SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Portex, the single, intuitive tool where shippers can handle everything related to freight management in one place, announced today $6.25 million in seed funding led by Footwork and joined by Cowboy Ventures. Existing investors Susa Ventures and Base 10 also participated in the round.
The funding round comes as the startup approaches nearly $100 million in annualized freight transport bookings across its rapidly growing, global customer base of small- to mid-sized companies. Portex will use the new funding to accelerate its AI-focused product development and go-to-market.
Portex is purpose-built to help underserved, small- to mid-sized companies unlock new freight management tasks and cost efficiencies. The cloud-based software makes it seamless for companies to centralize communication across their broker and forwarder partners with instant messaging, as well as to manage freight bids and quotes, shipment status, and carrier performance. Importantly, Portex is broker-agnostic, empowering shippers to work with as many brokers or carriers as makes sense for their pricing and service needs.
Portex’s streamlined interface and smart analytics slash the time its customers spend on freight tasks by 80%, or 25+ hours per week. Portex also reduces customers’ freight spend costs by 30%, which can translate to up to millions of dollars per year.
“Our platform will enable small- to -mid-sized companies globally to experience the same efficiencies and cost savings as large companies for the first time,” said founder and chief executive officer Brittany Ennix. “The shipping industry isn’t broken; it’s been highly effective for centuries. That’s why Portex is designed to make the way shippers already work more streamlined, informed, and efficient – not to manufacture workflows that don’t make sense.”
Over the past decade, software innovation has unlocked significant efficiencies for much of the $4 trillion global freight market. The largest 20% of companies moving products and goods, for example, have gleaned substantial time and cost savings through enterprise-grade Transport Management Systems (TMSs) that help them connect with their carrier networks. Similarly, new workflow tools have also been beneficial to brokers and carriers, those facilitating the movement of goods.
However, the logistics technology needs of small- to mid-sized shippers, which make up 80% of companies globally – have remained starkly underserved. Enterprise TMSs are typically too costly, time-consuming, and limiting for their needs, and sometimes restrict companies to specific partners. As a result, most SMBs and mid-sized companies still rely on time-intensive, manual workflows spanning email chains, PDFs, spreadsheets, and labor-intensive analytics reporting.
“Brittany has a superpower for listening to and building for the needs of her customers. Her deep customer focus shines through in the impressive customer traction and love that Portex has already won across its earliest users. Shippers use Portex obsessively and continue to bring their existing broker and forwarder partners onto the platform, creating a powerful network effect,” said Mike Smith, co-founder & general partner at Footwork.
“While small- to mid-sized companies might be an overlooked market, they’re an incredibly large one, making up more than half of the $4 trillion global freight market. Portex’s stickiness and tangible customer value underscore Brittany’s deep market knowledge to create the next generation of tooling for this vast segment. Her strong experience at the intersection of technology, logistics, and sales has positioned her to build an impactful product from day one,” said Jillian Williams, partner at Cowboy Ventures.
Portex’s deep customer insights and feedback loops have yielded incredible product engagement. The average company uses Portex 4x/day. Portex has also retained 100% of companies that ship four or more loads a week via its platform.
What customers have said about Portex:
"You have no idea the impact Portex has made – it has improved my quality of work-life 10-fold. It’s reduced the amount of time I spent quoting from 10 hours to just 30 minutes." - Armorock (Boulder City, Nev.-based concrete-maker)
"Portex reduces stress for my team: the transportation managers are happier, more productive, and make fewer mistakes. They and our partner carriers found Portex to be very intuitive and easy to use." - Franklin Foods (Boca Raton, Florida-based cream cheese-manufacturer)
"Good customer service and making sure deliveries are on time are my #1 priority. Portex has reduced 100 emails a week from my inbox, making it way easier to track and resolve issues quickly." - Community Coffee (Baton Rouge, Louisiana-based coffee brand)
Looking ahead, Portex will roll out a suite of highly practical, AI-powered features to make freight management even more automated and strategic. Portex’s modern backend and structured data make the platform ideally suited to use AI to make everything from pricing suggestions, to benchmarking, and analytics faster and more intelligent.
For example, companies on Portex will soon be able to use conversational prompts to generate tailored analytics reports. Portex will also be able to suggest carrier selections to customers based on factors like performance, route, ship time, and/or cost.
Portex will also add other key functionality like invoice reconciliation and payments in the coming months.
Brittany Ennix, a Tennessee native, first developed an appreciation for supply chain logistics in her youth through her grandfather, who was a glass manufacturing plant manager at the Ford Motor Glass Plant in Nashville for four decades. She learned about how much intention goes into even a single component of a larger, more complex final product. This inspired her to explore the intersection of logistics and technology, first at Uber and later, at Flexport.
She founded Portex in San Francisco post-pandemic after seeing how dependent small- to mid-sized shippers were on cumbersome, manual freight workflows.
Portex’s ultimate vision is to be the intelligent freight management assistant that empowers every SMB to make the best and most cost-effective freight transport decision for every single shipment.
“Our mission is to make freight management just as cost-effective and intuitive for small- to mid-sized shippers as it is for large, enterprise companies,” Ennix said.
