[GOOGLE INTRO MUSIC]
LIDIA YAN: Thank you.
So before I start
my spiel I would
love to ask a few questions
just to break the ice.
So when was the last time you
got up at 2:00 to go to work.
All right.
None of you.
When was the last
time you got scolded
because you're late for work?
I don't think it exists
in Google, right?
Then when was the
last time you worked
through Christmas Eve, Christmas
day, New Year's Eve, New Year's
Day?
None of you.
And when was the last time
you drove over 8 hours?
How did that feel?
It sucks.
Right.
And have you tried parking
at an emergency zone before?
All right.
We have all the
law-abiding citizens here.
And when was the last time you
drove through snow and wind?
I did it once.
When was that?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
LIDIA YAN: Yeah.
I remember when I went to
Vegas I drove through the rain.
And I thought I would die.
And I would never
want to do it again.
But unfortunately,
all of the above,
which we don't have experience
with most of the time,
is our truck drivers' life.
My name's Lydia Yan, CEO and
co-founder of NEXT Trucking.
We call ourselves the first
trucker central marketplace
where we connect shippers
with small trucking
companies, owner/operator,
or small fleets.
We are actually a
platform that connect
the carriers with
their preferred loads
according to their
own availabilities
so big drivers can drive
their preferred loads.
And we started the
company in October 2015.
Three years old.
Grew the revenue
100% year over year.
And this year we're
looking at 3x our revenue.
We are a venture-backed
company by venture firms,
including Sequoia
Capital, Brookfield,
and it will raise the total
of $125 million as of today.
So a lot of people thought
trucking is just moving goods.
But actually trucking
is a huge industry.
And 70% of freight in the US is
actually moved on the trucks.
And the trucking industry
has five large segments--
full truck load, less
than a truck load,
drayage is moving the
container from the port
to a local warehouse,
and intermodal
is putting the container on
the rail in a small parcel.
So we focus on two segments.
One is pulling the
container from the port
to local warehouse,
and the second
is moving the goods
from the local warehouse
to distribution centers like
Amazon, Walmart, Target, et
cetera.
The industry is huge,
but extremely fragmented.
90% of the trucking
companies-- small ones--
most of them have
less than 6 trucks.
Top 50 trucking
companies only accounts
for 16% of the market share.
The largest trucking company
only owns 12,000 trucks
and is a $9 billion
dollar public company.
We have two huge
problems in the industry.
One is lack of transparency
and no technology.
It's an antiquated industry.
Drivers rely on brokers
to find them loads.
We have phone calls,
text messages, emails,
sometimes even fax.
It's ridiculous.
I know that.
And a lot of back and
forth negotiations.
Drivers want certain loads
because they're human beings.
And shipper wants certain
lanes to be covered.
And they wanted to
come to an agreement.
It's a lot-- involves
a lot of phone calls.
So second is our industry's
number one problem.
It's trucker shortage.
Our industry's lack of at
least 100,000 truck drivers.
Turnover rate 97%, which means
every single trucking company
needs to change their
whole fleet once a year.
Nobody wants to
be a truck driver.
It's a tough lifestyle.
Imagine all the bullet
points before that.
You don't want that.
And the turnover-- that
creates a turnover rate.
And also, drivers don't
get paid that well.
Average truck driver make
about $45,000 a year.
Super tough lifestyle.
And another thing that
really caused a turn
in the truck drivers
is really what
we call forced dispatching.
I live in LA.
I took a load to Arizona.
I wanted to go home.
I call all my brokers
looking for a backhaul.
People give me either loads
to New York or somewhere else.
Nobody can bring me home.
So as a truck driver I
only have two options.
One, I bobtail home.
Basically I haul
an empty trailer.
I'll lose money.
Or I go to another state.
I might need to celebrate
my daughter's birthday.
But too bad.
I cannot find a backhaul.
So that's how we
created NEXT trucking,
the first trucker-centric
marketplace where
we design a solution
really for truck drivers.
And we allow them to
connect with shippers.
For the shipper site,
we allow shippers
to access to a large massive
database of virtual fleet
in Southern California.
