BasicBlock, a Lincoln-based startup that facilitates transactions in the trucking industry, announced Monday that it had secured $675k in pre-seed financing from Global Financial Group (“GFG”). GFG was joined in the financing by Jason Calacanis, Jenny Fielding, Invest Nebraska, and other angels.
In May, Silicon Prairie News reported that BasicBlock had received outside funding (https://spnewsnjt.wpengine.com/2019/05/lincoln-based-basicblock-continues-expansion-and-evolution/). The company’s explosive growth has continued – leading to this financing round – after only a couple of additional months.
The premise of BasicBlock is to help truck drivers receive payment for services and costs as quickly as possible – by streamlining the collection of paperwork for invoices. Thus, the company utilizes a mobile application that is available at the point of drop-off to expedite payments to the drivers. This program has received extremely positive responses from both drivers and trucking organizations because it creates so much efficiency in the process.
The company plans to continue to increase its investment into the technology so it can continue to reduce the price of the software for fleets, and brokers. “Our mission is to be able to pay trucking companies quicker and more money” said BasicBlock’s CEO and Co-founder Taylor Monks. “The investment and this strategic partnership with Global Financial Group will allow us to further our mission by giving the software for almost 75% less than any competitor out there.”
In early 2019 BasicBlock went from concept to reality. The scrappy entrepreneurs pre-sold over $30k before the company ever started building its software products. This lean methodology of ensuring a market has excited investors and other partners – because it confirms the need for streamlining the payment process in the trucking industry.
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And the trucking industry is big business. More than 8.9 million people work in trucking – including more than 3.3 million truck drivers. This group manages to move more than 71.5% of all U.S. freight. Together these people and their activities have created a $760B industry. BasicBlock is a relative upstart in this industry – but it has discovered a variety of ways to streamline the industry’s processes and particularly payment systems.
“BasicBlock is an exciting company that has gained tremendous momentum by being one of the only Nebraska-based start-up companies to leverage an impressive national investment network at the seed stage,” said Ben Williamson, Senior Associate at Invest Nebraska. “The company has a deep understanding of their customer and is attacking a huge (and evolving) market with fantastic upside potential and enhanced product opportunities.”
To find out more about BasicBlock, please visit their website at www.basicblock.io
