Jul 27, 2017 · 23m · top-founders
733: With $50M Raised, He's Leading Cargo Container Software Space
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of The Top, host Nathan Latka interviews Freightos founder and CEO Zvi Schreiber to explore how the company raised $50 million to digitize the trillion-dollar international shipping industry through a combined enterprise SaaS and marketplace platform.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Nathan holds 40.4% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Nathan as informed peer 4.0 Guest teaching 3.3 Guest disagreement 1.8 Nathan pushing back 2.5
speaking balance: gold is Nathan, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 16:34 Guest sets boundary on revenue run rate
Zvi puts up a clear boundary by explicitly declining to answer whether the company has crossed the $10M ARR mark.
Hardest push from Nathan ▶ 16:34 Host challenges guest on dodged milestone metricLatka directly confronts Zvi's refusal to share ARR numbers, playfully calling out 'He's punting. He's punting.'
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 8:19 Zvi corrects host on last-mile vs container import freightZvi educates Latka on the distinction between consumer parcel shipping and Freightos' core business of moving freight containers overseas.
Nathan holds their own ▶ 10:48 Host breaks down SaaS plus marketplace business synergyLatka showcases his SaaS expertise by articulating how companies leverage software utility to capture downstream transaction fees in a marketplace.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Nathan as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Nathan pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Introducing Zvi Schreiber and His Entrepreneurial Journey | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Latka opens by probing into the logistics mechanics and asks Zvi to break down the cost components of the trillion-dollar shipping industry. Zvi educates the host on door-to-door freight economics, container capacities, and port handling. | |
| Automating Container Pricing as the Expedia of Freight | 4 | 5 | 2 | 2 | When Latka presents an example of shipping an individual camera tripod directly to an end customer, Zvi gently corrects him to explain that Freightos manages bulk container imports from foreign suppliers rather than last-mile package delivery. | |
| Monetization Architecture: Commission Fees and Software SaaS | 5 | 3 | 2 | 3 | Latka demonstrates solid SaaS industry knowledge regarding hybrid marketplace-software models. When Latka misstates total fundraising figures, Zvi politely clarifies the exact funding totals. | |
| Founding Timeline and Global Team Distribution | 4 | 4 | 1 | 2 | Latka asks about seat pricing triggers while Zvi explains his playbook for overcoming the classic marketplace chicken-and-egg dilemma by bootstrapping freight forwarder supply via internal SaaS tools first. | |
| Revenue Milestones and B2B SaaS Capital Requirements | 5 | 3 | 4 | 5 | Latka pushes for financial specifics and asks if the company has crossed the $10M run rate threshold. Zvi firmly declines to share figures, prompting Latka to call out his punt before pivoting to order volumes. | |
| Promotional Segment: TheTopInbox Acquisition and Free Offer | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | Following a sponsor read, the interview concludes with the rapid-fire Famous Five questionnaire, covering book recommendations, tooling, family, and founding advice in a friendly, conversational tone. |
Statements from this episode (17)
Schreiber: 90% of products bought in the West are imported
“So in fact, 90% of the products that that we buy in, in the West are imported.”
Schreiber: Global spending on international freight is about $1T annually
“It's about a trillion dollars are spent each year on shipping goods between countries.”
Schreiber: Getting a container freight quote takes an average of three days
“So, believe it or not, when you call up a big freight forwarding company, and you say, I want to bring a container From Shanghai to, you know, wherever it is, Cincinnati or San Diego you're gonna wait an average of three days just for a price quote.”
Schreiber: Top freight forwarders each generate $10B to $20B in annual revenue
“Some of the biggest are Kunru Nagel, Expeditors C.H. Robinson in the U.S., but these are companies who do 10, twenty billion dollars a year each.”
Schreiber: Freightos charges freight forwarders a 2% marketplace take rate
“And right now we would take just two percent from the freight forwarders, so just the 40 bucks for finding them, your friend as a customer.”
Schreiber: 1,000 freight forwarders use Freightos software for in-house pricing
“Many of these freight forwarders, in fact, 1000 freight forwarders, are using Freytos software to automate their own pricing in-house.”
Schreiber: Over 90% of Freightos's 2016 revenue came from SaaS
“Oh, well, in 2016, I mean, ninety-something percent was SaaS, because we only launched the marketplace in 2016, so the marketplace is pretty new.”
Schreiber: There are 100,000 freight forwarders worldwide
“I mean, believe it or not, there are 100,000 freight forwarders in the world.”
Schreiber: Freightos serves 1,000 of the few thousand major freight forwarders
“There's a long tail of teeny freight forwarders who are not going to be using our software, and we're not approaching them as, so, you know, there's only a few thousand who are really big enough to matter, and we have 1000 of them, so, so we are definitely a m…”
Schreiber: Freight startups must be globally distributed by necessity
“Which you have to be because it's international freight. So there's no point being in one country. Every shipment involves at least two countries.”
Freightos SaaS pricing ranges from under $1,000 to tens of thousands monthly
“It starts from as little as even less than a thousand dollars a month. And it goes up for a big global freight forwarder with tens of thousands of employees, then it's well into the tens of thousands of dollars a month.”
Freightos used SaaS to acquire 1,000 freight forwarders for its future marketplace
“We spent the first four years selling SaaS to freight forwarders, and now we already have 1000 sellers We have a relationship already to sell, you know, already to sell on our marketplace.”
Schreiber: Complex B2B industries cannot use consumer-style rapid MVP models
“When you go after these big B to B complex industries, it's not like a consumer product where you can create a minimum viable product in a few months and start sales.”
Schreiber: Freightos reached $1M+ in revenue by 2015
“I think it was by twenty-fifteen, we were into the million, so.”
Freightos processes roughly 1,000 monthly shipments across ocean and air cargo
“Maybe breaking a thousands of shipments a month. They're not all full containers. Sometimes people are shipping just a few pallets less than a container, or sometimes they're shipping air cargo. But in many cases, it is, of course, a full container or even mul…”
Schreiber: No one had ever bought or sold freight online before Freightos
“And take into account that before Freighthouse, no one had ever sold freight online, and nobody had ever bought freight online.”
Freightos limits active marketplace sellers to maintain supply and demand balance
“So actually, Les, we have a thousand freight forwarders who use our software. We haven't brought them all onto our marketplace in one go, because then you'd have a misbalance. You'd have too much supply and not enough demand. So a few dozen of them are activel…”