We're actually different
from a lot of tech startups
that are trying to
spread the word.
What we're trying
to do is really
we call building the lanes.
It's a marketplace.
You wanted to make sure
your supply meets demand.
And it's a very
fragmented market.
So what we did is we started
with Southern California.
We viewed a lot of
local capacities.
And we built lanes, which
means we bring trucks
from Southern California
to northern California
to Arizona, Texas, and Nevada.
So those are the
callings we viewed.
And also we allow shippers to
track and trace the drivers
real time.
Google Map is so
advanced, but too bad.
Shippers never know
where the driver is.
Even till today,
shippers call broker.
Broker call trucker and ask
for the trucker's location,
then communicate
back to the shipper.
Tons of back and
forth negotiations
and the communication.
Sometimes drivers may lie.
Brokers may lie.
Right?
So there's really no
transparency in it.
And also we provide our shippers
real time proof of delivery.
It's a little piece of paper
with driver's signature
and receiver's
signature on it proving
that the load is delivered.
But in the past, or even today,
brokers need to call driver,
driver bring that piece of paper
back to the broker's office,
getting the payment.
And the broker scan that piece
of paper and send to shipper.
Then they collect the money.
Shipper will collect
money from the buyers.
But the whole process
takes two to four weeks,
which means as a shipper, my
merchandise got delivered.
I cannot even bill my
buyer after four weeks.
Huge cash flow issues
for a lot of shippers.
So with our solution
everything is online.
Everything is digitalized.
So shippers can bill
the buyers the moment
the loads get delivered.
And of course, we provide
EDI and API solution.
Of course, a lot--
I remember when I was
pitching Sequoia Capital.
I say, we're EDI and API ready.
They were like, what is EDI?
I remember one of
the "senior" partners
said, oh, that was
technology from 20 years ago.
We actually invested in
one of those companies.
But too bad.
We still use this in
trucking industry today.
So from the carriers side
we provide predictive load
offering capability.
So basically we study
drivers' behavior,
their own preferences,
their availabilities,
so we can predict
the kind of loads
that we want to give
to the shippers.
So they don't need to call.
They don't need to negotiate.
Whatever we give to
them, they'll accept.
So actually we reduce
the time that they
spend on negotiating
with traditional brokers.
On top of that, we provide
field events, QuickPay,
and offer a very lightweight
web-based fleet management
software.
And of course, on
top of that, we
have walkie talkies on the app.
They can communicate
with other drivers,
really trying to
create a community
feeling for our drivers.
And a difference from other
tech startups, as I mentioned,
we are port-focused.
We're original focus.
LA is the largest part
of the whole country.
40% of all merchandises in
this country are imported.
And 30% of them come into
LA and Long Beach port.
LA represent 15--
I'm sorry, this year 17 TEUs.
So TEU is 20 equivalent unit.
So it's really a measure.
So we measure how many
containers are coming in.
So average container
is about 40-footer.
So 20 is like half a container.
So we're looking at about
8.5 million containers
coming into this port.
And in LA alone it's $14
billion shipping business.
So we don't need to even go out
to be a multi-billion dollar
company here.
We create this really
program last year.
We call it a different
kind of drayage.
So I'm not going to go
into the details of this.
But with this
solution it's actually
a combination of our virtual
fleet, asset, and marketplace,
and allow us to inject
additional capacity
to drayage and increase
the turns of trucks
in the terminals.
So for our drayage relay
drivers, they on average
make 20% more money.
Not necessarily
we pay them more.
But they are more
efficient, because right now
40% of capacity is wasted.
And our goal and
ambition is really
to go to every
single port in the US
and really give the best
solution to the port
to reduce the congestion
at the terminals,
to bring in freight
a lot faster,
and make sure the
merchandise moves a lot
faster, shippers will
increase the cash flow.
And why we do this
And do what we do?
So a lot of people want
to start up a company
because they see the problems.
But a lot of them
start a company
because they saw the buzz
word, like blockchain, like AI.
People just want to apply
technology in something.
