#37 Geoffroy Henry - Founder of Ofload

In this episode, I interview Geoffroy Henry, founder of Ofload. Ofload is a digital B2B platform that helps shippers and road freight carriers connect to minimise wasted space in vehicles. In only three years from 2019, Geoffroy has raised $100m in funding which has led to the company now having 120 employees and making $100m in annual revenue.

Throughout the episode, Geoffroy talks about how the logistics industry is underdeveloped and has huge optimisation opportunities using modern technology. Also, Geoffroy discusses the challenges that rapid growth has caused to both himself and the business.

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Transcript

Failure is actually an amazing opportunity to learn. And so I love failing and as a business, I'd rather fail 10 times than take as much time in trying to get the perfect answer that still has, likelihood of being incorrect. And so I fail. I go and I try and I never stop.

And I never, ever, ever take no for an answer. Whether you're an investor, you're a client, whoever you are, I don't live in a world in which things are impossible.

(Generic Introduction)

 Welcome to the Dion Guagliardo Podcast, where I interview business people who run or have sold businesses worth a few million dollars all the way through to billions of dollars. While most of my time is spent to managing investment portfolios for people after they've had a successful exit. I've always been fascinated by the entire process and hearing the insights that successful entrepreneurs and business people have learned along their.

At Fortress Family Office, we're an investment portfolio manager and we manage portfolios for ultra high net worth families. If you'd like to know more about not only the way we approach investment markets by our philosophy on life and business, feel free to subscribe to my weekly insights note. Go to www.fortressfamilyoffice.com and hit subscribe.

(Episode Introduction)

 In this episode I interviewed Geoffroy Henry, founder of Ofload. Ofload is a digital B2B platform that helps shippers and road freight carriers connect to minimize wasted space in vehicles. since 2019 Geoffroy has raised a hundred million in funding and led to the company now having 120 employees and turning over about 30 million a year in revenue.

Geoffroy talks about the logistics industry, how it's underdeveloped and the huge optimization opportunities using modern technology. He also discusses the challenges that rapid growth has caused both himself and the business and how they've overcome those challenges. if you like this episode, feel free to share with family and friends and leave a five star review.

Geoffrey, welcome to the show.

Thanks for joining us.

Thank you very much, Dion for having me.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into business in the first place you're now running Ofload how did you progress to this stage?

Yeah, absolutely. I've kind of went with the, the boring kind of career pathway where it took a minimum amount of risk, went for business school. After business school, kind of majored in, in m and a, financial markets went into financial markets with a hedge fund for about two and a half, two and over years.

After that, I, I immigrated and moved to Australia and wanted to be a, a trader, which didn't happen. So a great humility check. And and then I just landed in the startup world because it just happened to be where a couple of my mates and friends from business school were. And so I worked in the, the startup called HelloFresh.

I love the growth, love the pace, love the people, loved the way that you couldn't be rewarded with tangible results, and you see truly the outcome of the work you put in. So I got hooked with that kind of industry and I was head of operations there. I saw an opportunity to actually take over a transport company.

And so left HelloFresh moved into being an entrepreneur and a general manager of a, of a last mile company, which I sold about two years later. from there I just got hooked in being an entrepreneur and truly having the freedom to, to drive the change I wanna see. And so that got me into, into being an MD for a startup called Zoocal

to me, starting two businesses that didn't work that well. And now bit more than three years ago, starting Ofload and so they kind of all make sense combined because I progressively entered the world in which you need to be an entrepreneur in order to be successful and truly drive change.

I've always been a kid that loved business, whether I was 14 and trying to sell bicycle parts from China, I've always been interested in, in trading, in, in, doing things myself. And I'm not a big theoretical guy. I, I like action. I've got a big bias for action. So that has been there for ages?

Yeah. so in three years you've gone from sort of basically zero to, I think you raised about 60 million last year. Is that about right?

Yeah. Yeah. We've always just showed up a hundred million in total.

