Ep. #38: Prasad Gollapalli, Chairman and CEO of Qued

I never knew about startup work , but my first job was a startup job . I almost did not take that job , but , looking back , that was the best decision of my life . It changed the way I always think . I don't think in terms of a huge organization , I only think about that startup mindset . So that was my world For you .

On top of that , freight was your world .

My first day was December 26th , I think , of that year . It was my Christmas break , and you know , I sat down next to tim king and heard him make a few calls to carriers and then I tried to do the same thing and it was this you know , back then there weren't a ton of people , it was 30 or 40 people maybe , but it was always something going on .

I mean , like this , the beauty of the startup is how it's like there's always something kind of broken that you just live with and like it's it's . It's a beautiful aspect of it where , like you're just like yeah , we're startup .

You know , the fax machine is a little funky like when we would send rate cons , we had to , like go to the fax machine and there was always something kind of going on there and I just remember that aspect of it and I don't know why there's something comforting about a startup environment where there's always something kind of broken .

I don't know , but I do remember I had this unimaginable confidence in my father and the business they were building . I just remember when I was 18 , so the business was now just two years old .

I don't know that the writing was on the wall yet that this was going to be what it would become , but for me , I had this belief that it was Because I remember when I went to school that year as a freshman and I was just talking to the guys who I'd become friends with and I was like man , you guys should see this company my dad started Like it's going

to be crazy , like they're Coyote Logistics and if you're not in it , you don't know it . Especially 18 years old People have no idea what the hell I was talking about . But there was just this like incredible belief and I don't know why . I think it had to do with the energy of the place and just the feeling Like people were so bought in .

There was so much passion , and passion takes you so far when you have people who are passionate about something , there's no problem we can't really solve . I think , like meaning .

I mean , I'm sure there are some problems we can't solve , problems we can't solve , but in business , like most of the problems that we will tackle , we are capable of solving with enough grit , passion , know-how and technological support . I'm sure , I don't know , is this resonating ?

And to me , a can't do it To everybody believes in him and helps him get out . And to me , a startup is like that . I mean , when you're a founder of a company , the first time you talk about an idea , not everybody believes that this can happen .

I mean , when I started Truckatolls many moons ago , there were 10 million smartphones in the overall country , Not just in the talking space . Overall country , 8 million were BlackBerrys .

I told him I know you probably think I'm crazy talking about all of this , but I truly believe this is how it's going to happen . When you start predicting things like that and one or two things happen , people will buy into it .

That's a fate that they develop right At Trucker2 , I'm going to use that as one of you know long example because I've seen it from start to finish . Unlike all other startups where I have probably joined a little later , my current one is just in the beginning stages . We've done so many things .

As a first , we were the first app in the whole industry not just in our industry , but probably the top 10 , 15 app in the app store that never required you to sign in . It automatically recognized you and I told our team at that time . I said I need you to come up with a unique way to identify this . And the funny thing is just a startup .

You're creating solutions that don't make any sense . Like you said about the printer thing is just a startup , you're creating solutions that don't make any sense , like you said about the printer thing .

Right , you know they used the location of the phone , some IP address , time of the device , whatever the unique key , and as they were building this , I told them in another six months , apple and Google are going to release their building block . We're going to replace that with that , but you know you just have to .

It's like you know the best example I can see is it's like you know you have a bunch of engineers in the plane trying to build the plane and design that plane . While you're flying that and saying I need a little bit more power on the right-hand side , just put a new motor . It's like that . A startup is such a , if you like it .

There is nothing in this world that can come close to that 100% , 100% .

Because imagine for a second you are flying a plane while it's being built in the air , the amount of stress and chaos you would feel sitting there with your hands on the steering wheel , whatever the hell they've got to fly the thing , while you've got engineers back there , you know , banging away making stuff happen .

You'd be terrified , you'd be stressed out of your mind , and that reminds me of the feeling I had for much of the first few years of Molo . So I mean , does that resonate with you ?

Yeah , you're not pausing for a second . You're doing 10 things at the same time and in the middle of the night you know if a customer has a problem . I still have one . In my previous life I had one customer who would call me three or four in the morning . Something breaks up .

they'll call me immediately Because we have our phone system that would bounce off and I'm the last person to get that and they figured out . I'm not going to wait for all of this , I'm going to just call his cell phone number , and that's a good thing and a bad thing , because we know that something's something broken , needs to be fixed .

The bad part is my wife saying Prasad , you got to go into the other room and can't speak while you're sitting in the bed 100% , 100% .

