Latest news with #techstack
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Less than 2 years after Flexport bought Convoy's tech stack, it's being sold to DAT
The tech stack that was at the heart of now-defunct digital brokerage Convoy is on the move again, being sold to DAT in a move seen as significantly broadening that company's value proposition in the freight market. Freight forwarder Flexport, which acquired the tech stack from the remnants of Convoy less than two years ago, said Monday it is selling the product to DAT. When a company retreats from something it bought quickly, it is often a sign of defeat. (An old reference certainly, but the deal by Quaker Oats (NYSE: PEP) in the 90's to buy beverage maker Snapple for $1.4 billion, only to sell it back to its original owners three years later for $300 million, is considered the ultimate example of that sort of humbling failure). There is no sign that is the case with the quick flip of the Convoy tech stack. Ryan Petersen, the CEO of Flexport, said the return on the sale of the Convoy tech 'puts Flexport in an awesome place financially.' When Flexport purchased the Convoy tech stack in late 2023, the price on the transaction was reportedly $16 million, though neither company confirmed that price. The sale to DAT reportedly was made at a price near $250 million, though the companies declined to disclose the sales price. Besides the strong return on investment, Petersen, in a joint interview with DAT's CEO Jeff Clementz, said the presence of a powerful technology tool serving brokers that is supposed to be neutral could often complicate Flexport's primary business of freight forwarding. Neutral might not be neutral 'What we realized is that a neutral platform is not neutral,' Petersen said. 'We have a brokerage. We're a massive freight forwarding company.' The combination, he said, raised questions in the industry whether the Convoy platform truly could be seen as neutral. It's not the first time a company in the freight tech world has wrestled with the issue. When what is now Triumph Financial (NASDAQ: TFIN) bought HubTran to serve as an open loop auditing system for brokers and factoring companies, Triumph's management took great pains, repeatedly, to stress that its traditional factoring business could not get an inside look at what its factoring competitors who were using the legacy HubTran platform were doing. Petersen noted that the digital brokerage business that came with its 2023 acquisition of the Convoy tech stack will remain with Flexport. It processes about 100,000 loads per year, he said, 98% of which are completed with no human involvement. It will also continue to use the Convoy system even though it will now be owned by DAT, according to Petersen. 'On day one, we will be their biggest customer and we hope to continue to be their biggest customer,' he said. A widening range of offerings from DAT For DAT, the purchase is possibly transformative. In the past several months, besides promoting Clementz to CEO, it has purchased visibility provider Trucker Tools and payments platform Outgo. (Clementz said DAT did not pursue an acquisition of the Convoy tech stack when it was first offered for sale as part of the Convoy bankruptcy). With the purchase of the Convoy tech stack, it has now vastly increased its range of offerings to the freight sector with capabilities that have moved well beyond its traditional load board. Clementz, in his interview with FreightWaves, laid out what might be considered the three segments of how loads are offered into the market. About 50% of broker loads, he said, get moved through a broker's private network. But after that, he said, 'you might go to other load boards,' adding that DAT is the 'backstop you need to go to, ultimately, especially in the last 24 to 48 hours.' If brokers choose to use their private network, Clementz said, that also may come with a decision to put the load on what will now be DAT's Convoy platform, 'because I don't have to touch it. And if it all works, fantastic. If not, then I'll intervene and I'll work it through the load board.' Ultimately, he said, DAT believes the Convoy platform, with its power of automation to get shipper and carrier together, will be the first place that loads will be placed. But from there, Clementz said, if a match isn't made it can 'waterfall' down to the DAT platform. 'We think we can go directly from the shipper to the TMS (transportation management system) and into the Convoy platform directly and then move to the load board,' Clementz said. The Convoy tech team–which is coming over to DAT in the deal–already has been working with TMS providers to have loads in a TMS populate into the Convoy platform automatically. Load board will continue to be dominant for awhile But change isn't overnight. 'We actually think the load board will be the primary use case for quite a long time,' Clementz said. Fraud prevention is expected to be a major selling point of the broader DAT product offering, Clementz said. DAT already was set to launch a fraud management solution before the deal with Flexport. But the Convoy system long had been admired for its own fraud prevention tools, Clementz said. Building it into the DAT platform on top of its own capabilities 'will really make DAT the safest platform,' he added. There will be no upfront fees for DAT users to sign up to use the Convoy platform, Clementz said. Fees will be transactional, so a DAT user can access the Convoy system with no payments unless a transaction is completed. But that fact also is a driver to the deal, according to Clementz. Bringing in new users on to the system has an extremely low customer acquisition cost, which often goes by the acronym CAC, and that may slow some early adoption, he added. 'I think we will have more demand than we can handle for onboarding, so we'll probably have to create a wait list because there's no cost to sign up for this,' Clementz said. 'It will take time for us to integrate accounts, set them up and get them going.' DAT is a unit of publicly-traded Roper Technologies. (NASDAQ: ROP) In the company's latest conference call with analysts, president and CEO Laurence Hunn said DAT's financial performance in the second quarter 'was solid…and had strong (average revenue per unit improvements).' DAT data is not broken out separately in the Roper earnings. Hunn also said DAT had made 'significant progress' integrating Trucker Tools into its system. More articles by John Kingston Yet another broker liability case, this time in the Fifth Circuit, adds to the growing mix Ryder's used vehicle numbers show a bullish corner: tractor sales Five takeaways from the State of Freight for July: What earnings and the indices are saying about the market The post Less than 2 years after Flexport bought Convoy's tech stack, it's being sold to DAT appeared first on FreightWaves.