Yeah. Okay. So this is, a fast growing company and presumably a global opportunity.

So the, the, the painpionts that we solve for exist in every single market around the world. And the way to go about solving them is tend to be very similar. So indeed we have a global play at stake. But the, the local opportunities. Big enough, it's 65 billion worth. So we're gonna focus on Australia first.

Nailing this market, creating value for everyone involved. Before we get distracted in trying to go global. I think there's a lot of value being very strong locally and creating a lot of value for our different users and different clients. So we'll stick to Australia for the time being.

Okay. And before I go too much further, did you just wanna explain to the. what your business does in terms of its logistics and just a little bit more information just so that people understand 

it's a good point. Cause we, we do play a very interesting role, right? Every single thing that we see, the chair you're sitting on, all of that has been on multiple trucks, right? And so there's, there's thousand of Australian businesses or inter multinational businesses trying to move freight, and there's about 48,000 trucking companies trying to move that freight in the most organized way, possibly.

the reality is that it was 48,000 trucking companies all acting silo, compete with each other, which creates massive and natural inefficiencies around. 30% of the trucks drive empty all the times. 50% of the time they don't even drive. They idle. 70% of the time they're not even completely full when they do have weight in their trucks.

And with this natural interesting thing, which is out of the 48,000 trucking companies, actually 98% of them are part of the long tail, have less than 10 trucks. So there, there's a massive long tail. The the top dogs combine hold 12% market share, and then you've got a massive long tail of smaller trucking companies that tend to be what we call in Australia studies subcontractors.

They work for larger companies, larger trucking companies. And so there's in general, between the freight. Owner freight operator, there's there's actually about 2.4 meter men taking a cut throughout the chain and giving the work to the long tail of the oil operators or the smaller Australian freight companies. And what we do is say, well let's find a way to be that, like central authority to be that that middle man in the middle trying to understand the predictability of freight, trying to optimize the freight for multiple suppliers or multiple multinational and, great big FMCG players.

And let's try to optimize it in such a way that we, we move the LT miles, we fill the trucks completely, we utilize the truck better, and then we allocated the trucks to the trucking companies for whom it's the most relevant. We allocated to the trucking company, but was meant to drive empty. We allocated to a trucking company, but actually had five pilot spaces empty.

And so we leverage data algorithms, machine learning tools in order to optimize the freight and then optimize the trucks of the trucking companies. we optimize for. We have about 1500 trucking companies in our platform, which is about 17,000 trucks for whom we optimize their freight. And so we are telling our clients Don't onboard overhead. Don't hire 10 more people to manage the complexity of freight. We provide you with all the tools and all the visibility, the analytics, and that helps you to be leaner. And when we tell all of our suppliers, don't invest in BDMs, don't invest in operational people. We will take care your technology to find your work and relevant work and optimize it for you.

So you focus on managing your drivers, your fleet, and staying the leanest you can because there's efficiency in how lean those trucking companies are.

presumably if you're looking at all of that, that lack of efficiency that's there in a very fragmented market. If suddenly you can increase the amount of freight that you can put on a truck there, there's no extra cost, you're already doing that load. That's straight to the bottom line, presumably, or pretty close to it

Absolutely. Yes. 

operators.

Absolutely is. in the, the past decades usually there has been what we call brokers, which is middleman people using a ledger using the network of trucking companies and using volume to squeeze prices down. The great thing about what we do is that the exact opposite.

We bring no possibility to the trucking companies. We make them more efficient, we make them leaner, and we also save money to all of The freight in all of the Australian businesses that are our clients. So it's a win-win situation. Everyone wins from it. There's an increased possibility and there's a reduced cost on the other end.

 As you've grown, I, I noticed that it's not just organic growth, you're now looking at growth by acquisition. what sort of mix going forward are you looking at in terms of how you want to grow the business?

It's a great point. I think usually in invest more to reassure investors, right? But you, you need to show that the market responds well to your product, right? That the product actually solves genuine pain points. And and so we've done that. We grew nine x to second year, seven x to third year.