Did I say that right ? Yep , awesome . And before we jump into him and his journey , let's just give a quick word to our sponsors , rapido Solutions Group , founded by Danny Frisco and Roberto Acasa , two guys that I have known for a very long time , worked with and have a ton of trust and confidence in the business they're building

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Whether you're a broker , a carrier , a logistics software company , whatever it may be , these guys can build out teams to support the roles you need , be it customer and carrier , sales and support , back office , admin , technology , services . The team at Rapido . They know logistics , they know people . They've got a great business , so shout out to them .

And with that , let's get this show on the road . All right , sir , let's start somewhere easy . How'd you get into freight ?

I mean , it's just pouring out what you know , what you think , nuggets of wisdom other people have done , and so I'm truly honored to be here . So thank you .

I have to move to Richmond , which I was reluctant . Where were you living ? Northern Virginia , okay , so not far from Richmond a couple of hours , but still I was reluctant . I was like what did I do ? What did I just do ? I got in trucking .

I don't know the space and when I started in trucking I sat through the training class I had to learn from van reefer flatbed . I've started from ground zero . It was , looking back , probably the best decision of my life . You know . I truly got to see how busy freight can be Like I mean that you get into the office .

There's never a down moment , there's something , something happening . And you know we were back then . We were trying to . We were competing with the DAT and truck stop at that time and trying to really own that space , um , or build up the company to .

You know , for an exit was very , very exciting and that constant let's say problem solving constant firefighting was , you know , kept me here and , looking back after a few turns , this has been a great change .

Talk about what that business was a little bit , because I think that many of much of the audience may have no idea what get loaded was you know what you said is right ?

That said , you know , back in internet era , get loaded . And then , of course , truck stop did the same thing .

Create this load matching portals where drivers would especially owner-operators deliver the load , pull their truck in a rest area or a truck stop , open up their laptop or call GetLoad at office and say , hey , I'm in Chicago , I need a load going back to Atlanta , and someone in our call center will log into our portal , search or , if they open up their laptop ,

they can search and then they get the broker's name and phone numbers , call those brokers for those loads and book those loads . It was very chaotic , very chaotic , but it was the best solution back in those days . You know , you sit there and you look at this . My famous example in the training class the first day was my trainer .

She said , okay , let me tell you how a trucker would search this . Say he is looking for a load going from Kissimmee , florida , and she started typing Kissimmee and I said Dana , time out . How do one know how to spell Kissimi ? Because I don't know .

I didn't know , that part of get loaded was a carrier could actually call into your office and say , give , put me a truck in this location , and then your call center would do it for them . You know cause ? I just saw the screen that said , hey , there's a truck in Richmond that wants to go to Chicago .

I assumed that he was sitting at his laptop , but it does kind of speak to how far back we're going into the kind of origination of the load board .

I mean we would get 150,000 , 200,000 loads every day flowing into our system and there were times where our systems could not handle that load because of the complexity Not the loads , but the searches happening . We had about 50,000 carriers back then .

Now it is , if you tell someone 50,000 carriers , they're like okay , yeah , our systems can handle that , but back then it was hard .

I mean , it's a classic example of when things change , right ? I mean PCs to internet game . It's going to level the field to internet came . It's going to level the field so new entrants can come in and really challenge an existing player . Likewise , in 2009 , when I started Trucker Tools , smartphone apps became open to public and that was my cue .

I knew it's going to level field the market for us . A startup can come and really challenge an existing player .

So trucker tools when I started record with them , the ultimate idea is to really do the freight matching , which we did , and but do it using the data because you know , going back every conversation I had with our customers and our team back at GetModified , it all came down to gee .

If we have a computer on the driver and know exactly all his , we could track him . We know where he's going to be before he gets there and we can feed a load rather than him calling us or looking for us . Yeah , proactive that was . You know , in today's world , when you talk about digital freight matching , that is the original digital freight matching idea .

So with that idea , when smartphones became popular , I said , okay , this is my cue , I have an opportunity waiting . I mean , either take this or wait for another change like this in my cue . I have an opportunity waiting . I mean , either take this or wait for another change like this in my life .

So I took the opportunity , started TripAdvisor and the other part , a lot of people . You've been a seasoned guy so you know this . In our industry , over 95% of the freight is moved by the small guys , and if they're the most fragmented , if you can put all of them on one platform , that's it , bingo . No one can do anything from that point onwards .

To you , you can control everything , like , meaning you can really give them the best freight . You know the efficiencies are all driven from that point . So that was my goal with Dropbox , which is basically built a platform where aggregating that long tail of carriers so started with an app that helps them with fuel , then slowly added up .