Bloomberg
23-07-2025
- Business
- Bloomberg
US AI Action Plan Released by White House
The US's newly released AI Action Plan is about building out AI globally on a US tech stack, says Bloomberg's Michael Shepard. He joins Caroline Hyde and Ed Ludlow on 'Bloomberg Tech.' (Source: Bloomberg)
Entrepreneur
17-06-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
What Scaling My Startup Taught Me About Bad Tech Decisions
Here's why your early tech stack becomes your biggest liability when scaling. Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. About five years ago, our startup hit its first million in revenue. I thought we had everything figured out. Our mix of tools had gotten us this far, so surely they'd carry us to the next level. Well, I couldn't be more wrong. Six months later, I learned a lesson no business school covers: the very tech stack that gives you your competitive edge to reach $1 million becomes your biggest enemy when scaling to $10 million and beyond. That's the scaling paradox. It's not uncommon either. 74% of high-growth startups fail during scaling, and most failures trace back to technology that slows business growth. This article shows you how to spot the warning signs before your tech stack becomes your bottleneck, and how to rebuild it into the engine that powers your next growth phase. Related: How to Unify Your Tech Stack in 30 Days — and Save Money What does scaling your tech stack mean? The average mid-market company uses 185 different apps in its tech stack, and most grew organically rather than strategically. But what starts as efficiency improvements becomes the very thing slowing you down. Scaling your tech stack means building technology that gets more efficient as your business grows, rather than becoming more complex. Instead of adding new tools for every new problem, you create an integrated system where each component strengthens the others. It's easy to look at scaling as simply upgrading to enterprise versions. But real scaling means moving from disconnected tools that require manual work to connected systems that automate workflows. It's the difference between having 50 apps that each solve one problem versus 15 tools that work together to solve complex business challenges. True tech stack scaling transforms your technology from a collection of individual solutions into a unified platform that amplifies your team's capabilities. When done right, adding new customers, team members or processes makes your system more valuable, not more complicated. The goal is to build a foundation that supports 10x growth without breaking. And this breakthrough can happen when you stop asking "What tool can fix this?" and start asking "How can we make our system work as one?" Related: He Was Scared to Give His Business Partners Bad News. Then He Realized a Gamechanging Truth. Why care about scaling the tech stack? Your current approach may feel fine because it's gotten you this far. But there's a hidden complexity threshold approaching where your informal systems will break down faster than you can patch them. Every new customer adds weight to a foundation built for a much smaller company. Every new team member multiplies the communication paths that need managing. Every new process creates another point of failure. The warning signs are already there. Your team complains about spending too much time on "admin work." Customer requests take longer to fulfill. You find yourself hiring people just to manage the tools you already have rather than growing the business. Technical debt compounds faster than you think. 78% of scaling initiatives that bypass technical evaluations encounter major setbacks within the first year, often requiring complete overhauls that cost far more than preventive measures. Meanwhile, your competitors who figure this out early gain advantages that compound every quarter. The gap between you and them widens with every month you delay. How to rebuild your tech stack without breaking what works Start with a scaling audit. Map every tool your team uses daily, every manual process that moves information between systems, every place where work gets stuck waiting for someone to update another platform. Then stress-test each component against your growth goals for the next 18 months. If you plan to double your customer base, can your current system handle twice the data volume? Focus on three areas: customer data management, workflow automation and real-time reporting. These form the foundation that everything else builds on. Start by consolidating tools that do similar things. 54% of IT professionals know that their tech stack is too bloated, and most bloat comes from overlapping solutions added reactively. Instead of having customer information scattered across three platforms, choose one system that can handle everything you need. Build connections between the tools you keep. Modern platforms offer APIs and integrations that can eliminate most manual data entry. Information should flow automatically from your sales system to your accounting software to your customer support platform. Make changes incrementally. Pick your most critical workflow and fix that first. Make sure it's stable before moving to the next piece. What obstacles do you need to work around for successful scaling? Budget concerns: You're already paying for inefficiency through manual workarounds, system downtime and missed opportunities. Calculate what your current chaos costs before deciding you can't afford to fix it. Team resistance: Include them in choosing new solutions and show clearly how the changes will make their daily work easier. Fear of disrupting what's working: The things that work today will break tomorrow under increased load. Plan changes during slower periods and keep backup processes until new systems prove themselves. Vendor lock-ins: Choose platforms that let you export your data easily. You want to control your information, not be controlled by it. The founders who master this transition early create sustainable advantages that compound over time. Those who wait face increasingly expensive crises that can derail their entire growth trajectory. Moving beyond the scaling paradox Your greatest strengths always become your greatest weaknesses as you scale. The scrappy, resourceful approach that got you to your first million — piecing together solutions, making things work through determination — becomes the very thing that stops you from reaching your next milestone. The founders who see this early don't just avoid the scaling crisis. They turn the transition itself into an advantage that builds their lead while their competitors remain trapped by the very success patterns that once served them well.
