ShipHawk

Jeremy Bonehammer founded ShipHawk in 2013 with a simple insight: shipping was broken for mid-market companies. They weren't small enough to use basic point solutions, but they weren't enterprise-scale enough to justify the $500k+ software deployments. ShipHawk launched at DISRUPT 2013 with an initial product—a Kayak-style interface to answer one question: "What will this shipment cost?" It was transactional, lightweight, and solved a real pain point.

The founding team built a transportation management system (TMS) and fulfillment software designed specifically for the gap in the market: companies with $10M-$500M in annual revenue who manage their own shipping. Unlike SMBs with basic needs or enterprises with complex multi-module systems, this mid-market segment had almost nothing built for them. The product helped customers coordinate not just pricing, but the entire fulfillment operation—which warehouse to dispatch to, which materials to use, which carrier to select, and customer communication.

ShipHawk's early sales relied heavily on outbound SDRs, a direct sales team, and importantly, platform partnerships. Early on, the team struggled selling "direct by vertical," but everything changed when they focused on the platform ecosystem. They integrated with mid-market ERPs like NetSuite, Magento, and others. Rather than chasing commissions, they focused on delivering on promises—something their competitors weren't doing. One mid-market ERP partner told them: "What if you just do what you say you're gonna do?" After proving it with one customer, partners opened the floodgates. Grove Collaborative, a direct competitor to Amazon in eco-friendly home products, became a flagship customer managing subscription shipments from multiple warehouses across the US.

Customer acquisition costs were sub-8 months payback on a $50,000 average contract value—roughly $20,000 CAC on average. The company didn't rely on conferences or booth presence; instead, they focused on platform partnerships, which became their dominant channel. Most effective was the realization that current customers became their best marketing channel. The company achieved negative 15% net revenue churn, meaning existing customers grew faster than they churned. They calculated lifetime value at $200,000-$250,000 per customer using a conservative 3% annual churn assumption. More than doubling year-over-year growth came primarily from new customer acquisition, with over 300 total paying customers by the time of this interview.

As of 2017, ShipHawk had raised $12.5M in total capital (seed round in 2013, with a final inside round in January of the interview year). They reported south of $8.4M in ARR after adjusting accounting for pass-through freight costs. The team had grown to around 35 people split between headquarters in Santa Barbara and an engineering office overseas. They were "flirting with profitability" while prioritizing growth, facing a decision between acquiring new customers and expanding within their existing base. With more demand than they could satisfy, the company remained cautious about spending given macro uncertainty, but their platform partnership strategy and word-of-mouth motion had proven powerful.