And it seems like they had two options they could either lower their price to be competitive with you , or buy you and get you out of the market so they can keep charging what they want to charge . Feels like they picked the latter , and DAT is such an interesting business , but we won't say anything more than that and we'll pivot now to trucker tools .

So , from what I understand , dat was acquired . I'm sorry Get DAT was acquired , I'm sorry Get Loaded was acquired . You were a director of product at that point , or product management . Talk to me about the notion of becoming a CEO , of starting a company on your own . I mean , you had only been at Get Loaded in the trucking industry for two-ish years .

I mean , what made you the guy to start the next big , successful business in our space ?

So when the opportunity knocks on or opens up , you have to take it . Two , you're going to make mistakes , no matter what . Right I mean , there's going to be so many mistakes in a small startup , you can't dwell on it , you have to move forward with it . Startups probably provide the biggest opportunity for strategy and that's what I truly like .

I did so in my previous . You know , before all of this , I did my MBA in strategy and entrepreneurship . That's the only time I felt at home . I have two degrees from in engineering , computer science , undergrad and a master's only to know that I'm not an engineer . My dad's an engineer , my brother is an engineer . They're true engineers .

They love engineering side of it . I like to . I'm very comfortable in gray area . So all of that culminated to the fact that I knew there was going to be an opportunity when the smartphones became available . So it was for me . Either you know , take that or I mean . Dit has been very good , very nice to me . They invited me .

I felt like I could be there forever . If you ever meet anyone from DAT , they are lifetime DAT folks Good , I mean , they're nice people , but they also are very transparent . They said well , prasad , don't get excited here , we don't do any innovation . So I mean , those folks are gone now .

So I'm saying this with a grain of salt , but you know , we don't move fast , is what they said . I wanted to move fast and I wanted to do something , so I took a chance . That was a risk too , like , like you said , I haven't been a ceo before , um , but I took a chance .

Take me back as well as you can remember , to 2009 , as you're starting this venture . What was the problem you were going to solve and why was Trucker Tools the right solution to solve it .

So , proactively feeding loads to these small carriers even before they deliver their current load is the way to go , because there's no delay in between and , two , you're getting ducks in line better loads . Other number is if you look at an owner-operator with one truck this was back at GetLoaded truck and you ask him how many loads he moves a month .

If he moves 12 or higher , he's going to make more money . If he moves eight or less , he's losing money . So it's between eight and 12 is their sweet spot . Usually they try to push it to 12 . And my thought I said could I move it to ? Could I add one or two extra loads for a guy like that ? That was as simple as it is right .

Two additional loads for an owner-operator with one truck , himself driving the truck , would change the landscape so much , because we're getting more out of that truck first of all , but we are making him popular Now . I mean today we are seeing the bloodbath right Small carriers leaving Back in 2008, . It was exactly the same situation .

Most of the owner-operators canceled at the same time , so it was a recession and I felt like that was a perfect time to start a company . If you're going to start a company , it has to be a recession .

What are the things that were really important to you that you think contributed to the success of the business and the growth ?

So when I called him , I mean he's the one with the iPhone and I'm not the one with the iPhone . So I said , well , that's good , good reason for me to hire him . So he came on board and managed that . So you also need somebody with amazing sales ability . That's an extremely important thing .

So for a startup , you could start with two people one technology , one business person , sales . So the other person was me . I don't know about my sales ability or anything , but I know I can because , like you said earlier , I had this passion . This is going to happen , no matter what . In my head I figured this out .

If I can get all the small carriers on one platform . We're going to own this and really revolutionize the DFL . With that , we were able to sell better . Most of our customers became my friends , good friends , partners and mentors everything right I mean . Today , everything that I have done and was able to achieve was because of that amazing group of customers .

They carried me on their shoulders for years . You know I don't know what I did in my life to deserve that , but they are my true guardian angels .

What are they seeing elsewhere that they're preferring to what I'm giving them ? Keeping that pulse as the CEO arms you so well to deal with all the other challenges in your business . I mean , I know how to talk to my people if I know what my customers are feeling .

When I talked about giving those speeches oftentimes the content of the speech was a product of a conversation I had had with a shipper before and them telling me about what an exceptional job my team was doing .

Communicating with them became the focal point of the conversation to say , if we communicate with everyone the way we're communicating with this company , we'll be 10 times bigger and that'll allow us to promote 100 more of you and pay out 100 times more commissions and all the things that you want in your life .

So just talk a little bit from your perspective of like those relationships and like how you use them to improve the business and such .

Together we make the decision , but you can't make where the product goes without their input and oftentimes they themselves may not know it . Like if you ask someone five years from now where the their business is going to be , they probably don't know . It's a blank . You know very vague idea Today , tomorrow , next week , next quarter .

