A year ago we announced our investment in KeepTruckin (KT) and today I am excited to congratulate the company on an incremental $50 million led by preeminent late stage investor IVP. The funding couldn’t come at a better time as KeepTruckin is undergoing tremendous hyper-growth, one of the fastest growth rates we’ve ever seen in a SaaS company.
Congratulations to Shoaib and the rest of the KeepTruckin team who have worked tirelessly to achieve this next milestone. One of the best aspects of the venture gig is getting to know portfolio executives and it’s been fantastic to work with Shoaib, Obaid, Ryan, Chuck, Ori, Kush, and John. I’m also eager to welcome Sandy and Roseanne to the board. Their track record of investing in companies like Fleetmatics will be incredibly useful as we continue on our growth curve.
KeepTruckin’s success is evidence in the explosion of vertical software, especially in the face of pundits that had dismissed selling technology into large swathes of the economy, including trucking. We believe that there is huge customer demand for vertically specific modern technology transforming what has been seen as “old-line” industries and the opportinity for the same hyper-growth that KT has seen. In order to identify vertical market leaders early it is important to find teams with market insight, a unique product, and a go-to-market advantage. In the case of KeepTruckin, we have all three in spades.
· Market Insight: Shoaib has invested over a decade of work and thinking to the transportation industry. Those countless hours have accumulated to a point where he has an innate understanding for the customers’ needs, the technological challenges, and keen sense for where the industry trends are heading. Our product roadmap is great balance of continuing to better serve existing customers and products serve the market in years to come. I couldn’t be more excited about where we’re going.
· Unique Product: It has become an assumption to be constantly connected and able to interact with a system of record via a smartphone. Not so in the trucking industry until KeepTruckin. Most truckers either lack connectivity and a system, or have expensive solutions bundling proprietary hardware and software into a licensed-software product. KT’s unique, modern, product-first approach to the industry is unique as demonstrated by the phenomenal reviews in all the major app marketplaces.
· Go-To-Market Advantage: I like to think that insight and product outline and lay the skids for hyper-growth, and a fantastic GTM provides the grease. KeepTruckin built years of goodwill and community love through its popular (and free) logging app. That channel helped launch direct sales with a full and continually refilling pipeline of leads. Furthermore, we made heavy investment in being able to serve and acquire the SMB effectively while the rest of the market historically ignored that segment. Great teams figure out advantages like this to bias the sales process in their favor.
I look forward to what KeepTruckin has in store for 2018 and beyond. If you’re looking for a job, KeepTruckin has tons of open positions and would love to hear from you. And if you have strong insight into a vertical market with a unique product and a GTM market advantage, I’d love to hear from you.