#75: Startup and New Technology in Supply Chain

 It is a pleasure to have with us in this episode Sarah Barnes-Humphrey and Eric Johnson on a conversation on startups and new technologies in supply chain. 

Discover more details here.

Some of the highlights of the episode:

• The funding of startups amidst the coronavirus crisis
• How innovators can use the current situation for future development
• Profitability vs Hyper scaling
• Big companies and startups working together
• The importance of storytelling in attracting talent

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Transcript

Radu Palamariu:   0:00
Hello and welcome to the leaders in supply chain podcast. I am your host, rather Callum. Are you managing director of Ellicott Global? Our mission is to connect the supply chain ecosystem by bringing forward the most interesting leaders in the industry. And it's my pleasure to have with us today. Sara Barnes Humphrey and Eric Johnston on a conversation on startups and new technologies in supply chain there Isa, logistician, turn, splash and Market Here. Passionate about bringing stories to life in the industry, she's the host of the popular let's talk supply chain podcast. She also hosts the trade squad show on YouTube, and she basically helps tell tell the stories and bring awareness to brands and hot topics in the industry, which also includes the famous women in supply chain Siri's. She's the co founder and CEO ship set, which is a new technology platform which encompasses all her experience and knowledge and supply chain, bringing innovative and collaborative ideas together on a platform for the supply chain industry. Eric comes from the Journal of Commerce. J. O. C. Is a senior editor there for technology, and he leads the coverage and analysis of the technology's impact on global logistics and trade. He regularly reports on how Scheepers carriers across all modes and logistics companies use software as well as on concepts impacting core afraid transportation processes like procurement, execution, visibility and payment. Eric is a regular presenter and moderator of industry events and Webinars. And prior to joining J. O. C. He spent almost 13 years with American cheaper in a variety of rose. Eric, Sarah, Thanks for joining us and a pleasure to have you with us today

Eric:   1:37
really happy to be here. Thanks so much for having us radio.

Eric:   1:40
Yeah, great to be here at

Radu Palamariu:   1:42
Super. And let's start maybe with Eric first. And and I wanted to ask you, given the current situation and we live quite interesting and well for lack of a better word. Turbulent times. Who about the coffee it? 19 situation? The Corona virus crisis is turning a little bit. Supply chains upside down, and obviously it's also having, and as an impact on the Capitol and on the funding, um, of ah, venture capital funds towards logistics supply change start ups. So I was reading that Sequoia Capital basically put out an official announcement recently saying that this is gonna be a fairly tough year. I wanted to ask you how do you see this situation affecting startups in general?

Eric:   2:23
Yeah, it's kind of the $1,000,000 question. At this point, a zit relates to start ups, and And either, you know, veces that air that our logistics or supply chain focused or, you know, Jenna, more general funds that, you know, had an interest in logistics, I think. No. From everything I've read and in talking to a couple of e sees that I sort of implicitly trust at this point. Um, I think what we're seeing right now is funds. We're going to get a little more choosy around which companies they invest in. Um, if you're already dead on the road with the fund, you're probably, you know, in relatively good shape. If you if if you have a good story to tell and they were gonna back you anyway, it might be a little difficult to start a conversation right now, especially if you're kind of in unproven territory and having to really, you know, go out there and raise in an environment where either you was a founder or not, you know, really kind of known on have a track record or, you know, the market that you're trying to address is not massive and sort of sells itself. Um, I think, and we can maybe get into this a little bit later, around kind of which business models are more preferable now and how that maybe has changed even independent of the Kobe situation. But, you know, I mean, I think big picture economically, Whether you're talking about the VC industry or whether you're talking about, you know, a company being able to invest in a piece of software. Everybody is gonna be taking a hard look at every last dollar right now because sales are down. You know, we don't know when that bounce back is gonna come. We're in a really, really unclear situation on both the demand and supply side. So it's not necessarily a TTE a time when you know the funds or loose Um, but on the other hand, I've definitely read about some. Cem finds that air saying, you know, this is the time when really huge winners air kind of sometimes emerge. You know, we saw in the out of the dot com and out of the financial crisis. We saw some big made household names come up that, you know, kind of Rose like Phoenix out of the fire. So it's it's not an all or nothing situation. But I think in general it's It's gonna be a really difficult situation to try to, like, prove yourself. You're kind of unproven to this point