We are now growing still rapidly. And, but I also wanted to showcase that in parallel there's a genuine flywheel of growth triggered through the network effect. So what I wanted to do with my first m and a acquisition was to show that both sides, whether you are on the supplier side, in the trucking company, or whether you are an Australian business moving freight around there is genuine value to actually enter a network and enter our platform and our software.

And so that, that's the exercise I've gone through and acquired a business in September last year. and we've since then showcased it. I think we grew that business 50%. And while keeping the same head counts, so the genuine kind of scalability that technology offers, and I will consider doing about one to two similar deals per year in the years to come.

how's that been in terms of betting that that acquisition down? Has it been easier than you thought? More difficult? 

The good thing is that the level of waste is actually not huge in the sense that we, we acquire waste businesses for a low multiple of e.

Because they're not very liquid business. They're only as strong as the ledger is. You're not buying any assets. We're buying analog workers in the freight industry.

So we don't have a man massive financial risk. So the true, genuine challenge is always post merger integration. And that is mixing two different cultures, two different mindsets, two different companies, and making sure that you retain the talents, that you make sure that you actually onboard the clients in different ways of working and behaviors.

And so all our focus has been put on the P M I piece.

Yeah. as you've progressed, what, what would you say your biggest strength is as the leader of these businesses and bringing in this other business? What's your biggest strength that you've seen?

(clip)

 my biggest strength is probably the awareness that I, I don't hold all the answers, but I, I'm not the, the most skilled person around the table. And every single one of my, my, my leaders are stronger than I am in, in at least one aspect and in some cases in, in the number of aspects. So I've always been very good at pick and choosing the ideas rather than coming with my own.

I have my own ideas. I have my own. Areas where I, I am fully confident to be able to get to the answer myself very quickly, but I also have a full awareness that sometimes the best ideas around the table, so I'm very good at, at listening and, and getting every single one to raise their voice and to speak their mind.

And then I often come with an answer that is a mix of everything that I've heard..

And, and in terms of technologies that are coming into. The industry where you are operating, I mean, there's two that probably are, are pretty obvious, but one would be AI and machine learning. The other would be driverless trucks as they come in. And this is obviously into the future, but how do you see those contributing to your business, given that I, I have read that it's actually difficult to get truck drivers capacity, but it's hard to get drivers.

So what does driverless trucks mean for your business?

I think the, lowest hanging food here is gonna be around AI for now. Just because a lot of the freight that move in Australia, is predictable, right? Most businesses don't grow double digit on year. They're single grow. They know exactly what are the patterns are freight moving around the peak signal of Christmas and usually what demand is for their own business.

So there's a high level of predictivity, and what we are aiming for is to have a satellite view of where freight needs to go at all times and where trucks are at all times. And so once we penetrate further into the demand side, further into the visibility of the supply side and where the trucks are at all times, the marketing it coordination piece is solely gonna be done through AI and machine learning.

And so that's where the thread comes. And so what we need to do is continue to gain market share because that's where the network effect is because we then understand the market further and better, and we have more data points every single shipment. Is the sum of data points, whether it's an origin, a destination, a cost capacity.

And every single thing is actually a, a sum of data sets that makes us stronger. And so that's where AI can come in. In terms of driverless trucks I think we are a, a bit out. I remember when I was a bit younger and, and I was told like around mid 2000 or. And 10 will have like flying cars.

I don't think it's that much of a stretch, but it's still something that we are far away. I think there's something to be said around making our roads safer, our drivers safer and vast food technology. But through assisted driving, vast food technologies like Tesla have super strong in self-driving trucks assisted by Truman.

I do think that this will help to make this industry more compelling to the young generations that are not entering this industry, that don't wanna be drivers because it is tough to drive 13 hours from Sydney to Brisbane. It's tough to drive in 10 hours from Sydney to Melbourne. And so we need to make that industry more compelling.

I think technology will help bring more labor force into that industry. But before we actually have a network of self-driving net trucks around Australia, I think we're a couple of decades away.

