Correction: Cargomatic was interviewed by CNBC, not CNN.
Cargomatic has raised $10.6 million in venture capital and is frequently mentioned in L.A. tech circles as a startup to watch. But the young company finds it more difficult than most to hire.
Cargomatic has an app that helps truckers find extra loads to supplement their core work. It’s one of a handful of companies that are reorganizing the way the logistics industry communicates away from phone calls, carbon copies and faxes towards the Internet and mobile apps.
Still, logistics isn’t the most exciting industry for those on the outside and the young company often finds it challenging to hire. In an interview, excerpts of which are below, Sean Whiteley, chief operating officer of Cargomatic, describes the challenges facing non-consumer tech companies and the rewards of working in an area of tech not often considered.
Question: What are some of your biggest hiring hurdles?
Answer: Getting the word out that this is a great place to work is important. We’re obviously getting a ton of press from national publications like the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, but letting developers know that this is an exciting fun place to work is a hurdle.
It’s a different pitch obviously. We’re not trying to solve the problems of the top 1 percent, like getting pizza on demand.
How many of your employees have a background in logistics?
We’ve got people from UPS, people that have worked at big freight forwarders, people that have worked at logistics houses. Our whole ops team has some background in logistics and much of our sales team does too.
So how important is logistics experience to your core business?
Logistics experience is definitely not required. The reality is there’s not a lot of tech in the logistics space.
Getting people on board, it helps if people have logistics experience, but on the engineering side there’s really not a requirement. It’s not a requirement for entry level positions. The (Cargomatic) technology really helps democratize the industry for everyone and makes it easy to onboard people.
We’re looking for Android developers, full stack developers, product folks and we are also hiring on the sales and operations side.
How well does Los Angeles supply that talent?
It’s really changed. I actually went the opposite way of most. I moved from the Valley to L.A. 15 years ago. I’ve seen a real change in how L.A. is viewed.
Now down the street from us we’ve got Snapchat and Google. We’re pulling from universities like USC and UCLA. I feel really good about how it has changed. We really see a change where a lot of talent wants to be here now.
What’s been your most successful way to find talent?
To find talent, we have in-house recruiting, we have outsourced recruiting, we have meet-ups at the office and at the local tech events, but referrals are the number one source of talent. The number one source of talent is our own people.
Do you think there are missed opportunities in tech because everyone is always focused on the consumer side of tech?
Yes, definitely. If you think about how freight is run around the country today it is really inefficient. Yet, this a $78 billion industry. I didn’t have a background in logistics, so coming in I was really shocked how it works.
For us to be able to come in and really optimize that and being able to increase the money truck drivers make speaks to the opportunity. When you see the way freight moves across the country you understand we really need something that is big and disruptive.
Technology reporter Garrett Reim can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @garrettreim for the latest in L.A. tech news.