Radu Palamariu:   4:47
and specifically on the topic of of software. And basically there's a lot of talk now in this situation where all of the sudden supply trains were kind of blown in the air. And then that there's bean little issues everywhere because of the lockdowns and different different breakdowns in the supply chain. How do you see software, visibility, tools, visibility, startups, all those type off offerings and service's whilst Cos. May not necessarily want to roll it out now. Nevertheless, it may in my, you know, amateur view, it may a little bit accelerate that process because it does give them a lot off. That's a lot of insight or data to make better decisions potentially in the future. Do you see that as a as a potential consequence of this crisis? So how do you see this visibility and

Eric:   5:37
early. Yeah, I think I think what you're going to see in the postmortem of this Ah, this crisis from a supply chain perspective is you're gonna see a 1,000,000 case studies, you know, highlighted by you know, companies that either sell themselves is risk risk management or mitigation tools or, you know, supply chain visibility, tools, anything that helps you. I pivot quickly from kind of one course to another. Um, people are gonna sell them, sell themselves, saying, Look what you might have been able to do had you had the foresight had you have this in place prior to this crisis. I think you're absolutely right. It's really difficult to expect any, you know, shipper, any three pl to implement some kind of transformational technology in the midst of all this. And I would suspect, haven't had a chance yet to talk to a lot of companies to kind of see where they are. You know whether projects are on hold or have been put on hold due to this. But I can't imagine that many people have the bandwidths, too kind of, you know, go forward with a big project. Big rollout of some new technology in the midst of all this. So I would imagine a lot of projects on hold. And I would I would bet a lot of money that coming out of this when things return to some sort of normal that you're gonna see a lot of kind of. Well, if you had our technology in place prior to you know, January of 2020 you would have been able to make you know, you would have been able to minimize your damage is and you would have been able to preserve revenue out of this market. Oh, are from this product, So absolutely. I mean, I this is sort of like a tailor made case for those types of hindsight is 2020 cases, really?

Sarah:   7:23
I just jump in there for a sec. I also think that, you know, innovators in and of itself are gonna take a look at you know what's happening right now, and they're gonna be able to come up with new, innovative ideas software cloud platforms to maybe, you know, reduce some of the risk and the pandemic that's come from something like this as well.

Radu Palamariu:   7:45
I

Eric:   7:46
I was gonna say I think you know, a point that I had made someone last week was I tend to look at things very much through kind of a first and foremost through an ocean freight lands. And if you go back 15 16 years ago in North America, you had some really crippling situations in ports in North America and especially in L. A in Long Beach. On what what shippers importers into the U. S. Did post that crisis was. They said, Well, we need to diversify. We can't have all of our cargo going through one gateway, right? But slowly they started concentrating things back again until it happened again. About a decade later. That was in 2014. Now you don't find an importer who doesn't have a very diversified strategy about getting cargo into the U. S. And so I think this type of major major disruption is gonna make people think about have it diversifying their source, saying, which is not easy, you know. I mean, sometimes if you have this component and you know that you've spent years creating ah supplier relationship around in one particular country where there's like a favorable duty treatment, it's not easy to replicate that. But I think you are going to see companies take a hard look at diversifying, and any technology that helps them do that is gonna be really well received.

