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Last week, I had the honor of representing DrayNow at the PACT (Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies) Capital Conference at Xfinity Live, right in the heart of Philly’s sports complex. Even without a professional sporting event taking place next door, it’s a venue with a lot of energy.

PACT selected DrayNow as a “Showcase Company” in the Successful, Mature Growth Companies category. Just a year ago, being called a successful, mature company seemed a long way off. While I’m not ready to claim absolute success quite yet, it’s been a big year for DrayNow, with a lot of great advancements in terms of our platform, our team, and our customers.

The Capital Conference’s mission was to provide a roadmap of the various stages of success by demonstrating how companies connect and collaborate. At DrayNow, we’ve embraced the principles of connection and collaboration, by constantly seeking input and feedback from our customers and motor carriers. Even though we’re a technology company at our core, there’s simply no way we’d be successful by jamming a tech solution into a marketplace filled with complexity and nuance.

In addition to tackling our niche category’s complexities and nuances, our DrayNow Marketplace has the added challenge of operating a platform economy model, where we need to cultivate both sides of the market simultaneously. In other words, it’s a classic chicken-and-egg scenario.

During our presentation at the PACT Capital conference, I walked through the challenges facing our segment of the trucking industry and the way we solve them. It was a pleasure to get positive feedback about what we’ve accomplished in a relatively short period of time.

On the main stage at Xfinity Live, Mike Albert presents at the PACT Capital Conference.

Now, stepping back from the conference and thinking about issues we’ve tackled that led PACT to deem us “Successful” and “Mature”, I realize that our early success really boils down to delivering on a few simple attributes:

1. A service that meets a market’s clear and growing needs. In our case, that’s for both the demand and supply sides of the business: shipping brokers and motor carriers, respectively.

2. A product that’s easy to adopt and easy to use. At DrayNow, that product is a technology platform our customers can start using quickly, and is easy to use by the people who run their day-to-day businesses.

3. A team that understands the market and cares deeply about customers and/or users. For us, that means rolling up our sleeves about helping freight move with less friction.

At the heart of it, these are the things that any new company needs to deliver. Regardless of your market, your technology, your experience, or the amount of money you raise, there’s no shortcut.

Address a real need, do it well, and always show up for your customers.

That’s what we’re working on, and I’m proud to be a part of it.

 Mike Albert, CEO