Interview with Zvi Schreiber, CEO at Freightos (CRGO)

Welcome to ChainTech, the show and podcast focusing on the latest trends in supply chain, procurement, and logistics technology. My name is Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council, and together with my co-host and special guest, we explore the personalities, startups, innovators, and industry players driving disruption in supply chain. From early stage to unicorns, And from cutting-edge technology to the people using it to help drive more innovative, agile, and resilient supply chains around the world. This is ChainTech. Hello everyone and welcome to a new episode of ChainTech. My name is again Max Henry from the Global Supply Chain Council. And I'm gonna be your host for today's episode. I wanna thank you again for joining us, you know, on this show as we continue to host some of the most interesting chain tech founders and discuss the rapid rise of supply chain logistics and procurement technology around the world. As we jump into today's conversation, I also wanna make sure that you're aware of our chain tech platform on chaintech.net, where you find, you can find a number of solutions and technology providers that we have, you know, curated and also So if you're interested to watch the previous episode of the show, you can go directly to chaintech.show. So today I'm very pleased and very honored to have our guest joining us from Israel. I'd like to welcome Zvi Schreiber, who is the CEO of Fredos. Hi, Zvi, how are you doing?

Great, Max. Great to be on your show.

All right. So as we always do in our show, I want to maybe get started with first your background and where you, if you can share with us, you know, where you grew up, You know, maybe, maybe tell us and tell our audience what kind of studies did you have when you were younger, just to give us a bit of perspective of where you come from.

Yeah, if I can remember that far back. I was, I was born in London, but I first moved to Jerusalem when I was 7 years old. And so I've spent most of my life here in Jerusalem. I studied in university, I studied in Cambridge and Imperial College, studied mathematics. a PhD in computer science and also did a master's in theoretical physics. So various sciences, that was all quite a while ago. And yeah, after that I started work as a software engineer and within a few years sort of transitioned from being an engineer to being an entrepreneur and CEO, but still, still love writing code. So when I have spare time, I still write code sometimes.

Let's go back a little bit on your early part of your career. I know I've looked at your LinkedIn profile, you had a number of positions, but maybe can you probably highlight some of the most interesting roles you had before starting Freightos?

Sure. I started a startup called Tradium back in the bubble years, as we call them, of '99, 2000. I was actually living for a year with my family in San Francisco during that bubble. And during when it, and when it burst, that was one of the pioneers really of B2B. That was the time when the term B2B was first invented and we were one of the pioneers there. That company got acquired just before the bubble burst actually. Later I created a startup called Unicorn, which was in the enterprise data management where we sold solutions to big enterprises like MetLife Insurance and Bank of America for managing their databases. That was acquired by IBM in 2006. Then I did something in consumer web, which was very exciting, but ended up in a fire sale. We should have carried on somehow because we were basically doing what later became Dropbox and, you know, Box.net. So we had the right idea. We were a little bit early. It's hard to remember now, but there wasn't much broadband back in 2008. And, you know, the internet wasn't fast enough. And it's hard to remember that now. And then the most relevant experience actually to Freightos is that I managed a hardware company called Litec for 2 years making power supplies for LED lights and sold that to GE Lighting in 2011. But it was actually during the 2 years at managing Litec that I discovered, you know, that I was actually dealing with supply chain issues, shipping from mainly from China to the US and China to Europe, both air and ocean. And that's where I was shocked to discover how old-fashioned and, you know, non-transparent this industry is. And so after selling that company, I had the inspiration to start Freightos and basically to be the Booking.com for international freight. That was the vision.

Okay. So in one sentence, could you tell us what your company is doing?

In one sentence, we're like Booking.com for freight. We're automating the price quotes for carriers and forwarders who are selling freight, helping them to quote instantly. And for shippers and forwarders who are buying freight services, we're providing a transparent website where they can compare prices and book instantly.

What problem are you solving with your platform?

Very simple. The main, I mean, several problems, but the most obvious one is when you've got a spot shipment, air or ocean, you're tending to wait 1, 2, 3 days for price quotes. The price quotes are non-binding, they're non-transparent, you never really know how much you're going to pay. And so you end up overpaying, you end up wasting time and overpaying and never knowing if you're getting a good price. So there are other issues, of course, but the headline is just making it much more transparent and efficient to buy freight services.

