SHIPBOB

Dhruv Saxena and Divey Gulati saw firsthand how painful shipping and fulfillment was for small online brands. Packing orders by hand, running to the post office, losing track of inventory, the whole nightmare.

They realized the gap between what Amazon could do and what a small brand could do was enormous. ShipBob was born in Chicago in 2014 to close that gap.

Y Combinator backed them that year, Saxena became CEO and Gulati president, and they have been building warehouse infrastructure ever since.

ShipBob is a third-party logistics (3PL) company that handles warehousing, picking, packing, and shipping for e-commerce businesses. Brands send their inventory to ShipBob's fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, Europe, and Australia.

When a customer places an order, ShipBob picks, packs, and ships it automatically. Revenue comes from storage fees, fulfillment fees per order, and shipping charges.

They integrate directly with Shopify, WooCommerce, Amazon, and other platforms.

ShipBob Fulfillment Network (50+ fulfillment centers across the US, Canada, Europe and Australia), ShipBob WMS (warehouse management software), Merchant Plus (for brands with their own warehouses), analytics dashboard, and returns management

Expand the fulfillment center network to get closer to end consumers, reducing delivery times and shipping costs. Move upmarket to serve larger brands, not just small Shopify stores.

Build more software tools — inventory management, analytics, returns processing — to make switching costs higher. International expansion, especially in Europe.

Fulfillment is a brutally low-margin, operationally complex business. Every new warehouse costs millions to set up and takes months to optimize.

Competing with Amazon's FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) is a constant struggle — Amazon can subsidize fulfillment costs that ShipBob cannot. Scaling internationally while maintaining delivery speed and accuracy is extremely difficult.

Y Combinator backed ShipBob in 2014. Hyde Park Venture Partners led a $4 million Series A in 2016, Bain Capital Ventures led a $17.5 million Series B in 2017, Menlo Ventures led a $40 million Series C in 2018, and SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led a $68 million Series D in 2020.

In June 2021 Bain Capital Ventures led a $200 million Series E that valued ShipBob at more than $1 billion, bringing total funding to about $330 million.