Forbes
09-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
The Freelancer Tech Stack: Tools You Need To Increase Efficiency
Freelancer man working on laptop while sitting at a desk at home. Being a freelancer comes with a unique set of challenges, one of the most universal challenges being that we are strapped for time. There are only so many hours in the day to complete client work, let alone manage your own marketing and the administration side of your business. But the fact of the matter is that time is money. Implementing an efficient tech stack is one way to free up your time so that you can focus on needle-moving, revenue-generating activities. Your tech stack needs tools to help you streamline your workflows, offset basic administrative tasks, and use your time more effectively. From there, you can scale your business to new heights. Here are some tools that freelancers can implement in their business right away. Every hour you waste hunting down client timelines, briefs, and documents, let alone switching between tools, is time not spent delivering value to clients and increasing your revenue. An all-in-one project management tool will centralize your tasks, documents, and timelines, which is crucial for any freelancer's tech stack, especially when managing several clients simultaneously. It will help to keep you organized and efficient, and may even help to prevent overwhelm! Some project management tools can even be shared with clients, which improves transparency and efficiency in your communications. Some popular freelancer tools include Notion, Trello, ClickUp, and Asana. The right tool for you will depend on your preferred workflow and what appeals to you visually. Time is your most important asset. Every freelancer needs tools to help manage their time on projects and busy calendars. It's exhausting to send back-and-forth emails to determine each person's availability. Freelancers need to make it as easy and streamlined as possible for prospects to book discovery calls into their calendars and for clients to book meetings. One such way is with Calendly. Prospects and clients can choose a time in your calendar that suits them. You've already labeled the available times and days, so there's no clash! Calendly then syncs with your calendar so that the appointments will populate automatically. Are you sick of repetitive and mundane tasks? A tool like Zapier lets you create automatic connections between your tools, saving you time and fuss. For example, when a client emails you with a request, Zapier can automatically attach that request to your project management board so that it's filed correctly and doesn't fall through the cracks. Another way to manage your time more efficiently is to track it. Tools like Toggl Track or RescueTime will report your time on a specific task. No more guessing games, just pure data on how much time you're spending, and from there, you can take steps to improve your efficiency. Want to go a step further? Create a 'Zap' in Zapier to send your time-tracking data to Google Sheets or Notion for streamlined reporting and analysis. You may not be a designer yourself, but every freelancer must invest in their own marketing. This is where design and content tools are important additions to your tech stack. Here are a few tools that can keep you efficient and also improve the professionalism and quality of your marketing. First, Canva is a popular tool amongst freelancers - for good reason. It empowers freelancers to upgrade their marketing assets, digital products, reports, and even invoices with pre-designed templates and drag-and-drop builders. Canva also has its own AI tools that freelancers can use which is helpful for non-designers and those quick turnaround requests. Speaking of AI, you may already be using generative AI tools in some shape or form. If not, choose at least one to keep in your tech stack. Highly popular ones include ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini, which can be helpful to freelancers for super quick brainstorming or drafting of content. Lastly, a round-up of tools for freelancers wouldn't be complete without a grammar checker. It may not be the flashiest of tools in your tech stack. However, a tool like this is important for picking up typos and mistakes in your writing, which can ultimately help you save time on editing and prevent you from second-guessing your communication with clients. Popular ones include Grammarly, Quillbot, and Hemingway Editor. The right tools don't just save freelancer's time and money. They empower you to work with clients more efficiently and confidently. Add some of these tools to your tech stack and watch how they improve your business's operations and even help you scale your business in the future.