What are some of the biggest benefits that your solution is bringing to your customers? And are you more focused on the shippers, the end-user shippers, or more the freight forwarders with your platform, or both?

Yeah, so definitely both. We actually use 2 separate brands. So the Freightos brand is mostly working with shippers. Very strong with SMB shippers, but starting to have some success with big enterprises as well more recently. For example, we did a press release a month ago with Electrolux that we're helping them to automate a lot of their procurement. But we work a lot with freight forwarders and with airlines and a little bit with ocean liners. And we use, when we work with the service providers, we use the brand WebCargo by Freightos. So WebCargo is Also a huge part of our business, and we are by far the biggest platform where freight forwarders book with airlines. So that's also a big part of what we do.

So there are quite a number of companies who provide freight marketplace right now. What is your, right now, currently your company sweet spot?

Well, if we divide, like, you know, you asked me before about the 2 segments that we have, sort of shippers buying from forwarders, forwarders buying from carriers. When you look at forwarders buying from airlines, there's not much competition. We are by far the biggest, SwepCargo is by far the biggest platform where forwarders are buying from airlines. I don't want to say there's no competition, but we're, you know, I think we're close to 90% of the market for digital booking of forwarders with airlines.

Okay.

So we've got a very strong position there. Freightos.com has some competition, but I think in the areas that we are, which is mostly Where we're strongest is SMB importers in North America. I think we're by far the biggest platform for American, you know, American companies importing from China who want to book digitally.

Give us an idea of the market size today for this kind of marketplace for freight or shipping. How big is the market?

Look, we'll do just— we'll do the best part of $1 billion of transactions, not our revenue. Our revenue is much smaller, but the value of transactions. We were expecting to do $1 billion of transactions this year on our marketplace. Having said that, with the prices dropping so much, the number of transactions will still be as we expected. The value will be less than $1 billion given that prices are lower, but that still gives you an order of magnitude. So on the one hand, you know, that's some scale we'll do. It will be around a million transactions, order of magnitude, million transactions booked on our platforms this year. So on the one hand, that's some significant scale and significant liquidity. On the other hand, it's still a small proportion of the world market. You know, this is a market which is measured in hundreds of billions. And so it's still, you know, depending how you count it, it's still way under 1% of the world market.

So the freight market has been in a downturn for, you know, past few months already. What has been the impact on your business and the revenue? Because I believe you're generating, you're making money, you take a commission, right, on every transaction. So maybe you could explain a bit more how you actually generate revenue here.

Yes, we take either, I don't want to use the word commission because we're not a broker, we're not buying or selling ourselves, but yes, we take a small sort of marketing fee for bringing orders. In some cases, it's a small percentage. In other cases, it's a flat fee. So we have both.

Okay.

But honestly, both have been impacted because the fees, of course, when it's a percentage, the prices are way down. Ocean rates are 90% down this year. You know, we publish indexes, the FBX and FAX indexes, we publish indexes of what's happening to prices. So we know very well how much prices have dropped and then volumes are down as well. So even Even when we set a flat fee, there's some impact because volumes are down. Having said that, we're growing this year, so we would have grown even faster for sure. But we just announced our transactions in Q2. It was again, for 14 quarters in a row, we have record transactions every single quarter. Our revenue is going to be a record this year. So we're growing this year. But for sure, if the industry hadn't shrunk, it would have grown more.

Okay, so I've seen, yeah, I've seen the news like anybody else. You've been recently laying off people and, you know, it's a tough market out there. So I know your revenues are growing. So how do you intend to, you know, stay competitive and, you know, despite the downturn, what is your strategy for, you know, still growing in this difficult market? Yeah.

Yeah, look, I mean, our strategy is working. We did, uh, we do have to be careful like all companies with our cash, and because financial markets are really tough, um, so we did take the sad decision to lay off about, about 13% of our staff. Um, and we've done that in the, in the best way we can. We're on good relationships with them, and luckily they've been— they're mature people, have understood the situation, and we've done it in a way which allows us to— will not— will barely impact our growth. But it will save our cash, you know, it will improve our— reduce our losses and help us to get through to become a profitable company. Our growth strategy is working. Like I said, even in a— I think it's really, we should be very proud that even in a down market, a significantly down market, our revenue will be up this year. Our transactions will be up this year. Our transactions will be up hopefully every quarter. And so, and the reason for that is because digitalization is happening, you know, even The freight market is cyclical. There's good years, there's bad years. This one is definitely a bad year, but digitalization is a strong trend which is continuing regardless of whether the market is up or down.

