Lior Ron: Pioneering a New Era in End-to-End Logistics

September 11, 2024 00:40:31
Lior Ron: Pioneering a New Era in End-to-End Logistics
Ayna Insights
Lior Ron: Pioneering a New Era in End-to-End Logistics

Sep 11 2024 | 00:40:31

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Show Notes

Wondering about the future of emerging technology in logistics? Where do autonomous trucks and AI come into play?

Gaurav Batra, President and CEO of Ayna, speaks with Lior Ron, founder and CEO of Uber Freight, about the transformative power of technology on logistics. Lior shares how Uber Freight's digital-first approach uses advanced data science and vast shipper and carrier networks to streamline supply chains, enhance efficiency, and boost sustainability. He addresses key challenges with fragmentation and market transparency issues and highlights Uber Freight’s scalable tech-driven solutions and international footprint, including North America and the EU.

Lior Ron, with over 20 years of expertise in tech-driven solutions, has an impressive background including key roles at Google Maps and Motorola Mobility. As the leader of Uber Freight, he and the team are powering intelligent logistics, leveraging a suite of end-to-end logistics applications, managed services and an expansive carrier network to move the world’s goods.


Discussion Points

Ayna Insights is brought to you by Ayna, the premiere advisory and implementation firm in the industrial technology space that provides transformation and consulting services to its clients. The host of this episode, Guarav Batra, is the President & CEO of Ayna

 

