Why We Invested In Loadsmart’s $90M Series C: Sune Stilling of Maersk

Loadsmart announced a $90 million round in mid-November led by BlackRock, Inc.’s managed funds and included prominent strategic investors from the transportation space such as TFI International Inc. (NYSE and TSX: TFII), a North American leader in the transportation and logistics industry, and Maersk, the world’s leading ocean carrier and a Loadsmart investor since Series A.

The two questions you receive more than any others when you raise $90M are: why did they invest and what are you going to do with the money?

Our investors speak for themselves so we thought we’d let them do just that. We talked to Sune Stilling, Head of Growth at Maersk, Richard Perry, Founder at Perry Capital, William Abecassis, Head of Innovation Capital at Blackrock, and Andy Boyd, Founder at Bramalea Partners to discuss why they participated in the round and what they’re most excited to see Loadsmart accomplish with their investment.

Sune Stilling, Head of Growth at Maersk

Aaron: What do you look for in a company when you invest. What are those one or two things a company must have in order to move on an investment?

Sune: A lot of companies out there on the surface look extremely tech forward, but they actually haven’t solved the fundamental industry problems. They don’t drive efficiencies, they don’t drive scale, they don’t drive customer satisfaction. Essentially it’s a pretty web page, but with all the same problems as the incumbent players

We want to invest in companies and in people that are addressing real problems. We don’t want to invest in problems looking for solutions. Loadsmart addresses a real problem and also actually sustainably addresses it and makes some of the friction in the industry go away.

But one of the things we really really liked about Loadsmart back then and still like is Loadsmart is playing the long game. I think again there are a lot of companies in freight tech or in the broader log tech industry that are taking VC money or taking venture capital and using that to subsidize customers. And again anyone can deliver growth that way.

Aaron: What does the world or the supply chain look like when Loadsmart is able to maximize the investment we’ve received from our strategic partners?

Sune: The company is growing, it’s growing rapidly, but it’s growing profitability. And this has been achieved through a deliberate approach over the last five years. The way that Ricardo spoke about this when I first met him, he spoke about wiring up the pipes. First you wire up the demand side then you wire up the supply side and once you’ve actually done that you can more or less scale into infinity, right?

Learn More About Our Series C

Our announcement was covered in the Wall Street Journal, FreightWaves, TechCrunch, and VentureBeat, among others.

Loadsmart’s suite of investors now includes the largest ocean carrier in the world, the largest port terminal operator in the U.S. and one of the largest transportation and logistics companies in North America. The proceeds of the Series C round will allow Loadsmart to better serve shippers through doubling down on the tools to deliver excellent operational performance, as well as an expansion of value-added services like mode optimization, price transparency and data insights on supply chain optimization opportunities.