The Logistics of Logistics The Fishtail Story with Marc Held
Marc Held and Joe Lynch discuss the Fishtail story. Marc is the Co-founder and CEO of Fishtail, a Boston based fintech company that empowers freight forwarders to finance the movement and procurement of goods – for small and medium businesses (SMBs) around the world.
About Marc HeldMarc is a serial entrepreneur, specializing in applying advanced artificial intelligence and IoT to the supply chain industry. Prior to Fishtail, he started, funded, and sold multiple companies – creating real value for Fortune 500 customers, investors, and his acquirers. Most recently, his company ODYN (inventory optimization platform for large CPG companies) was acquired by Turvo and his company before that (Weft, maritime intelligence platform – funded by a16z, social + capital, SV Angel, and other tier-1 VCs) was acquired by DMGT-owned Genscape. Prior to his experience in supply chain, Marc was also a product development consultant, specializing in mobile applications and content consumption, and had done early work in the smart personal assistant space.
About FishtailFishtail is a trade finance automation platform empowering freight forwarders to finance the movement and procurement of goods – for small and medium businesses (SMBs) around the world - either by arranging extended payment terms through the financing of freight or by financing the goods themselves. Specializing in financing Purchase Orders for small businesses in emerging markets, Fishtail solves the $2tn working capital gap in trade finance.
Key Takeaways: The Fishtail Story- Marc Held is the Co-founder and CEO of Fishtail, a Boston based fintech company that empowers freight forwarders to finance the movement and procurement of goods – for small and medium businesses (SMBs) around the world.
- In the podcast interview, Joe and Marc discussed Marc's entrepreneurial journey and the founding of Fishtail.
- Fishtail is venture backed and already servicing and partnering with some of the biggest names in the industry.
- Complexity behind global supply chains has made it incredibly challenging for financial institutions to fund purchase orders and invoices, internationally, for SMBs on a meaningful scale.
- The trade finance gap got even wider as a result of COVID and the supply chain disruptions that it caused.
- Fishtail's data-driven, scalable solution allows for freight forwarders to provide financing to their customers within minutes – either by arranging extended payment terms through the financing of freight, or by financing the goods themselves that these logistics companies are transporting.
- Incorporating cutting-edge machine learning research, Fishtail's trade finance automation platform turns global supply chain complexities from weakness into strength, extracting meaningful risk signals from the noise in messy supply chain and financial data.