Radu Palamariu:   9:06
I wanted to share a little bit on on a discussion that I had with one of our well, he's actually a software and the AARP provider. And then he was telling me exactly to your point, Eric, that most of the projects are now on hold on the At the same time, I was talking to a different type of visibility to software provider, and it's a different problem that they had namely, their rollout takes between 2 to 6 weeks, so he was coming from an angle of Now we really need to accelerate ourselves and get in. There's different modules. And this different complexity, of course, writes for the least complexity of the of the model module. It would take about 2 to 3 weeks to implement it now, but his issue was that because clients are I used to brand names like a city or orca, what not that take sometimes months or years to to successfully rollout. They almost cannot believe that there are solutions that would give them that type of data and disability that are available so fast. Eso eso It's kind of Ah, convention on the other side. That was the solution. Some of the solutions are already available. People either don't trust that it actually, I mean, you know, sometimes to the point where they think it's a scam. And and secondly, again, obviously in crisis mode, you don't necessarily want oh, you know, to risk another failed implementation. So, um uh, yeah, well, we'll see how that pans out, but different. There's a lot of solutions that can be quite readily and fast deployed if necessary. And if if companies were open to it on and I wanted to, I wanted to kind of shift also and us both of you. Because now it's also time of collaboration and working together, and I'll shift a little bit to the to a question that I had a little bit later on. But I think it's applicable to ask in now. And we've seen that spot on with with what with what happened, TPM rightly in terms of in terms of the conference. The fact that you've done an online event because it wasn't possible to do a physical event. How do you see? Also the situation getting people to getting getting organizations, working together for a greater edit value to their clients by data sharing alliance. It's and so on.

Eric:   11:22
You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna let Sarah answer that first, cause she I know collaboration is probably the thing I hear from the most real person I could jump in after, But that's a great question.

Eric:   11:32
Yeah, I was going to jump in because you said my favorite word radio. I mean collaboration. I don't know if people cringe every time they hear it now because I say it so much. Um, but I really think that collaboration is the future of business. And like we saw after, you know, um, unti PM is what what people have been calling it and the emergence of that one day webinar that we were all really able to come together. Um, kudos to the team at chain dot io for putting that together because, you know, everybody was going to TPM toe, listen to the content, listen to the speaker's especially, you know, El Dorado, which was Eric's baby, um, and brought together the tech community. And so I think this is a really great example of people coming together and collaborate, and it's just going to get that much more important as we, you know, move forward. Especially in the tech side. Um, you know, one example that I haven't seen yet is cos that solve challenges in different aspects of the supply chain coming together in collaboration to make it easier for supply chain professionals to find what they need without a lot of Loggins. That's a challenge that I think that we're facing a supply chain. Do you think that I'm gonna pose this right back to you guys? Do you think that can happen?

Eric:   12:56
Uh, you know, I would say that one of the interesting things in putting together a couple events over the last two years around, you know, purely logistics technology, not not convening people around, you know, global logistics, and then having a little bit of programming around technology but actually building an entire event around. The idea of technology is I've been sort of floored by the level of kind of partnership and cooperative Ishan that you see. Um,

Eric:   13:28
I love that word.