But we are doing this
is really for a cause.
So this is a real story.
Kevin Luke is one of
our owner-operators.
I wanted to give you a little
bit of background of him.
He had a little small
business a couple years ago.
It's a tax business.
And he failed miserably.
And he actually
filed bankruptcy.
He and his wife
live on the street.
So he worked for a trucking
company going to the terminal
every single day.
He really worked
hard to save up.
So the moment he saved
up a little money
to be able to pay for the
down payment for a truck,
he bought his first truck.
He wanted to be an entrepreneur.
So he became owner-operator.
He went to the terminal
every single day.
He worked so many hours a day.
But still he could
barely survive.
He found us last year.
And the reason why we
found out about this story
is he came to our office for
the Mobile 2.0 focus group.
And he shared his
personal story.
And he broke down
during the focus group.
I wanted to share
this video with you.
[VIDEO PLAYBACK]
- I got into trucking.
My grandfather was
dying from cancer.
And he kind of passed
the torch to me.
When I was homeless it
was the toughest thing
I ever could have been through.
I was actually sleeping in a
guy's truck I was driving--
me and my wife.
So she used to have
to wait till I got off
18 hours to get in bed.
But you push through something
like that, what can stop you?
Working for NEXT changed
my life dramatically as far
as giving me a lot of time back
to spend time with the family,
doubled my income,
allowing me to grow
my business to another level
faster than what I expected.
[END PLAYBACK]
LIDIA YAN: So I
always told my team,
because of stories like
this, it's emotional.
It's beautiful.
And we're not just
building a mobile app.
We're changing people's life.
It's bigger than what
we thought it is.
And also this kept us going.
And it kept us moving forward
because we're literally
changing truck drivers' life.
And a lot of people
asked me Lidia, why now?
Why didn't you come up with
this solution 10 years ago?
Trucking never change
in past centuries.
True.
Trucking never changed.
It was like that in
the past 24 years.
But logistics was not that
important 10 years ago.
I remember 10 years ago
because my husband has
been logistics for a long time.
And I was actually
talking to some investors
who wanted to raise some
money for his small logistics
company.
Nobody wanted to talk
to us 10 years ago,
because logistics
was not sexy enough.
It's not tech enough.
It's not cool enough.
But 10 years ago international
trading companies
had thick margins.
So logistic cost is really
a fraction of their margin.
But it was the
growth of e-commerce
and the transparency
of the world.
Now it becomes very,
very transparent.
So vendors-- the margin
actually decreased dramatically
while logistics costs
increased dramatically.
Right now logistic
costs account for 10%
of an average vendor's margin.
So it become very,
very important.
So now all of a
sudden everyone's
looking into
logistics to see how
we can be more efficient,
how we can save money there.
That's why in the past three
years, millions of dollars
got poured into logistics space.
And according to some
news, it estimates
that US companies is going to
spend more than $2.5 billion
in disruptive
logistics and supply
chain technology by 2022.
And overall, supply chain
logistics tech spending
will rise to $87 billion.
So everyone's trying
to create a solution
to make the freight
shipping painless.
And also there's a
fundamental issue
with the industry is this
imbalance between supply
and demand.
We have a lot of
freight to move.
I know how many of you purchase
on Amazon every single month?
Right?
But nowadays but we don't
have enough truck drivers.
Our truck drivers are
not efficient enough.
But they are the
foundation of our economy.
So the goal is really to attract
capacity back to the industry.
Our average truck
drivers age is over 50.
So after 10 years,
what do we do?
Do we have enough trucks?
How can we move the goods?
So that's the problem
that companies
like us move freight convoy.
Everyone's trying to resolve the
problem from different angles.
So people talk about future.
What are we seeing
in the future?
We believe companies
like us will
replace the traditional
brokerage technology
platform to really connect
the shippers with carriers
more efficiently.
And other than that, we're
looking at two players,
really, in the trucking space.
One is clean trucks,
because carbon emission
is a really big problems in
the especially for the drayage
companies.
And all the ports really
require clean trucks.
