trash pickup: there’s app that an for
rubicon Global Ceo Nate Morris is building the Uber of garbage collection, disrupting a $60 billion industry dominated by giants.
Like other entrepreneurs who head blockbuster tech startups, Nate Morris these days finds his social calendar sprinkled with glitz and glamour: invitations from Leonardo Dicaprio to a premiere of The Revenant (he declined) and from billionaire Marc Benioff to a private dinner with Arianna Hufngton and Billie Jean King (he accepted). But much of his business at Rubicon Global is a world away from Hollywood and Silicon Valley, in places like Jeffersonville, Indiana, a town of 45,000. On an unseasonably warm November day, he’s there meeting with local garbage boss Bob Lee, who has a plea for Morris: “We need your help.”
Lee has been in the garbage business since he snagged a gig hauling trash for the local unemployment ofce as a young Army vet in 1971, and his company, Eco Tech Waste Logistics, based in Louisville, Kentucky, is the kind of mom-and-pop operation that has powered Rubicon’s ascent. With 96 employees and 69 haulers (trucks), Eco Tech is one of the area’s leaders. But like almost every other small hauler in the country, it faces a daily challenge from national players with resources that dwarf its own, and Rubicon’s tech offers a way to fight back.
Rubicon is the Uber of trash. Its software connects waste collectors (the guys with the trucks) with the waste creators (an ofce or business or perhaps even homes), then makes sure the pickup runs smoothly. For the haulers, Rubicon’s app helps detect when the collection happens without any input from or distractions for the driver. The dispatchers know where their trucks are and who’s working the most stops. The consumer gets a big-picture view that shows how much waste they’re sending to landfills versus recycling and how frequently they really need service, helping to cut costs. Rubicon charges both sides—the haulers and their customers—for access to its tech.
Eight years after Morris launched the company with childhood friend Marc Spiegel in Louisville, where they grew up, Rubicon works with 5,000 small hauling businesses and with big customers like 7-11 and Wegmans. It snagged its first municipal contract in October in Atlanta. Revenue has tripled to more than $200 million in the past year. Rubicon has lured top-tier investors such as Goldman Sachs and Wellington Management and is now poaching talent from Silicon Valley. And with a new partnership with Suez Environment, a $15 billion French multinational hungry to learn from Rubicon’s technical chops, Morris is gunning for a $60 billion industry in the U.S. that’s dominated by giants Waste Management (revenue: $13 billion) and Republic Services ($9 billion).
Suez is leading a new $50 million investment in Rubicon, bringing its valuation to $800 million. Already the owner of Waste Management’s former assets overseas, Suez plans to reenter the U.S. market by working with Rubicon, which will share its best tech practices and what Morris considers its most valuable asset: its data. “The U.S. model is oldfashioned,” says Jean-marc Boursier, CEO of Suez’s Recycling & Waste Recovery, Europe, who has kept his company’s plans with Rubicon secret until now. “We hope it will astonish and surprise—then they will need to evolve and evolve very fast.” For Rubicon, the Suez deal opens a clear route to markets overseas over time. For now, its Morris’ ace up his sleeve to take more share from the incumbents. “That’s when it gets fun,” he says.
Morris, 36, was elected student-body president in fifth grade, and by high school he had met Bill Clinton and hosted a morning news telecast. As a scholarship student at George Washington University, he woke up early on weekends for internships and began moonlighting for the state GOP to help reelect Senator Mitch Mcconnell.
Morris went off to China to teach business management and work for Kentucky’s cabinet for economic development before heading to Princeton for graduate school in public and international affairs. Firsthand exposure to industrial sprawl in China had put sustainability on his mind, and with Spiegel, whose family had worked in the garbage hauling business