In the ever-evolving landscape of entrepreneurship, few have experienced the full spectrum of highs and lows like Zvi Schreiber. His journey from software engineer to successful serial founder offers invaluable insights into the trials and triumphs of building and scaling companies.
In this exclusive interview, Zvi talks about his experiences selling a company to IBM, taking another company public, and fundraising. He has had a series of successful acquisitions and fire sales.
Zvi’s latest company, Freightos, has attracted funding from top-tier investors like FedEx, SGX, OurCrowd, Aleph, and Annox Capital.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Overhyped valuations can lead to dramatic crashes, so approach deals with a critical eye.
- Being too early to market can be as detrimental as being too late, as infrastructure and consumer readiness are crucial.
- Opt for investors who share your business’s long-term vision and are supportive of the timeline for success.
- Digitizing traditional industries, like freight forwarding, can transform outdated practices and create new efficiencies.
- Successes and failures alike offer valuable lessons that contribute to future ventures.
- Building and maintaining a loyal, skilled team is essential for long-term success.
- While immediate results are important, the aim is to have a lasting impact and improve the global landscape, such as by enhancing world trade.
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About Zvi Schreiber:
Zvi Schreiber (“tsvee shryber”), is a British-Israeli software and Internet entrepreneur. He founded Tradeum Inc., one of the pioneers of B2B E-Commerce, which achieved revenues of over US$100m and an exit of $500m.
Zvi founded Unicorn Inc., which sold to IBM, and G.ho.st, sold to Infinity Fund. He was CEO of clean-tech electronics company Lightech, which he sold in 2011 to General Electric (GE) Lighting.
Zvi is the Founder and CEO of Freightos, the Internet marketplace for the trillion-dollar international freight market. He has a PhD in computer science, has written and spoken widely, and continues to code part-time.[my_form_shortcode]
Connect with Zvi Schreiber:
Read the Full Transcription of the Interview:
Alejandro Cremades: Alrighty. Hello, everyone, and welcome to The Deal Maker Show. So today, we have a very exciting founder that is joining us. you know We are ah definitely about to experience an incredible conversation with a founder that has done it multiple times. He sold his companies to the likes of IBM, you know done the whole thing of going public, raised all the money that you can think of, ah and going through the cycles. so um you know Now, ah he’s on a rocket ship. We’re going to be talking about it too, how he’s disrupting this outdated industry that is massive and what they’re doing about it. And again, you know super incredible you know founder and conversation that we have. So brace yourself for a super unbelievable episode. So without further ado, let’s welcome our guest today, Svi Shriver. Welcome to the show.
Zvi Schreiber: Great to be here.
Alejandro Cremades: So give us a walk through memory lane because you were born in London, spent a bunch of time in Jerusalem, you know, there in Israel and now in Barcelona. So yeah I guess you’re a citizen of the world.
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, I’m still in Jerusalem, but also splitting time in Barcelona, where we have our biggest office. um So yeah, briefly, I started started my career as a software engineer. And while I was doing that, I did a PhD in computer science. So technical background, I still still getting you know get involved in the technical side when I can. But for many years, I’ve been an entrepreneur. I’ve had ah acquisition successful acquisitions, fire sales, a mixture of everything. But now, already for 12 years, I’m founder and CEO of Freitas. And you can think of us like Booking dot.com or Expedia for international freight. So we’re trying to digitize a very big, very important old industry and bring it into the 21st century.
Alejandro Cremades: And we’re getting we’re going to get into that in detail. But you know before that, we’re going to get to know you. and it’s weird So how how how do you get into math? So obviously you went to study at Cambridge, and you got all types of shiny degrees you know around mathematics. But out of all things, mathematics. Why mathematics?
Zvi Schreiber: I just seem to have a natural skill at it and I love it.