So clean trucking companies
like Tesla, Thor, BYD in China,
and also hydrogen
companies like Nikola,
they will be playing major
roles in local drayage.
Autonomous is
really getting big.
And who have a Tesla here?
AUDIENCE: [INAUDIBLE]
LIDIA YAN: All right.
Who knows Waymo?
Yes.
So this is really the future.
And startups like
TuSimple, Starsky, Embark,
and Google's Waymo,
Baidu, Paccar.
Everyone's really looking
to autonomous trucks,
because driving is really a
painful experience for truck
drivers, especially
for long haul drivers.
Traditional truck manufacturers
like Volvo, Toyota, BMW,
Volkswagen, I know Mercedes have
the most expensive autonomous
trucks.
Ford, everyone is
looking into the space.
So this is what we think that
will happen in five years.
Not 10 years.
Five years.
So for local trucks we will see
a lot of electronic or hydrogen
trucks to really create
low emission transportation
methods.
So it's really from the
local warehouse to a yard,
then from a yard then to
out-of-state warehouse it will
go on an autonomous truck,
because it can really
eliminate the burden for the
driver's driving long hours.
And it allow drivers to
really only manage exceptions.
Then when the loads arrive
at the local city, which
is the destination, we will
have another local truck
that pick up the
loads from the yard,
then move to local warehouse.
I predict it will
happen in five years.
And it might be
shorter than we expect.
All right.
So my name's Lidia.
And I was born in
Shanghai, China.
So I'm a pure immigrant.
I was the only child, same
as the most people that
were born after 1978.
So I do have some
single child symptoms.
I'm very selfish.
But the best thing
is I was really
the center of the
universe in my family
and got the best education,
because education is very
important to Chinese families.
I went to a school called
Shanghai Foreign Language
School where I met my first
American teacher, who actually
inspired me to come
to this country
to pursue my master's degree.
Because I love the freedom
that she brought to us,
she brought the best to classes.
So after graduating
from college in China
I applied for a master's
degree in the US.
I applied for
several universities
and got accepted
by most of them.
I chose to go to UVA
because of the ranking.
I really have no idea
what the map looks like.
And also, UVA actually gave me a
teaching assistant scholarship.
Back then it was very
hard for a Chinese citizen
to come to this country
to study, especially
when you don't have scholarship.
So I had to get scholarship.
So I applied for
Italian literature.
I did study Italian.
And I got Italian literature
teaching assistant scholarship,
which means I had to teach
80 students Italian, which
is pretty weird for a Chinese
to teaching Americans Italian.
But it happened to me.
But I really appreciated
my two semesters at UVA
because I actually left
after two semesters
because I know that
I wouldn't want
to be a professor as a career.
But I really got
experience as coaching.
I really got my
coaching skills there.
And I was not afraid of
standing on the stage
and speak to the people because
I got 80 students down there,
and asked me questions
all the time.
And I was less nervous,
a lot more brave,
and I dared to raise my
hand and ask questions.
I really appreciate that.
That's what I learned from UVA.
And after then I
transferred to USC,
pursued my master's degree
in communications management.
Because I wanted
to be a journalist.
But obviously it was very hard.
And my English wasn't even
good enough back then.
Even nowadays it's
not the best English.
Then after graduation,
obviously, I
couldn't find a job
as a journalist.
So I found a job at an ad
agency as an account executive.
So my job was really
talk to a lot of clients
and negotiate contract.
I actually practiced
my negotiation skills
for my first job back then.
And who's not good
at negotiations here?
All right.
If you're not very good
at it, I recommend a book.
It's called "Never Split the
Difference" by Chris Voss.
He was actually a former
FBI negotiator for hostage.
And this book was actually
introduced by my Sequoia
partner, Omar Hamoui.
He was the founder of AdMob.
He gave me the book,
then I read it.
I was inspired.
And he regretted it, because
I negotiated with him.
But yeah.
If you have an interest,
you can read this.
It's actually a very
interesting book.
And that's available at
Amazon and Audio as well.
And after that, I
started-- because I always
wanted to be an entrepreneur.
I started a few small companies.
