Chicago startup ShipBob just raised $40 million in new funding to help small and medium-sized e-commerce companies ship products with Amazon-like speeds.
ShipBob's new funding, which brings its total amount raised to more than $62 million since its launch in 2014, was led by Menlo Ventures. Others in the round include existing backers Bain Capital Ventures, Hyde Park Venture Partners, Hyde Park Angels and Y Combinator.
ShipBob's software lets companies manage their inventory and shipments from one dashboard, allowing brands to track packages, communicate with customers, restock inventory and use predictive data to optimize shipping. ShipBob has warehouses in Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, New York and San Francisco where it picks, packs and ships items as orders are made on a brand's website or on e-commerce platforms like Shopify, SquareSpace and even Amazon. Its logistics technology allows brands to offer next-day and two-day shipping options.
Since its last funding---a $17.5 million Series B in 2017---ShipBob has grown from 60 employees to over 400. The company says it's growing the business 300 percent year-over-year, reaching eight figures in revenue in 2017.
“We love how ShipBob lets smaller, creative merchants affordably offer fast shipping across the country," Shawn Carolan, partner at Menlo Ventures, said in a statement. "Customers want what they want, and they want it fast, and it takes serious technology to make it look easy.”
ShipBob began, as many startups do, as a scrappy startup hustling for its first set of customers. Co-founders Dhruv Saxena and Divey Gulati waited outside of Chicago post offices to try and convince small business owners to ship through them, rather than the USPS. Early inventory was stored in Saxena’s high-rise Chicago apartment.
Today, the company says it has now shipped more than four million packages, helping companies like Paleo Scavenger, Jimmy Bars and Chicago startup Interior Define ship their wares. ShipBob is among several well-funded logistics startups in Chicago, including project44 and FourKites. The city has become known as somewhat of a logistics tech hub, in part due to being centrally located and its history of shipping innovation.