Alejandro Cremades: but that’s good because that got you into, I guess, say becoming a software engineer. So how was that journey from being a software engineer to all of a sudden taking ownership of your own future and becoming an entrepreneur? entrepreneur at
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah. um You know, I think in many cases, certainly for me, that it was just sort of a natural progression. um I worked for a very good software company in London, and and I saw sort of saw how they did things. And at some point, I thought, I want to try to do this myself. And so, you know, someone wants to find an entrepreneur, someone who’s unemployable, you know, like they sort of couldn’t hold down a job for long. I was itching to try it for myself.
Alejandro Cremades: That’s amazing. things So tell us about what happened there, you know, because it was during the 2000s, you know, with all the yeah craziness kicking into it with the bubble, you know, and so forth. So how was that like?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, those was yeah, that certainly was crazy for your for your younger listeners who weren’t around through that. I mean, in 1999 and the beginning of 2000, there was a bubble, like we haven’t seen since in ah tech. it was The internet was very new and um stocks went completely berserk. I mean, there there were startups you know valued at tens of billions of dollars with that without any profit. and and barely any revenue. ah So it was a very extreme bubble. Actually for that year, so and I had a company called Tradium at the time, also doing sort of B2B platforms. um And I moved, I raised money in Israel and then moved to the Bay Area at that time. So I was actually in the the San Francisco Bay Area at the peak of the craziness and it really was a ah wild time.
Zvi Schreiber: And I was able to sell my startup um to a startup really called Vertical Net, which was public with a $10 billion dollars valuation at the time. um And I sold it in March of 2000. Within days of that sale, the market crashed hard. And the shares that we received on on paper, it was a really good exit, but the shares crashed by, well, 10% and 20%. And before long, they were down 99 point something per percent. And so it was quite a roller coaster.
Alejandro Cremades: So what did you learn there when it comes to cycles?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, um I learned the things that don’t look real aren’t real. and and And I have to say, I went into this deal with my eyes open and and advised people. I told my team, look. you know, on paper we’re selling for half a billion dollars, but but this paper is very hyped. And so so I went in, fortunately with my eyes somewhat open that this this may not be a sustainable thing. um And and i’t none of us knew how quickly and how dramatically it would crash, but but we were certainly well aware that things were likely to crash because it didn’t make any sense. um But you know, it just ah it just, the lesson is the obvious one. If if something, if evaluation doesn’t make sense of a startup,
Zvi Schreiber: which isn’t doing particularly well, it’s valued at $10 billion, then that’s probably not going to last. And I’ve seen that with many other types of shares of technologies that, you know, I think to some extent blockchain went through a similar thing. When things get over hyped, then there’s a correction, as you’d expect.
Alejandro Cremades: So then in your case, you know you ended up a you know moving on to the next chapter. And once an entrepreneur, entrepreneur always always an entrepreneur entrepreneur. And the next one also had quite the outcome. So how was that they journey with the next company?
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, I mean, so it was tough it was tough in a way because what happened after 2000, in the bubble, everyone was spending money on IT like there’s no tomorrow. So so companies were were really investing. And then when the bubble burst, and then, you know, and I started a company called Unicorn. nothing but This was before Unicorn had the connotation that it has today. And we were sending data management to big banks and big insurance companies. And and it was a tough time because everyone was slashing their IT budgets. Everyone was nervous to buy from startups because startups so many startups weren’t bust in 2000. So big enterprises became much more conservative again about their IT spending and and also who they bought from. So we we had some success. We did sell to MetLife Insurance, Bank of America, and some top tier enterprises. But it was hard going.
Zvi Schreiber: And it was kind of frustrating in a way, as soon as we sold to IBM, many deals that we were trying to close and failing, as soon as IBM bought us those deals closed immediately, because buying from IBM was the conservative thing to do in those days, certainly, and you know still today. So that was ah a lesson. you know We had ah a modest success, but it could have been a lot more if we weren’t dealing with such ah such a conservative market at that time.
