Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: 65% of supply chain news is sourced from FreightWaves
“65% of supply chain content is originally sourced from FreightWave. So if you're reading Times, you're reading it on the Washington Post, Perhaps you're reading it in Bloomberg. A lot of that data material actually gets originally sourced through our data and …”
Insight
Fuller: Media monetizes early, but SaaS builds self-sustaining momentum
“It's easier to monetize media, frankly, than it is SaaS. I don't know that a lot of people realize that. But the great thing about SaaS is it, like once you get that engine going, it's, it has its own set of momentum, which doesn't require you to put as much i…”
Insight
Fuller: Supply Chain Data Signals Economic Shifts 8 to 12 Weeks Ahead
“Supply chains, you actually see the economy eight to 12 weeks before everybody else does.”
Insight
Craig Fuller: Editorial-First Content Models Can Succeed in Any Industry
“Content supported
X models, and what I mean by that, it can work in real estate, it can work in SaaS, it can work in anything.
It's basically going at it in an editorial first mentality of developing content that will drive your audience to buy and consume you…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Craig Fuller: 70% of FreightWaves' SaaS deals originate from its media
“70% of our deals that come into our into our enterprise SaaS business are closed because those companies read about the data on our own media business.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves has zero CAC, funding R&D with media profits
“The nice thing is our customer acquisition is, is effectively zero or negative. So we have no capital tied up in direct customer acquisition. All of our capital is tied up in R&D and product.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves grows 90% year-over-year while operating cash neutral
“So we're a company that doesn't burn capital. We're basically cash neutral. And we're still growing, you know, 90% on a year-over-year basis.”
Insight
Fuller: Acquiring low Rule of 40 targets depresses software valuation multiples
“They rank lower on the rule of 40 matrix, which actually is a direct correlation between how well you're positioned on that rule of 40 matrix to what your valuation is, either at exit or on a capital raise. And so If your rule of 40 is very high, which ours is…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
FreightWaves Reaches $20M ARR, Burning $1M and Adding $2M ARR Quarterly
“And in the four years since we've launched our SaaS business, we've achieved twenty million in ARR, and we burn about a million dollars a quarter, but we add about two million dollars of net ARR per quarter.”
Disclosure
FreightWaves hires logistics practitioners over generalists for editorial team
“We recruit people who are actually on the field to write editorial content so that it's written from a point of authority and it's written from a point of credibility and not written from somebody who's never actually dispatched a truck, driven a truck or load…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Craig Fuller: FreightWaves Media Has 50% Margin, Data Business Has 83% Margin
“It's a 50% margin business.
Our data business is about an 83% margin business.
It operates under traditional SaaS metrics.”
Insight
Craig Fuller: Established market data sources are unkillable cockroaches
“They don't die. They're like cockroaches. They will live on forever and ever because if you become the source of information and intelligent in your market, no one can kill you.”
Disclosure
Fuller: FreightWaves pays reporters $100k-$150k as lead generation engines
“So you're paying a reporter a hundred, 120,000, maybe a 150,000, picking them off from very large media businesses. But they become your primary source of content lead generation.”
Disclosure
Fuller: FreightWaves grew 70% in 2020 despite losing $5.5M event revenue
“In 2019, half of my eleven million dollars in revenue came from physical events. 5.5 million. All of a sudden it was zero in 2020, and yet we grew 70%.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves SaaS revenue exceeds that of its rumored acquirers
“Our SaaS business is actually bigger than some of the companies that you mentioned that would acquire us.”
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves to hit $15M SaaS ARR and matching media revenue
“If you looked at our SaaS business, we'll, we'll complete the year, about fifteen million of ARR in terms of occurring. It's about a three-year-old business and then if you look at our media business it will be on the same sort of trajectory at the end of the …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves tripled 2020 revenue despite losing 100% of event revenue
“Half our revenues in 2019 was in physical events. It was zero last year. So we lost half our revenue last year, but we still managed to triple the size of the company.”
Assertion Supported
Fuller: FreightWaves raised $16M at a $286M post-money valuation
“So our post on that was two 86.”
Disclosure
Fuller: FreightWaves gave up 25% equity for $2M initial debt financing
“It was 25% of the company for two million dollars. And I had to pay it back. The investor has been paid back. So they, he has received his full two million plus eight percent interest for the three years that we held it.”
Disclosure
Fuller: FreightWaves exit will likely be IPO or financial data acquirer
“For us, it is unlikely that we would sell to a business that's in our industry. We're more likely to sell to a S&P or a Bloomberg or a Reuters or a Finita or somebody that's in market data businesses or take the company public because that's really what we do.”
Disclosure
Craig Fuller: FreightWaves draws 3M visitors and 85K daily livestream viewers
“200 employees. We have 50 right at 50 analysts, I'm sorry 50 journalists analysts in data science. We get about 85,000 people a day that tune into our streaming content live and then we get about three million visitors across all channels across our entire wor…”
Disclosure
Fuller: FreightWaves Sonar Data Product Averages $25K Per Year ACV
“One is our sonar data product, which is On average, about 25,000 dollars per year is what customers pay us for the data”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Fuller: FreightWaves subscription revenue surpassed media revenue in 2022
“Back in 2018, it was five percent, and this year is the first year that our subscription data revenue will have surpassed our media business. They're both growing 90% year over year, but the really important part is that now we can truly say that we are a SaaS…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Craig Fuller: FreightWaves generated $3.6M revenue and $1.3M profit from one event
“We did one in Northwest Arkansas. We did about 3.6 million in that made about 1.3 million in profit”