So you mentioned earlier that you are focusing on SMBs, right? Especially for the end-user shippers. Are you focusing just on the SMBs or are you also serving the larger enterprise with, you know, your suite of solutions? Yeah.

Yeah, I mean, so both. So first of all, forwarders, we're very strong with both enterprise and SMB. If you look at the top 20 forwarders in the world, 19 are customers of ours. So we're very strong with the enterprises and the SMB or independent forwarders, let's say. With shippers, yes, we are, we're definitely getting into enterprise shippers as well. So the first adopters were all SMBs, but we have some big enterprises working with us for, in 2 areas. One is data.

Yeah.

So we have a lot of big names. I don't remember off the top of my head which names I have permission to say. So I won't say right now, but I can look afterwards where we have permission. But many famous enterprises are buying our data, our SBX Ocean Index, our FAX Air Index, and our other custom reports. So we work with many enterprises on data, and we also work with some enterprises on air spot, because a lot of air cargo is bought spot, and that's an area where we can really help the enterprises. So one I know that we did a press release is definitely public is Electromax. The forwarder was FedEx Logistics. But there are others which I can't mention who are using us for Airspot.

Okay. Are you targeting specific sectors or industry?

No, we're not. But I guess at the moment, the air digitalization is most advanced for general cargo. We still, if you look at dangerous goods, or pharma. We do have that, but fewer airlines, not all the airlines. You know, we have about 40-something airlines who can give us instant pricing, instant booking for general cargo. When you look at pharma, dangerous goods, it's a smaller number. So we'll focus initially on all the industries who are doing general cargo, but that's quite a lot. You know, it's electronics, it's apparel, toys. We're making slow progress with pharma and chemicals, but that's also coming as more airlines finally do digital booking also for specialized products. We can expand to even other industries. But in the end, we're a booking platform. So we're really not, you know, we just need to know how many kilos there are. So long as it's nothing special, we don't actually care what commodity it is.

You mentioned Electrolux has been recently, you know, promoted as one of your key customers. Could you share with us how do they actually use your platform in their day-to-day operations?

Yeah, so let me talk about the solution. I don't want to speak about a specific customer, but, you know, let me talk about what the solution is and then you can understand how customers like them are using it. The solution is to allow big enterprise shippers to buy air cargo in a transparent way where they can— there is a freight forwarder involved for sure. To do the handling, but the freight forwarder agrees to use our technology and to be more transparent. And the shipper or the BCO actually gets to choose which flight it's going to be on and which price they're going to pay. So you get this great tripartite digital booking where the big shipper is choosing, is booking with the forwarder and with the airline at the same second and has the transparency to choose the carrier they want and the flight that they want and the rate that they want. But still absolutely using a freight forwarder to do all the extra handling and make sure it gets to the airport and from the airport, etc.

Okay. So the freight forwarder, the 3PL, is, you know, in the case of Electrolux, is a company that they have already selected as part of their global bidding or global, you know, negotiations, right? But then they connect to your platform and then they are then able to see, you know, the pricing, you know, differences that the company is providing and choose specific flights, you know, to get the best pricing basically, right?

Best pricing or the best routing, you know, the quickest transit time, whatever they care about. Price might be a factor, but it could be transit time or preferred carriers as well.

Do you have sometimes resistance from those freight forwarders to actually being pushed into using the platform? Because if Electrolux say, okay, now we are using freightos, and you guys need to be on it. But then they become, like you say, transparent. They need to be very, very clear and highly, you know, honest about, you know, the rates and the rules that they're using. Is that sometimes an issue in bringing those 3PL or freight forwarders on board?

Yeah, I mean, that's a great question. I think when you first discuss it with a 3PL, there is some nervousness because it's new and it's more transparent than they're used to. But then when they try it, they see also the big benefits. First of all, they're getting a big customer who, you know, they're going to get more volume from the customer because they're providing a better service. But also it's a lot more automated for them. So at the time the shipper books, it's going to be booked with the airline already. So they don't have to phone up the airline and book. The shipper is getting updates. So the shipper doesn't phone them up every day to say, is it on the plane or not? Because the updates are automated. So it also reduces costs for the 3PL. And in the end, what they want is a satisfied customer who's sending more volume through them. So in the end, the forwarders seem to be very pleased with it. But it is new and there is some education and adjustment. Yes.

