Onward Delivery, a Denver, CO-based freight marketplace that connects retail stores to underutilized trucks already on the road, closed a $4.7m seed funding round.
The round was led by Range Ventures and Matchstick Ventures and includes follow-on investments from Springtime Ventures and angel investors including Andrew Leto, Founder & CEO of Emerge, Jett McCandless, Founder and CEO of Project44, Sean Henry, Founder & CEO of STORD, James Eberhard, Founder & CEO of Fluid Truck, Mark Joseph, Board Member at Rubicon, and Leo Polovets, General Partner at Susa Ventures, among others.
The company intends to use the funding to hire engineers to further build out its SaaS platform, strengthen the marketplace, build out its sales team with the goal of entering a total of 15 markets by the end of 2022.
Founded in 2020 and led by Grafton Elliott, CEO, Onward Delivery provides a platform that allows shippers to place shipments to its load board where it is then instantly priced and smart-matched to a truck already headed in the same direction. The platform streamlines a historically archaic industry by digitizing documents and processes along the final-mile journey, enabling truck drivers to complete more deliveries in less time. Onward’s auto scheduling feature removes the burden of extensive communications between drivers, customers and shippers with one click.
Backed by Techstars, Onward partners with 75 retail stores across six states and is actively looking to forge new partnerships with retailers and expand into more markets across the country. Some of Onward’s retail partners include Slumberland Furniture, Bassett Furniture, Woodley’s Fine Furniture, Element Home and The Tile Shop. Today, Onward operates in Iowa, Colorado, Nebraska, Georgia, Kansas and Missouri.
FinSMEs
08/12/2021