Listen to this articleCitizenShipper is online auction based peer-to-peer shipping marketplace that connects shipping customers with transport providers and couriers. CitizenShipper has recently announced $500.000 in new funding. Below is our recent interview with Richard Obousy Founder of CitizenShipper:
Q: What is the CitizenShipper story?
A: As a graduate student, I would often drive the long and lonely roads from Waco to Houston to visit my new wife, who was studying at another university. I was a typical student, working to get a solid foundation through education and struggling to make ends meet. Each weekend I would scrape together the money needed for gas and while driving I would try and think of novel ways to earn some cash to subsidize the next trip. I wondered how many other folks on the road were traveling between cities frequently and on a regular basis. I imagined that maybe there could be a way to connect some of those drivers with people who needed things to be taken between cities. Maybe those people who needed to ship things, would be willing to pay a small amount, and I could use that money to pay for the gas to visit my wife. From that idea, a very basic version of CitizenShipper was born in mid-2008.
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Q: Tell us how you founded the company and something more about your journey?
A: The last seven years have brought a lot of changes to my life, to CitzenShipper, and to the concept of the collaborative economy as a whole. I graduated from graduate school with a PhD in theoretical physics and relocated to Houston permanently. Once there, I focused all his attention on building CitizenShipper into a reliable platform using leading edge technologies to connect neighbors and build communities of shippers and drivers all across America. Little by little, the company has been growing into what I had envisioned so long ago. CitizenShipper has built an innovative shipping marketplace from the ground up. User ease and efficiency has been enhanced greatly from the early days and CitizenShipper now delivers a top notch service to thousands of folks every day. Collaborative economy companies, like Lyft and Task Rabbit, caught up to my ideas and took off to become major contributors to the American economy. Now, CitizenShipper is poised to achieve the same level of success through its commitment to providing value to its vibrant community, and assuring that regular folks have options to corporate shipping and, in some small way, more freedom to explore life on their own terms.
Q: You’ve recently announced $500K in new funding, what are your plans?
A: Develop the brand, continue to enhance our UI/UX, hire additional talent, expand and grow revenues.
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Q: What advantage does CitizenShipper have over its competitors?
A: We’ve derisked CitizenShipper significantly and have more screening and safety checks than our competitors. We already have better UI than the competition, are agile, have a more competitive pricing model and have the added element of gamification.
Q: What is the biggest lesson you’ve learned since founding your company?
A: You get what you pay for! In the early days, before we had any significant funding, I had to bootstrap the MVP using outsourced, low cost developers. The technical debt we acquired still haunts us today.
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