Alejandro Cremades: How was it like to do ah an M&A transaction, you know selling your business to such a big player like IBM? How was that for you?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, it was that was my first time going through well sorry it was my second time um first time going through through an ah acquisition by a big enterprise, let’s say. It was quite an experience. we We turned up there in Albany um for two days of due diligence. And they had given us a questionnaire in advance with one over 1,000 questions. For example, though there were 35 questions on on and environment, whether we’re polluting any rivers, you know that kind of thing. now We’re a software company, but they don’t get it. They ask all the questions. So very, very heavy process. And we had this funny thing when we met them. And and they so you know we said, um oh, we’re a team of but about 30.
Zvi Schreiber: And they said, we’re also a team of about 30. Of course, they they meant just the team doing due diligence was 30. IBM at that time was 300,000 people. But they’d sent 30 people just to sit with us and do due diligence. So it was a very heavy ah process, but but ultimately successful. And the product did very well inside IBM. yeah
Alejandro Cremades: So then let’s talk about you know what happened after. you know Obviously, one thing that is saying incredible is that you go from two successful outcomes to all of a sudden a fire sell. And it’s like they say you either succeed or you learn. So with this next experience, what happened there that they really forced you guys to having to go to ah to really sell the business you know and and perhaps not at the desirable outcome that you had to hope for.
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, I mean, look, you win some, you lose some. I always knew that it’s ah that that it’s risky. And um I was always very honest with my investors. Even though they know that, I always said explicitly to my investors, you you could lose all your money. um And and that that was helpful. So when they did lose almost all their money, I was able to you know look at them straight in the the eye. And some of them invested with me again afterwards. So so I kept a good relationship. um The company then, it was called Ghost, which was kind of a clever acronym of global hosted operating system. um And it was my only time I did B2C, which is always even much more risky than B2B. So it was consumer web. And it turns out that we were too early to market was really the issue there because we ended up getting, ah we we really did something which is very similar to Dropbox and and Box dot.net and
Zvi Schreiber: you know, keep all your files in the cloud. And if we if we were two years later, maybe we could we could have been, you know, Box or or ah Dropbox. That was a very, we had the right idea, you know, I had the right idea and and um we built a good product. come It’s rated, of course, we had issues, but we built a good product. And if we were two years later, it might have been a huge success. It might have been worth billions of dollars. ah We were too early. It’s kind of hard to remember, but in 2008, ah The internet wasn’t very fast. you know In those days, when you bought a broadband internet connection for your home, it was 256 kilobits per second, you know a quarter of one megabit. Now everyone’s got 100 megabits and 500 megabits. So um the internet the internet infrastructure just wasn’t ready for keep all your files in the cloud. ah So we had the right idea, and we were actually a couple of years too early to market, I would say.
Alejandro Cremades: So in this case, then, you know market timing. you know What did you take away there from market timing that maybe some of the founders listening you know can really get inspired by from some of those lessons on um being able to time things?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, you know, get it right. um You know, being being too late is everyone knows that if you’re too late, then it’s tough. um But being too early can kill you for sure, just as much maybe more maybe being early kills you more because there are amazing cases of people who were late to market and succeeded. Maybe the most obvious one is Google. I remember very well when when the first time someone showed me Google, And I’m like, what what are they thinking? It’s too late. We’ve got Yahoo search. We’ve got Ink ink to Me search, and Altavista, you know alta vista and and you know there’s several great search engines. Who would even fund a new search engine? It just seemed like ridiculous to me. They they were too late to market. And boy, was I wrong. you know that they They just created a search engine which was a bit quicker and a bit better, and everyone moved. um So you can recover. You can be late to market. And if your product is better, you can you can win.
Zvi Schreiber: if you’re too ah If you’re too early to market and and you don’t have enough money to to wait it out, then then you’re dead.
Alejandro Cremades: so I mean, here you are, you know building, scaling, exiting successfully and unsuccessfully also companies, ah learning a lot, having a lot of fun. So why going from being the founder to being more an um an employee?