They have an idea , so they know what's coming up next quarter . They're going to tell you that . So that means you have a quarter to build that part . So another famous thing I'll share with you is when I got our technology , I told him I want you to build this app , but it doesn't need to work beyond a year . That's what I said .

Try to make it real complex , as opposed to I need it to work for a year to year and a half because new technology is going to come , new business requirements are going to come . So whatever you build , you have to rebuild , rebuild , rebuild .

In a startup world , a lot of things have to be rebuilt , so there's no point in trying to make it perfect , but good enough All the time . It's good enough to do something .

You take , for example , amazon , if you saw their first version back in the 80s- it was a horrible website trying to sell books , but today they're selling everything , not just books at all . So I mean , if they thought about all of this back then , they would never , ever see the daylight .

But they themselves don't know that they're going to be selling all of this . But as customers , we push them to be selling more , and that is what our customers do to us . They'll tell us exactly where to go so you can build , you know .

Going back to our analogy of the plane , they are sitting right next to you in the cockpit of that plane and telling our engineers how the plane should be .

And that's something that I struggle with because I don't know if it's just the way my brain's wired , where I'm always like , well , in three years we're going to need to be able to do this and it's maybe that's a future problem that you deal with then , but especially as I look at today's environment , right , so in my world I'm sitting on a non-compete , I

can't do brokerage , and I've had a lot of people ask me if I'd be willing to start one of these AI companies . And I don't know shit about AI , but I'm going to learn , maybe a little bit . But my point is I'm not the technologist . I wouldn't be the technologist on any team .

I could do the other role , the sales role , and I get why these companies that want to get into the AI space , whether it's , as we talk about , qt or it's the happy robot , fleetworks concept of the AI calls , inbound calls and whatnot . I think it's really interesting .

But the thing I'm worried about is look at how far this technology has advanced in one year . Imagine where it'll be a year from now . Like nothing that we're building today will be what we'll be using in a year .

So that's where I keep getting stuck and I'm like I don't know if I want to commit to that , because you know for one , I don't even understand the technology we'll be using effectively today for the next year . But we're gonna have to build something next year . That's , you know someone's going to new . Come in and you know you get what I'm saying .

You can't draw a play two plays down , like meaning , let's say I'm the quarterback , I got the ball out , we're at 10 yard line , on our side we got 90 yards to go , so you can't plan two plays down . Now , depending on if I could throw the ball 60 yards and get us close to 30 , 30 , 20 yards to the field goal , then the play changes All of a sudden .

We could run , we could do something else . Similarly in a startup , in my viewpoint , technology is like that but also you build a technology to help customers use . So , for example , in our current company , teard , which we , by the way , we try to keep it stealth as far as possible , but we couldn't .

You guys have the integration with my cloud we want to use . We were thinking we're going to get to carriers probably six to eight months down the line . They came in so early . They saw amazing success . All of a sudden we have a bunch of carriers on our platform now booking their , you know , scheduling their appointments .

So now the carriers are using , and they're also telling us there was one carrier who said we use hydraulic trucks and there's this platform you need to connect to so they're basically helping us grow into areas that we would have grown a year and a half ago in our head . Right , but that's happening .

So you know , instead of rolling with it , one might say , well , oh , we are not going to do this for the next year . That doesn't work in a startup . You know , if your customers come in , you've got to roll with it .

Can you walk through internally what that looked like , how you thought about it and then what actual changes you had to make to accommodate ? Because I agree wholeheartedly , go where the customer takes you , right . If they're going to walk you down a path right to the gold at the end of the rainbow , then let them take you there .

So Qt was an interesting idea because often , you know , I spoke to a lot of friends and everybody said Prasad , this is the biggest nagging problem for us . All we're doing is have people manually schedule appointments . Come to know about it . I've learned that over 100 million man hours are spent scheduling appointments in our industry . That's a massive expense .

So it definitely got my attention .

But the real draw for me to Qt I'm going to come back to your question in one second is I spoke to a friend at Coyote and he said Rasa Prasad , this is , I have the same shipper , pickup and delivery , but I know I'm going to get shitty appointments in the middle of the night , so I have to , instead of bidding at $1,000 on that lane , I have to bid at

, let's say , $1,500 , because I know I can't sell that to a carrier , so I can't have people manually trying to . It's a foot race . I need some technology . And that's when I thought well , this is a good problem because it has effect on the shipper side upstream , carrier side downstream .

There's so many efficiencies that can come from it and if you focus on one thing , it can become an exchange .