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Uber Freight

Titanium Economy

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Episode Transcript

[00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to INa Insights, where prominent leaders and influencers shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector discuss topics that are critical for executives, boards and investors. InA Insights is brought to you by Ina AI, a firm focused on working with industrial companies to make them unrivaled. Segment of one leaders to learn more about Ina Aihdev, please visit our website at www. Dot ina dot AI. [00:00:40] Speaker B: So good morning folks. Welcome to another episode of our Titanium economy podcast series brought to you by Ina today. I'm honored to have with us Leo Ron, founder and CEO of Uber Freight. Launched in 2017, Uber Freight is an end to end enterprise suite powering intelligent logistics. They offer end to end logistics, applications, managed services and an expansive carrier network to advance supply chains and move the world's goods. Today, the company manages over 18 billion afraid it is one of the largest network of carriers present around the globe. Leo Ron, the CEO and founder of Uberprait, is an serial entrepreneur and executive leader with over 20 years of experience innovating, building and scaling transformative products and teams. He's also an expert in the field of supply chain so Leor, welcome to our podcast. We are extremely honored and excited to have you and are looking forward to the conversation. [00:01:35] Speaker C: Thank you. Thank you for having me. Excited for the conversation today. [00:01:39] Speaker B: Super. So Leor, to get started, could you tell us a little bit more about over freight's business? What is the vision? What is the mission you are driving? [00:01:48] Speaker C: Yeah, at over freight we are transforming logistics with technology, expertise and a digital first approach and really building an end to end logistics company of the new era that can truly help modernize supply chain and get all participants in the supply chain, shippers and carriers to be more efficient, more digitally savvy and just helping move the goods around the world. [00:02:15] Speaker B: That's like a very tall task, particularly in industry, which is so intertwined and so traditional in so many ways. Leor would be great to just understand from you as you think about where uber freight plays in the logistics universe. Who is, for example, even competition for you, or what's the unique value proposition you bring to the table? [00:02:35] Speaker C: Unique value proposition. I'll start with that and then we can talk a bit about potential analogies. Is truly to digitize your entire supply chain and make it highly more efficient, essentially uberize your supply chain. And we are now at the scale where we are one of the largest, probably the largest digital first supply chain with almost $20 billion of demand moving through our system and over 2 million truck drivers that have downloaded the Uber freight app and are digitally connected to our ecosystem. Once you build a digital apparatus, this becomes more of an uber like problem of data science technology, AiH, where we can really optimize the supply chain by reducing empty miles, by optimizing those networks. And you do that at the level of scale that nobody else can actually do. And once it's all digitized, then it's really about a technology first approach versus trying to manually make sense of all of that. So the ability to reduce the cost, to make your supply chain highly more efficient and to do that in a sustainable way is really unique for what we bring to the table. So then competition really. If you look at potential folks getting take on that lofty ambition of digitizing the world supply chain, it's hard to come by because on one end you have the startups lots of amazing innovation in the space. I think VC funding into logistics tech went probably like 20 x over the last couple of years. But technology and logistics is as good as the scale. So it's very hard for those startups to actually affect change given their missing sort of the level of scale that you need for the algorithm, for technology to actually make an impact. We serve now over 50% of the Fortune 500 as such, big companies such as the known and BASF and PNG and Kellogg and target and more as such, we can really sort of affect change at scale. The other potential competitor will be the big incumbent players. The issue for them is the typical clay christian disruption theory. Very hard to cross the chasm from a highly manual, labor intensive business to a digital first business where you measured on what can technology do and what change can you drive in supply chain versus just the people you bring to the table. So it's very hard for the incumbent to cross the chasm. The last analogy will potentially be Amazon. The challenge there is you can't replicate trucks as much as you replicate servers. So inherently you are conflicted in your ability to move other people goods on your supply chain. So we think we are a unique beast and with Uber in our back, really looking at logistics as one of the next biggest opportunity for Uber, we feel very good position to the mission and what we're trying to achieve. [00:06:00] Speaker B: Thanks Leo, for that explanation. I think definitely calls out the uniqueness of what you're trying to do and I like how you built it up from digitizing to uberizing the logistics space. So maybe taking that second thread a little bit forward. The logistics in the fate industry has its big challenges. It's cyclical, it has several issues around data visibility and transparency as a barrier. So how is uber freight trying to solve some of these challenges? [00:06:26] Speaker C: Yeah, no lack of challenges in logistics industry. I think if you look at the way systems and companies are built today, unfortunately, everything is siloed. As we spoke about the lack of scale, the lack of connectivity, the information moving in the sphere of people, not in the sphere of light. And inherently that leads to fragmentation and lack of optimization. I'll give you some numbers on the fragmentation. 