Decades away. Okay. That's interesting. So AI in the short term is where the low hanging fruit is?

Absolutely. Yes.

Yeah. Okay. And as, as a leader, Talking about your strengths, what, what about your weaknesses? What, what's your biggest weaknesses and how do you overcome them in, in this, in this business as you've grown?

My biggest weakness is that I I am actually you've said it yourself at the beginning Dion, but the reality is that this company has evolved very, very quickly. It is a fully bit years old, and so what was required of me three years ago is very different to what is required of me now. We have about 130 staff.

There's a lot of structure. There's four and a half layers in the business. When I started this, I had no office and I was working after the in Sydney. Right. I need to evolve as quickly as my business does. I need to be able to delegate, to trust, to power, but at at the same time keep awareness.

So while I have a lot of weaknesses, but the biggest one is actually for myself to keep up evolving from being a founder to a CEO and allowing to know what actually creates the most value. What is my new TAL Law? Where is my 80 20, right? And how do I keep awareness and keep the details of how every team are going and my figure on the post?

But how do I also delegate enough? But my leaders are truly empowered to, to then drive themselves because they'll go faster than me trying to do everything at once. So probably delegation and, and trusting and empowering the team is probably currently the transition I'm going into. That will lead me to become a more of a CEO than a founder.

And that, that is a rapid change. I mean, ev every year you, you must be having to go through that sort of transition to go, Hey, on will here, starting from zero, and now we're at this point and another year later you're, it is every year. It's a completely different business almost in terms of the learning curve you've had to go through to, to manage that new business, if you like.

I mean, I know it's not a new business, but you know what I'm saying in terms of the, the size and scale and the problems that you're dealing with and the opportunities. Very different from by year to year.

They absolutely are. Why the level of, of communication, the level of transparency, the visuality of scope, the processes you build, they're very different, right? From, from a business where everyone is aware of everything to business that we now more than a hundred people, you, you need to structure your business differently.

So the business needs different things. Also almost different leaders at first. So how do we make sure that we, we then train our leaders? How do I make sure I train myself and up skill myself? So that is a challenge. And then, to your point, right, I think about 50% of the headcount is less than a year.

So it's a lot of new people. So once the DNA was clear for all the early journalists, how do you maintain the same culture throughout when everyone is joining at a different stages of the business, which is a different. It's itself different environment, right? So how do you make everyone on the same boat, on the same journey and on the same, on the same kind of viable or energy kind of frequency.

So surviving the challenge that we constantly have to grow through, I'm hoping that it won't stop because it's a good problem. It means that growing it means that you're having the painful growth. And there's painting growth, but at least it's one that comes through the fact that you're actually doing something that is creating value.

So I'm not gonna complain, but I'm just saying that indeed it, it the highlights in the spotlight on every weakness, every leader has.

Yeah. and what are some of the things that you do do within the business to maintain that cultural, to grow that culture? what, what are a couple of examples that you do? Trying to manage that process with new people.

It's a good point. It used to be spontaneous and it now cannot be, it can no longer be spontaneous, so the onboarding phase is probably one of the most precious. I consider that every single new import like employee brings like a new set of eyes to the problem. And so they, they have fresh blood, but that wants to drive change.

And so I nurture that phase for onboarding, which means that every single person I actually onboard in terms of division and the values myself. So I do an onboarding for every single employee that we, get in one hour session where they tell them all about the vision and all about what we stand for, what does the journey must look like, and what did the end goal look like?

And then everyone is, is actually then onboarded in every single team so that they have full awareness of what's going on for the business. So the first kind couple of days they don't actually work, they just get to understand the business.

Okay.

And then we, we organize a specific team events regularly that is, but are team building events, company-wide events.

We do once a quarter so everyone can gather together. We have town hall sessions and monthly. We have updates weekly on the business we join, so we've just improved a lot more communication across the business. And probably the biggest change is that now when assessing if talent is the right time to join ofload we actually have a culture fit interview that is specifically around the culture.