Or they say Friday midnight we're going to get you these appointments released . How many people skip , you know ? Set the alarm .

We can solve that Exactly and this is to me that has been the cue . So you know , initial roadmap has been we launched this exchange with some large customers , known bridges , and then we go into the carrier side and then there's more value on the shipper side too . Right , so that's how we would expand .

So initially , when we started talking , that was one aspect . But the other aspect was we also don't want it to do manual or semi-automated approach , we want it to completely automate the whole process . Manual or semi-automated approach , we wanted to completely automate the whole process .

So two things we did in our initial discussion our president , tom Currie , real smart guy and I told him he should be one of your guests too . I mean , the guy can talk forever .

His point was people don't trust what they don't see , and he was absolutely right about that . So we wanted to have a semi-automated route , which helped us , because 100% of our customers , when we go live with them , the first thing the appointment schedulers do is they come on our website to see if it's actually doing the job or not .

Of course , that's all it is . I mean literally , that's all it is . I mean literally , that's all it is . I mean they know what it is , but they just want to come and like see . So that was one pivot , and the carrier one that I shared was a big pivot . We're still in our early life , right ? I mean we're about a year or so in our journey .

Give me kind of a higher level view of the cute organization . You're about a year old . You're the ce CEO . Tom Currie is the president . What does the rest of the team look like ? And how many customers do you guys have ? Have you raised money yet ? Are you going to Walk us through some of kind of the high-level stuff ?

One is onboarding a customer working with the customer on how to use the product , on how they use learning and seeing learning where the gaps are . The third one is the support side would fall to them because they can understand where the gaps are .

Support in our industry is something that people think expects , so that we are more but the second part where if a customer tells you where your product doesn't work , nobody likes to hear that . In my viewpoint , that is an amazing thing .

I mean , it is literally like who in the world would tell you test your product 100% and tell you , hey , it breaks here , why don't you fix it right ? Or I'm using your product this way . There are two things that could come after that . Either you tell me Prasad , that's not how you use this product , I learned that .

Or you look at it and say , well , Prasad uses this way . Most of my customers are using my product this way . Why can't I tweak the product to fit the customer ? To me , that later part is such a powerful thing that customer success role feeds right back into your product roadmap . So you can't have a rigid roadmap .

So , going back to my point on , you don't want to build the product completely because the customer success feedback is going to come in .

We didn't build any of of working with that mastery , with my father , and he's got 700 people building technology and I'm kind of on the side helping with some sales stuff .

I'm not in the business like running it with him , but what I have noticed is there's so much value to having a leadership group , a CEO especially , who really understands the business , because it allows them to have these conversations with customers that are so , so valuable to both sides .

Just like you can sit down with whoever it is at Ari Garrison or one of your big customers and they might say , hey , I'm using the product like this , but having someone on your side who understands the business or , in Mastery's case , like my father , who could say I get that you're using it like this , but have you thought about it like this way ?

Or vice versa , where they're educating you but having two sides that are open , honest and willing to listen and hear each other and share perspective is so valuable in the software business , especially in our space , because it just does as you said , especially if you have a roadmap that's not rigid . And I'm curious because this is something I've seen .

Changing a roadmap often is sometimes necessary to support your customers in the best way possible , but what I've learned is that can also be frustrating for the individuals who have to do the actual building and moving and shaking .

So can you talk to me a little bit about that , as someone who's now led multiple organizations with , I'm sure , plenty of engineers of how do you balance the need to support your customers and be flexible and nimble to adjust your roadmap with the desire of engineers to have a very kind of straightforward like hey , I know I'm doing this for the next six months

, this is what I'm building , stop changing shit for me .

You have your product , your overall 10-year quote right , who you want to be right With Qt , we know we want to be the appointment scheduling platform , exchange right , sitting between the shippers , brokers , carriers and just basically building all these bridges and use AI to really improve that .

And someone comes to us and says , well , would you do something different ? Now that would take us away from , like , on this scale , it would bring us down away from our goal , right where we want to be .

The other aspect is we spoke to a customer they are already live with us and he said Prasad , you know we love this , but we don't need the semi-automated route anymore . We want complete automation and , more than that , I want you to tell me what are my best appointments . So he's basically taking us in our direction . So he's asking us to build the AI .

Someone asked us well , prasad , we actually schedule us to build the AI . Someone asked us well , prasad , we actually schedule , which is basically going back into our previous question but on the phone we schedule appointments . We've already built that part , so we're just playing with it , but it's going to add to our roadmap , right .

So when you have things that add to your roadmap towards your direction , you got to take that input right . Otherwise what would happen is you're leaving customer unhappy . One thing . Two , you're opening the door for someone else to come and build that part right , like so we know we are everything appointments .

