2018 Startups to Watch: Super Dispatch takes shipping partners into the digital age

Editor’s note: Startland News selected the top Kansas City firms to spotlight for its annual Startups to Watch list. The following is one of 2018’s companies. To view the full, ranked list of Startups to Watch, click here.

Super Dispatch first delivered its concept to the trucking and hauling industries with professionals and managers adopting the Kansas City firm’s technology. Now it’s time for the next leg of the journey.

“We have evolved to taking an entire trucking company and digitizing it,” said founder Bek Abdullayev.

When Abdullayev created the company four years ago, he hoped to streamline the paperwork, receipts and confirmations of shipments for companies and their fleets. Bringing the idea to fruition took experimentation, as well as communication with operators and truckers, he said. Getting drivers and others on board with an idea that would completely revamp their bookkeeping systems took time.

“At first, not everyone had a smartphone,” Abdullayev said. “But that has changed. In the last couple of years it has been driven by peers and what is causing our growth are referrals and word-of-mouth.”

Revenue grew 10 times more in 2016 than in 2015, Abdullayev said, and 2017 brought revenues increasing about 300 percent from 2016.

“That puts us at a huge milestone as a team in crossing into seven figures,” he said.

In doubling its size to about 19 full-time employees, Abdullayev said the team is focusing on its growth.

“We went from being a nuanced pop-up shop to having a space at the table,” Abdullayev said. “We were taken seriously and now we can start discussing much larger problems.”

Super Dispatch’s next frontier aims to find digital solutions to connect those needing to ship materials with trucks that can haul it.

“So far, we have focused on the carrier side and streamlined that,” Abdullayev said. “We want to help the shippers find space and then track the shipment and get paid fast. There’s $700 billion of shipments and they are looking at message boards and calling people. Our platform can be to streamline that.”