I failed at all of them,
and failed miserably.
The one memorable
one was the one
I started in China called 9luxe.
It's a flash sale website.
Very similar to Gilt,
because I was really
inspired by the Gilt. Gilt
was really big back then.
So I went there really
bravely and abroad,
borrowed the money
from my family,
started this little
company with five people.
And then my margin was 75%.
I was selling US merchandise.
I was the first one who brought
Juicy Couture back to China.
And the company was
profitable after six months.
I was so happy.
But I forgot one thing.
China is competitive.
After a few months, hundreds
of flash sale websites came up.
Everybody raised tons of money.
Nobody wanted to make any money.
I got squeezed out.
Just six months later
I got flushed out.
So lesson learned
there is two things--
speed is the only
competitive advantage.
No matter how good
your technology is,
you need to move fast.
No matter how good your team
is, you need to move fast.
Second, you need to learn
if you wanted to be in tech,
you need to make sure
your company has money.
Fundraising is probably
a virtue for a founder.
So learning how to raise
money is important.
So here comes the
origin and inspirations
from NEXT Trucking.
It's really from
two stories I had.
Because of my background I
wanted to be a journalist,
right?
I never was interested
in logistics.
So unsexy.
It's like old men and big
guys and like, 180 pounds
or 200 pounds.
So it's very boring to me.
But my husband has been
in logistics for 15 years.
So the other day I
went to his office.
He actually complained
every single day.
He's like, I hate logistics.
Like, why are you still in it?
But I hate it.
So I went to his office.
It was chaotic.
Everyone's fighting.
The drivers were fighting.
The dispatchers were fighting.
I remember sitting
next to a dispatcher.
He spent two hours
trying to cover one load.
He pick up the phone,
call five drivers trying
to find the cheapest one.
He found the cheapest one.
He gave the load to him.
He thought, I probably can
find another cheaper one.
So he called two more.
Unfortunately, he couldn't
find a cheaper one.
Went back to the other one, and
the driver dropped the load.
So he had to do all
over again the spiel
and trying to lock
another driver.
Two hours for one load.
Extremely inefficient.
I found it pretty amazing.
And the second story
is, we were actually
driving on the freeway
the other night
after a party, me
and my husband.
So that was at midnight.
So we saw a big rig parking
in the emergency zone.
So I was like, I asked my
husband, is he broken down?
Why is he parking there?
He's going to get a ticket.
So my husband was
like, he probably
doesn't want to pay $25
truck stop parking fee.
I was shocked.
Those guys work day and night.
They make so little.
And they have to risk their
life by parking in an emergency
zone trying to save 25 bucks.
So that really inspired me.
I wanted to do
something for them,
because I see those guys
almost every single day.
They work hard.
They are humble people.
They're probably not the
most sophisticated people,
but they deserve more.
So that's where we come up with
inspirations just to help them.
Then we started to
understand market
and trying to identify
where the root causes.
So here come the ideation.
That's how my process was,
just for you in reference.
I interviewed 100 truck
drivers before I came up
with this idea.
And I understood
their pain point.
They shared their ideas with me.
I built my first
MVP in three months.
And it didn't work.
When we launched the
app in October 2015,
I remember we had 30 users.
And our idea was
like, OK why don't we
ask drivers to
dictate what they want
so they can post their truck.
So we actually create this post
a truck function on the app.
But too bad.
Nobody posted the truck.
Everyone download the
app asking for loads,
because their behavior
is, what do you have?
Let me choose.
So we immediately
changed the idea.
We switched the
gear and say, OK.
Why don't we do this?
Let's post the loads
and let them pick.
And also we need to be
really original focus.
Why?
Because it's such a huge market.
If I onboard
drivers in New York,
I don't have any loads for
them, they're going to churn.
And if I onboard
shippers, to on to ship
on the lanes I don't have
drivers, my shipper will churn.
So then we actually scale
down to really building lanes.
Southern California only.
Let's onboard Southern
California home-based drivers.
Their behavior is very simple.
Either I'm local, I
go out, I come back.
So when we pitch shippers
we do the exact same thing.
