The Next Mile in the Journey — Congratulations to SmartHop on their Series A led by USV
Today SmartHop announced the close of a Series A round led by Rebecca Kaden of Union Square Ventures. This represents a tremendous (and well deserved) milestone for a company that is truly transforming the trucking value chain.
We first announced our investment in SmartHop in July and shared the story of how Equal and SmartHop came together. Since then, the company has experienced incredible growth, extended its array of products (offering fuel cards, factoring and leasing to our drivers), established countless partnerships with brokers, and become one of the largest sources of loads in the country. To put this in perspective, SmartHop launched its product last February and has surged to become an emerging leader in the trucking industry in just under a year.
This load database is the core of SmartHop’s platform. Rather than “disrupting” brokers (like many have attempted), we partner with them and provide access to our network. This represents a tremendous service to both drivers and carriers who have traditionally struggled to work together profitably. Integrating with brokers has been historically difficult with many demonstrating reluctance to partner with emerging startups. Guillermo (SmartHop Co-Founder and CEO) and his team, however, are operators native to the industry and have fully embraced these stakeholders and partnered with them to achieve something that many thought was impossible. With that, SmartHop’s load network provides opportunities for drivers to gain access to rates well above what they would achieve in the market, while offering unprecedented efficiencies to brokers. Miguel (SmartHop Co-Founder and CTO) has built a product capable of analyzing and automating load recommendations to ensure drivers not only get the best rates, but also the least amount of dead haul time by predicting future demand for drivers in destination markets. These advantages compound as additional brokers and carriers are added to our network, further enhancing the economics for each side and creating a compelling flywheel for the business.
Core to this mission is finding ways to put technology in the hands of the industry without increasing IT budget. SmartHop has brought disruptive pricing to services like dispatch, fuel cards, factoring and leasing, generating tremendous cost savings for drivers. We’ve seen drivers increase their profits by >60% using SmartHop, all with zero out of pocket expense. Putting more money back in the pockets of our drivers has been the mission of SmartHop since Day One (our motto is: “earn more, do less”) and we’re elated to see such amazing results for this objective so early on.
These drivers are themselves entrepreneurs, many of them living their own version of the American dream, growing their fleet of trucks on our network. As a platform, we’re excited to see these businesses grow on top of our services, enabling the individuals behind these companies to earn and pay livable wages. By creating the tools for these drivers to own and expand their fleets, we see a path toward powering not just thousands of drivers, but millions, in the years to come. Many of these truckers have kept our supply chains intact during the pandemic, delivering the medicine, food and critical supplies necessary to help us weather this storm. We’re honored to play a small part in helping them navigate these times.
For those looking to join a team solving impactful, audacious challenges, please join us. We were in Miami before it was cool ;), openly embrace remote work, and are recruiting for some exciting roles in the company.
Congratulations to Team SmartHop on the next mile of what we’re sure will be an incredible journey.