I want to go back to some of the latest developments around FreightOS also. I mean, recently, I think it was last year, right? You went, you got listed on one of those. Yeah. What was the motivation for you to actually bring the company, you know, and get listed? Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. We're listed on NASDAQ, ticker CRGO, like cargo.

Yeah.

Um, the motivation was, uh, you know, number one, to raise more capital. So as part of going public, we raised $80 million from some excellent long-term investors. That's what we want, you know, investors will be with us for the long term. Um, so that was the, the number one motivation. Uh, number two, in the past we've made some successful, um, acquisitions, and we hope that being public will give us the opportunity with a trade, you know, sort of a currency, a traded share, maybe to make more acquisitions in the future. And number 3, we welcome the transparency. Some of our customers, actually some of the big enterprises we talked about or the airlines, you know, actually feel more comfortable working with us when we're a public company, when we have transparency. And so that's given us some extra, you know, being a NASDAQ company and the transparency that comes with that and the level of audit that comes with that has given extra confidence to some of our big customers.

Was it also a reaction to some of the, you know, capital markets drying up? I mean, the funding situation from major investors, the VCs, are getting more difficult. So you didn't want to raise again more money from those VCs?

Well, but we raised, I mean, you know, we raised money from the public markets, which are also, they're not VCs, but it's also investors. That's also hard. Look, by the way, I mean, most IPOs or de-SPAC deals this year got canceled. You know, not a lot of tech companies have succeeded in going public and doing so had some of the same challenges that markets are skeptical and tough. But in the end, it was very successful for us. We raised some good money.

Okay. I want to just stay on that funding topic. When you started the company, how did you actually got started? Did you, you know, bootstrap it for, for some time? Did you raise funds right away? What was your, the sequence of, you know, the different funding stage that you had here?

Yeah, we, I bootstrapped it only for quite a short time. We raised, um, a seed round pretty early on. Um, I'm fortunate, fortunate in that it's, um, you know, this is not my first rodeo, as they say. So I've got relationships and track record with, with the venture capitalists that definitely helped. It also helps to be in Israel, which has a very active venture capital, a lot more than many other places. So it's a good place to raise money. The challenge was that nobody had heard of, you know, logistics technology or chain technology, you know, supply chain technology back then. So this was very new. Now, yes, now many venture capitalists understand the potential of Logitech and understand that it's an important industry. But that was not the case back then. So I had to educate the VCs that this is an interesting area for them to get into.

So that's also another thing that I'm interested to find out is, you know, how does that, you know, startup or scale-up scene look like in Israel, specifically around supply chain logistics and maybe procurement? How big it is, you know, how, you know, is it growing? Are you connected with that community? Do you meet other founders which are also, you know, Um, well, okay, so that was a few questions.

So, um, in general, the tech scene in Israel, mainly in Tel Aviv, but I'm in Jerusalem, which is close by, um, is, um, is amazing, to be honest. It's really one of the most active tech scenes in the world, and the amount of venture capital here is huge. Um, having said that, it's a tough year like everywhere. So, um, And potentially, arguably, Israel was even doubly hit because of the general slowdown in investment and interest rates. And also there's been some political instability here, which maybe has made investors nervous as well. So there's definitely been a significant drop this year. But if you look at the overall multi-year trend, this is really a very good place to fund startups. And we have more startups per capita, I believe, than any other country. It's a— there's not much else to do here. So we all create startups in Logitech specifically. There are a few. I'm not— there is an active community. Entrepreneurs do get together quite a lot. I'm not very good at that myself. I tend to focus on what I'm doing. I don't spend a lot of time meeting other entrepreneurs. Also, I'm in Jerusalem, not Tel Aviv. But yes, there are several logistics-related startups and some of the entrepreneurs get together often. And I personally only do that rarely because that's just my preference.

Okay. I want to understand, so we're coming out from that pandemic, which has been tough for a number of companies and also your customers. What has been the lesson overall that you learned from that pandemic and how to manage a business during a very difficult time?