95 97% of trucking companies in the US have five trucks or less. As such, inherently, it's very hard to actually look at the entire supply chain, the biggest shippers. The second you are below Walmart, you own at best 0.1% of the goods moving on the north american network. So inherently, both supply and demand are fragmented by nature. With our scale and technology connectivity, we can really digitize the entire thing end to end, from shippers to carriers, solve fragmentation, and really start optimizing things much more quickly. I'll give you two examples to give you an intuition of what a digital first approach can mean. One that fragmentation on both sides mean a lot of inefficiency. A truck moving from LA to Chicago will go back empty. From Chicago to LA, if not empty, the driver will drive hundreds of miles empty to find another load. That means if you look around on a highway, 35% of the miles driven by trucks are empty. 35% is just moving air. If you multiply those numbers, 35% times 30% of pollution is now by transportation. 30% of pollution in transportation is trucks. We get into two to 3% of global CO2 emissions are caused by empty trucks. That happens cause left hand doesn't know what right hand is doing. If the network is connected, if we see $20 billion of freight moving on our network, if we are digitally connected to every truck driver at this point, we're connected to two thirds of all truck drivers in the United States digitally. Then you can start optimizing. Now, we bundle those loads so that truck from LA is going to Chicago full, but then it's going Chicago to maybe Indiana, then Indiana, Texas, then Texas back to Arizona, then Arizona to California. And the algorithm can optimize the time of the truck driver much better than anything else can do. As a result, on the uber freight network, only 15% of miles are empty. It's less than half of what will happen if we don't optimize. I'll give you one more example for those shippers, and you can do that also on a shipper network, we saved last year $2 billion of freight spent by optimizing the entire supply chain for those shippers. I'll give you one more example. Closing the loop between shippers and drivers is it's a big black box. We've done something very simple, actually. Truck drivers spend 7 hours of their day not on the road, just waiting on average to be loaded and unloaded in facilities. So we've turned the table and said, hey driver, why don't you rate the same one to five uber driver rating you like? We turn it on its head. So say, hey driver, why don't you wait your experience at facilities so we can close the loop with those shippers. Truck drivers are now rating 50% of their visits that amount to 5 million. Ratings and reviews we have on facilities now we can show the biggest shippers out there. This is exactly the issues in your facilities. This is why you're bleeding cost of transportation. And those are the things you can do to help. And then back to the uniqueness. You can only do that if you can close the loop digitally. End to end between supply and demand at scale. [00:10:26] Speaker B: Now, it's incredible to see the concept you talk about and the scale of impact it's having. I wanted to pull on one thread you talked about on pollution in particular. So sustainability is top of mind for folks these days. Could you speak a little bit about how impact and how you're helping implement or promote sustainability in the sector? [00:10:45] Speaker C: Very important topic for us, and something that keeps us awake day in and day out. Our parent company, Uber, set an ambitious goal to move to carbon neutral or carbon free rides in the US by 2030. So only like six years left. We set a similar ambitious goal for logistics to move 80% of our network on carbon free modes of transportation by 2040. So some of what we're doing is really helping EV adoption and carbon neutral adoption with our shipper base. We can do that because we can manage so much freight and we can really help them identify what are the right lanes to move EV capacity on. But EV is going to take a while. The bigger opportunity is to really optimize the supply chain and move those 35% empty miles to 15% by bundling and optimizing the network by looking for opportunities to batch lanes or the network by putting their distribution centers in the right places, by mode shifting. That's the beauty of our end to end platform. So we are one of the biggest truckload provider in the US. We are one of the biggest Ltl provider in the US. We are one of the biggest rail providers in the US. So shifting between truckload, LTL and rail depend on the context of service levels, and really optimizing sustainability within that is something we really pride ourselves. And finally the road starts first and foremost for sustainability with visibility. And a lot of those customers and big shippers, even big Fortune 500 customers would not necessarily even understand where carbon emission is happening on the supply chain. So because we have the data, we have the scale, we basically a lot of those customers are choosing to outsource their entire logistics and supply chain for us to manage. So we see all the data coming from other system. We put our transportation management system in. It allows us to then show them a sustainability or emissions dashboard that give the C suite in that customer a first glance into where emissions are happening. So we can then build a transformation plan with them on what are the steps they need to take to start transforming the supply chain to be more environmental friendly? [00:13:16] Speaker B: No? Incredible. I think you talked about how you are doing making a difference in sustainability, but how you also assist, like enabling the rest of the ecosystem also to make moves on there. So that's an incredibly important topic. So leah, maybe we switch gears now and talk about you a little bit. I think