Okay. 

Because we, we can't improvise culture. Culture is not coming from luck. If you want to have a specific culture, you make, you gotta make sure that you hire people that align with both values and behaviors. And so within that process, we now built a, an HR function that assesses every single candidate solely from that set.

And how, how new is it? Have you had a chance to see how that flows through and the impact of it? Or is it still too new and too early to tell?

So I've seen the impact of not having it.

Right.

and that was painful meaning that we, we naturally had every single team had almost a different culture set. And, and we were different. We had different leaders that were managing that team differently, but had different ways of providing feedback and that we were more assertive, some less assertive, and so we had massive gaps and we didn't have the same culture across the entire business.

And we actually rectified this very, very quickly by training every single leader and by implementing what I've just said, which we implemented about eight months ago. So we've already results now, and we have a far more cohesive company than we used to.

Yeah. when you've brought in partners raising money, that sort of stuff, is it a venture capital type people or is it industry type groups? What's the, the mix within that?

(Clip?)

So the, the mix is interesting because in the world we used to live Dion, which is not the world we live in now, but in the world we used to live. Money was pretty easy to find if you had a business model that was working well. And so we were in a position in which we considered that not every dollar is equal.

A dollar for someone that doesn't bring value is not the same as a dollar that some of a 10. And so we, we specifically decided to, to tackle and get a bit of strategic partners on board. We have me, which is the one of the biggest shipping line. In the world. we have been a very large warehousing company which is called Lineage Logistics, which is the big biggest refrigerated warehousing company in the world.

That is a strategic investor. And then we have a specialized supply chain VCs. So we have Fundamental, which is a smaller one based in Berlin. We have Jungle, which is the largest one in Singapore that led the 60 million round in December. And we have then a long tail of smaller traditional vs.

Yeah. And how important has that been because obviously lots of companies do things differently, but I really like the idea of having those strategic partners because of the doors that that opens up to any business. And especially in a business like you are talking about, that makes complete sense to have those types of partners.

Do you see those sorts of impacts and would you have done it differently in any other way?

I probably wouldn't have done it differently. I think that the surprising manner, they've all created almost as much value. The VCs have guided me a lot through the need of early on, leading with the wide final team. Getting a chief of staff to support me to be able to do even more at the same time.

And so they've, they've kind of seen a lot of companies grow and go through the same pain. And so there's a lot of learnings that you can get from both specific investors and from strategic investors. we've gone through a lot of like learning curve where we've, we've just literally downloaded all of our experience for different leaders of different functions.

We've been able to tap into a lot of expertise. And that has been super valuable from a network of clients to actually personally understand how things are done actually sometimes have integrations with some of them. So it's been, it's been a, a very good mix of investors and I don't think that I would've done.

Differently probably I could have done it better in the sense I could have extracted more value. more structured about it early on. But as a typical founder, you kind of started journey thinking about you can do it all alone, and then you realize that you need support.

Yeah. And what about. the best decisions you've made along the way. So obviously the last three or four years, there's been a lot of different things that you've had to decide on or put in place. What, what would you say would the be the, the best or you know, the best couple of things that decided on?

two things. One of that that are business focused is that I've been very stubbornly focused on On what is our core? Where do we create the most value? And not try to grab every single shiny, low hanging opportunity. We have grabbed a few, and I will keep on being opportunistic, but having the wide blend of being how strategical you are and how opportunistic you are and opportunities are great, but they are massive distractions if you're not in line with your core and your end vision.

And so I haven't gone too distracted at trying to be everything to everyone. I've been able to say no. I've been able to adapt and adjust. To my client needs. And I've also been able to stay crystal focused on what our end goal are and what our vision is. So that is something that I, I think is, very important to every single new business because when you're young, you tend to want to grab revenue at all costs.