Look, yeah, I mean, that's a great question and nobody has all the answers, but I think one clear thing which I think many people would agree is agility, right? You need to be able to move fast. If you're in supply chain and, you know, China's closed, you need other suppliers. If the Suez Canal is closed, you need to be able to go the Pacific route. And if air is too expensive, you need ocean. If ocean is too slow, you need air, you need rail. So the ability to, you can't, you know, the old lazy way of long-term contracts that you renewed every year, that doesn't work anymore. Not in logistics, not in any other area. When you're building the team, you, you know, we talked about before, unfortunately, we had to, we've been hiring a lot, we had to let go some people. And that's a sad process always. But it's also part of the agility that a modern business needs. You need to be able to hire, you need to sometimes be able to do the opposite. So I think it's, it's just everything is not, you know, whether it's logistics or hiring or business model or pricing. Whatever you're doing, you have to be ready for change and be ready to move quickly.

Do you think the pandemic in some ways accelerated the use of supply chain technology solutions? Do you see customers adopting it much more than 3 or 4 years ago?

Yes, it seems like it did a bit, especially in the area where we're seeing the fastest growth, which is air cargo bookings. I mean, the number of, you know, before the pandemic, we were doing, I don't know, a few bookings a day. Now we're doing thousands of bookings a day. It's grown, you know, more than 100x. So that's now, that was going to happen anyway, without a doubt. Even before COVID we knew we already had 3 big airlines in 2019, and we knew that a few more were coming. So in 2020, we were going to get to a critical mass of airlines enough to accelerate adoption. Even if there was no pandemic. But the pandemic, of course, accelerated it because the air cargo industry was— I mean, it's hard to remember, but before the pandemic, many airlines had a summer schedule with a summer price and a winter schedule with a winter price. And for them, agility meant that twice a year they had a meeting and updated their prices, you know. And that wasn't so long ago. But now with the pandemic, things are changing so quickly, flights getting canceled. Airports closing, airports reopening, passenger planes getting converted to freighters. So they all realized that the old way of having a spreadsheet for 6 months was just completely impossible. So it definitely accelerated things. Like I said, we would have been going through the digital air cargo revolution anyway, but it probably happened a year or two quicker.

What else has changed in the air cargo sector? Because, you know, I mean, traveling is still fairly expensive across major routes. And we saw— we see also issues around disruption still happening because of extreme weather conditions. So there are a lot of challenges and also airlines overall are trying to kind of quickly recover and make all the money or make back all the money that they lost in the last 3 or 4 years. So, you know, it's a price, you know, a little bit out of control. I mean, what kind of trends do you see happening from those airlines? Yeah.

Well, I mean, the first obvious trend is that passenger travel is recovering very well. There seems to be some revenge travel of people who were stuck at home for a couple of years and now they're traveling. So that puts pressure on the— that adds capacity for cargo and puts pressure on price because cargo is not increasing, cargo is decreasing a bit. So when the cargo volumes are decreasing a bit, but the capacity is increasing because of passengers, And that puts a lot of downward pressure on price. And so we're seeing prices that if you look at the Freightos Air Index, FAX, we're seeing prices down by tens of percent. And it's difficult to, you never know, but it's difficult to imagine that recovers anytime soon because there's more capacity coming online. But what's really exciting is just the switch to digital air cargo. I mean, on the one hand, the airlines were so slow to get started with that. I mean, I always joke, you know, do you know when the first electronic booking for passengers was? Here's a question for you.

I'm not sure.

When did American Airlines start some kind of electronic booking for passengers? Not with the web even, but electronic with a computer.

I would say in the '80s or '90s. I'm not sure. Maybe it's actually much later than people think.

Well, it was actually much earlier than people think. It's a perfectly reasonable, it's a good guess, but in actual fact, What later became Sabre was started in 1963. Very few people know that.

Okay. All right.

So there was, you needed a mainframe the size of a room, you know, but there was some kind of electronic booking for passengers in 1963. When did American Airlines launch their API, their electronic connection for cargo? 2020.

Oh, wow. Okay.