Zvi Schreiber: um No, I’m still still the founder. um
Alejandro Cremades: ah with with ah with a like With the next one, no? With the hardware company that you take that you did like that
Zvi Schreiber: ah Ah, yes, sorry, I got you. Yes, for a couple of years, years i was I was the CEO. um But although I had wasn’t the founder, I’d been involved in that company for a long time. My dad was an investor there. I’d been on the board of directors. I’ve been involved in the original investment there. So i’d been although I was not the founder, um I’d been quite involved as ah as an active director for many years and certainly felt some of the same ownership that you feel when you’re the founder. um And at that time, we had to fire the CEO who was there, and and there was a gap. So one, I wanted to help out. I cared about the company. um but But also, you know it was an interesting experience. That’s why I learned all about supply chain and managing inventory. And you know managing a hardware company is really something very different. So so I had a good couple of years at Lightech and had a good opportunity to sell it to GE Lighting in 2011.
Alejandro Cremades: And hey, you know that’s where the idea of your next baby came about. So it’s just the one that you’ve been pushing out for quite a bit of time.
Zvi Schreiber: Exactly right, yeah.
Alejandro Cremades: So walk us through what was that ideation process because at this point you had built a couple of companies and you really understood you know what it took from point A to point C.
Zvi Schreiber: Yes.
Alejandro Cremades: So walk us from ah how you come up with the idea to really testing it, valid validating it, and then being like, this is it, let’s go.
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, well, I thought I understood. I’ve learned learned some new things as well, but ah for sure. um So I mean, it it was really a classic case where I saw the need. So when I was at Litec, we were doing international shipping, we were manufacturing, it was electronic power supplies for for LED lights is what we were doing, which was good because LED lights was growing market by now it’s taken over the world. But then it was quite new and growing fast. And um we were manufacturing in the south of China like most electronics and and shipping by ocean and by air from Shenzhen area to the US and to Europe where our customers were.
Zvi Schreiber: um and so Yeah, so so we did that. And um you know I was just kind of shocked. you know I expected that um if you want to travel from Shenzhen to New York or or Paris already for 25 years, or at that time already for 15 years, you know there was a website where you could see all the options and book online. So I certainly thought that when I was the first time I was shipping a container or air cargo from Shenzhen to to LA actually or to London, i expect I said, okay, where’s the website where I can see all the prices and and book? you know and And I was kind of shocked to find out that it didn’t exist. Not only that there wasn’t a website, but you call up, the the the companies who arrange this are called freight forwarders. It’s a big, big industry.
Zvi Schreiber: As you know, Alejandro, when you go into a shop in America, in Europe, 90% of the products you buy are imported. So this is a huge part of the world economy, international shipping. A huge part of our lifestyle, a huge part of how the world economy works is international shipping. But not only was it not online, but when you call up a freight forwarder, and that there’s 100,000 freight forwarders in the world. It’s a very, very big industry. ah When you call them up, that they They don’t pick it up when they say they’re going to pick it up. They don’t deliver it when they say they’re going to deliver. You wait. And this is still the case. We’ve started to change it. But it’s still common. You can wait two or three days for a price quote. When you get an invoice afterwards, it doesn’t match the price quote. you know There’s hidden fees. It’s a complete mess. And you know I felt like I was the first guy to ship something from China to the US you know the way they treated me. And as you know, that’s something which is which is done hundreds of thousands of times a day. And yet it was completely unautomated, completely opaque.
Zvi Schreiber: um so um So yeah, you know it was just a classic situation where I started Freitas because I saw a big gap in the market and a big need.
Alejandro Cremades: So how do you guys make money with Freighters? What’s the best model there?
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, two main two main business models. One is, you know, I do see us primarily as a platform, as ah as a marketplace or a platform, which match matches buyers and sellers. So part of our part of our revenue is transactional. We call that platform revenue. And we’re now a public company, so we report platform and solutions separately. So we’ve got platform revenue, which is transactional. ah But still a majority of our revenue is actually subscriptions. So it’s um mostly SaaS, software as a service subscriptions, but also ah data subscriptions. We sell ah data. we We have the best data.
Zvi Schreiber: in the world for what is the current price of ah shipping a container? What is the current price of shipping kilograms by air? And so we published that data and other related data on the Freitas terminals. So our solutions businesses. So it’s basically platform, which is transactional, and then solutions, which which splits into SAS and data subscriptions.
