Jesse Buckingham

We got quoted for $6.7M for a 30 second Super Bowl ad slot. We said f*!% that and made our own. I present:

The Fox of Freight Street.

Turning the chaos of your freight brokerage into a money printing machine.

Vooma: the ai platform for logistics.

Grateful for the opportunity @GrahamCWeaver and others provided to me!

It’s a big day for Vooma.

We’re thrilled to announce that Vooma has secured $16.6M in Seed and Series A funding from @craft_ventures , @IndexVentures , and other leaders in the logistics industry.

@thacarta2 and I started Vooma to empower the women and men who keep America’s economy running. We want to give them the best AI tools to win and execute more freight.

Everyday logistics operators are bogged down by hundreds of repetitive tasks that distract them away from building relationships and solving complex problems.

We believe we can change that.

So today we’re also announcing Vooma Agents – a first of it's kind multi-channel AI platform built for logistics. It’s the foundation for building autonomous agents with freight expertise that can execute complex workflows across email, voice and text. We’re also introducing Vooma Voice, which gives Vooma Agents the ability to make and receive calls - critical to many freight workflows.

We’re grateful to our customers, partners, Voomers and investors for believing in our vision, especially @HOFCapital, @Definition_Cap, @OperatorStackVC, @Soma_Capital and @ycombinator who participated in the round.

We’re just getting started. Let’s Vooma! 🚀

Shoutout to Grace Sharkey and @FreightWaves for covering the news.

Huge update from the @create_xyz team

A lot of founders reach out and ask - is @ycombinator worth it?

363 days now from our W23 demo day my confident answer is - yes, it is.

In my opinion YC has the best IP in the world on early stage company building.

There is no institution that has played a role in helping more teams go from nothing to something.

They’ve distilled that experience into concrete, no bullshit, tactical advice that they dish out at scale. The partners are direct and honest, often to an uncomfortable extent.

There’s no letting you off the hook. If things aren’t working, they’ll tell you. If you’re focused on things that don’t matter, they’ll tell you.

Someone said building a startup is like throwing yourself off a cliff with parts and trying to build the rocket mid flight.

Only you can build the rocket ship. But YC tells you timely stories of how the thousands of startups before you either crashed or found flight before hitting ground.

Here’s the advice that helped us most:

-> Focus on the 90/10 solution. Figure out the key features that can drive the most value. Then build those. Ship it, fast.

-> Get real commitments from real customers. Not ‘I’m’ interested’. Not design partnerships with no real skin in the game.

-> Focus on early adopters. Even if your idea is good, most companies won’t work with early stage businesses. Find the ones that will.

-> Focus on talking to customers, building. Not talking to investors. The best thing for investors is traction - focus there.

It’s not just the advice though. There’s no better way to drive urgency and pace of action and decision making than running the gauntlet of YC with other talented founders with the looming threat of demo day lighting a fire under your behind.

Should you worry about the dilution? IMO, no.

Startups are pretty binary. Either you build a valuable business or you don’t. If you can substantially shift your odds to being something versus nothing, that’s a good trade.

And the support from YC didn’t stop at demo day - we still meet every couple months with Gustaf and it’s always impactful time.

Big continued thanks to @gustaf, @dflieb (our visiting partner) and all the @ycombinator partners for their support.

To the founders in the W24 batch presenting tomorrow - go crush! 💪