Leading Marketplace Expansion & Growth At Convoy

12 Jul 2024 · 2 min

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This content was created by Max Brun. This content was uploaded by Max Brun. This is a YouTube interview titled "Leading Marketplace Expansion & Growth At Convoy" (uploaded July 12, 2024). The excerpt is an English conversation between an interviewer (referred to as Mike) and a former Convoy employee who describes their tenure at Convoy from 2018 (around Series C) to 2021 (post-Series E). The guest recounts joining the original cross-functional growth squad, leading nationwide market expansion and the first cross-border market in Canada, and scaling new business segments (refrigerated trucking, a spot auction business). They note serving as GM of the spot business during COVID, growing it ~6x to become over half the company and a major profit driver. The clip focuses on operational learnings and growth strategies for a B2B, operationally complex marketplace.

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Could you maybe walk us through, you know, your experience at Convoy and also, you know, specifically discussing expansion and growth with it as a B2B and more operationally complex marketplace?
For sure. Yeah. And then maybe I'll give quick background on, you know, my time at Convoy and then we can jump into more of the learnings. I joined Convoy 2018 right before the hypergrowth Series C and left in 2021 post-Series E. So I've been out for a few years and if you're considering, you know, I'm sure top of mind is the recent news. I can only speculate on that if we do get into that, but I can definitely share more about my experience while I was there. It was an incredible experience for me, a launchpad for my career, and the team truly was special. I think for those that aren't from the Pacific Northwest, like being there at that moment in time in 2018, if you were anyone, in tech in the Seattle area that wanted to work at a startup, like Convoy was the place to be. And I joined the original growth squad, cross-functional team mandate was basically identify growth opportunities and pursue them aggressively and in a scrappy manner to build the next growth drivers for the business. And the team took many forms over the years. leaders from that initial growth strike force became the functional leaders across the company. So truly, I think it was a special place and time at the company. Specifically, some of the things I did, I did new market expansion. So I brought the company in the marketplace nationwide. I launched our first international market cross-border with Canada. And I also scaled some of the early incubations. New segments basically of the business, our refrigerated truck segment, our spot auction business. And at the end it was, and we can dive into this if interesting, you know, sort of GM of that spot business right around when COVID hit. A lot of really interesting dynamics at the moment in time in freight and was able to scale that business right place, right time, really 6x at one point was over half the business. Driving all of the profit. So really wild ride. I'll pause there quickly and, you know, if you have any questions, Mike, and we can dive deeper into the learnings.