it'd be great for us listeners to understand a little bit of your background, your career leading up to be freight and what inspired you to pound and then try to solve this problem in the sector. [00:13:42] Speaker C: I'm a technologist at heart. I've been building technology system for the past 20, almost five years, aging myself. I had the fortune of joining Google at a very early stage as one of the first product managers on Google Maps and had a blast doing five years, eventually leading product for Google Maps. And that experience of really digitizing the physical world, that's what we've done. Google Maps essentially build a digital twin, if you may, to the physical world. And being that industry, mapping for facts, phone and paper to a digital first future. That experience has taught me a lot about what it takes to really transform a big ecosystem to a more digital future, which then obviously led me later to logistics, which is essentially what we're doing with Uber freight, digitizing that vast ecosystem. My second experience after having a blast growing Google Maps from 2 million users when I joined to over a billion users when I left, was leading Motorola mobility after the Google acquisition. And that taught me, first of all, falling in love with the midwest, talented. Our headquarter to the date formal freight is based in Chicago. We have close to 1000 employee and team members out of Chicago. The other thing that experience taught me is supply chain. That was my first deviate into the complexity of supply chain. What it takes to actually produce a phone, to move it, to put it on the retail shelf. So it gave me a bit of a taste for supply chain. And after I left Motorola and I've done my walkabouth on what I want to do when I grow up as a technologist, I was looking for two things. I was looking for an industry that technology can actually help transform that is still on the frontier and the digitization opportunities are still plenty. And that one was really an industry where I can help make a difference and will touch people's lives, so inherently has scale. What I found in logistics is one huge technology opportunity ahead and b industry that has, well, 13% of global GDP. So we check both of those boxes convinced Uber it's a good idea to enter logistics. And we've been building Uber freight for the past eight years since then. The stop on the way for Uber freight, the easiest way for me to actually get going on logistics eight years ago, with what I knew that the talent I was surrounded with was actually to start the first self driving trucks company and building self driving trucks we understanding that we need more driving capacity as those drivers are aging out. Average age for a truck driver in the US was 35, then 45, now it's over 55 years old. And with the opportunity both sustainability and safety we got going with that. And that road led us to uber freight with the understanding that really all of the robots are fun. In the end of the day, you need a digital first network to be able to deploy those self driving trucks efficiently, which is what we're building with uber freight. So that's a bit on the journey. [00:17:13] Speaker B: That's amazing. I mean, it's brilliant to see the journey. And I think you've been building your brick by big over the last eight to ten years. So you've been through, I think, several interesting, I'd say, disruptions during your time here. I'm sure plenty has happened on the autonomous vehicle side, EV side. You also had the COVID pandemic. Could you share with us about your leadership philosophy, your leadership style? Like, how has that kind of influenced culture at Uber freight? [00:17:40] Speaker C: Absolutely. And it's interesting. Some things stay the same as you scale, some things change. I think some of the stuff that stays the same and was helpful for me and I hope for the team as well. It is about the team first and foremost. So getting the right people on the bus is always the first priority. I'm looking for people, and myself included, that are curious, asking the five whys. Because that's the only way to disturb the status quo and it's the only way to innovate and it's the only way to progress. So looking for people of both sort of high iq that can ask those questions and listen, not just talk, listen, but also people that can effectively collaborate, always it takes a village. It takes a village when you're a startup and it's really about the speed that your talent collaborate with each other and how to remove barriers from that collaboration. So everybody's like going in the same direction. And the same applies now with Uber for it, we have more than 5000 team members about really both leadership and modeling that throughout the company. How can we collaborate effectively and rely on each other to serve the greater good? And that means transparency, that means modeling that day in and day out. That means having the right people that are leaning into that, something that serves me in any context. Speaking of that, the other thing that I think is very so you bring the right people, you allow them to collaborate, you set, of course, the North Star. The other thing, to be effectively collaborating innovative people need to really understand the context. So I am a big believer in sharing and over sharing the context. If you share enough context, then people get it. Everybody like well, attention and smart. If it's on you as a leader to set the North Star with enough granularity and share enough of the context for the team to be effective. And that was true in the early days of a startup where you need to share the context of what we are trying to solve and what are some of the constraints. But that's even more true at a big company where bigger company where sharing the full context, the industry, the customer feedback firsthand, the financials, what we're trying to achieve is just so important with full transparency and granularity for allowing those people to succeed. The last thing I'll mention is, speaking of just innovation, two