This fireside chat recap is from Day 2 of FreightWaves’ F3: Future of Freight Festival live event in Chattanooga, Tennessee. For more information on the event, click here.
FIRESIDE CHAT TOPIC: Founders Journey: From Concept to Exit.
DETAILS: FreightWaves founder and CEO Craig Fuller chats with Baton co-founders Andrew Berberick and Nate Robert about their journey of creating the company, which had developed proprietary trucking logistics technology, to selling it in August to Ryder System Inc.
SPEAKERS: Andrew Berberick and Nate Robert, co-founders of Baton, which created a software platform that eliminates detention and dwell for truck drivers.
BIOS: Prior to co-founding Baton, both Berberick and Robert served in the technology startup space. Berberick worked roles with Google, Accenture and Mindtribe, and he sports bachelor’s degree and master’s from Stanford University. Robert has worked for BuildZoom and Bain & Company, and he has a bachelor’s degree from MIT and a master’s from Stanford.
KEY QUOTES FROM BERBERICK and ROBERT:
“We thought that by selling our software [to Ryder], we could have a much bigger impact in the industry as a whole than if we’re just running our own fleet. We want to democratize the technology that we built for everyone.” — Robert
“As a founder, you have to live in this sort of paradoxical world where, on one hand, you have to be this evangelist of this crazy idea. And everyone’s gonna see you as the one that decided to go for it all, and you have to convince people of this crazy, incredible vision. And you also have to be incredibly paranoid at all times that your business is going to fail. … You have to be maniacal about understanding and have a very clear story for what assumptions need to be true for your business to eventually turn over and become economically positive to grow.” — Berberick
“Our mission is to build this fast-growing, Silicon Valley-based innovation arm. We’re going to really take the foundation of Baton and use that to power a wave of fairly transformational products for Ryder. So, it’s really trying to have the benefits and the speed and fast-paced nature of the startup with the resources and scale of Ryder. And our mission has always been the same: We want to eliminate waste in the supply chain, and we think Ryder is the best way to do that.” — Berberick
