MVMNT Raises $20M in Series A Funding

It’s an exciting and pivotal moment for the MVMNT team and customer network. As announced this week, we’ve secured our Series-A funding and have big plans for continued growth. On the heels of this news, we thought we’d take the opportunity to reflect on the state of the industry and discuss our vision for the future.

Freight Brokerage Today: A Brief Overview

Freight movement is vital to the U.S. economy. Every year, shippers spend $800 billion moving goods across the country, and as everyone learned firsthand over the past two years, one small hiccup—such as a stalled container ship—can exacerbate an already strained global supply chain. New consumer demands for increased visibility and shorter delivery times have only increased the pressure on shippers to boost connectivity and efficiency.

 The industry is composed of three major parties: shippers, carriers, and brokers. First we have the shipper – the party that manufactures, owns, or sells goods and needs to move them from Point A to Point B. Second, we have the carrier – often a trucking company that physically moves the goods. And last, but certainly not least, we have the broker – the party that helps the shipper find available capacity and negotiate pricing from their large network of carriers. Freight brokers, like insurance agents, real estate agents, and other traditional brokers, have remarkable staying power because freight is a nuanced, relationship-driven business. The broker market is also large and highly fragmented; there are almost 20,000 freight brokers in the U.S moving almost $250B in annual freight, and the top 10 brokerages hold a total 4% market share. This model is supported by carriers who suffer from diseconomies of scale; carriers benefit from added fragmentation, as shippers’ inability to compare prices helps protect carriers’ margins.  

Investors and large venture capital firms have been betting on digital freight brokerage technology to disintermediate brokers, funneling billions in capital towards startups that ultimately seek to put smaller brokerages out of business. These expectations, however, are based upon false assumptions that technology could disintermediate and/or consolidate brokerage, which has been reflected in the fact that no large digital broker has gained any meaningful market share despite using equity capital to run lanes with negative margins.

 

Automation Alley: Expectation vs. Reality

The industry thesis over the past decade has been simple: automating business processes with technology would remove the need for most brokerage relationships and allow shippers and carriers to interact directly.

While TMS functions like load building can now be done without manual input, completely removing the broker from the brokerage has turned out to not be as easy as previously thought. Anyone in freight knows that when problems arise you need someone to call in real-time for exception management. This is where the generalized software approach and “Uber for Trucks” model falls short and the importance of America’s 20,000 brokerages becomes apparent.

Still, automation certainly has its place in transportation management. The largest brokerages have spent tens of millions of dollars over the past few years building out robust systems that remove manual tasks and boost efficiency – a privilege that smaller brokerages can’t afford. For those not yet ready to build, finding an affordable platform that covers your needs is challenging. Many end up piecing together multiple tools out of necessity, which results in manual steps, messy data, and fragmental workflows across multiple screens and browser tabs.

It’s in this gray area that MVMNT has discovered a significant opportunity.

 

MVMNT: Brokerage. Out of the Box.

At MVMNT, we believe that enabling rather than eliminating brokerages is the most important path forward for optimizing freight transportation. We see the largest opportunity in offering technology that augments the existing relationships in the transportation industry rather than replacing them. With proprietary technology often being too expensive and off-the-shelf solutions outdated and lackluster, new and existing businesses have traditionally been at a disadvantage.

This is where the MVMNT platform steps in. 

MVMNT is not just a product innovation company, but also a business model innovation company. Our TMS platform allows small and mid-sized brokers to streamline transportation management with enterprise-grade software that aligns with their business model and amplifies their product strategy. Our reimagined TMS helps scaling companies enhance day-to-day operations, improve cash conversion, and move more freight. Even better, users have the ability to access new capacity, build an optimal carrier network, pay and get paid faster, and establish credit to earn more business – all on one platform, subscription-free.

 

Building Something Bigger with MVMNT

Our mission is to enable the long-tail of supply chain with enterprise-level technology and embedded financial services so that small and mid-sized businesses can scale and compete on a level playing field

This Series A funding round of $20 million led by Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Equal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, M25, and supporting individuals, will help us devote more resources to the development and growth of our platform to accelerate that mission.

When tackling endeavors at this scale, it’s important to have leadership that has experienced the problem firsthand. Founder & CEO, Michael Colin, first entered the freight industry at a brokerage in Chicago, moving up from entry-level operations to directing a team of 80 across three offices. It was this experience that led him to start MVMNT.

Michael has a tenacious hunger for problem-solving and creating solutions that leave a lasting impression – sometimes much greater than advertised. Even in his personal life, Michael has challenged himself to be a leader, most impressively as one of the world’s highest-ranked World of Warcraft players, helping lead groups that were ranked top five in the world. However, it’s less about the craft, but rather the team. Michael understands what it takes to build a mission-aligned, hyper-competitive group that seeks the same goal – and at MVMNT, we are building just that.

MVMNT is committed to building a team of both freight and technology leaders to enable a better future for freight – one that levels the playing field for everyone in the industry, regardless of size. Our team is aligned to create a generational impact on the freight industry by enabling the brokers that fuel America’s transportation industry.

MVMNT is rapidly scaling and our team is growing. We encourage those interested in our mission to apply to our open roles today and join a dedicated team at a top-tier level.