Seaplane Ventures is pleased to introduce our newest investment, Packsmith. It’s early days but the LA-based startup is off to a strong start and we’re excited to be along for the journey.
Packsmith provides third-party logistics (3PL) for small-to-mid-sized ecommerce companies. Packsmith handles fulfillment for those merchants, including the storage, picking, and packing of orders, and then hands off the parcels to last-mile delivery providers.
Unlike traditional 3PLs, though, which are geared around centralized infrastructure, Packsmith is building a distributed network of independent contractors dubbed 'Packsmiths' who handle the fulfillment and warehouse the inventory at their own homes. The model allows Packsmith to distribute inventory from a wider range of locations and closer to end customers which shortens shipping times, reduces costs for merchants, delights customers, and lowers carbon footprints.
Ecommerce is a vast category with the US market alone eclipsing more than $1 trillion in size. There's still plenty of room for growth, though, with US ecommerce growing at more than 3X the rate of total retail sales. Small-to-mid-sized merchants are growing even faster: Shopify reported today that sales on its platform over Black Friday / Cyber Monday weekend were up 24% year-on-year.
The company’s Tasmanian-born founders have exceptional founder/market fit for this task. CEO Ben Wunderman previously worked at Lyft and Postmates where he stood up new markets, led new product vertical launches, and worked on competitive intelligence, among other roles and responsibilities. Meanwhile, CTO Simon Robb is a second-time founder who previously served as a senior software developer at Uber.
The founders are well supported by an impressive group of advisors with strong domain expertise including marketplace expert Colin Gardiner and investors including Wedbush Ventures, M13, Banana Capital, Spacecadet Ventures, Nomad Ventures, Flexport, and more.
Lastly, we're happy to share a conversation between Ben and Seaplane Founder and Managing Partner Joe Magyer about Packsmith and the problems the company is solving for merchants. We hope you enjoy and look forward to supporting Packsmith for years to come!
The Seaplane Venture Fund is available only to accredited investors. This content is provided for informational purposes only, and should not be relied upon as legal, business, investment, or tax advice. An offering to invest in the Seaplane Venture Fund will be made only by the private placement memorandum, subscription agreement, and other relevant documentation of any such fund and should be read in their entirety.