, you guys hear these interviews on YouTube. All these datas are built from real time valuation data points founder share with us on the show. So traction 1,200,000 seed round 3.7 raise. They sold 22% of their business. Go in here and filter by the event. Maybe you only wanna see companies that have sold the whole business. Well, here are a bunch that have been acquired the valuation and the multiple. Maybe you're [05:32] going out right now and you're raising your seed round. We'll go in here and look at all this recent seed deals that went down, what they raised, what valuation they raised at, and what percent that they sold. There's never been a larger dataset of SaaS valuations than what you can get now inside of Founderpath. And we're thrilled to bring it to you. All right. We're gonna go back to the YouTube video here in a second. But [05:54] if you wanna check this tool out, if you wanna jump in and sign up, you can check it out for free to get your valuation at this link. This link, founderpath.com/products/valuations. Or if you go to founderpath.com and hover over products, click on get your valuation here, and go ahead and sign up to give it a whirl. Again, all that valuation data live right inside the platform. I hope to see you there. All right, let's jump back [06:20] into the interview. [06:21] >> We were somewhere in excess of 11,000,000 annualized, right? So a good 25 to 30x growth during this period. [06:31] And how many loads is that through your platform in January 2022 that represents 11,000,000 in project value? [06:36] >> Yeah, about 100 loads a week is what we do. [06:40] So about 400 total. [06:41] >> Yep. [06:42] Okay. So these are expensive, right? If we take 11,000,000 in project value divided by 400 total loads, these are at $27,500 per truck on average, like per per load. [06:53] >> What? 2,700, not 27,000. [06:56] Well, if we take 11,000,000 divided by four [06:58] >> That's the annualized number, Nathan. [07:01] Okay, got it. So again, the question was, just in January, how many did you So you did about a million in January across four That's 100 right. Okay, got it. So yeah, I see what you're saying now. So it's about 2,700. And what's the average use case? Are they shipping from driving from Chicago to New York City or from San Francisco to Washington, DC? [07:21] >> Yeah, there's not a typical load for us. We are moving goods all the way from So Southern California is big, right? All the stuff that is coming in on those ports, it's going across the country. So coming in from Southern Cal into Dallas, into the Northeast, into Chicago, into Atlanta, and then you are moving goods between Northeast and the Midwest. That's a big volume. Everything from between Texas, Atlanta in the Southeast, going up into the Midwest [07:54] >> and the Northeast, those are some of the busier lanes for us. And then we do a little bit of stuff in the Rockies, where, of course, you get into all kinds of squirrelly stuff as the snow starts coming down as heavy and shutting down highways when it does that. [08:09] This is fascinating. Okay, so just to summarize, the marketplace as it today has about 1,200 people that drive trucks on it, and you match them up with shippers who pay for transportation, where you have eight big clients right now. Total right now, your run rate, you know, they did about a million bucks in total project value across those eight shippers in January. Of the 400 loads that were processed, how many truck owners, the 1,200 on your [08:32] platform, facilitated one of those 400 payments or 400 shipments? [08:36] >> So out of the 1,200 that have joined the platform, we have actively used 700 during our lifetime, till this point. [08:44] So what you add actively use means you pay them at least a dollar? [08:48] >> You pay them at least a few thousand dollars, yes. [08:51] Okay, got it. [08:51] >> So, yes. [08:53] So what happened to the other 500? You did all the work to do on the platform, and you haven't been able to get them any work [08:58] >> Yeah, every single time. So there are a whole lot of things that we go through. So we go through a carrier betting period where we want to make sure that the customers are receiving the best quality service that they can. And so you go through that period, you're watching the carriers, and then some of the carriers don't qualify. They join the network, they join the platform, but they don't get through the qualification process that we have [09:20] >> to bring them in and give them a load, right? [09:22] What's the number one reason people don't make it through? What's the actual reason? [09:26] >> There's a whole lot of historical data that we want to go through. We want to make sure that the insurance requirements are met, the safety requirements are met. So we allow the carriers to self register, but if they don't meet the safety and insurance criteria, it's very hard for us to work with them. [09:48] I see, I see. Okay. Let's put all this on a timeline. So you launched in 2018, you're your first customer, it sounds like in 2020. You're scaling out today. Have you bootstrapped this, Ajesh, or have you raised capital? [09:57] >> We have not raised institutional capital till now, so we