Alejandro Cremades: so then So then in this case, too, I mean, you guys have raised quite a bit of money, you know, with going in public and then also with the investors prior to that. So how much in total have you guys raised to date?
Zvi Schreiber: $200 million dollars in total.
Alejandro Cremades: And then what has been the journey of raising that money? Because obviously, too, you know, you are a successfully accepted founder, so you are according to investors a tier zero founder that is very hard to come by. So I know that there was more than the people and the money. So how did you go about the people? you know How did the cycle shift? How was going public? So walk us through that.
Zvi Schreiber: Yeah, I mean, there are some advantages when you’re doing this for like, you know, the fourth time that that you do have a relationship with the venture capitalists. and That helped a lot because when we started Freitas, the VCs didn’t really think about supply chain or logistics as an interesting area. ah That changed then over the years that we were, by the time we did a Series C, um you know, Logitech or was already sort of a thing. So so VCs have discovered that there’s a big industry which needs to be modernized. But I think the Series, the seed and the Series A, I only did because I had relationships in a track record. That helped me a lot.
Zvi Schreiber: because investors were not otherwise looking at Logitech at that time. and Then I did a Series C, which was mainly actually strategic investors, so FedEx investors and SGX invested, the Singapore Stock Exchange invested. um And then we did our final rounds by going public. We IPO’d via a SPAC in January of last year.
Alejandro Cremades: How crazy was that?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, um you know again, I have to say I went through it um with our with my eyes open. Our stock has not traded well since then, which is disappointing. but But I told all the team and I told all the investors, we’re not doing this to exit. We’re doing this to raise money. ah you know and I haven’t sold any shares and almost all my investors haven’t sold any shares. you know We did it as a good way to raise money. At that particular time, um there was a lot of money in SPACs. We were right at the end of the whole wave of SPACs. We were one of the last SPACs to really get out. But at that time, there was a lot of money in SPACs. It was good money. it was you know that There was good investors behind our SPAC and M and&G, which is a
Zvi Schreiber: top British funds invested and they’re long-term investors so actually I think for us it was better than an an IPO because in an IPO you get a lot of people who are just investing short term for the IPO pop. ah We raised 80 million dollars from long-term investors. at that time. So it was it was a great way to raise money from quality long-term investors. um And I said to all my team, and I said to my investors, we’re not doing this to exit. I hope the trade the share trades well, but that’s not what i’m what it’s about. I’m not not even going to look at the share price. This is a good way to raise quality money. And in that respect, it was very successful for us. Of course, I’d be happy if the share
Zvi Schreiber: traded well and reflected our true value, that would be even better. um but But even though it’s not, and and the volume is very, very small in ah in our share, so it’s not not a very liquid share yet, um even so we achieved our main goal, which is to raise good money from good investors.
Alejandro Cremades: So let’s talk about that, because i sure I’m sure that you know like people are going to be able to to really learn a lot you know when it comes to like the key ingredients to choosing the right investors. If you could share what are the top three that founders should keep in mind, what should those be?
Zvi Schreiber: Look, um you want investors who who are going to understand your business and be supportive. You want investors who are suitable to your business. So I knew when I started Freitas that this would take a long time. I’ll be perfectly honest, I didn’t know how long it would take. I knew it would take a good number of years. This is a big conservative industry. I knew it wouldn’t change quickly. um And so I took investors who were in it for the long term. And honestly, yes, it took even longer than we thought, but but but it’s succeeding. and And my investors have been very patient um and never pressured me to exit early, never always understood it would take a long time. So you need you need the right kind of investors for the…
Zvi Schreiber: for the for the type of um business that you’re building. We were building a business which is modernizing, digitalizing a very large, very conservative industry. It was always clear that’s going to take time, taking even longer than we thought, but succeeding. And so it’s fantastic that we have investors who, some of whom are in already for more than a decade, and still not pressuring me to to you know to to help them exit. ah still supporting me making the right long-term decisions. so So that’s super important. ah You know, value-add is the third but the least important. If investors can add value, that’s great. If they could they have connections, if they have insights, if they are able to help with a business that’s a value-add, that’s always good, but it’s not critical. What’s critical is to have investors who are going to be supportive and who are aligned with you on on what kind of business you’re building and what kind of timescales you’re building on.