And sometimes cost is not just distractions, sometimes it's actually losing money. So a lot of ventures out there, a lot of businesses, which is not the case for us. But, so I, I've been able to stay very focused. And so that's one aspect to the answer. And the second one is, I haven't been too precious in regards to fundraising.

I've never tried to be, let's go with the highest valuation. I'm gonna wait. I'm gonna squeeze. I've always said what my priority as a leader is to safeguard the shares that every single employee has in my business. Every single employee has shares in this business, safeguard their job, safeguard this business, and not try to optimize for capital of percent and survive.

Always funded way before I needed to. I fundraised the 60 million series B when actually, budget wise, I could have gone profitable before I needed it because I need to build a war chest. I'm not taking any gambles. I'm not a gambler. and so I build a sustainable business and I wanna make sure that I, I deal with the business very quickly and that's paying off big time now because the 

market is turning. 

yeah, yeah.

we are still burning money cause we invest in growth, but we have more than five years runway, which is the

Right. Yeah, that's huge. And that that is, especially as markets can change pretty quickly when it comes to capital and when everything's good. everything looks easy, but once it turns, it's a completely different ballgame. So to have raised that money when you did, I think is very wise.

Thank you and I agree.

What, what about in terms of challenges? the first thing that comes to mind, especially when it comes to logistics, is, is covid, because you've, You basically don't know in terms of your business, you don't know a world without it. sort of from the start of the business, it's been around.

Right. So how did Covid impact the business and also the, the, the staff and how you, you manage your people?

(Clip)

So you've asked a question early on on how global offload will become, or, or is it a global play? I first started the business with the intention of being global from day one. So when I launched the business in March, 2020, or officially in March, 2020, but. In, in Q1 2020, let's say. I had two teams.

I had hired some, a great super smart ex McKinsey team and leaders in Indonesia, and I had about 12 staff in Indonesia. And then I had my, but, and I was launching the Indonesian market at the same time I was launching those trial market. And so I had asked all those people to, to resign from whatever jobs they had, which were great jobs, and I convinced them and brought them on board.

And then in March we understand that the world is different. The world is changing. We now kind of lost a lot of freedom. We now have every single VCs panicking, not knowing, is it the end of the world? Is it an opportunity to seize? And Soine was freezing. People had literally no bandwidth to try to invest.

and so I started the business and I had in February, March, I had until about October in terms of money before the company to shut down and go for bankruptcy. Cause. It was an early company. so very early on I had to make a very hard decision to actually fire everyone I'd just hired in Indonesia.

So four months after I had to fire them because it was either that or I only had a month to live before I had no more cash. And so I had to cut half of my team in, shut down the entire Indonesian market to save out Australia. And thankfully two months later that extended one way that I've acquired from letting those people go allowed me to raise a couple million from, from Maersk and GFC Global Founder Capital, which made now offload possible and now what it is.

And so that early challenge of going through panic and thinking that I will not have more than couple of weeks of money and shut down the business, taught me a lot, I think. The mistake of convincing and asking those people to resign and come on board made me realize the obligation I have as a leader.

But people are not just an output. They're actually true, genuine people, but have a mortgage, but have kids. I take bests and trust a leader to take the right decision, and I hadn't,

Yep.

Not that I could foresee the challenge, but I still, I made a mistake that impacted them negatively. So that gave me a great sense of like, Carefulness in terms of when I hire, I need to make sure I will never let that person go.

I will never do redundancies beyond. I will never hire too quickly because there's opportunities to get cash in the market and go faster. I will always be very considerate in how I deploy cash and how I ask people to change their life and join the adventure. So that has been a big challenge that taught me a lot.

in terms of that, did it really make you aware, I guess, of the magnitude of the responsibility of when things go wrong? And it, it does for everybody, right? At different times, and this was out of your control. And as mu as much a risk and a and a gamble employing people as it is for people to join a business, and everyone understands that, but did it really just highlight the magnitude of that responsibility when you are bringing people on?

