[marothisu]

Fulfilling fulfillment: ShipBob lands $40M Series C, opens massive new warehouse

https://www.builtinchicago.org/2018/...llion-series-c

The company, which provides shipping fulfillment and inventory management services to small and mid-size e-commerce companies, has hit the trifecta of scale: announcing a $40 million Series C, the opening of a massive new facility and a hiring push.

This round brings the company’s total funding to over $62 million, following a $17.5 million Series B in 2017. The company will use the new funding to enhance its shipping capabilities and to accelerate the development of its software platform. Co-founder and CEO Dhruv Saxena told the Chicago Tribune the company’s engineering team will double in size.

According a press release, ShipBob’s new 105,000-square-foot warehouse in Cicero is six times larger than its previous fulfillment center and more than double the size of any site across its nationwide fulfillment network, which includes facilities in Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Brooklyn. When the warehouse is fully online in December, the facility will be able to store more than three million units of product.

To staff its fulfillment center, ShipBob will make 60 new hires. That number will grow to 100 during peak season. ShipBob’s current headcount sits at north of 350 people.

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Construction Tech Startup IngeniousIO Brings in $4M To Build Out Product, Sales Team

https://news.crunchbase.com/news/con...ct-sales-team/

The premise behind the Chicago-based company is the belief that construction workflows are fragmented, especially for a $10 trillion industry built on collaboration. The use of a variety of disparate point solutions only exacerbates the problem, according to IngeniousIO Founder and CEO Nick Carter.

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The company’s platform uses artificial intelligence to redefine the process of construction projects by creating what Carter describes “a unifying, data-driven approach.”

“IngeniousIO does not intend to disrupt construction,” said Carter, who is also a former Cisco Systems engineer. “The industry is already in pieces, and therein lies the problem. From PMs to sewer subcontractors, many groups have to work together efficiently to complete a building. Digitizing documents only uploads the mess to the Internet. IngeniousIO galvanizes the business of construction by connecting the entire process.”

The 15-person company is planning to use the money raised to accelerate product development and continue hiring to build out its sales and customer implementation organizations. That hiring, Carter said, includes former employees of e-Builder and Textura, which was acquired by Oracle.