We're very good
with those lanes.
We have a lot of drivers.
Give those to us.
That's how we really
create the matching
and really kept the
marketplace going.
So that's how we evolved--
tested idea, learn
from our customers.
So a lot of people ask me, it's
like, Lidia, your background
is pretty weak.
Of course, look at this.
It's the worst the package
for a startup founder, right?
I'm an immigrant.
I'm a woman in trucking.
And I didn't
graduate from Google.
I didn't go to Stanford.
So pretty-- it's like
I call this beautifully
irrelevant to Silicon Valley.
So it actually took me four
months to raise my serious egg,
because nobody believed in me.
Like a lot of VCs asked me,
Lidia, do you drive a truck?
I was like, too bad.
I'm too short for that.
But that's how I started.
And I think there's something
in me that kept me going.
And I wanted to share
it with you if you
decide to be a founder one day.
It's some strengths I have.
If you're an average
founder like me-- of course,
you're all graduate--
you are all from Google.
So you do have the one
element that Silicon Valley
is looking for.
So one trait I think
I'm really good at
is I do have self-awareness.
I know my weaknesses.
I know what I'm not good at.
So that's why I wanted
to surround myself
with the people who have
the qualities I don't have.
So I know I'm not a coder.
And I'm not a good
people manager.
And I'm probably not good
at communicating ideas.
So I actually really
surrounded myself
and brought in the team who
were good in those areas, who
can deliver the message
better for me, who can really
build an awesome product.
And of course, I
sell all the time.
Not only to my customers, I
sell to the employees as well.
And I'm very scrappy.
At the very beginning we
worked on folding tables.
I don't know.
People always talk of a garage.
We're even worse.
We don't even have a garage.
We have folding tables.
I remember one
employee, actually,
one of my early
employee come in.
He actually worked on the
folding table the first day.
And the second we
actually took it away
because we have one more person.
So he actually, he
worked on his lap.
So we were very scrappy.
But we shared one vision.
And we really wanted to
change the truck drivers'
life fundamentally.
So it's important to bring
the people that share
the vision, who share
the mentality, who
are equally scrappy as
you at the very beginning.
And be patient.
I was very patient.
We made a lot of mistakes,
but I never gave up.
Even when at the very
difficult time in I
think it's the end of 2016
when I was raising series A.
We did $11 million first year.
For tech startup
it's huge already.
I think we did a great job.
I was very confident
when I walked out
and I went to Silicon
Valley investors.
I got turned down
by over 50 investors
in literally a few weeks.
It was very disappointing to me.
And I think after 50
pitches you actually polish
the pitch a little bit better.
And your skin grew a
little bit thicker.
So I didn't give up,
because at the end of day
you probably only need one yes.
So at the end of 2016
we closed our series A
with a Chinese investor
called China Equity Group.
We raised $5 million.
Very small money.
And then we kept growing.
Everybody wore multiple hats.
We worked tirelessly,
extremely hard.
I remember during the peak
seasons everyone works
over 12 hours a day.
And then we got really a lot of
tractions from Silicon Valley.
We picked Sequoia as
our series B investor.
Of course, the best
investor we can ask for.
And for series C
it took us 30 days
to close at almost
$100 million round.
We only wanted to
raise $50 million.
But we ended up actually
raising $97 million.
And we got Brookfield
on our book.
And they're a fantastic
strategic investor.
So I think another trait
that I have is hustling
and ask for help.
When I just started the
company I didn't know any VCs.
I literally added
every single person
that I can possibly
find on LinkedIn.
And I asked for
introductions from the people
that I don't even know.
That's how I got
my first investor.
And then I also got all
the LA founders' contacts.
I basically messaged
them and say, hey,
I wanted to get a
coffee with you.
And I wanted to know how you
really bring up your company.
What challenges you have?
Can you share some
experience with me?
So I made a very-- a
group of good friends,
and who can share
experiences with you.
And of course, sell, sell, sell.
Sell to the investors.
Sell to the market.
And sell to your employees.
And one last thing
I wanted to mention
is company culture
is very important.