So if it's a phone-based appointment , yeah , we can handle that If it's an email today . We built that , but when we first started we didn't have email as a channel yet . But we quickly got to it because one of our large customers I have tons of appointments on that , so let them push you in the general sense of where you want to go , but don't them .

You know , someone came to me and said I need you to build a WMS . I said thank you very much for your faith in me , but there is no way I can start that business .

I believe those are the three vehicles by which you can schedule . So it does make sense for you to do all three and they're different . I'm sure they're wildly different in terms of the resources it takes for you to build and all that . Now , wms , it's a different world , completely different world . It ties in .

Appoint appointments are certainly a part of that and I'm sure an appointment system part of a wms in some capacity . But I guess my question is then how do you know when you're straying too far outside of your designated world ?

Like someone might think about this from the perspective of AI , is the world and within the AI world , you have appointments and you have carrier sourcing and you have document retrieval and you have all these other things .

So it's like how do you know what the right world is that you should be living in and when it's a good or bad idea to extend that into another feature ? You know , like some of the other AI stuff , that other not competitors , but other companies are starting .

What is your end result ? And I always remind our team in . By the way , earlier I forgot to mention another person in our team , the head of our technology . He came from Regents Bank , another friend of mine from high school .

And people have been generous and said , well , prasad , I'll invest money , we'll start a company . I said you can't pay me enough to get me in TMS world . You know you have to know what you really like and what you think you can solve . So you have to stay , have to be absolutely focused and disciplined about that .

If you're not disciplined about that , you lose your strategic advantage . And I'm going to jump back into my previous slide .

And in the earlier days of Trucker Trolls we stuck to app-based tracking and we didn't venture into other spaces and that helped us build that driver base that no one could compete with us again because people couldn't get into the app-based tracking at all , and the app gave us two-way communication with the driver and the load and everything .

So you know your strategy in your head , right ? It's like , end of the day , as a CEO or a founder , you are the one playing that game , right ? You're making the play call and you're responsible for everything . So , while you hear a lot of things and somebody might have done this , somebody might have done that , you would have to stick to your limits .

I mean , there is no two ways over . A lot of businesses fail because , I mean , today I see a lot of startups saying we are AI this , we do this , we do that , and I'm thinking you know , how can they sell this if they do 10 things to a customer ? Customer themselves can't remember this company as hell . This is the only thing these guys do better .

You will have a hundred that do appointments competing with you . You will have 100 doing carrier sourcing , inbound call stuff . You will have 100 doing the documents and whatnot , and I just it's going to be a messy field , I guess . A question I have for you , because how many total people are on the Q team today ?

It feels like a lot of it feels like it's not I want to be careful with my words here , because I'm not thinking of the word easy but it feels like it doesn't take a ton of resources to build an AI solution in this space , whether it's for appointments or for inbound calls or whatever .

Maybe it takes someone who knows the business , it takes a couple engineers and that that's kind of it . And it's not to say that's easy . That's not what I'm saying at all . But what I am saying is it does it .

It feels like low barriers to entry and I'm curious like , how does one get staying power and build a defensible solution in a space that's going to have a lot of attention to it and doesn't take a ton of resources to build a solution ?

Like , is there a risk or concern that we get to a place where there's 40 of these companies who are all saying I can do it for five cents a load , because you know , that's just the only way I get the business is if I'm basically inexpensive .

Not having a clear go-to-market strategy gets all market and those startups . I mean I hope they see that before they go bankrupt or go belly up . So you have to start with , like when I told you , we started with the 3PL market and even within the 3PL market and even within the 3PL market we started with the top 100 3PL cell carriers .

So we have a majority of those customers already onboarded today .

But to build a complete solution with a good customer server , I mean success , the overall strategy , everything that's where the expense is going to be . We've raised me and a bunch of my friends . We put money in this . We did a small round . We raised almost double what we wanted to raise , because it's a good way right , I mean good way .

Everybody wanted to put money in . It's a good group of friends . But also the expense comes in when you're trying to build a complete solution as opposed to an entry point . So your point on AI is absolutely dead on .

You can buy a third-party AI software right , and try to build something quickly , but then the moment you have to make it complete and provide it as a professional service , it's going to cost you and you can do that across 10 different things and still float that startup . That's going to hurt them .

I'm curious what , in both the positive and the negative or maybe not even negative , but just like kind of something you didn't expect what's something you've kind of learned in the last year with respect to AI that surprised you ?

