Meet the Nigerian Entrepreneur who Just

Meet the Nigerian Entrepreneur who Just Raised $20.5 Million to Help Truck Drivers Manage Their Business

By Igor Bosilkovski

CloudTrucks cofounders (L to R): Jin Shieh (CTO) and George Ezenna CLOUDTRUCKS

CLOUDTRUCKS, A PLATFORM HELPING

truck drivers fi nd work and organize their business announced today that it has raised $20.5 million in a Series A round led by Caff einated Capital with participation from Craft Ventures, Khosla Ventures, SciFi VC, Kindred Ventures, Abstract Ventures, and Better Tomorrow Ventures.

Cofounder and CEO Tobenna Arodiogbu said that the problem they were trying to solve was basically helping truck drivers manage their business better.

“We noticed that more and more drivers wanted to take control of their schedule and become entrepreneurs, and needed a lot more help with

managing everything: from revenue, cash fl ow as well as minimizing their costs,” Arodiogbu says.

CloudTrucks

(www.cloudtrucks. com) has built a mobile app where drivers can see loads coming from many diff erent shippers across the country, and the company has an algorithm (called Schedule Optimizer) which helps drivers make better decisions on which loads to take to increase their revenue.

Along with the announcement of the funding round, CloudTrucks has rolled out a payment product called CT Cash.

“It helps users get paid faster so they don't have to worry about getting paid in 30 or 45 days, or tracking which jobs they are paid or not paid for,” Arodiogbu says. “We take over all of that stuff so they can run their businesses with fewer headaches.”

According to Arodiogbu, CloudTrucks is lowering the bar of becoming independent for truck drivers.

“The full process after they sign up to the app is that they fi nd all the leads and book them instantly, they have a calendar to manage their schedule, they have CT Cash to manage their payments, and everything is simplifi ed.”

The way CloudTrucks generates revenue is by taking a fl at rate of 13-15% percent of what the driver is generating on the platform.

The company, which launched in May of this year, has grown to $1.8M in freight transactions over the past 6 months and the company is growing 40% month over month, doing over 300 deliveries on a monthly basis.

Arodiogbu, who is originally from Nigeria and earned degrees from Penn State and Johns Hopkins, previously cofounded a company called Scotty Labs, which had raised $6 million and was acquired by DoorDash in 2019.

Arodiogbu met his cofounder Jin Shieh (who was born in Taiwan and serves as CTO) at Zenefi ts, where Shieh he was director of engineering, and Arodiogbu was a product manager. George Ezenna (who is also from Nigeria) and Arodiogbu worked together at Scotty Labs.

Ray Tonsing, founder and managing director at Caff einated Capital, who led the Series A investment says that the company aims try to empower small trucking fi rms and individual truck drivers with modern tools.

“The cofounders are really trying to create a consumer experience to modernize the business in a box toolkit for truck drivers,” Tonsing says. “Looking at it long term, the company is going to be about how it can help these drivers earn more money and optimize their time.”

CloudTrucks, which currently employs 13 people and is headquartered in San Francisco, previously raised $6.1 million in a seed round. With the $20.5 million Series A the total amount of equity funding in the company has grown to $26.6 million. www.forbes.com/sites/igorbosilkovski/2020/12/16/ meet-the-nigerian-entrepreneur-who-just-raised-205million-to-help-truck-drivers-manage-their-business Image credits: CloudTrucks' platform