Missed part 1? Click here!

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Matt Kurman is the Director of Growth Programs at Convoy, a digital freight network transporting the world with endless capacity and zero waste (akin to “the Uber of freight”), as 1 of the 1st 15.

Which makes sense, given Matt formerly came from Uber , where he cut his teeth in the high octane world of marketplace startups. At Uber Matt was part of the hearty Ops team, the “beating heart” of Uber Seattle.

Back to Convoy! Over the course of 8 years, Matt went from founding member, to Supply-side expert in physical marketplaces, has been a diehard evangelist of the company, while coming from the performance heavy world of college basketball where he was a “1000 point scorer”.

This conversation was…full throttle. Very entertaining! It’s loaded with gems of amazing stories of marketplace scale & challenges; Matt brings the ruckus and energy of an athlete to a marketplace, we love it.

We dive deep into…Taking the “road less traveled” (and what that meant for Matt), the “dance” of building hard-earned trust & respect of trucking companies, 6 key principles of ops for a physical startup marketplace, breakthroughs in acquiring Supply & operating in a “Demand-lead” market, and Convoy’s ingenious flywheel that just KEEPS GIVIN’!

This episode is particularly valuable for any founder, operator, or marketer who’s involved in a PHYSICAL marketplace and needs to know the nitty gritty of a proven blueprint for scale. Booby traps are called out; you’ll definitely want to listen to this one.

BON APPETIT!

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Show Notes

• What’s your world like today? How did the pandemic affect the trucking industry? [1:59]
• The benefits of being a marketplace (vs a traditional carrier vs shipper biz model) [6:53]
• Did y’all have to worry about the chicken & egg problem? How did you think about it? [8:43]
• Was there an opportunity to subsidize the marketplace? [11:47]
• How would you get more customers? Brands that need shipments (shippers)… [15:32]
• Is there any paid marketing? [18:10]
• Is there ever marketing to acquire BOTH sides of the marketplace? [18:40]
• What’s surprisingly challenging about acquiring carriers or shippers? [20:14]
• Carriers will get into a specific kind of load they want to take? 3 types of carriers [21:16]
• An example of creating the perfect load for a carrier [23:36]
• Dig Convoy figure out a flywheel? [25:25]
• One of the hardest things to prove out as an “Ops Guy” is efficiency [27:30]
• Rapid mayhem questions! [28:47]
• Where can we find you? [37:34]

Links from Episode

• Connect with Matt: LinkedIn |Twitter | Email
• Convoy
• What capacity is (in trucking)
• What contract rates are (in trucking)
• C.H. Robinson
• Coyote
• What a drop trailer is
• What is a carrier vs shipper (in trucking)
• What a landed cost is
• Unilever
• Cargomatic
• Transfix.io
• Dolly
• Luxe (on-demand valet service)
• Hello Alfred
• Fin (virtual assistance)
• Josephine
• Shef
• Emntr
• Pitch Matt for Angel capital

What’s your favorite marketplace that failed? Comment below 🙏🏽