things. One is you have to be focused. You have to focus your innovation. I saw a lot of teams going in a million different direction. You have to focus your innovators, your technology team, your brilliant operators on where do we think are the pockets of innovation, both bottom up and top down. And then you need to allocate enough cycles and we can talk about AI in a second. But you need to allocate enough cycles for those seeds to grow. And the percentage will vary from 10% to 30%, let's say. But you have to create some space or some white space for the team to be able to be patient and focus and innovate. And sort of really define the next frontier. So always keeping a healthy dose of cycles to allow us, the team, to figure out sort of what's next and always have enough in the oven where we can really accelerate things as we have more resources at any given point. [00:21:17] Speaker B: That's incredibly insightful. We are one of the very few executives or entrepreneurs who've taken what I would call a very traditional industry and disrupted it with technology. I think when we look at business cases or value creation thesis, I think it becomes easy to put it on paper, to say take a traditional industry, mix technology with it and create a lot of value. But clearly the journey is not as simple. There are many aspiring entrepreneurs. We have that same thesis. Any learnings from your journey you could share with them to increase their odds of success? [00:21:50] Speaker C: Absolutely. I'll say three things. First of all, I'm amazed and it's fantastic to see more and more people choosing the hard, but in my humble opinion, more satisfying way of really starting, accelerating, helping more traditional industries. And I start there. I think that's amazing. I think going and putting your energy in transforming industry move the economy is so much more in my book, both more satisfying because you're really sort of touching society and b less competitive in the end of the day versus doing the 101 crypto or social or fintech startup. So I find it both satisfying and more. You increase your chances, I think, of finding success given that the market is you have more room, I think, to destroy. That's 1 second I've seen technologists enter that and what they start with is technology. You never start with technology, never ever in any life, especially northwest sort of industrial setup, you start with the pain point, you start with the customer. If you really. It's easy being said, it's how to actually do that. If you actually do that and actually listen, good things will happen. If you start with a technology looking for a problem, bad things will happen. So really my advice is listen to your customer closely. It doesn't mean you have to do everything they say, but everything starts with the pain point and then the solution. Easy advice, but I still see so many people ignore that. The last thing I'll mention, we spoke about technology in the last four days interview. But the reality is people remain as important as the technology. And to really be successful, or what I probably pride myself most a little afraid, is both amazing technology and amazing team. You cannot be successful with one without the other. You need to ace both to success in any industrial context, especially in logistics. So it's really about how then the question moves to how do you combine the people and the technology together? How do you combine amazing operator with amazing technologies together? How do you make them interact? How do you make them listen to each other? How do you make them push and pull? That's what defines your DNA at scale, collaboration and velocity between your operation and your technology. And I think that's what defines greatness in transportation. I think Uber will be the best example in logistics. We aspire to be that. Amazon is another good example of that. Thats what defines success. And as a CEO, as a leader, as a preneur. My advice is spend a lot of cycles really figuring out how you can fit, then a lot of good things will happen. [00:24:44] Speaker B: Appreciate truly wise words. So we talked about technology and how youre bringing it to a traditional industry. Maybe we dig a little deeper in the next set of questions. With that, could you discuss the role of data analytics and particularly AI as you deploy it across Uber faiths, operations and processes? [00:25:00] Speaker C: Absolutely. I mean, data is the oxygen of any supply chain. There's severe issues to be able to before even we get to AI. To do anything meaningful analytics, AI, you need data integrity. So first and foremost is about getting the data. As I mentioned, we're now managing close to $20 billion freight under management. So we see a lot of data. When those big shippers, Kelo Kelenova Basfe, choose to outsource their entire supply chain, to us, it means we can up the level internally in terms of data. We put our transportation management system, we integrate with the ERP, we see the in and out of the factories on the floor, across the supply chain, and we invest a lot in setting the right integration, cleaning the right data, cleaning enough, sort of like stable base so then all the fun stuff can be on top. If you don't have a stable base, it's garbage in, garbage out. So I would say like 70% of the effort is like getting the data right, then the fund begins. Then I think because the supply chain is so fragmented, so nuanced, and there's always cost pressure regardless of cycle, a lot of is about how to generate, but then how to actually surface those insights and embed them into the day to day of our customers in the supply chain. And we do a great job, I would say at reactive, any report you want on anything in supply chain, we got it. It's easy to digest. It integrates with your SOP. We put our team of experts on top. We have a sizable client engagement team that will help recommend staff for those customers that will help make sense of the data, will do constantly, weekly, monthly loss analysis on what are opportunities for them to improve