Slync, the intelligent platform for shipping, logistics and the supply chain has appointed John Urban and Robert Edwards—two established and successful entrepreneurs with almost $1B in combined company exits—to its advisory board.
“At Slync, we are committed to building an elite team globally both internally and with our advisory team,” said Slync Chairman, CEO and co-founder Chris Kirchner. “Our advisors are intimately involved in the company and we are thrilled to have Bob and John join the team.”
Urban co-founded and served as the president of GT Nexus, a leading cloud platform for global supply chain management with significant market share in retail, apparel, automotive, chemicals, pharma, consumer electronics, and logistics service providers. GT Nexus was acquired by Infor in September 2015 for $675M.
“The team Chris has assembled and the capabilities of the Slync platform immediately caught my attention,” said Urban in a statement. “Slync has already started to impact the supply chain software market globally, and I’m delighted to have the unique opportunity to contribute my expertise to Chris and his team.”
Edwards, a serial entrepreneur, has founded and sold pharmaceutical companies for more than two decades. One of Edwards’ most noteworthy deals was the sale of Boca Pharmacal, which he co-founded, to Endo Health for $225M.
FreightWaves spoke by phone to Kirchner about the addition of Urban and Edwards to Slync’s advisory board. Kirchner characterized Urban as a successful supply chain software entrepreneur whose experience guiding a large company from its founding to acquisition will be invaluable to Slync.
“John Urban is a great resource for me to have—someone who’s been there the entire journey that we’re going through and we’re tackling in the future,” Kirchner said. “What John really brings to us is that he’s been in the operator seat; he’s been in my chair. He went through a recession where he had to make adjustments and keep the company moving and growing—he’s been through a lot of the challenges we’re going to face.”
Kirchner said that Robert Edwards has already been a trusted mentor for him, and that his subject matter expertise in the pharmaceutical industry is another value-add.
“With Bob we’re adding another tried and true entrepreneur from the pharmaceutical industry. Bob built three companies from scratch and sold the second one for hundreds of millions of dollars. It is fantastic to have two people I genuinely admire involved with Slync,” Kirchner said.
Urban will join Kirchner and the Slync team at MarketWaves18 in Grapevine, TX this month.