#067: Swiftly: vSaaS For Public Transportation, SaaS For Boring Business > Everything Else, Have You Mapped Out Your ICP Yet?
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One Biz Story:
AtoB: All-In-One Finance Software for Trucking
Taken a public train, bus, or subway recently? You've probably used this companies app without even knowing it. Swiftly, SaaS for Public Transit, is an incredible "BORING" business ⬇
Swiftly develops enterprise software to help transit agencies and cities improve urban mobility. Their software platform improves transit system performance, service reliability, and real-time passenger information. And it's quite an interesting business...
Swiftly was founded in 2014, by Jonny Simkin, Michael Smith, & Will Dayton. Jonny was a former entrepreneur, where he founded & sold a college textbooks startup. Mike was the former GM & CTO of NextBus & Will was a Platform Engineer at This Moment. So how the heck did these three guys end up coming up with Swiftly?
The idea came when the co-founders bonded over their passion for improving urban mobility. They realized the potential of using big data to improve public transportation systems. They set out to create a SaaS that would help transit agencies and optimize their services, reduce costs, and enhance the rider experience.
Swiftly's product suite includes:
White Label Passenger Public Transit App
Business Intelligence & Data Tool for Transit Agencies
To break it down further, Swiftly enables consumers to track ride times, schedules, and whether their ride is on-time or late. This rolls up to Transit Staff, who access visual dashboards to track all of the transportation running across their entire operation. Pretty neat...
And it seems to be working.
Swiftly has been at it for 10 years and is used by 150+ public transit agencies in 10+ countries. Major customers include Miami Dade County, CU Boulder, and even Dubai's Transit Authority, RTA Dubai.
Public transportation is a good sized industry. But most interestingly, it is still largely offline and analog. Swiftly is making a dent in that...
1.6 BILLION passenger trips have been taken over the last decade by their 500+ customers. They are citing some incredible improvements including:
Increase on-time performance by up to 40%
Improve passenger prediction accuracy by up to 50%
Analyze data up to 90% faster
The business scraped together early capital to fund it's operations across a 6 year period
2014-2016: Angel Rounds w/ Boost VC
2017: $2.5M Seed w/ VIA ID
2020: $22.8M Series A with Aster, Renewal Funds, VIA ID
But in late 2020 that changed...
The company EXPLODED during the pandemic as Transit Agencies received tremendous amount of funding to help protect their riders and ensure safety at all costs. Digital over analog tools became a necessity.
The company cited 1000% growth...
The company subsequently announced a Growth Equity deal with JMI, which I assume came with a great return for early supporters and the founders. At the time of the deal, they cited 90 Transit Agency customers. Today, they are at 150+ (!!!)
I'd imagine the advancements in AI can supercharge this business and I'm excited to see what the next few years look like. Given Growth Equity firms are focused on 5 year flips, I'd estimate Swiftly will be in the news re: an even bigger transaction in the next year or two...
Kudos to the @SwiftlyInc team.
Fun to watch smart entrepreneurs leverage mobile, and big data, to modernize an incredibly antiquated industry. Excited to see what comes next for them...
One vSaaS Breakdown:
I used to think creating software for "boring" businesses was, well, BORING.
I couldn't have been more wrong...
Go build SaaS for Floral Shops, Furniture Stores, Car Washes, etc. The likelihood of success is so much greater...
One ‘How To’:
Have You Mapped Out Your ICP Yet?
I meet a lot of Seed Stage founders that still haven't mapped out their ideal customer profile.
So, so important. If you haven't yet, get to it.
Will save you and your team lot of pain.
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