their cost and service and supply chain. So we do all of that. I think the next frontier is moving from reactive to proactive, where we can proactively, and we, obviously the team, but also the system, using AI and other mechanisms, and proactively constantly curate the supply chain. The supply chain used to be, again, it's this friction, because there's so much friction. I need a full RFP cycle and I need a 24 month cycle. Da da da. Now everything is connected, you see everything real time. The business context is changing, so you can heal, curate and change your supply chain on a continuous basis. But to do that, you need to be proactive. You need to show the recommendation, you need to integrate them constantly into the supply chain, which is something we are very invested in. And the tool to do that is AI. AI obviously is very good at the back office and automation and all of that. But what I'm most excited about as a practitioner of AI, and I had a fortune of finishing my undergrad in computer science in the Technion Israeli Institute of Technology and then doing my master thesis in neural networks in the desert days at the ice age of neural networks. What I'm most excited about applying those technology is to actively allow supply chain professionals to better understand their supply chain and to have a copilot, if you may, for logistics for those customers and supply chain professionals, which is what we essentially have been doing for the past year. We have created this copilot for logistics, which is essentially an AI assistant that runs on all of your data as a customer, understand opportunities and allow you both to worry that in a natural language, so I can ask in text language in the same way that you google anything. I want to know about supply chain, what's my service levels? Where am I overpaying, what's my benchmark? How am I doing against peers? What would be the cost on that locale if I open the factory there? So I can just ask anything you want of my it's my data of my supply chain one, but b I can get proactive recommendation using machine learning AI on opportunities for me to constantly evolve my supply chain. I'm still in control, I need to approve, but the machine now generates a wealth of pointed, fantastic solutions and we're happy with both. We just crossed 95% precision rate on a free form text query. Meaning if I'm a chief supply chain officer, I can ask anything on my supply chain. 95% of the time, we'll get you the right answer better than your well paid SQL analyst that you need to wait for two weeks for a presentation to come back. So just the speed of innovation and change is accelerating to no end. [00:29:57] Speaker B: It's tremendous, tremendous. And I love the way you framed it around, getting data right and the copilot kind of two aspects of it. So one challenge there, at least I've seen from my experience, is that integrating new technologies in traditional industries comes with its basic challenge of dealing with legacy systems. And there's a plethora of them. How do you handle that at Uber freight? [00:30:20] Speaker C: No lack of a legacy system. I think three ways. The primary way, more than half of our business now is the managed transportation business, TMS Business. Wherever shippers will tap us on the back to fully outsource their logistics and help them on their digital journey, this is a big transformation for that supply chain. But what we'll do is we will do a full analysis of their systems, and we will build a full migration plan that ends with us putting our digital native cloud uberized transportation management system that will really be the backbone of their entire operation. Coordinate all of those systems, whether it's legacy or not. So one notion we have is, hey, there is shipper customer. We will bring you on the journey. We will put our team, our resources, our system, and we will do all of the heavy lifting for you. That's why you can hire us. We have amazing talent, we have fantastic technology. You don't need to deal with that. This is a partnership. We will help you on the way. So I think that's the most efficient way, because then you can really sort of like take control of your destiny and fully transform with us or with anyone else, your full supply chain by tapping into scaled, experienced partner that can do that with you. So that's the primary way, and that's like super lucrative. Once we do that, you see like a 15 20% cost reduction on the supply chain. Not to mention now you can leverage industry leading talent and all of that. So that's 1 second is sometimes even with that, it takes a village and you need to collaborate with other providers, with other systems. You do that either by us being the backbone or if we're not, it's really about creating a collaboration across the industry. So I'll give you one example where appointment scheduling, something as simple as you imagine, like scheduling appointment in a facility, you hope that thing is like an open table. No, it's not. Every facility have their own standard excel sheet, PayPal. This system that system, like 80 different systems. It's a mess. The poor truck driver creates tons of friction in the system. What we've done is create a consortium where all the providers can come together and agree. We've led that with JB Hunt and others, and we can say, hey, this is how an appointment looks like. This is the standard. Let's all agree that we'll implement the standard in our system. Now we have a cohesive standard across the supply chain that can overcome any legacy issue. So that will be the other way to do that. And there's more and more and more ways, but I think the key is to pay attention to that, to put the right resources. You can't under invest in your it and systems and then really tapping the right partner to help you on the way. [00:33:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So then just on that note, on partners, clearly the industry is filled up with traditional players, OEM shippers, customers. What has your experience been given your technology led