have raised capital from all kinds of professionals, from the supply chain space, from the technology and finance space, so a whole lot of people who have been very interested and very supportive. [10:13] How much have you raised from those people? [10:15] >> About 5,000,000. [10:17] Okay, and would you consider that like a seed round? [10:21] >> What we did last was a pre seed followed by a bridge round. Now, terminology for the rounds has been changing all the time. So most likely what we will raise next, we are going to call it a series A. [10:33] I see, I see. But all this been on a convertible note paper or has anyone priced the round? [10:38] >> We have done a price round before. [10:40] You have? Okay. So some portion of the 5,000,000 you raised to date, like the last tranche of that was at a priced round, the valuation. [10:47] >> Yeah. After the price round, we again went back to a safe note. [10:51] Why did you okay. Well, let's break that down. So what was the valuation on the priced round that you did, or a range is fine? [10:57] >> So that was below $15,000,000 when we did the priced round in the end of twenty twenty. [11:04] Okay. And how much did you raise on the $15,000,000 valuation? [11:07] >> Was, till that point, we have raised right around 2,100,000, till that point. [11:14] 2,100,000. Okay. So 2,100,000 on notes, and then those all converted at the 15,000,000 valuation. Did you raise more money at 15,000,000, like on top of the 2.1 or just 2.1? [11:26] >> Just the 2.1, including the price round, and then we raised the rest of the 3,000,000 after that on safe notes. [11:33] Why did you go back to a safe note? [11:35] >> It's just when you're trying to do a bridge round, Nathan, it's so much more convenient to go the safe route. You can get it done rather quickly, and you don't really put the onus of valuation again because the market today is where the valuations are pretty nuts, especially in a freight tech kind of marketplace. [11:59] But just to be clear, that 3,000,000, was that this year or it was 2021? [12:02] >> It was end of 'twenty one, beginning of 'twenty two, yes. [12:05] I see. So 3,000,000 c. Now what cap was that node at? [12:09] >> About 35. [12:10] Okay. So your valuation still, like, technically went up. Right? You're just comparing the priced round to a cap. [12:16] >> That's right. [12:17] Interesting. Okay. Tell me more about We haven't talked about how you make money. You've had this great marketplace. On a $2,700 shipment, how much do you make? [12:27] >> Yeah. So we don't approach it as a very basic marketplace because those are a dime a dozen where a load comes in and they basically find a carrier and they try to make money from that. Where we make money is when we bring in all these loads from different people and we are able to utilize the resources that are coming in from the carriers, from the truckers, much more efficiently. So for example, a truck in a [12:54] >> week would drive 2,800 miles and get paid for less than 2,000 miles. We use it for about 2,500 miles. So those 500 additional miles generate, let's say, 1,200 to $1,500 in additional revenue. We take a part of that. So we don't make money unless we are creating those efficiencies in the market. [13:14] So you're taking a percentage from drivers where you've taken unutilized miles driven and made them utilized, more efficient? [13:24] >> Not directly, Nathan. So what we do is we sell transportation services, trucking services to these large companies. We buy trucking services from the carriers, but we use a different model on that side. So we might combine three loads from three different shippers on one side, but then execute it as a round trip. And that's where we create the spread and make money. [13:48] Okay, okay. So in January, how much did you guys make as a business? About a range is fine. [13:55] >> Not going there right now, Nathan. [13:56] Why is that? [13:58] >> It's just when we think about the margins and the EBITDA for the business, we think about it on more of an annualized basis. When you look at the trucking market right now, the trucking market is so up and down all the time, but it has been at a crazy up, at historic highs the last [14:15] Well, let's talk about annualized. What do you think you'll do in 2022 total revenue? [14:20] >> Yeah, we like to target the lower end of 12.5% to 15% on that revenue that we bring in. [14:29] So, got it. So on the million that you processed in January, which right now annualizes about 12,000,000, you're saying you target between a 12 to 15% sort of take rate from that? [14:39] >> That's right. [14:39] I see. I see. Got it. So on a million, you could say maybe you guys took 13% of that or $130,000 last month. [14:47] >> Once we start, yeah. So that depends on how efficiently we execute the freight, so that part of the world fluctuates for us. [14:56] I see. How much will that fluctuate this year? Is it based off seasonality or something else? [15:01] >> It's not just based on seasonality, it's based on when the customer enters, where the efficiencies come in, because every single time a new customer joins our ecosystem, we start expanding the entire footprint, including our current