Truckload capacity management platform Parade announced Wednesday it has closed a $12.7 million series A led by Menlo Ventures with participation from Greenhawk Capital, Jones Capital, The House Fund, Oriza Ventures and a number of undisclosed angel investors within the FreightTech and supply chain communities.
Parade’s customer base grew by 500% last year and freight brokerages like brokerages like Armstrong Transport Group, Schneider and Worldwide Express have leveraged the capacity management platform to optimize their carrier operations teams’ time while providing their carriers a less invasive, cloud-based application to get loads.
“Supply chain digitization is at a tipping point, as logistics service providers increasingly rely on more connected workflows to maximize efficiency and speed. … Parade empowers all freight brokers to go digital, with powerful tools and technology to optimize workflows, manage carrier relationships and operate more strategically,” said Steve Sloane, a Menlo Ventures partner who will join Parade’s board of directors as part of the deal.
As digital freight brokers begin to dramatically scale at lower margins, they have pushed freight brokers to think twice about their internal operations and consider areas like load matching that can be done in a more cost-effective way.
| Funding details | Parade |
|---|---|
| Funding amount | $12.7 million |
| Funding round | Series A |
| Lead investor | Menlo Ventures |
| Secondary investors | Greenhawk Capital, Jones Capital, The House Fund, Oriza Ventures and strategic personal investors including Jason Duboe, Shannon Hart, Zach Fredericks, Tom Caughlin, Eric Rempel and Jett McCandless. |
| Business goals for the round | Expand capabilities, team, and third-party partner ecosystem |
| Total funding | $18.4 million |
To make the transition of these manual operations to automatic, Parade has integrated with legacy transportation management systems to make the digital investment attainable for brokerages of all revenue sizes.
According to Parade co-founder and CEO Anthony Sutardja, the company plans to use the funds to “speed up tech enablement for freight brokers” by expanding its current load-matching capabilities, grow its own sales and development teams and continue adding integrations with third parties to add more value to its customers.
“Customers continue to recognize and reward Parade for innovation and providing a best-in-class freight brokerage software as the industry shifts towards more real-time and collaborative ways of doing business,” said Sutardja.
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