By Tian DuBelko
Seattle’s Convoy was the lucky business that received advice from some of the community’s brightest innovators and special guest Richard Branson.
Convoy’s Chief Product Officer Ziad Ismail spoke with Virgin billionaire Richard Branson and an esteemed panel of Seattle entrepreneurs about his business, at the ‘three minutes to landing’ segment of the 2017 Business is an Adventure event.
At each year’s Business is an Adventure event, a local business joins the respected panel on stage for the ‘three minutes to landing’ segment to discuss a challenge or problem their business is currently facing.
This year, Convoy‘s Ziad Ismail joined the panel. His business is in the process of building the world’s largest network of trucks, with real-time GPS and guaranteed capacity on all shipments. He wanted to know how to balance quick expansion to meet the needs of customers while remaining focused on excelling at the small things. Watch Ziad discuss his dilemma with Branson and the panel below.
After his time with the panel, Ziad fielded some questions on his business and the panel talk. See what he had to say below.
One takeaway from the panel:
“Virgin has been able to breakthrough with its brand by having fun with incumbents (like British Airways). It did inspire me to think harder about how we can breakthrough with our story and brand. Trucking is a traditional industry that is hungry for innovation and that approach could resonate here.”
On Convoy and its mission:
“Convoy is reinventing trucking. Shippers spend hours making phone calls and emailing to find a truck. On the other side, nearly 40 percent of all miles driven are empty miles leading to waste. Convoy is focused on using technology to build the world’s most efficient and reliable network of independent trucking companies. We are backed by investors and founders from Amazon, Expedia, Salesforce, Starbucks, Instagram, Greylock Partners, and others.”
On company building:
“A lot of the discussion centered around the importance of grounding a company in values and continuously anchoring the major decisions in the value. After the panel discussion, someone came up to me and told me the best advice he received which was that some people just aren’t going to fit with the value of the company. Dealing with people that don’t fit the values is as important as dealing with people that aren’t performing.”
On business challenges in Seattle:
“Historically, people left Seattle for the Bay Area to start their own company or join the next hyper-growth company. In the past few years, that has changed. Seattle now has an incredible set of startups that are tackling large and ambitious problems. We are betting that Convoy and other start-ups will contribute to the next wave in Seattle tech.”
On doing business in Seattle:
“Seattle is an anomaly. It is a small city and ranks roughly 100th in population globally. Yet it has two of the world’s five largest companies with Microsoft and Amazon based here. That means you get the friendliness and intimacy of a smaller city with an unparalleled concentration of ideas and talent. There is just no city like it.”
On Convoy’s future:
“We started Convoy in Seattle serving the West coast. We initially thought that we would spend the first few years serving the small and medium business market and it would take longer to get Fortune 500 to adopt us. But global leaders like Unilever and others have already adopted Convoy because they are hungry for innovation and saw the benefits of what we could do. As a result, we are expanding rapidly geographically to meet our customers’ needs. We have been fortunate to attract great talent from Amazon, Google, Uber, Microsoft and many others join us.”