Eric:   13:30
Yeah, I mean, I it to me. It always sounded a little bit kind of, um, you know, like something you'd see in a management book, But But there's no real better word to describe what's going on right now where you have coming in, you know, in 5 10 years ago would have not taken phone calls from one another and been, you know, talking, talking crap about each other to their competitors. And maybe they still d'oh. But But they are literally finding ways to work together. And I think there's two reasons for it. One is the demand side. There is, um, there's too much. There's too much need for want for one company to solve all the problems of a particular shipment in transit. There's just too much. I mean, companies have tried to do it. Single companies have tried to do it. Inevitably, they always need to buy, you know, piece of data. Ex partner with, you know, provider ABC, um, you know, have a have a strategic partnership with with this company that fills a hole that their customers asked for. So now, instead of that approach, it's now it's like, Well, let's you know these for 34 companies. Let's work together and provide greater value than we would you know is the sum of our parts. And then I think the second part of it is the structural part of software. Now it's just easier to pull things together with AP eyes with, you know, kind of, you know, Sara, mention Cloud and everything being hosted remotely cuts down on software companies cost to kind of produced their products so they can throw more on the engineering and throw Maurin toe integrations and interfaces with both our customers, but also with other software. So you know, rather your point about companies that can implement in 2 to 3 weeks. Surprising kind of consumers is well taken because it does seem crazy to someone who probably might have lasts. Gone through a big software and limitation 15 years ago and yet did take three years. And it was a nightmare. And But what's behind all this is that software that's really easy to connect with one another. It's not easy. I shouldn't I shouldn't like I can't do it, but it's way easier. It's way easier to be done. People that Brian a chain down another. You know, you're Edie, I these companies, that really kind of they kind of provide, like the, uh the the the tools that connect two's different systems together. Um, it changes the whole kind of approach. You don't have to be at the be all end all a single software company to every customer you can. You have this kind of like tool kit that you can piece together different different companies, different sources of data. So I think I'm right there with Sarah and thinking this is absolutely the future. And if not the present and it's really about is the ultimate consumer of the technology. Are they gonna be with that model? Or they're gonna expect to still have one box and one, you know, kind of platform and one throat toe? Choe, to use very trite

Radu Palamariu:   16:39
phrase, I guess from a constable perspective, it's ah, it's ultimately, you know how we leave our lives on a daily basis and why Amazon is so successful, right, because it's one point off or Ali Baba. It's one point where you can get all your stuff something from from a diesel utilization, as long as it's easy to use. That's probably what the consumer wants. I wanted to bring the example, and I'll ask you both. Maybe for some concrete examples if you have seen as well. But I wanted to specifically pull going down in this aspect of collaboration, and I will personally say that I was skeptical at the beginning, and actually, I had them on the podcast about a year and 1/2 ago. Trade lines, eh? So I had them. I had IBM and I had a risk. They first started the place for him, right? And about a year and 1/2 when when they were sharing that, Basically, they wanted to get all the carriers and a number of other, um players from the, you know, customs and government and all of that three peels on the platform. I I kind of asked them a I assure you that this is even possible. Are you sure they will want to share you their data with you? And well, now fast forward. One and 1/2 years later, it things that it really is catching on. I think they got most of the carriers now on board, on top of merciless, you know, there's their competition. All frenemies. There's another term, right? So you had your time. I have the time. Frenemies. Um So I think the trade winds can be also pretty good example of collaborating, working together and creating this platform for, I don't know, greater good and ease of the of the industry. And I wanted to to ask you Do you have some specific exam? Because I'd love to, you know, maybe to give some very specific, uh, case, that is, if you have maybe from us, maybe from other parts of the world, will you? You've seen also start ups coming together or start up with big companies coming together or anything like like that to this point of collaboration.

Eric:   18:37
Well, s o for me when I was starting to build ships e um, it's not necessarily a concrete example, but it's something that, you know, I kind of see as the future of the company. And that would be and that's really a part of all of the conversations that I'm having around ship. See, when I am talking about other tech companies in supply chain, other software companies and supply chain, I'm thinking about the future and how we can work together because they're solving different aspects of the supply chain. I'm solving different aspects of this play, Jane. And how do we bring that together? And that's actually face two of what? We're gonna be working on it ship, See, Because I think that, you know, if, like you said, if we can bring it together into a one point that makes it easy for everybody and easy for them to see what supply chain cos air out there and what they do for their size of company or for their product or for the aspect of the supply chain that they're having a challenge with at the time. I think that we're going to see a lot more success throughout the industry if we all are able to, you know, come together in that collaboration,

Radu Palamariu:   19:49
right?