Alejandro Cremades: So let’s say you were to go to sleep tonight and you wake up in a world street where you are able to see fully realized the vision for Freitas. What does that world look like?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, yeah the vision, it’s quite simple, really. The vision for Phratos is that shipping goods around the world will be transparent and automated, just like passenger travel has become. um And we’re already making progress towards that. and And we’re making more progress in air cargo than ocean. In air cargo, we did ah you know about ah a billion about a billion dollars of spend on air cargo.
Alejandro Cremades: you
Zvi Schreiber: which represents many billions of dollars of goods were booked fully digitally last year. And that’s where we’re at an even higher run right now. So we’re starting to see that. Still, it’s a small proportion of the world market, but we have some scale now. So we’re able to see what it looks like. And it’s just what you’d expect. It’s bringing the same experience for shipping of goods. as we already have for passenger travel, where things are very transparent, very online. And through that, ah improving world trade. I think world trade is important. It’s improving and important for employment. It’s important for our lifestyle. It’s important for world peace in a way. you know There is a claim, and it’s it’s quite well-backed, that when countries trade with each other, they’re less likely to fight with each other.
Zvi Schreiber: It’s not a guarantee, but but clearly there was a correlation between you know trade opening up and and peace. And I know i know this and know there’s some parts of the world which are far from at peace, but still most of the world is at peace in Europe ah besides other than Ukraine, but Western Europe has been at peace for for, you know, 80 years now for the first time in in history. um so So even though there are some horrible exceptions, it’s still true that as countries open their borders and trade with each other, it contributes to world peace.
Alejandro Cremades: So now let’s talk about the future, but doing, sorry, the past, but doing so with a lens of reflection. Let’s say, you know, you were able to go back in time and I’m able to put you in the spot where you are now a software engineer that is thinking about, you know, switching gears here and becoming an entrepreneur. Let’s say you had the opportunity of being able to be right there with that younger self and you’re able to give that software engineer one piece of advice before launching a business. What would that be and why, given what you know now?
Zvi Schreiber: goodness Goodness. I don’t know. I think if if I was a young entrepreneur and some guy, some dude sort of turned up from the future, started giving me advice, I wouldn’t appreciate it very much. So so I think I wouldn’t.
Alejandro Cremades: ah Let’s say that younger self actually listened.
Zvi Schreiber: um
Zvi Schreiber: look i don’t have anything clever to say that you haven’t heard before um but And you you’ve probably heard this many times before, but it is it is a lot about the team. so you know So surround yourself by great people, surround yourself by smart, engaged, loyal people. That’s ah obviously, and I’m sure many other entrepreneurs have you’ve heard given the same advice, but that’s that’s the reason why many people say that is is because it’s true. Likewise, treat your investors as part of the extended team. Find good investors who are going to support you, who who are aligned with your with your vision and your time scales.
Zvi Schreiber: um and And and also, you know, there’s a lot of luck, you know, I don’t think that I when I had successes, I don’t think it’s because I was clever when I when I had failures, I don’t think it was because I’m stupid. and there’s And you’ve probably heard this from other entrepreneurs as well. but But we have to be honest, there’s a lot of luck along the way. And so you have to enjoy the ride and and celebrate the wins and don’t be yourself up about, you know, about the losses.
Alejandro Cremades: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, Svi, for the people that are listening that would love to reach out and say hi, what is the best way for them to do so?
Zvi Schreiber: Well, LinkedIn or my emails, v at freytos.com.
Alejandro Cremades: Well, that’s easy enough. Well, Svi, thank you so much for being in the Dealmaker show today. It has been an absolute honor to have you with us.
Zvi Schreiber: Oh, my honor. Thanks for having me on.
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