Ai works in when you can feed enough data to train the algorithms . Just building the algorithms doesn't solve the problem . And just because AI is so smart , you cannot mimic a human relationship with the AI . So with the audio calls I mean , like you mentioned about the voice calls , right , I mean we have that . It sounds absolutely like a human person .

I mean , I actually thought that was just a test case . Human on the other end . That's how real it was . But having said that , the overall in our freight industry , the human connections are such a powerful thing because you're trusting someone that they'll pick up the load as they say and deliver on time . Now the cost of falling off of that load .

So I'll give you a good example . You give a load to a carrier to pick up the load on Monday morning in Chicago . The carrier , for whatever reason , doesn't want to show up . They got another load the last minute . They can go and move , do other things . Because there are so many brokers out there , so many shippers out there .

The carrier can bone the bridge with you and not worry about that credibility . On the other hand , now you are left with let's imagine your technology company says well , andrew , I'm going to pay you back your monthly fee , which is $100 or $50 . You're like I don't care , I have a load , I need to put it in the store to sell .

And imagine if that's right before your Thanksgiving weekend . You miss that opportunity as a shipper . You're furious , we can . You miss that opportunity as a shipper . You're furious . So the next time you have a load , you're only going to give it to someone you trust will not drop like that .

So the technology can only do so much , can help us be better , but cannot help us build that relationship with the customer . That is the part you know . Imagine you have an AI solution for customer success and on the phone , how do you try to ask a question to a customer about something that they themselves don't know yet ?

You're talking about a product and you'll say well , what happens this way ? Customer about something that they themselves don't know yet in their head . You're talking about a product and you'll say well , what happens this way ? How do you use our product ? Do you think we should build the feature in order to come product or not ?

That whole conversation cannot be a technology doing it with a customer .

I don't think we'll get to a place where a brokerage will be relating to a customer and only using AI to source and execute the load right , because there needs to be a last line of defense that is human , that is orchestrating , like hey , this is a problem , thanksgiving is coming up , we're going to lose this customer if we don't pick up this load in the

next two hours . But that person , like you said , it's not like everything is going to change . You know , if we look at appointments , you said 100 million man hours a year are spent scheduling appointments . Let me ask you this If you do your job right , will there be any hours spent on appointments man hours ?

The shipper needs to release that carrier , things like that . There's going to be humans talking about it . But , more importantly , what the humans will be doing is they're going to analyze our data out of the reports we give them . They're going to analyze our data out of the reports we give them .

Go back to the shippers and say , going back to our original example , and telling the shipper you don't have enough appointments during daytime at this location . I need you to open up if you want me to bid lower rate than this .

The evolution will be from the active executor to the maintenance and maintainer , and I will go from my job is to schedule 50 appointments a day for my five customers to my job is to oversee the product that schedules 50 loads a day and when there are exceptions I step in to accommodate and , in my opinion , if that's done effectively , organizations that once had

200 customer operations , people will only need 20 , 30 , 40 . I don't know that it really matters a ton that we get the number right here , if it's 10% , 15% , 20% , but the point I'm making is it's a fraction , it's a small percent of the total in terms of the human capital organizations will need for things like appointments .

They're not going to get excited . It's almost like brain dead at that point , as opposed to if you can bring them in and say I want you to understand this and understand , have a relationship with the shipper and talk about where our choke points are . Eliminate that choke point . You are the appointment's process manager . Imagine that job would be better for them .

I mean you're respecting them . I mean as a human , you're respecting them better . I mean you're respecting their , I mean as a human , you're respecting them better , right yeah , Today , unfortunately , there is no other way to do this job other than have people manually do it , Yep , and they do an amazing job .

But if you talk to some of these people , they're all going to move into higher up roles . Do a much better value add to us , and you know , if 10 people in your organization are adding more value to your organization , your organization is adding more value to our overall supply chain . So that is in my head .

That is an overall win for all of us 100% , so in five years .

Not just help brokers and carriers , but also help shippers , because I think we need to really go and have a candid conversation with some of these shippers that don't have a good logistics or scheduling systems on their side , helping them schedule their dock operations and really focus on eliminating the detection .

I mean , if we do this job right , eventually the detection should go away or get really minimal . Hence there's going to be more streamlined . You know efficiencies that get out of this . Now , in five years , we want to own the space .

I mean , I told our team and all our team is is fully focused on we don't want any competition , we don't want someone else coming in our space and to do that we have to do a great job . But that's how we . We see ourselves owning it , so competition gets deterred .

Our customers don't feel like they have to change because if we're doing a good job , great job . Why would they leave us ? And that's our focus , and everything else is noise .