Eric:   19:50
Yeah. Uh, so do I. I I'm always a little hesitant to name specific examples, because

Radu Palamariu:   19:59
I just really I just realized they put you on the sport I

Eric:   20:06
usually have. I'm usually in the position where I'm putting other people on the spot, so it's totally fair I But you know, I do. I cover a huge range of companies and and a lot of competing companies. And obviously, uh, there are a lot of interesting, interesting models out there. And to your specific question, you know, there's I have seen some specific intersection of start ups with established providers. I can give it a couple examples because I've written about this a lot on the domestic free, uh, landscape in North America. You've seen a lot of the big name, uh, GMs providers partner with both some of the startup visibility providers, Um, and also with some of the kind of well known, well back venture capital backed freight brokers, so that you know the sort of the domestic trade for hours. Um, and it's been interesting to see that level of partnership between the two of them and how much it's been publicized. So it's actually been it's not been some sort of integration that takes place behind the scenes that you know, the company's tell their existing customers about in an email that just goes out to customers. They've been front center and press releases. There's been Big Public blog's Arlington and on their Web sites about it. They've made sure that I know about them And, you know, rather than any individual partnership cuts kind of collectively, it's showing that, you know, TMS providers have the in bill network of demand from shippers or brokers. If if that's what their you know, their core customer is and the startups need access to those companies, the startups need need demand to fuel their connections that they may have to the carrier side or vice versa. Maybe they have a huge network of carriers. I'm sorry. Maybe they have a huge network of shippers and they need some sort of TMS that connects them Thio, a network of carriers of trucking companies. So what you're seeing and this goes to what I was saying before is you're seeing thes startups kind of come in and say, Well, you know, this is the market as I thought it was. This is what the product we're gonna try to build, and very quickly they realized, Well, we're missing this piece, and maybe this knees and demand side, and we just, you know, it's hard for us. The money that we would spend to create that demand side is so intense intensive, I should say, Why don't we just create partnerships with TMS for providers who have that demand side built in, um, and make a big deal of it, you know? And so that's that's been one area that I've seen a lot of activity where you've seen kind of these big incumbent companies working with some of the startups. Um, that that's notable. You know your point about trade lens. They've definitely made a lot of progress over the last year in terms of getting, ah, a lot of rival carriers marry six rival carriers. They've gotten a ton of port port authorities, terminal operators, customs authorities. They actually just signed up today. I just saw a note that they signed up Standard Charter, which isn't interesting kind of partner, because I've been importing a lot on kind of how trade finance is becoming a bigger kind of ancillary service to logistics on. That kind of it'll be interesting to see what standard Charter wants to get out of their participation, but, um, but, you know, the missing piece is similar to what I was just talking about, At least to date is is Thea shipper side the demand side of that, and I know that Maris's has told us that they have shippers who were involved in this, but there are, you know, don't necessarily want to be named at this point. So I think until we see a lot of shippers kind of jumping in on this and a lot of freight forwarders being involved in trade winds, there's always gonna be that's kept that ultimate skepticism on the demand side

Eric:   24:12
well, and I wantto I want to jump in there on trade lens because I think from a three pl side, I think they might have some some challenges there as well, right, because the carriers are already on the three pl side, and so it would be interesting to see if they're gonna be able to get three peels on board with this. And then the other thing that I wanted to just jump in there with is there's also accelerator programs like plug and Play that are bringing some of the you know exactly what Eric said, bringing some of the larger brands that are looking to innovate in certain areas of their business. And those accelerator programs are bringing those large enterprise companies with startups that have innovative ideas, platforms that are going to literally plug and play into what they're already doing from attacking a software side. Um, and so they're not, you know, taking on that project of proprietary technology there, you know, looking at start ups for the innovative idea that they can bring into the fold.

Radu Palamariu:   25:14
Yeah, Lincoln plays a great The mic result came on the podcast a few kisses ago. They're great. They're great with their drink. Things Unilever has has. Also, from a corporate perspective, it's an interesting model I don't like. You guys know that there's Unilever Foundry, where they basically support directly by themselves a number of start ups, and then they integrate them in their business unit called Unilever International, which is kind of their play field for, um, before they launched it into the bigger, bigger arm of Unilever. So it's Yeah, it's also self models. And around us, those areas,

Eric:   25:50
not the merits of the independent Accelerator core fund versus corporate accelerator find, is like a whole hour long podcasts into it.

