The information: Flexe is the most recent to affix Seattle’s unicorn membership. The 9-year-old firm simply raised a $119 million Sequence D spherical to push its valuation previous $1 billion. Demand for the corporate’s warehousing know-how continues to develop, with income doubling year-over-year up to now. As some startups lay off employees and minimize bills amid a possible recession, the financial uncertainty is definitely a tailwind for Flexe’s enterprise.
The main points: Flexe acquired its begin by providing on-demand warehousing area for on-line retailers, serving to them flip what was historically a set expenditure (long-term leases) right into a variable price (pay as you go, for what you want). It provides firms the power to scale their logistics wants up or down relying on their provide and demand.
The pandemic and ongoing provide chain chaos drew extra firms to Flexe’s versatile mannequin. Six of the ten largest U.S. retailers are Flexe prospects. The startup, ranked No. 19 on the Startup 200, has since grown its know-how choices to fulfill different wants past simply pallet and case warehouse capability, increasing to supply transportation and success for each on-line and bodily retailers.
The enterprise: Corporations with logistics wants come to Flexe, which then syndicates alternatives to its community of warehouse operator companions that bid on offering companies. Either side of {the marketplace} use Flexe’s know-how. “We’re creating worth for purchasers. We’re additionally creating worth for the operators,” mentioned Flexe CEO Karl Siebrecht.
The market: “Issues are altering extra quickly than many firms may react in the best way they beforehand constructed their provide chains, which have been both heavy capital funding in fastened property like warehouses or signing multi-year contracts with third-party logistics,” mentioned Dwight Klappich, a analysis vice chairman with Gartner.
Funding to logistics startups equivalent to Flexe almost doubled year-over-year in 2021.
The competitors: Siebrecht mentioned there aren’t different firms addressing the identical set of enormous enterprise prospects. He pointed to Deliverr, the logistics startup Shopify acquired for $2.1 billion in Could, however mentioned it addresses smaller retailers. Amazon additionally just lately launched a brand new “Purchase with Prime” program to let on-line retailers use its success community to ship orders. However Siebrecht mentioned Flexe targets a special market and in addition works with bodily retailers.
Klappich famous that firms will proceed to make use of their very own warehouses, however will nonetheless be potential Flexe prospects. “Flexe can nonetheless work with these kind of organizations permitting them to supply extra distributed community of amenities they’ll ship from or overflow capability they could want quickly,” he mentioned.
Talking of Amazon: The Seattle tech large made headlines earlier this 12 months after it added warehouse area quicker than the corporate finally wanted in response to the challenges of the pandemic, outpacing client gross sales and leading to an additional $2 billion in prices within the first quarter.
In some methods, Amazon’s forecast hiccup is a price proposition for Flexe.
“There are such a lot of variables in your forecasts which might be unknowable,” Siebrecht mentioned. “And so I believe that’s an amazing instance of the crux of the difficulty.”
The spherical: Siebrecht mentioned this was the corporate’s most difficult spherical to boost, provided that enterprise capitalists are rising extra cautious of the financial system and searching extra carefully at a path to profitability.
“It’s a really difficult macro-environment for elevating capital, however a extremely large end result for Flexe,” Siebrecht mentioned. “It’s all as a result of the enterprise is performing so properly.”
The traders: Funds and accounts managed by BlackRock invested for the primary time. Earlier traders Activate Capital, Madrona Ventures, Prologis Ventures, Redpoint Ventures, funds and accounts suggested by T. Rowe Worth Associates, Inc. and T. Rowe Worth Funding Administration, Inc. and Tiger World additionally invested. Flexe final raised cash in January 2021 when it closed out an $80 million Sequence C spherical.
“Flexe is the one logistics platform offering built-in, versatile, omni-channel logistics applications for enterprises,” mentioned Raj Atluru, managing associate at Activate Capital. “They now simply scale logistics networks and construct nimble, resilient provide chains for in the present day’s dynamic world.”
What’s subsequent: The financial system could also be boosting Flexe’s enterprise, however the uncertainty remains to be a trigger for concern.
“We’ve by no means operated in a recession. We don’t know what that’s going to do to our enterprise,” mentioned Siebrecht, a finalist for CEO of the 12 months on the Startup Awards.
Profitability can be on the CEO’s thoughts.
“We’ve raised loads of capital, which is nice, however we should be actually sensible about how we handle that money given the market uncertainty. Now we have to make investments in scalable progress — not simply progress itself,” he mentioned.
Siebrecht, former CEO of AdReady, was beforehand president of aQuantive’s Atlas know-how division, after which a Microsoft basic supervisor. He co-founded Flexe with Edmond Yue and Francis Duong after they attended a housewarming celebration and met an entrepreneur who complained about discovering warehouse area for his barware firm. Duong left the corporate earlier this 12 months to steer a secretive new Web3 startup.
Whole funding is $265 million up to now. The corporate has 463 workers and is hiring.