Fast Company
29-05-2025
- Business
- Fast Company
From stack to sync: The rise of the marketing operating system
Marketing today isn't suffering from a lack of tools—it's drowning in them. Between campaign platforms, analytics dashboards, CMSs, CDPs, DAMs, and automation engines, marketers are cobbling together fragmented tech stacks with duct tape and good intentions. Enter: the marketing operating system (MOS). Yes, another acronym. But before you roll your eyes, consider this: What if the MOS isn't just another buzzword, but a fundamental rethinking of how modern brands operate? At its core, the marketing operating system is a unifying framework that reimagines how marketing functions. It transforms the traditional tech stack into a synchronized, composable ecosystem. It's the connective tissue that brings together siloed technologies, teams, and touchpoints into a living, breathing system—designed to deliver real-time engagement, personalization at scale, and measurable business growth. In other words, the MOS isn't just about managing tools. It's about orchestrating them around the customer. And in doing so, it creates the conditions for AI to operate meaningfully, woven across platforms, data, and workflows to accelerate everything. Let's break down the four key transformations the MOS enables. 1. FROM EXPERIENCE DELIVERY TO EXPERIENCE ORCHESTRATION This is not your legacy DXP—and it's definitely not just another tool. It's a philosophy. A system. A new way of working. A DXP is essential for managing content and delivering experiences across channels. But even the best DXPs often function as glorified content management systems, with limited orchestration across the full marketing lifecycle. A marketing operating system takes a broader, more strategic view, seamlessly connecting your DXP with your data layer. It synchronizes with engagement tools across email, web, mobile, and social. It also integrates AI and automation to drive personalization, real-time decisioning and continuous optimization. A DXP helps you build experiences. A MOS makes sure they're intelligent, connected, and aligned with outcomes. 2. POWERING RELEVANCE, CREATIVITY, AND SCALE Today's audiences aren't waiting for your next campaign drop. They're navigating ecosystems. They expect relevance in real time, tailored content, and seamless, frictionless journeys. This is where the MOS becomes mission-critical: • It makes personalization real. With AI baked into your MOS, you're potentially speaking to individuals—not segments—based on behavior, context, and intent. • It connects content with conversion. The MOS ties asset creation to performance data with which can allow AI to drive iteration. • It frees your talent. Automation doesn't replace creativity—it removes the friction around it. AI accelerates tagging, versioning, and even ideation, so teams can focus on the ideas that move people. • It embeds agile governance. A modern MOS builds in smart guardrails to protect the brand while scaling content globally. AI can flag risks, enforce voice, and ensure compliance in real time. The takeaway? AI doesn't work in isolation—it thrives when connected. And the MOS makes that connection possible. 3. BUILD THE SYSTEM, WIN THE CULTURE You don't buy a marketing operating system off a shelf—you architect it, and then build culture around it. Even if you're leveraging leaders like Adobe Experience Cloud or Optimizely, a MOS must be intentionally designed—with composable tech, cross-functional alignment, and AI embedded where it drives value (full disclosure: Rightpoint is a partner of both Adobe and Optimizely). This marks the shift from campaign-centric to systems-centric thinking. But even the most sophisticated system will fail without people. That's where experience-driven change management becomes essential, ensuring lasting adoption of both the tools and the mindset. Because this isn't just a tech transformation—it's a cultural one. It's about helping every function—from creative to data science—see themselves as part of a synchronized, customer-centric system. And when teams trust the system, they're more willing to trust AI as a true partner in their work. 4. DESIGNING YOUR MOS: A STEP-BY-STEP ROADMAP Building your MOS starts with a few key moves: 1. Audit your stack. Identify overlaps, gaps, and data silos. 2. Define what you need to orchestrate. Use your customer journey as a blueprint. 3. Choose composable, AI-ready tools. Modular platforms that integrate cleanly—and can scale with intelligence—are essential. 4. Align teams early. Bring marketing, content, data, and ops together around shared KPIs and workflows. 5. Lead with enablement. Train your teams not just on the tech, but also on how to work with AI so that it becomes a creative accelerant, not a black box. A well-designed MOS doesn't just scale marketing—it synchronizes it around the customer and across the enterprise. THE FUTURE ISN'T STACKED—IT'S SYNCED In a world where expectations evolve in real time, brands don't need more tools—they need orchestration. They need systems that turn noise into nuance, complexity into clarity, and creativity into impact. And the result isn't just launching campaigns—it's building intelligent, adaptive, always-on experiences. The marketing operating system isn't about infrastructure—it's about customer intimacy. It empowers brands to show up for consumers where they are, when it matters most, with the message that fits the moment. Not someday or eventually, but in real time, with relevance. While AI makes those experiences scalable, the MOS makes them possible.