company of collaborating with them? How is their mindset? What is their position been as you kind of coming and scaled up in the presence? [00:33:50] Speaker C: My experience has been positive. I'm optimistic, but it's been very positive. Meaning everybody understand technology is coming. Everyone understand the need, everybody understand the need to digitize. Everyone is excited about what AI can bring to them and the potential. So I think people are coming from a place of good intention and wanting to collaborate to accelerate every seal. The pain points. We haven't spoken enough about the pain points. It's not just stability, it's the increasing cost. It's an aging driver. It's the fraud, and it's a mirror of issues. Everybody sees those pain points, so everybody want to collaborate. I think it's, as always, like a tale of, like, maybe three segments. You have the digital native, where it's fun. We can, like, you know, jam with, like, OEMs truck oems all day long on a fully IoT truck. And what are the amazing stuff we can do with that IoT track in the supply chain or the AV partner or other technology startups there you can define the frontier and innovate together and really define the North Star five years from today? Then you have the middle del, well intentioned, but you have to meet them where they are. And back to what we discussed before. The legacy system, having the team of expertise. We have hundreds of people on our integration team, and they're very good at what they're doing because they are the connective tissue, and they're helping our customer on the journey. So the customer is well intentioned they want to transform, but you need to meet them where they are. That's the second fact. Look, the fellow does always the late adopters, and that's okay. It's not from lack of good intention. It's like other competing business parties, other things happening in the business, and that's also okay. I think we create a relationship, we invest a lot of education, and we need to be patient by improving and showing more and more better outcomes for the first and second bucket. And eventually the late comers, late adopters will adopt as well. But back to your question of advice for entrepreneurs. Logistics is tough and it's moving slow. Yeah, it is. So you need to be patient. There's no lexicon. That's why we entered the business eight years ago and I'm having so much fun. I'm looking to continue with this in the decades to come, but this is a long, ambitious process and it takes time for the transformation. And some of those customers have mentioned Fortune 500 customers. We had discussion for like seven years before they put the plug. And it's okay. So you need to meet the customer. You need patience. There's no like silver bullet. This is a amazing, huge rifle disruption. B, two b. Business and industry that is moving slow because of all the constraints there in those supply chains and what our customers are doing day in and day out. [00:36:50] Speaker B: Your enthusiasm about industries, very, very easy to see. So we sincerely appreciate it. So may I move to the last question for this discussion? You talked about your, you're enthusiastic, you're ready to do this for the next few decades. What's your vision for Uber freight as you think about the future? [00:37:06] Speaker C: So great question to maybe end on. I'm really looking forward for Uber freight to really be that end to end digital first solution that connects that supply chain and really help shippers and customers derive cost outcome, service outcome, to help them modernize their supply chain. The goal is to build the largest into a network that connects everything in the digitally native way and allow a better optimization across every modality of the supply chain. Whether it's truckload, whether it's less than truckload, whether it's near shoring in Mexico, which is a fast growing business for us, and really connect the supply chain in a much deeper way. See, in the physical world, everything is connected. In the digital world, everything is siloed. And that's the opportunity. If we create that digital twin of the physical supply chain, if we truly connect not just shippers and drivers, but shippers within themselves, we now have, speaking of industrial, probably the largest chemical customer base ever assembled. In logistics, we probably have 50, 60 70% of the chemical shippers on our platform. Think about the opportunity for all of those chemical manufacturers to vertically collaborate with each other once they have a common system and a common set of standards and a common visibility into what each other is doing. Same for automotive, same for pharma, same for other industries. That's the opportunity really connecting the network and deriving those outcomes in a digital first way. So I'm excited about what to come in a proactive future where we help make sense of all that complexity using AI and recommend that the people are still in charge, but really recommend and proactively accelerate the pace of understanding the opportunities. A future that is more ev in nature. A future that is more av autonomous in nature. We should see the first driverless deployment upon us next year and yeah, lots of more opportunities ahead. [00:39:34] Speaker B: That's so awesome to hear. Lera, thank you for sharing your insights, your enthusiasm, your excitement about this space, which I think can definitely do it. So sincerely appreciate your time. Leor, and it was a real pleasure talking to you. Thank you. [00:39:46] Speaker C: Same. Thank you for hosting me. Thank you for doing the important work you guys are doing to help industrials and help with this super important topic and looking forward to converse more. [00:39:55] Speaker B: Awesome. Thank you so much. [00:39:56] Speaker C: Lior thank you. [00:40:03] Speaker A: Thanks for listening to ina insights. Please visit ina aihdev for more podcasts, publications and events on developments shaping the industrial and industrial technology sector.

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