This Entrepreneur Raised $75 Million To Empower A $700 Billion Industry With Data Intelligence
Craig Fuller is a repeat startup entrepreneur who has launched, scaled and exited multiple businesses. He’s gone from the family business to publicly traded businesses to going out on his own.
During our interview on the Dealmakers Podcast Craig Fuller shared his journey from childhood working in the family businesses to getting fired by your dad, and doing your own thing. Plus, funding your own business, how venture capital works, VC versus private equity funding, and his key to success.
Fuller was born in Chattanooga,TN. A city he says is a great place to be in a COVID-19 world, with its hyper-fast internet and plenty of outdoor space to enjoy.
Entrepreneurship runs way back in Craig’s DNA. His great grandfather was in trucking. His grandfather was a pioneer in the same space. Both of his sons, Craig’s father and uncle started their own trucking businesses, employing thousands of people.
His father began bootstrapping his own business back in the mid-80s. He learned a lot from him. Both about the trucking industry and running a business. He was inspired by him to become an entrepreneur, and found his time learning from him at work and around the dinner table the most valuable education he received. Even more so than his Master’s.
He had been going to the office with his dad since he was six years old. He became the company’s first help-desk technician. His father’s business went public when Craig was just around 15 years old. He stayed until he was 24, learning everything he could and exploring many roles and parts of the business. He washed the trucks and helped maintain them. He worked dispatch, and saw what it took to be an executive.
Like many successful entrepreneurs Craig Fuller started out as an intrapreneur.
In college he tried selling air freight. Pretty soon he became the ‘truck guy’ at DFW airport. They would call him saying, “I don’t care what it costs, but I need a truck.” He took the idea to his father. His son going out to start a competing business didn’t seem like a good move. So, they set it up as an experiment and kind of a startup within this bigger company.
Craig was told he could split 25% of the margins with his team by one of the executives. Within 24 months it turned out to be a huge hit. One of the most profitable parts of the organization, with a $68M a year margin. Seeing this, the exec he reported began slashing the compensation. That went down to 5% for the team, then a basic $100k a year salary, with no bonus, instead of the millions he should be earning for his contribution. He was effectively told that since his father and family were doing so well, that he should really take one for the team. Even though his boss was getting the bonuses for his work.
He clearly wasn’t being compensated fairly for his value. He decided to go do something else.
His father ended up backing him as one of the investors in Transcard. A prepaid card and payments business. They ended up with 400 bank customers and were acquired by US Bank.
After the acquisition Craig had managed to keep part of the business. He was ultimately ousted or fired by his own father.
No matter the reasons, getting laid off or let go by a family member never feels good. Still he knew he loved him, but wasn’t going to involve dad in his next venture.
After doing some day trading and seeing what was happening in global ocean shipping, he stumbled on the idea for creating a futures market around trucking.
Today, FreightWaves is a media data business, dubbed ‘the Bloomberg of freight.’ They use data to help freight companies win, manage logistics, reduce risk and get a better understanding of their industry.
Craig didn’t have a lot of capital. He did have good credit. So, he opened up a credit card, and got a 0% interest deal and $50k line of credit. FrieghtWaves has now raised $75M from a mix of investors.
They’ve had angel investors, VCs and private equity investments.
He shared some significant differences between venture capital and private equity with our audience.
VCs are famous for looking for those 100x returns. He describes them as wildcats drilling for oil. In the oil business you can drill a lot of holes and come up dry. It can be 10 or 100 and you may still come up empty. But, if you do strike oil, just one well could produce many millions of dollars and offset the cost of the other 99 holes you tried to drill.
It’s the same for VCs. They only need one investment to produce a 100x return. They don’t care if the others go bust. They just want to go fast and find out if you are a bust or a gusher fast.
In contrast, private equity may target far more modest 3-5x returns. He says they are more concerned with preserving capital and modest growth. As long as you are delivering on that, they’ll leave you alone. When you come up short, that's when they’ll show up and put you on the sidelines.
That doesn’t seem to be a problem for FreightWaves today. They are already an almost $20M a year company, with 130 employees, which is growing 200% per year.
Read the full transcript of our Dealmakers interview for more on:
Working with family · The unforeseen challenges of taking money from family and friends · The one key focus that took his business from one customer to 400 · How to get in touch with Craig fuller
Craig Fuller and Chattanooga: why the city matters to the story
Craig Fuller built FreightWaves in Chattanooga, Tennessee, rather than in a coastal technology hub, and that choice is a substantive part of the company's story rather than a biographical footnote. Chattanooga has deep roots in trucking and logistics, and the city's freight industry gave the company proximity to the operators, carriers and brokers whose data and trust the product depends on.
Fuller comes from a freight family — his background is in the trucking and fuel-network business before technology — which is how a data company for a $700 billion industry got founded by someone the industry already recognised.
Craig Fuller's net worth: what can and cannot be said
There is no verified public net worth figure for Craig Fuller, and none can be derived from FreightWaves' funding. The company has raised roughly $75 million; that capital sits with the company. What is documented is the shape of the value: founder equity in a private data business, plus prior involvement in family freight businesses. Any specific dollar figure published elsewhere is an estimate without a primary source behind it.
What FreightWaves proves about building in an unglamorous industry
Domain access is the unfair advantage. Freight data is hard to obtain because it requires operators to share it. Industry standing, not engineering, unlocks that. · Sell the index before the software. FreightWaves built market benchmarks first. Benchmarks create a shared reference point, and a shared reference point creates a market — including a derivatives market for freight rates. · Media as a distribution wedge. The company built a newsroom serving the same audience it sells data to, which lowers customer acquisition cost in an industry that does not respond to conventional software marketing. · Location can be a moat. Building in Chattanooga meant lower burn, lower attrition, and a hiring pool with actual freight experience.
