South Florida Sun-Sentinel (Sunday)
Startup plans to move headquarters
Beach startup ShipMonk has raised $10 million and plans to move to Fort Lauderdale as well as expand to the New York area in 2019.
The company, which specializes in shipping for e-commerce companies, will lease 170,000 square feet in a building at Broward Boulevard and Interstate 95, both for its headquarters and South Florida logistics operation, said ShipMonk founder and CEO Jan Bednar.
The financing round “gives us more breathing room to hire people before we need them and position for more aggressive growth,” Bednar said.
With new funding, Shipmonk also plans to increase automation. “We’re spending a lot more on automating the software itself,” Bednar said.
ShipMonk has tripled its shipping business since 2017, now handling close to 1.5 million packages, he said. The company employs about 230 people, including 150 in South Florida, and has a fulfillment center in Los Angeles and an office in Prague, Czech Republic, where Bednar is from originally.
Revenues for 2017 were about
$11 million, said Bednar, who expects ShipMonk to end the year at
$30 million in sales. Founded in 2014, ShipMonk has been funding its own growth until now, he said, and gave up less than
15 percent of its equity for the inDeerfield
vestment.
The financing round was led by SJF Ventures in North Carolina, with participation from Virginiabased Grotech Ventures, Maine-based Supply Chain Ventures, and a group of angel investors who specialize in supply chain investments, the company said.
David Griest, managing director of SJF Ventures, said ShipMonk’s technology and automation enable “even small e-commerce businesses to meet ever-increasing consumer expectations for faster delivery.”
ShipMonk was ranked No. 29 on Inc. 5000’s 2018 fastest-growing companies list, and Bednar, 27, was named to Forbes’ 2018 list of “30 Under 30.”
Bednar was in his early 20s when he started the company and was accepted into Florida Atlantic University’s Tech Runway startup accelerator program in Boca Raton.
“He’s a rock star. He’s the epitome of discipline and execution,” said Jerry Katz, president of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization - South Florida and founder and CEO of Premier Protection Insurance Services in Fort Lauderdale.
Katz said Bednar, one of the youngest entrepreneurs invited to join the leadership group, has absorbed advice from fellow entrepreneurs on how to best scale and fund his business.
“He’s running a baby Amazon here in South Florida,” he said.