I know Google has
fantastic company cultures.
But for first-time founders
it's hard to define your company
cultures.
I didn't even know what it is.
I remember I went to
a Sequoia base camp.
And I was on a car
with Scott Cook,
who is the founder of Intuit.
So I asked him, I was like, hey.
What is your company culture?
How did you define it?
He gave me one word.
He said, you are
your company culture.
I was like, what does that mean?
He's like, you know, you and
your leadership team really
define what a company is.
So after that we actually spend
a lot of time internally trying
to form a culture committee,
try to really come up
with our mission,
vision, and value.
And this is our first draft.
And we know it's
going to evolve.
So our mission is
empower drivers
to work the way they
want when they want.
And our vision is
painless freight.
We wanted to acknowledge
that freight shipping is
really painful.
And we're really not resolving
a rocket science issues.
We're really trying to make
their life a little bit
better one step at a time.
So five values we have
is put the drivers first.
It's very simple to a
lot of tech companies
basically put your users first.
And demonstrate
hustle, passion to win.
I think I'm a very
aggressive person,
even though I'm pretty small.
But I think it carries
towards the whole company.
Everyone's very aggressive.
And we wanted to solve
a problem, not symptoms.
This is actually
something that most of you
will see if you have a company,
because at the very beginning
everybody was trying
to put out fires.
And we actually last
year spent a ton of time
trying to putting out fires.
And we didn't really
look into root cause.
So this is something that
we know we made a mistake,
and we wanted to change that.
Set and follow true north,
because especially when
you have a business, there
are a lot of distractions
just for us.
We wanted to do drayage.
But we got business for
logistics other segments--
warehousing, transloading.
Those are true revenues.
This is a real dollars.
Do we want to do this business?
Do we want to sacrifice it?
If you set a true
north, you know
this is direction
you wanted to go,
and you do not want
to be distracted.
So it's important
you follow that.
And trust that
it's in good hands.
We default to trust that we
bring the best to people,
and the people will
take the ownership.
So my final words.
Recommendations for
first-time founder,
if you ever plan to be one.
Just to really summarize
what I just said myself.
First is understand market,
and the size, the dynamic.
Identify the problems.
Don't start a company
because you think it's fancy
or it's sexy and there's
a buzzword out there
and blockchain.
It probably doesn't work
right now for trucking.
And test the ideas.
Be brave.
To share the idea it's OK.
Nobody can steal it if
you can execute very well.
Learn from your customers.
We put ourselves in Lynwood.
It's not like the
beautiful Venice Beach.
It's Santa Monica.
We're in the ghetto.
And I remember some
investor talk to me.
And they said, oh,
where's your office?
Because they are
coming to visit us.
I would say, oh,
we're in the ghetto.
Just be aware.
OK?
And they [INAUDIBLE]
say, Lidia, no joke.
You're straight out of Compton.
So we're literally
like north of Compton.
But we're close to our users.
We're literally next
to our truck drivers.
So we can talk to
them on a daily basis.
And be scrappy.
At the very beginning, unless
you're multimillionaires,
you cannot afford to build
a large team, the best team.
You probably need to be scrappy.
You probably wanted to
do everything yourself.
And be patient
and never give up.
And it's easy to give up.
But you know you will have the
light at the end of the tunnel.
It will keep you moving.
And work extremely hard.
This is no-brainer.
You just have to when
you're a founder.
Hustle and ask for help.
Don't be shy.
It's OK to ask for help.
There are a lot of
founders like us.
And when we started, we
didn't know what to do.
And we always were willing
to share experience,
because we walked the road.
We know how difficult it is.
And define company
culture early.
That's the mistake that
most companies make.
I did too.
I didn't really know
my company cultures.
We just pushed forward,
drive the revenues,
make the app work, and view
the internal efficiencies.
But we didn't know
what our company
culture was til this year.
Last, as a founder, always
be your best salesman.
Salesman for your team, salesman
for your culture, and salesman
for your company vision.
Well, thank you so
much for your time.
[APPLAUSE]
Any questions?