Radu Palamariu:   26:02
Yeah, that's not going to that, but there's less no to another $1,000,000 question, which is perfect ability perfectibility of of, um or ah, yeah, hold this, this incumbent, this startups and this new, exciting adventures. I think there's been quite a bit off discussions, especially because we've had the we work situation where it didn't quite pan out the way, maybe menu hoped Or, you know, maybe some of the in retrospect, everybody can can say they knew it right? So they you can always be very wise when you look backwards. But the fact of the matter is that I think this there's a lot more investors now that are very getting much more impatient. Or they want results faster that they want their startups to have a clear path to profitability and usually in supply. Janine Logistics. You need fairly long investments, and you needs fairly long cycles before that is achieved. Have you seen any shift? Have you seen any The discussions maybe also shifting. Eric Serra, What's your take on this specific to

Eric:   27:09
the I can I can turn jump in first. I so two things that point out one is, um you mentioned kind of the cycles in logistics, and this is something that I sort of bring up on. Almost every conversation I have with me sees whether you know, in a public forum, or or, you know, in phone calls that are off the record or on background is, you know, do just the just the VC community now understand what a typical logistic software sales cycle looks like because it's not. Even though you have stuff that can be deployed in 2 to 3 weeks. The decision around that is typically not a quick decision. It could be, you know, eight months, 12 months, 24 months, five years, right? I mean, it really could be a long, long cycle for some of these things. And is that a line? How does that align with a V C? That is expecting X percent growth and revenue over the next 12 to 18 months leading into another round where the company is valued up higher? Um, so you know, our VC is kind of more aware that that's sort of how, like a company could be successful, but they just take more time to be successful because of the nature of the product they're selling. Probably, I think in general, I think just the aptitude around the industry has grown a lot over the last five seniors um it's, you know, I don't think that veces air all of a sudden going to say, Well, we're you know, we're fine. Uh, we want a company to prioritize profitability over the next year over hypergrowth. No, I mean that that's not what a VC is investing in. If you see is investing in the the chance that this may be a a huge home run and not, you know, a decent sized business, Right? So, um, there's also some misalignment there, and and it leads me to think like maybe every software company and logistics isn't suited to to raise VC funding. You know that. Look, maybe some of them ought to be looking at other forms of capital. Thio bolster their cut their company right. So, you know, a lot of it depends on it. Are you a brokerage where there's tons of revenue, we're afraid for her where potential You have lots of revenue, but most of it is passed through. But is the d. C kind of aware that that top line growth isn't necessarily indicative of how successful the company is and eventually becoming profitable, or they sass for the sale cycles longer. But you know, the recurring revenue is is the stronger and the margin is stronger, So it just e I think it depends more on who the VC is as much as it does the, you know, the business model. Like, do they understand what this business is trying to achieve and where and how long it might take them for to it for them to achieve it.

Sarah:   30:11
Yeah, those air really great points, Eric. But I also want to point out that I think marketing is gonna play a really big role in that as well, you know, rolling out the story of the company. I mean, we all know there's a lot of technology companies out there, especially in supply chain. And it's growing every single day, you know? So how are you going to differentiate yourself To make sure that that that sale cycle actually comes down, right? So it doesn't take as long to on board a customer. It doesn't take long to be profitable. And I think marketing is gonna pee key to that.

