Union Square Ventures Leads Series A Investment in Shippo

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 9, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Shippo, which powers shipping for business, today announced a $7M Series A funding round led by Union Square Ventures (USV) with participation from SoftTech VC and Version One Ventures, and other Seed investors. The company also announced that 10,000 merchants are now actively using the company's popular API to ship millions of packages every month and that Albert Wenger, a partner at USV and an early investor in Twilio, has joined their board of directors.

Shipping is now being cited as one of the biggest challenges merchants must solve to thrive in today's world. The industry is fragmented with many different carrier and service options. Information about shipping is hard to come by and pricing is based on multiple criterias which are not always clear. Shippo powers shipping for business. Through a single, scalable API that is easy to integrate, businesses now have instant access to domestic and international carriers to compare shipping rates, create shipping labels, and track parcels. Along with a powerful dashboard, anyone can bring shipping to their businesses within minutes to increase productivity, cut costs, and solve any fulfillment challenge. Shippo also aggregates the shipping volume across their platform to access volume pricing for their customers.

Shippo powers shipping for a variety of customers including merchants, platforms, and marketplaces, supply chain management systems, and ERPs, so that they can focus on their core business. For instance, Shippo powers shipping for Weebly, the simple website, blog, or online store builder. Any e-commerce owner using Weebly is able to access shipping directly from their storefront.

"It's a great benefit to be able to offer Shippo as a tightly integrated part of the Weebly platform, saving our users time, money, and frustration," said Will Ranih of Weebly. "The integration has saved our merchants hours a day running their small business - to us, that's a success."

Shippo is changing the dynamics of the $300B global parcel shipping marketplace to meet the needs of the e-commerce marketplace, which is the fastest-growing trillion dollar market globally. The company was one of the first to build a modern shipping API that is easy to integrate, reduces the cost and complexity of shipping, and provides data insights that help customers ship smarter.  With both the API and web-based dashboard, Shippo can work with a variety of different businesses including merchants just getting started, exponentially growing venture-backed companies, all the way to powering supply chain management systems and ERPs. Today, nearly 10,000 companies, like Mercari, GOAT, Memebox, GoDaddy, and Nurx are actively using the Shippo API to ship to 230 countries around the world. 

"The world of e-commerce has made it easy for us to purchase goods from around the world--but shipping hasn't caught up," said Albert Wenger, partner, USV. "Shippo has built a critical missing piece in the e-commerce stack with a modern-day shipping solution that reduces the cost and complexity of shipping. Like Stripe for online payments and Twilio for communications, Shippo is changing the dynamics of the decades-old shipping market to raise the standards of shipping technology for modern businesses."

Shippo also announced today the hiring of several new executives including; Sin-Mei Tsai as VP of Engineering and Mikhail Ledvich as Head of Marketing. The company has also partnered with supply chain management systems such as Selro, Sellbrite, and SKULabs, as well as carrier partners like DHL eCommerce to further help customers grow and scale.

"Businesses cite shipping as one of their biggest pain points to growing their businesses. It's very difficult to integrate shipping technologies, the pricing models are opaque, and setting up a real-world operation is highly complex," said CEO and co-Founder Laura Behrens Wu. "Our shipping-as-a-service platform allows any business to access a comprehensive network of shipping providers through one API to find the best shipping service for their needs."

About Shippo

Shippo powers shipping for businesses at the center of the trillion dollar e-commerce revolution.  Founded by two former e-commerce entrepreneurs, Shippo's API and dashboard provides businesses of any size the ability to build simple and cost-effective shipping operations. Businesses are able to connect with an entire network of shipping providers such as UPS, FedEx, USPS, Canada Post, DHL, and many more to compare rates and services, print shipping labels, and track packages.

Businesses powered by Shippo today include Mercari, Memebox, Weebly, GoDaddy, GOAT and Nurx. The company is based in San Francisco, and backed by investors including Union Square Ventures, SoftTech VC, Version One Ventures, FundersClub, 500 Startups, and others. For more information visit: https://goshippo.com/

Media Contact: Jaclyn Hartnett, Spark: 415.321.1897, [email protected]

To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/union-square-ventures-leads-series-a-investment-in-shippo-300325297.html

SOURCE Shippo

[ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]