It does. And I think that But put it on steroid. What you just said is the fact that I was even younger, right. I'm today, I'm, I'm 33. And so I was literally 29 in a bit at the time. And so I was super young and and a bit naive and, and I never gone through crisis, right? I never had genuine, massive failures.

I had challenges for sure. This was a wake up call to how serious it is to be an entrepreneur. We only hear about the success stories and so we never truly understand the pain or the difficult decisions or, or how we affect the lives from being a leader and an entrepreneur. And if I kind of gave me very, very quickly an awareness about the responsibility that actually a leader should have.

Leader is not just here to try to be part of Forbes 40 on the 30 or whatever, like prestige people think that is worth having. It's very much around the people. So that kind of, we put the focus, which should be very early on.

is that what's directly influenced your sort of conservatism when it comes to having more money in the bank than you might need and those sorts of things? Is that, was it that experience specifically, or have you always been a little bit that way inclined?

I think I've always been like that because the business that I've, that I've started is one in which cashflow is very clear. The g possibility path is very clear. It's not one that needs to wait for 50 years in order to scale and get. The volume to, to have a profit wide. And, and we could talk about models like, like the, the, the, the Uber car sharing and so on.

Like, I, I would never be that kind of founder. I, I need to believe in the valued, I need to believe in the economics and fundamentals of those businesses. So by nature, I have a bias for something, but, but, but it's clear and not a moonshot. and also I think that that experience for sure did remind me.

But around labor and around talent acquisition and around retention it's essential to be a thoughtful leader.

(here)

Yeah. How did Covid impact the business itself? Did, did it increase revenue or decrease or, I mean, you've got stuff that stops moving, right?

It was, it was obviously it became amazing at the beginning of 2021. Freight demand just skyrocketed because people had a lot more chasing power. They did not spend, but did not travel. And so they started consuming a lot more. 

and so consumption went through the roof. In a market in which people had covid, truck drivers could not drive anymore.

Borders were sometimes shut, sometimes there was testing that needed to be done between a border to another, right. Australia's complex in that sense, but there's a state policy. And so all of those challenges meant there was a lot less capacity in the market. But when every single client. They had a lot more demand.

And so there's, the biggest mismatch we've ever seen between demand and supply was during covid, which meant by any traditional model, meaning that when you hire a big company that has 10,000 trucks, well if you need 10,000 in one trucks, well you, they can't, right? Don't have more capacity than the number of trucks they have.

But our model owners by a position very different because we have an unlimited amount of capacity because we tap into whatever trucking company exists. So and we have 17,000 trucks, so we had far more capacity. So we had an opportunity to showcase our value a lot faster, and there was a need for offering and a need for our nimbleness and a need for data and a need for visibility that that increased rapidly and faster than it would naturally.

So we went through massive Maro. And now that we've managed to, to kind of showcase our value, we have the network effect or the, the word to math happening. So we're still going about the same time, even when demand is now flattening. And as you know, inflation, the, the, the rising cost of cash, which and the RBA increasing the cash flow rate and so on means that demand is going down, but our growth is still going up.

Yeah. Yeah. And what about advice that you've had from presumably you've got mentors or people that have given you insights into business from all sorts of places, but what, what are some of the best advice you've been given along the way?

They tend to always be the, the simplest ones. And, and the way it is that the timing of when they're being said is as relevant as, as what is being said. And and for me it's very early on in my life, I've realized that the biggest enemy was myself. The doubts that I had, the Theo Syndrome that I might the fact that.

I would tell myself that it wasn't possible before I even tested it, before I even heard it from someone else. And so I've realized I was putting stick in my bicycle in the wheels myself, and I was falling cause of my lack of belief that things are possible. And so someone in my, in my, in my network kind of always reminded me throughout my early stages of, of of career that everything was possible as long as I tried.

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And so I've quickly put myself in. Failure is actually an amazing opportunity to learn. And so I love failing and as a business, I'd rather fail 10 times than take as much time in trying to get the perfect answer that still has, likelihood of being incorrect. And so I fail. I go and I try and I never stop.