Eric:   30:45
Oh, big time. But you know you, sir, you are. You've probably heard at our events where shippers get up and say we've had it. We had a shipper at our log tech event in Vegas. Get up and say I get 160 cold. Yes, all the weak. Like, how do you know if you're running a global supply chain? How do you manage sorting through 160 cold emails from three p. Els and software companies? You don't way we do that right,

Sarah:   31:14
like it's absolutely impossible. And that's why I'm saying, you know, part of that key and the key to the success of this is going to be in your marketing and how you get your story out there because you have to be able to differentiate yourself not in a phone call, but in a different way, either through thought leadership pieces, being on a panel at conferences, really getting to know that person. The networking in person, I mean is, is huge, but also sorry,

Eric:   31:47
being on rodders podcast,

Sarah:   31:49
Yeah, or mine, you know, and I'm picking different content mediums to be able to get it out there because not everybody's the same. Some shippers are really active on Twitter. Some are really active on Lincoln. Some really watch videos very closely. Some listen to content through, you know, the podcasts, APs or audible or different things like that, where they're getting, that's where they're getting their information. And I think that's really going to be key to the success of a technology company differentiating themselves, getting themselves in front of customers. You know, even through vetted communities now, right, like there's there's a lot of different options, but it's a matter of even when you do get onto those mediums and you do tell your story, What are you saying? Are you keeping it simple? Are you painting the picture as to You know what it is that you do and specifically, how you can help a company? Because if you're not doing that, then they don't have time to sit through that and sift through what you're saying to try to figure out whether your technology is what they're looking for.

Radu Palamariu:   33:04
Points there. I'll lead them. Let's, um, some of my experience at least with this with these things, because I mean and I'm not even a client. And but I do myself get pitched a lot and you know, a lot of people approached me for some reason. They think that I might be able to either advise them all by their software. I don't know what, but at some point it gets overly. I mean, it gets over the crowded like, Okay, I mean, but what what exactly do you do in what sets you apart? And, um, what is what is, in a way, um, exciting to see is that people are getting on the bend wake and slowly, it's happening slowly but are getting on the bandwagon with Okay, we we need to add value. This kind of die hard sales speech. Cole calling type of activities are kind of debt. I mean, I don't I don't I don't think anybody will sell stuff because they, you know, they call called ahead of Supply Chain and that person picked up. And then there was open to talk about that particular particular software piece of whatever it may be that they were selling it. It's mostly done because you put out a content you they met at the conference. You said something of value to them, which typically is not a direct sales speech, is more of a story a case that how did I help somebody else on type of ah, type of ah example. And then you gauge there. Then you get their interest in and there they ask you for more. Um, I think we're seeing slowly but surely with seeing startups, Israelis, Corporates, I think Corporates Are you going slower in the start? That's what we're seeing them to start to do that. But yeah, I think it's gonna take is gonna take a while. So if you open up Lincoln now, I think there's there's a few that, you know, that actually put out thought leadership. They put out reports they try to they try to do this, this type of activities. But also, I think it's, you know, there's a long way to go in the gym.

Sarah:   34:55
Yeah, well, and I also think that it takes time, right as to Eric's point and to your point just now, you know there's a lot of touch points, but before between meeting them and actually getting the sale right, and marketing takes a long time, a swell. You know, you've got to be consistent in that messaging. You've got to be giving value after value after value after value and then be asking for the sale as well.

Radu Palamariu:   35:19
Specifically on the point of it was since the business that I'm supposed to be in, which is the human resource is side had headhunting and recruitment side. I wanted also to ask you both. Ah, and this also links very much to the branding and the storytelling of the company. How do you attract the best talent, and especially if you're a startup or your a younger player, you don't have the same. You don't have the same funds of the same brand, like, you know, like an established place sometimes. So maybe if you can share your perspectives on how can start ups and the and younger organization makes make themselves more attractive as employers of choice and win this fight for talent.

Sarah:   35:59
Well, I can't believe you're asking us that question. You came on the trade squad a couple of months ago, and we talked about how storytelling is a huge component to hiring talent.

Radu Palamariu:   36:11
It's weird for me to court myself, right.

