Post.Bid.Ship. recently closed its third round of angel funding, getting a little over $600,000 from Desert Angels, according to Chairman Curtis Gunn. These funds will help expand the business of linking companies with shippers, co-founder and chief operations officer Jarret Hamstreet said.
The Tucson-based company is looking to transform how the shipping business is conducted by allowing companies to post their freight and have shippers bid to carry the load. The idea sprung out of the founders’ backgrounds; co-founder and CEO Micky Thompson built online software systems and Hamstreet worked in the trucking industry before his family sold two such companies.
The business model for Post.Bid.Ship. consists of various subscription plans that range from $29 per month to $199 per month. Hamstreet said the company experimented with taking a percentage of the bids, but it did not work out.
“What we heard from users was that they wanted unlimited access for a monthly subscription fee, so we adopted that as our pricing model,” he said.
Both Hamstreet and Thompson received MBAs from the University of Arizona in 2010 and started the company a few days after they graduated, Hamstreet said. Post.Bid.Ship. had a strong start when it was awarded funding from the Desert Angels the same year.
The co-founders forged ahead and have now raised a total of $2 million. They have received an additional $370,000 from the Arizona Commerce Authority after participating in the Innovation Challenge in 2011 and 2012.
The company is still young, but Hamstreet said it is already serving companies in all 50 states, Canada and Mexico. However, its roots are in Arizona and Oregon, where Hamstreet’s family owned a trucking company.
Hamstreet is happy about the company’s location and said he wants to help grow the local economy. Post.Bid.Ship. currently gets about 60 percent of its funding from within the state, he said, meaning 40 percent of the company’s funding might not have come to Arizona without its service.
Part of Hamstreet’s goodwill toward Arizona can also be attributed to current government policies. The governor’s office “has been very supportive and I know they’ve been working really hard to keep good tech startups here in Arizona,” Hamstreet said.
Learn more about Post.Bid.Ship. here.
Learn how to use Post.Bid.Ship. on YouTube.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OueN1uRJGEE[/youtube]
I understand Post.Bid.Ship is still a young company but it
is strange they do not have any contact details (address/phone number) on their
website. Not sure how any one would partner with them if this information is not
provided? Good to see an AZ start-up growing.