unistart

Writing concise investment memos is a critical skill that any VC must have under their belt. 

Here at unistart, we’ve written up a one pager to invest into an exciting startup that’s bound to transform the freight industry. 

Feel free to reference this when writing your own investment memos. 

Oway is a freight platform that sells unused truck space to SMBs for up to 50% discount for rapid shipping. Leveraging ML, Oway enables ridesharing and addresses inefficiencies in the $940 billion US trucking industry. Oway has a near-zero churn rate and recently joined Y Combinator's Summer 2024 Batch.

Less-Than-Truckload, LTL, is a $230 billion industry in the US. This market is highly fragmented with small trucking companies making up 91%. More importantly, 35% of all trucking miles is deadhead miles, meaning the trucks are traveling without a load. This is both expensive and dangerous for the truckers, as well as for our environment. Oway addresses this issue by offering an easy to use solution to both shippers and truckers.

Philip and his brother scaled his family’s trucking production business to $70 million in revenue. He found traction early on with Oway by going door to door before raising a single cent. Philip isalso a self-taught full stack developer.

Get a quote in 30 seconds and get matched with a driver in as quick as a couple of minutes. Since the orders can be picked up the same day, the orders can be delivered overnight with no warehouse transfers, reducing damage risk in the process.

There are existing freight broker marketplaces like Convoy and Uber Freight. Additionally, there are many load boards like DAT and Truckstop that help shippers post a job and truckers to find a load. However, current marketplaces target enterprises with the emphasis on full truck loads, and the load boards can be difficult to navigate due to its scrolling experience. The bigger risk that Oway faces is in GTM and finding viral SMB adoption.

Oway’s approach to address trucking inefficiencies for the underserved SMB market by becoming the go to marketplace with a consumer grade product strongly aligns with __VCFirm__ criteria for network effect driven businesses. As the company scales its reach, Oway can tackle consumer markets like furniture logistics. Oway’s potential to lead in rideshare freight shown in its traction so far and being backed by Y Combinator makes it a favorable portfolio addition.

Opensourcing Investment Memos: Freightshare Startup - Oway