What happened?
The U.S. is the world's largest freight forwarding market, with about 100,000 forwarders, of which 70% to 80% are small and medium-sized businesses. However, these businesses had been using old ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems to manage the shipment manifests they handled on their customers' behalf.
- Most of the technology providers in the industry focus on meeting the customized software needs of a few large forwarders, ignoring the small and medium-sized forwarders.
- Taiwanese start-up GoFreight has taken this as its starting point to develop SaaS (software-as-a-service) products that can respond to the needs of niche markets. It has not only gained 1,000 customers in seven years but also has the backing of Allied and Silicon Valley's top-tier venture capitalist, Muker Capital, and last year's Series A round of financing, led by FlexCapital and Headline, raised US$23 million, setting a new record for SaaS in Taiwan. Last year, FlexCapital and Headline raised US$23 million in Series A financing, setting a record for a SaaS start-up in Taiwan.
How did GoFreight's seemingly uninitiated team get favored by customers?
The co-founders of GoFreight, CEO Wayne Chen and COO Yen-Lin Lee, came from the tech industry and are outsiders to the freight forwarding industry. How did they enter the market with no connections and fewer than ten customers in the first year of their business? They have made it through thick and thin with the help of the two main methods and have been adopted by 1,000 freight forwarding companies.
- Quantitative analysis to determine the best customer acquisition channel: The best customer acquisition channel will differ in different company life cycles.
- In the first year of poor performance, Chen Weiyu quantitatively analyzed the three unfamiliar development channels of airmail, telemarketing, and door-to-door interviews, taking into account factors such as turnover rate, investment time, and workforce costs, and finally found that door-to-door interviews, which seemed to be the most costly in the early stage of the business, were, in fact, the most effective channel for acquiring customers. At the beginning of the business, the two spent one year visiting over 1,000 freight forwarding companies in California to open up the market.
- As their popularity grows, the team relies on email and telemarketing to get new customers, and only larger customers are visited in person.
- Keeping an eye on customers' needs: In the company's early days, Chen almost slept in the forwarder's office for three months to discover the customers' pain points. It is virtually GoFreight's corporate motto to "love doing their own business more than their customers do," which has led to the development of features such as shipment tracking and real-time pricing that customers would never have thought of.
- Today, the Customer Success department, one of the largest in the organization, also focuses on collecting customer feedback and optimizing existing software features.
What's is the future?
- GoFreight focuses on the vertical SaaS field, facing a single industry using systems to help them do business. In the future, all kinds of software services freight forwarders require, including accounting and collection, warehouse management, and digital marketing, can be satisfied in GoFreight's one-stop service.
- Even if we don't count 2021 and 2022, when global freight transportation explodes due to the epidemic, GoFreight's customers' revenue will grow more than once on average compared to the past, and gross profit will increase by more than three times.
To find out what kind of service GoFreight offers to help customers solve their problems and expand their business, please read the in-depth Salon Talk between Sunrise Medium and GoFreight's founder, Chen Wei-Yu.