If , in three years , five years , whatever it is when I think appointments , I think Q'd and every broker and carrier like appointments are scheduled through queue , that would be a resounding success for the business , and I think that would be a home run billion dollar business Great , and that solves a big problem .

The next iteration of that , though , is kind of what you're alluding to , which is now , once you've got all the data and you've got all the players and all the appointments and all the trucks , how do you optimize , how do you reduce your tension , can you ?

At that point , you're kind of changing the game a little bit , like there's a world where you're going to have to change the way that appointments are scheduled , and not just way , and what I mean by that is not that an operations rep is currently calling and scheduling or sending an email , and now it's AI .

I'm saying the whole process by which a shipper has their load scheduled might need to change . Are you seeing what I'm seeing in terms of there's a next evolution here .

You know that one-day delivery or two-day delivery that Amazon does for all of us , right ? So they're building warehouses , are building these algorithms to really streamline every load that is coming to their facility . They can flag it as hey , this has got a highest priority and I need to come in and go creating these pathways .

We need to plug to them in real time so that , as the loads are moving , we're already working on some of it . So I'm going to be cautious because I don't want our team to be yelling at me for saying more than I should . So in real time we can change a lot of these appointments .

We're going to be doing it , then . The better we understand each other , the better the dance would be .

There's so much opportunity still for innovation coming and the way that technology is advancing I think it's creating even more opportunity . So if you take your appointments hat off for a second , where do you still see the biggest opportunity for innovation ?

We're hearing about a lot of optimization on the whole , the , the bidding process , all of it , the rates , and all even today . Even today , isn't it surprising that we don't have a real-time ticker price for freight ? But think about , this is 2024 .

And back many moons ago , as we spoke about Get Loaded , we used to look at the last 30 days of rates and tell people , hey , the lane going from Chicago to Atlanta , this is the average rate and people use that rate to bid on the Delta quote . And that was common . We are more or less like that still 20 years , 25 years later .

In my viewpoint , I think we need to have a ticker price . I've said this to many friends , including Craig Fuller , who has owner . I told him . I said , craig , we got to have a ticker price . The reason is , I think , at this point of time , what is the rate going from Chicago to Atlanta ?

If I have to pick up the road tomorrow morning , let's say something's got to happen , there is opportunity for that to happen , and I don't want anyone else to work on it other than us . Just a footnote , and we're not getting there yet , but we'll see . Just a footnote , we're not getting it yet , but we'll see .

There are also other areas of inefficiencies on invoicing side , which there are some companies that are addressing Instead of going on this bandwagon of AI .

If people can focus on silos , like like , okay , there's procurement , there's scheduling , there's carrier coverage , carrier vet and carrier coverage , then the feedback as the channels or the silos , there are more solutions to be picked , in my viewpoint , as opposed to we get .

You know , I don't know , for lack of understanding , or is it a formal that we get on these bandwagons of blockchain is going to revolutionize that , our industry . Now , ai is going to take over this , something else is going to take over that and two years later , nothing happens .

That's not a bad thing , but that's the reality of it .

It's clear you've built a great business , and even in the early stages . So I'm excited to follow along and I'm sure our audience as well . So thank you so much . Any parting words , any words of wisdom you want to leave our audience with .

My my two things I wanted to say . One is I want to thank everyone who has supported me all through this journey . This journey , which is easy for me to rave and talk about , wouldn't be possible with numerous people carrying me on their shoulders .

Whether it's my customers amazing group of customers at Trocadil's Get Loaded and now Queued , but also get loaded and now queued Whether it's the investor group , a good friend's group they put money in anything that I'm doing now , which is amazing and a little bit worrisome for me . The third is our team .

It's great to have a team that can walk through the fire . They have done it numerous times . You and I have spoken about this . As a founder , you might have a great dream and you want people to follow that Time and again . That group came and walked through the fire to get us there .

Without these three groups and other friends within the industry , they have just helped me for no good reason . They just helped me because I'm sure they loved something . I'm so grateful to all of these people . I'm so grateful . That gives me one parting advice to anyone who is dreaming in our space .

Don't worry about who you are , whether you have any knowledge in this space or not , or whether your idea might be big or small . It doesn't matter . But if you are brave enough to dream , follow through your dream and be focused . Don't get carried away . Don't get carried away . Be grounded .

This is an industry that has made so many great leaders . They'll carry you . All they ask in return is don't be arrogant and don't be you know . Think that you know everything , because we don't know everything at the end of the day . You know , you've been part of a few startups and you know this . You've been a big success story .

Yet I would think you would say , hey , I don't know some of these parts of supply chain right . So focus is the only way to success . There are no two ways .

And to everyone else , we'll see you next week , thank you . You .