FULFILLD.
* WHERE: Denver * WEBSITE: www.fulfilld.io * FOUNDED: 2020INITIAL LIGHTBULB:
Following up their previous startup together, NIMBL, Yosh Eisbart and Michael Pytel co-founded Fulfilld with Rick Fischer soon after their 2020 exit from the SAP services provider.
Whereas NIMBL targeted the enterprise, Fulfilld focuses on warehouse management solutions. "What we're doing now is an evolution of what we did in our past life, where we would help companies implement and build custom software around their warehousing and logistics functionality," Eisbart says.
With Fulfilld approaching 30 employees, Eisbart is CEO, Pytel CTO, and Fischer is chief product officer.
IN A NUTSHELL:
"Our product is the only location-aware, AI-powered warehouse management software on the market that we know of," Eisbart says.
The platform "basically is ingesting the blueprints of the warehouse to understand where people, product and connected devices are located," he continues. "Because we are location-aware, we then have the ability to leverage all of that rich data to feed our AI and ML [machine learning] algorithms to provide real-time recommendations on how to optimize the activities within the four walls of the warehouse."
Fulfilld's "orchestration engine" takes data from warehouse employees, ERP software and third-party systems and creates workflows with AI-prescribed task assignments to optimize efficiency, improve training and balance human resources and automation.
"Everything that we do is to drive greater efficiency, optimization and labor reduction within the four walls, the warehouse," Eisbart says. "The bottom line is that we are an optimization engine, or a warehouse operating system, which provides efficiency gains in minimizing wasted warehouse worker footsteps, optimizing where product is placed for greater efficiency in picking and put away, orchestration of activity between human and non-human labor to be able to most efficiently route where a person is walking, or determine if a robot is going to save travel time."
Matchstick Ventures invested in Fulfilld's seed round in 2021 largely due to the founders' track record. "We knew they knew how to operate a good business and were really motivated to build something bigger than they built before," says Boulder-based partner Natty Zola.
Another factor: Warehouses are in need of a tech upgrade. "The existing warehouse management software was built a decade ago, and there are just a lot more capabilities that are possible and needed in that space," Zola says, noting that the "Amazonification of software" catalyzes the entire market. "Amazon has really invested in fantastic software for their infrastructure, whether it's warehouses or delivery or whatever, and basically non-Amazon businesses want the same caliber of software."
THE MARKET:
Crowded, with big players like SAP and Oracle, and growing. According to a forecast from Report Prime, the warehouse management systems market is poised to jump from about $2.4 billion in 2020 to $5.7 billion in 2025.
Fulfilld is in the midst of its first deployments to customers as of late 2023. "Our customers now include Pepsi, Honeywell, Tyson Foods and Home Depot," Eisbart says. "As an early-stage company, we've already been able to get some pretty nice traction."
He adds, "We're in hundreds of thousands of square feet of warehouses with a line of sight to millions of square feet based upon additional warehouses just for these sets of customers."
FINANCING:
Fulfilld has raised more than $8 million in seed funding to date. "We've got an incredible set of investors, including the former second-in-command at Amazon, a fellow by the name of Jeff Wilke, as an investor and as an adviser and as a mentor," Eisbart says.
The company will pursue a Series A in the next year to "really put more fuel on the fire to be able to scale," Eisbart says.
BY ERIC PETERSON
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| Title Annotation: | Tech Startup |
|---|---|
| Author: | Peterson, Eric |
| Publication: | ColoradoBiz |
| Date: | Dec 22, 2023 |
| Words: | 609 |
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