And the first airline to have one was Lufthansa in 2018, you know, so there was this, 60-year gap almost, you know, between passengers being digitalized, or it wasn't called digital then, but, you know, and cargo. So it was shocking how long it took for digital bookings to happen for cargo. But when it happened, it adopted, and it was frustrating for us, you know. I don't know, it's lucky I didn't know when I started Freightos that we'd have to wait for 2018 for the first API from an airline. I'm pleased I didn't know that because— but on the positive side, once it happened, once 2020, 2021, once we had a number of airline APIs, the growth has been phenomenal. I mean, we've grown, you know, well over 100% a year and it's growing every single quarter. So this industry can move when something really makes sense and really works well, the industry can move, which is exciting to see.

Yeah, interesting trends happening in the industry. I want to go back again on, you know, how you manage your company and ask you a very simple question. What is your biggest challenge in your current role? I know you've been having some hard time, you had to let people go, but what would be your biggest challenge, you know, in the day-to-day operations of running Freightos?

Oh goodness, there's so many, it's hard to pick one.

If you had to pick, you know, one would really keep you awake at night.

Well, actually, I sleep pretty well because overall, overall things are going well and the industry is digitalizing, as we mentioned, and the number of transactions is growing fast. So, so overall, I'm sleeping well.

Well, what drives you crazy then? What makes you really—

Look, I know that you're focused on Asia and Asia has been a laggard. Asia has been slow in the adoption of digital airline air cargo. So that's been a big frustration. Europe was by far the leader.

Which is surprising because a lot of those airlines are fairly new airlines and we will think that they will adopt IT and these kind of systems much faster than the, you know, the old dinosaurs, you know, in the US or Europe. But you're saying that they're not.

Absolutely not. It's finally starting to change. I believe this year we will announce, well, we did announce a couple of Chinese airlines. China Eastern, China Southern, and I believe we'll announce a couple more big— I know that we'll announce a couple more big Asian carriers this year.

Okay.

But only this year. I mean, till, you know, last year we had all the European carriers, Lufthansa, Air France-KLM, Finnair, IAG, you know, which is British Airways, with all the big European carriers. In the US, we've had Delta and American for a while. I hope we'll get the others soon. In Asia, if I'm not mistaken, going into this year, we didn't have any of the major airlines, not one. But it's finally changing. But Asia, and I know it's a focus for you, has actually been a frustration. I hope in the next year that will finally resolve itself.

Okay. And other than just getting those airlines, you know, in view, in your actual management role, what would be your biggest frustration or headache that you have?

Look, you know, people are complicated, right? Managing— when I want to relax, I sit down and do some programming because computer programs pretty much do what you tell them. They're very predictable, and I find that relaxing. Uh, as you know, managing people is complicated. It's also a pleasure when it works well and you have people who are superstars and perform well. Um, but of course, there are, there are always, uh, issues, always, um, how to structure the organization, how to motivate people, how to, um, how to get the right balance of, on the one hand, empowering people, on the other hand, helping them and monitoring them. So I try to err on this side of being more empowering and less, certainly not a micromanager, but you can't go all the way the other way either. So you're constantly balancing 100 things of how you manage people and how you structure things. So it's an ongoing challenge and also, you know, a lot of fun, especially when it works well.

Yeah. So in the last 6 to 12 months, there's also been a lot of frenzy around AI and generative AI. What's your take on that technology and how it could change the way you run your business and also develop your solutions?

Yeah. Well, yeah. So that's a great question. AI is, is going to change everything. We're already starting to use it in a few places. In the long term, just by the way, you didn't ask me this, but in the long term, AI is a huge threat. I'm one of the people who believe— I believe for a long time that there's a real risk that the AIs kill us all eventually. We could lose control, you know, once they're more intelligent than us. That's a few years off. But AI is a huge opportunity and a huge threat, you know, because it's technology we can easily lose control of and it's moving way faster than anyone expected. I mean, if you told me, and I've got a background, you know, I've got a PhD in computer science. If you told me 10 years ago, me or anyone, you know, the level that ChatGPT or Claude 2 would 10 years later be writing poetry, summarizing books, you know, or DALL-E generating images. None of us, these are things that if you asked most people or even experts just 10 years ago, what are the things that AIs will never do or won't do for a century? They'd just say, well, AIs, you know, they can model data, but they're not gonna be generating images. They're not gonna be writing poems. You know, a lot of the things that we expected would be the last things to be automated are being automated very quickly. So it's a very exciting and also scary time. Development. But that's just background. In terms of what you asked me, yes, we are. We're using AI both, and we need to do more, both as a personal productivity tool, you know, people using ChatGPT or other AIs to help them do tasks. But we're also certainly starting to bake AI into our products in a few ways. I can't talk about specifics yet, but for sure it will be coming— impact on our product roadmap. Absolutely. Yeah.