customers, right? So as we go through the expansion, parts of it are less efficient than others. But the idea there is, as you are getting to 50,000,000, 100,000,000, 500,000,000, you are going to stay, become very, very consistent at that 12% to [15:34] >> 15% level. [15:35] And if you're doing sort of a million dollars in volume last month, do you remember what you were doing a year ago so we can calculate growth rate? [15:42] >> Zero. [15:44] Well, you said that you did Let me go back to my notes here. [15:48] >> April 2021. [15:50] April 2020 is when you processed your first five to 10 loads. [15:53] >> Yeah. So, let's say April 2021 is when we did, let's say, $30,000 in loads. [15:59] >> It. I see. Got it. [16:00] So, you've basically It's only February. We're about to be January, February, March, April. So, you've only been in business sort of eleven months, but you've grown from your first month of revenue in April of about $30,000 a month in revenue up to, call it, $100,000, 120 ish now, something like that. [16:14] >> To a million. [16:16] >> Well, 120. Well Oh, sorry. [16:17] You're talking about volume, not your cut. [16:19] >> I'm talking about your cut. So, if you're doing a million in January, your cut was about $120,000 or something like that. [16:25] >> Yeah. So, back then, it would have been, what, $3,000 to $4,000? [16:29] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. That's big growth rate. Small base, obviously, we're playing games with percentages here, but still a good growth rate. I guess I just don't understand. With that kind of growth rate, I just don't understand why you wouldn't go keep things clean and do it on a traditional equity round at like a $30,000,000, $40,000,000, $50,000,000 valuation. Is it really that much faster? Is it worth it to go back to the note? [16:53] >> It's not about [16:56] >> So the note is just a component of the kind of round that you're doing and the timeline that you're doing it. The reason we did the bridge round was we're talking to a lot of investors, but the investor that you want to bring on as a lead investor, that has a very direct implication on where the company is going to go. So we are being extremely selective about who we want to lead that round. It's not [17:19] >> like we're trying to stay away from institutional money. If we want to grow from 10 to 100,000,000, we are going to need institutional money and we are going to go do that round. It's more a question of not running out of runway and just making sure that you are going to get to the point where you have the right investor in. [17:39] How do you make sure that your marketplace has liquidity? So let's say one of these eight shippers pays and needs you to ship shoes from Chicago to Denver, but you can't go buy that inventory for many truckers because some other people are paying more than you. There's a lot of these networks out there. How do you guarantee that placement? [17:59] >> Yeah, it's not just a question of So that was one of the thoughts that we had when we were starting out and we were extremely focused on it. So that's the one big part where we talk about using the carriers more and more and more that we have in the network and not go for 50,000 carriers. That's a big reason. So the carrier loyalty starts building up. And when you have that focus, so in our case, [18:27] >> have been able to maintain a good 99% plus load acceptance rate with every single one of our customers. Industry standard out there is somewhere between 50 to 70%. So that's a big, huge jump for us, right? And we focus on that, [18:46] >> not stay away from, Oh, if we have to pay a little bit more money, we'll pay a little bit more money. But over the long term, the basic concept is if you're doing right by the carrier, the carrier is going to do right by you. [18:57] And how many folks are on your team today full time? [19:00] >> 16 people full time. [19:02] How many engineers? [19:04] >> We have the engineering team of 10 people, including product managers. [19:09] Okay. Okay. Got it. Very interesting. [19:13] It sounds like across eight customers, I mean, it sounds like what they're I mean, eight into a million, what? They're each spending like $150,000 a month, something like that? [19:22] >> Some of them are just starting out, right, Nathan? So the big huge pieces where some of these customers have some customers started in March and April last year. Some started in September last year. Some are just getting going. So the numbers in January don't really reflect the overall volume that we are doing. [19:42] And why are you? We'd already talked about you have to win two sides here. Why are these eight shippers choosing to go with you versus your bigger competitors that maybe can negotiate for lower rates? [19:52] >> Yeah, it's not about rates and it's not about what those guys bring in. We have a fairly unique business model in that we don't go for transactional pricing and dynamic pricing that pretty much everybody in the digital freight space is bringing in. [20:10] Which are who? Name three people in the space. [20:12] >> So, you have, [20:16] >> let's say, Convoy out of Seattle, a great company, Uber Freight. There's two companies called Transfix