Sarah:   36:14
Well, I'm gonna quote you for you. And you know what? I absolutely agreed with you when you said that, um, and it was a really compelling, you know, argument to let companies know that not only are you storytelling for the brand itself, but you're also storytelling about the culture and the people and the leadership and the mindset to be able to attract that talent. I think that, you know, the approach to hiring talent really depends on each entity. Um, because, you know, enterprise or traditional companies versus startups, they both have their upside. They both have their downside. And so it also depends on the individual's you know, what kind of company they wanna work for as well. But I think the key really to attracting the talent is in that storytelling. And so when you're looking at marketing the company, you've got to think about who your marketing, too, of course, your marketing to your core customer. But then you're also, um, storytelling and marketing to the next wave of talent that you want to bring into your organization.

Eric:   37:27
I can give a few thoughts in terms of conversations that I've had with people who have been weighing, you know, offers. But, uh, you know, they had offers on the table from start ups and offers on the table from incumbents, and, um, I think I think there's sort of this general idea that, you know, a certain person is drawn to the challenge of being a A startup. There's young, you know, young energy. There's, uh, less layers of fewer layers of bureaucracy. There's more direct opportunity to influence the direction of the company. There's there's potentially a lot more upside to the, you know, compensation. And then, you know, the flip side of that is stability. And, uh, you know, name brand. And you're kind of locking into, uh, some, uh, something that has a good foundation, and you're just trying to sort of incrementally improve it. And I think there's this idea that, like some people are drawn to, one and other people are drawn to another, and I think that's part of it. Um, at the end, what I've seen people kind of gravitate toward one of the other is, um that the person it's more like the person that they feel like they're gonna be working with a team that they feel like they're gonna be working with of the person that they report to, um seems to make as big a difference is anything else. I think I think people in logistics tend to be, they tend to move a fair amount. They tend to be risk takers. You know, you I've certainly met a ton of people who've lived in some pretty far flung places in their in their career. So it's not about taking the easy path ever, even if they're working for, ah, you know, a name brand company. So I think if you're a startup, I think one thing you're realizing really early on is a You're competing in a really competitive market within logistics and supply chain, and then you as a start up, you're also probably competing against other sort of technology focused industries that have a bunch of gravitational pull themselves. So, you know, if you're in engineering, you know you're you. Is it logistics startup are competing for with for engineers across a 1,000,000 different industries that all need good engineers. Right now we're good. Absolutely. So it's there's these dimensions that startups after the face. And really it's like I think if you obviously people who are I think drawn to startups have this feeling that they want big problems and big challenges to tackle Um but you also you can't. I don't think you Congar Oh in and say, you know, we're gonna give you with this Make crash spectacularly or we may make it to the moon. I think you have to provide people a little bit more of a kind of a stable road map for what you plan to d'oh. Just because there's too many good opportunities at incumbent companies that are on the table as well.

Eric:   40:26
Yeah, communication is key there.

Radu Palamariu:   40:29
Super well on this on this note, I want to thank both for your for your time. Sarah. Eric, Thanks for for joining us. Stay safe in this in this time, stay healthy and yeah, let's see what the next couple of months will bring. But for sure, it's gonna be very interesting.

Eric:   40:49
Thank you. Radio appreciate having me on.

Eric:   40:52
Thanks. Yeah. Podcaster. Great. I'm not allowed to travel very far anymore. So thes air. These were great. I really appreciated the chance to Tad, I listened your podcasts for a long time. So it's great to be great to be a part of it.

Radu Palamariu:   41:04
So, for thank you for listening. If you like what you heard, we should to go to www dot elka global dot com include the podcast button for all the show. Notes of the interview also subscribed our mailing list to get our latest updates. First, if you're listening through a streaming platform like iTunes Spotify arts teacher, we would appreciate a kind view. Five star were expressed to keep us going and our production team happy and, of course, share it with your friends. I most active on Lincoln. So do feel free to follow me. And if you have any suggestions on what what to do and who to invite next, don't hesitate to drop me a note. And if you're looking to hire top executives in supply chain or transform your business, of course, contact us as well to find out how we can help.