How do you see your company or your platform or your solutions in 3 to 5 years from now?

Well, you know, I hope in 3 to 5 years we have worked out various innovations, but mainly just scale. You know, like I said, we've grown more than 100x in the last 3 years in terms of number of transactions. But still, you know, in air, we're still maybe about 1% of the industry. We're maybe 80% of the digital transactions, but 1% of all the transactions. And it's growing fast, which is great, and ocean even less. So I hope this stuff, it is growing fast. I hope it continues to grow fast and start to become mainstream. You know, in passenger travel, it took 10 years from the first electronic ticket till 50% of the tickets were electronic. I don't know if you remember the paper tickets with the carbon copy. I'm old enough to remember those. And so it took 10 years to replace 50% of those. So we're now about 5 years into digital air cargo. I hope in 5, you know, now it's still a small percentage, but it's growing fast. I hope in 5 years, you know, the majority of transactions will be digital.

What would be your advice to, you know, a new founder who wants to launch a company today, especially in the field of logistics?

Yeah, I think the one thing I'd say is you need to build your investors and your team in a suitable way. You know, logistics technology doesn't move fast. Like you heard, Freightos is 12 years old and we're making— we've achieved some things, we're making some progress, but we're still a relatively young company. We still have years ahead to really get to the scale we want to get to. So it takes time, it takes patience, it takes capital. So I was very fortunate that some of my early investors are people who are patient and willing to— some of them have been invested for 11 years. They're still— they understand that it will take, even though we're public, it will still take some years more for them to get the return they expect to get. So understand that this is an industry which takes time and capital and build your— find the right investors who understand that and will partner with you for the long term.

Okay, good. Let me ask you, as we know, I want to wrap up this interview. I'm just asking you some very quick questions and you can just answer super quickly as well. So cats or dogs?

Uh, no thanks.

None of them.

If you put a gun, if you put a gun to my head, then dogs. But, but I don't, I don't have either of them.

All right. Window or aisle? We're talking about airlines. Window or aisle?

Um, aisle. Unless I get upgraded to business, then, then, then maybe window.

Okay. What has been, okay, what has been your, one of your Favorite movie that you've seen recently?

Well, I saw Oppenheimer, the only movie I've actually seen in the cinema in years. And it's, you know, I know some of the history about physics. It's a great, great movie.

Yeah. Okay. What's your favorite lunch? Or, you know, what do you eat typically for lunch?

Yeah. Well, I try not to eat this typically, but my favorite would be pizza.

Pizza for lunch.

Okay.

That's pretty heavy.

Well, that's why I don't— I'm not saying I do that Regularly, but that's my favorite. But I try to restrain myself.

What's your— the most used app that you have on your phone?

Um, most used— well, Gmail and Slack, of course.

Okay. All right.

Uh, that's kind of boring, but I also, I also have a lot of home automation now, so I use, uh, Google Home and Smart Life. I do quite a lot of home automation, which is a bit more interesting than saying, you know, Slack.

And what would be your favorite tool to build your company other than Slack?

Well, we're starting to, you know, starting to use ChatGPT and similar tools, as we mentioned before. It's kind of amazing what they can do. They can also get things very wrong sometimes. You've got to be careful. But those are starting to become real business tools.

Describe in just a few words what would be the last part of your life. Where do you see yourself? After you completely retired and really tired of running a business in 10, 20, or maybe 30 years from now, what do you want to do? Where do you want to be?

Oh, I don't know. I mean, I quite like it here. I tend to split my time between mostly Jerusalem and a bit of London, and I love both places. But I hope I'll have time to travel to new places as well. I've never been to Australia, so that's one bucket list ambition.

Okay, great. Thank you very much, Zvi. It was great having you. Again, this was, you know, Zvi Schreiber, who is the CEO of Fredos, you know, for this interview. It was great having you. Thank you very much. We'll see you next time.

Thanks, Max. It was fun.