Shippo bags $45 million in new funding

Shippo, a startup that powers shipping services for e-commerce companies, has announced a $45 million investment led by D1 Capital.

The new capital values the venture at $500 million.

Shippo works with more than 70,000 e-commerce businesses and powers shipping for the likes of OfferUp, Mercari, ShipBob, and Ecwid. It says that last year it shipped more than $12 billion worth of products through its platform.

An Amazon Prime for everyone else

“Shipping has become more than moving packages. It’s become a part of the online shopping experience, which consumers care about before deciding to purchase,” Laura Behrens Wu, CEO and Co-founder, Shippo, says in an online post.

“Many customers have come to expect free shipping. Most expect to know when the package will arrive, and expect it to do so in less than a week. Amazon Prime has set the bar and everyone who’s not Amazon is trying to figure out how to keep up.”

She adds: “Everyone is able to do e-commerce because companies such as Shopify, Woo, Square, and Wix have paved the way, but excellent shipping is reserved for retail giants with scale, massive shipping volumes, and big logistics and engineering teams.”

Shippo’s vision is to build Amazon Prime for everyone else. It wants to put SMBs at a competitive advantage by setting a new bar for their shipping.

“I’m more excited about this vision than ever. There’s a lot of momentum and a huge pull from the market right now,” Wu comments.

“Shipping is a giant space that hasn’t been touched by modern software just yet. This is a take rate business.”

“Given how many packages are shipped, you can imagine the size of it. We are making shipping programmable. We make moving atoms as easy as moving bites.”

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