and Loadsmart out of New York. All of them went after a very different problem in this space, right? They basically said, you have a whole lot of phone calls, very little automation in the brokerage space. You have small carriers and owner operators have a very hard time finding a load, and they basically automated that process, brought those carriers into the mix, [20:50] >> they did a great job of it, right? [20:51] Do you compete with Freightwaves? [20:55] >> We don't compete with Freightwaves, no. [20:56] What about Flock Freight? [20:58] >> Not really, because Flock Freight is also trying to do taking the less than truckload shipments and kind of executing that in a full truckload multi stop model. Very, very different from where we are trying to play. [21:12] But aren't you all competing for the same space on those 600,000 trucking companies in The US? [21:19] >> Not exactly. So where we go is we don't really specifically go and try to find supply from the small to midsize carriers or owner operators. We want to bring in the mid to large carriers because we are trying to create a virtual dedicated fleet in there. So when you are doing that, you're basically finding the capacity from wherever you can find it and get that into the system, And utilize them that utilization, that efficiency, that optimization, [21:53] >> you're not really going to hear about that in this space at all. Nobody talks about optimization in this space when they're trying to approach this problem. [22:00] Very cool. Ajesh, I love what you built. Great story here. In the meantime, let's wrap up here with the famous five. Number one, favorite business book? [22:08] >> Let's see. Peter Drucker, I guess. [22:10] Number two, is there a CEO you're following or stocking? [22:14] >> No, that's a good question. I like what Brad Jacobs did at XPO. [22:22] >> I used to follow Chris Lofgren at Schneider National. [22:27] >> There are so many of them. Carol Tome is a great example at UPS right now. [22:32] Number three, what's your favorite online tool for building the business? [22:36] >> Oh, that's tough one. There's just so many different technologies that we've been able to use that have shortened everything that we are doing right now, anything from all the whole thing that AWS has compiled in there. Then you combine that with all the stuff that is happening on the fintech side, like Brex and RAMP, on the HR side, like Gusto, every one of them has an advantage. Now, when we talk about the marketing side of it, [23:09] >> HubSpot, Webflow, all these things have just made it so much easier to build a business this time around than what we used to have ten, twenty years ago, right? [23:20] Number four, how many hours of sleep do get every night? [23:26] >> That changes. That changes, Nathan. So anywhere from four to eight, depending on [23:33] >> what day it is and what the financial situation looks like. [23:37] And what's your situation? Married, single, kids? [23:40] >> Married with a very beautiful kid. Yes. [23:43] Okay. One kiddo. And how old are you, Ajesh? [23:45] >> I am, oh man, 55. [23:49] >> 55. [23:50] Last question. Something you wish you knew when you were 20. [23:54] >> Oh, if I knew how it takes a village to build a venture like this, if I knew it the first time I was trying to build my startup, it would have made it so much easier, so much easier. [24:05] Guys, semicab.com launched in 2018 is helping eight folks that need to pay truckers to ship their goods. He's helping them spend about a million dollars per month right now to access over 1,200 truckers on his platform. They aim to take somewhere between sort of 12 to 14% of that total million dollar volume. They processed their first truckload back in April last year, just eleven months ago. So really healthy growth rate. They raised their last equity round at 2,100,000 [24:31] at a 15,000,000 valuation, and then just raised this year or late last year, this year, 3,000,000, call it a seed round back on a convertible note at a 35,000,000 cap as we look to keep scaling up past 16 people. We'll see what happens. Ajesh, thanks for taking us to the top. [24:45] >> Thank you, Nathan. Thank you for having me. [24:49] One more thing before you go. We have a brand new show every Thursday at 1PM Central. It's called Shark Tank for SaaS. We call it deal or bust. One founder comes on, three hungry buyers, they try and do a deal live and the founder shares back end dashboards, their expenses, their revenue, ARPU CAC, LTV, you name it, they share it and the buyers try and make a deal live. It is fun to watch every Thursday, 1PM [25:14] Central. Additionally, remember these recorded founder interviews go live. We release them here on YouTube every day at 2PM Central. 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Feel free to let me know what you thought about this episode and if you enjoyed it, click the thumbs up. We get a lot of haters that are mad at how aggressive I am on these shows, but I do it so that we can all learn. We have to counter those people. We [26:17] got to push them away. Click the thumbs up below to counter them and know that I appreciate your guys'support. All right. I'll be in the comments. See you.