And I never, ever, ever take no for an answer. Whether you're an investor, you're a client, whoever you are, I don't live in a world in which things are impossible.

yep. Okay. That's good advice. All right, I've got final four. Quick questions to finish off, who, who's a, a business person that inspires you the most and why?

It is gonna be boring, but it has to be a elon musk because I like the 

Yep. 

that he made a great outcome with PayPal and the business. He talked PayPal and then PayPal, but he never stopped. He never relentless and his driving change at magnitude, but no one else is So admire it.

Yeah, it's a common answer, but a, a very valid and a very good answer because the stuff that he does is just incredible as, as, as far as someone who can execute on big vision. Amazing. 

What about business books? Any, any business books in particular that you would recommend?

There's one not that is like it's just one that reminds you the importance of the, or the 80 20 and the four hour week 

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book. I think Ferris, because I think like the enemy of pace is perfectionist and and trying to have the perfect answer all the time and being able to prioritize is essential to be able to do a lot of things at the same time.

that reminds you the fact that there are things that create value by things that I don't, and focus on things that actually do, because sometimes they take a lot less time.

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Yep. And, and what about do you have any, any particular quotes or maxims that you, you go by on business or life or leadership, With you? 

yes, there's one which, you know for sure of and it's one value because I have a bias for action. I don't, I I don't Contemplate things. And so I believe that become the change you wanna see in the world is true within your business is true. Every, everything you do drive that change.

If you want things to change, do it. Become that change first. Stop complaining. Stop trying to, to tell yourself it's not possible. Just be that change. Be whatever you wanna see.

yep. Just get on with it.

Just get on with it.

Yeah, it's a very underrated piece of advice 

Yeah. 

I think these days. And well, what's, what's next for offload?

I mean now it's it's all about consolidating our growth. It's about building a, a steady business. It's about being the mus, like building the muscle of being able to acquire more businesses, which is an expertise in itself.

And so the next three years are going to be around that. And then we'll contemplate what can, what, what does an exec look like?

Is it, is it i p o because we have great fundamentals and we'll have a very, very strong agenda. Or is it gonna be a trade sale? And so it's gonna be investigating all of those alternatives out there. And me personally is trying to always be aware, am I still the perfect c e o for this business? And making sure that I am still myself or that I bring the right talent to support me.

Yeah. And that's an interesting question too, isn't it? That who's the best person to be the CEO? Is, and I've seen this come up from time to time where. who found the founders of the business sometimes come to a point where they say, it's not me from now on, or at this point it's not gonna be me.

So that's, that's an interesting concept and, and, and maybe it always will be, but you've gotta reinvent yourself as you go along, don't you?

Yeah, you actually need to, and you need to be aware when you're not. And there will be a point in time when you're not, whether you are zero to five or zero to 80, there will be an 80 to hundred required at some point if your business is So you need to understand what is your skillset? What are your strengths?

And selfishly, where do you find your happiness? What fulfills you in that journey? It does it on your zero to 20, fulfill you. In that case, maybe you should get generals around you and people to support you so that you focus on things that actually drive your energy.

But that's not even, that's not necessarily selfish either. I mean, it isn't in terms of, but it's critical, right? Because if you're not, if you don't love what you do, then you're not gonna do it as well. So if there comes a point where, you know what, managing a thousand people just isn't as fun as what it used to be when it was a team of a hundred, 150.

Well go, go back to doing something that's, that you really do enjoy because you just, you won't do it as well. Otherwise,

Absolutely blind.

Geoffroy thank you very much for your time, mate. It's been fantastic. Really enjoyed hearing about your journey and, and the company and, and progress and how much you've achieved in such a short amount of time. Like that's really incredible and I really look forward to seeing what the next 3, 4, 5 years hold.

It's an exciting journey.

Thank you very much and let's never forget, it's always the sum of hard work and luck, but it doesn't come without luck. Neith, even with the hard work.

Yeah, very well said. Alright mate, we'll let you go. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you. Bye Dion

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