Plus, a cabless autonomous truck just raised $24M, non-domiciled CDLs rules need clarifying, CSX posts a 26% profit jump while watching the UP-NS merger closely, and more in today's newsletter.
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ICYMI: FreightCaviar is travelling across the U.S. Here's what the first three weeks have looked like: Sponsor meetups, subscriber photo shoots, premieres, truck stops, Elk Grove to Phoenix, and more. FOMO starts now.
Today we dive into the mind of an industrial technology investor, Santosh Sankar. He reveals what he looks for in potential ventures, why interpersonal connections remain vital in an AI-driven world, and more.
On this episode, we’re joined by Santosh Sankar, Co-Founder & Managing Partner at Dynamo Ventures, an industrial technology investor.
He offers his perspective on why he values earned insight over decades of industry experience, explains why AI shouldn’t be seen as a threat, and reveals what he looks for as an investor.
Plus, don’t miss this week’s featured carrier!
Santosh Sankar co-founded Dynamo, a supply chain and mobility investor, focused on pre-seed and seed-stage opportunities, in late 2015. Just three years later he was featured in Forbes 30 Under 30 for Venture Capital. Over the years, he has backed several notable supply chain technology startups, including Stord and SVT Robotics. Today, we catch up with him on all things AI and investing.
Reflecting on Dynamo’s early days, Santosh recalls the criticism he faced at the time:
“I have been laughed out of my fair share of rooms because at the time the pitch was going to focus on this industry that nobody really believed you should be focused on. Nobody believed in sector-based investing. And even to this day...we're investing in kind of this industrial, ‘sleepy part’ of the economy in some people's eyes.”
Santosh has found that the most valuable founders are not necessarily those with the longest careers, but rather those whose recent, intensive experience has equipped them with novel solutions to long-standing industry problems.
“What we actually found is that those founders who won, at least with Dynamo's backing, are not these industry executives seeped in decades of seeing these things through. If anything, actually, that experience limits their creativity and ability to solve something in the best fashion. And instead, I look for earned insight, but in brief bursts of time, maybe spend two or three years doing something.”
When deciding to invest, Santosh looks beyond ideas to the people behind them. It all comes down to the person and their ability to be persuasive of a future they believe in.
“Prove to me that you have the chops to attract the right talent and then execute on that vision that you so believe in.”
With AI being so ubiquitous in the industry’s landscape today, it raises the question: 'will I be replaced?' A subject that we've previously covered in a newsletter.
“The future I see is: freight brokers are what I call a ‘thin client’, they actually are a small part of the process. Maybe even overlooked. But when something bad happens, they can actually become a ‘thick agent’, and step in. I think that’s the role of the freight broker as things increasingly digitize.”
In Santosh’s opinion, AI shouldn’t be seen as a threat, but as a tool to remove repetitive tasks and allow humans to focus on areas where trust matters.
“It should be more about the lens of ‘How do we enable our people and allow them to not spend their time doing dull, rote work?” If there’s an issue, a human can thoughtfully step in to make sure there is assurance and trust upheld in that relationship.”
AI also helps remove emotional bias from decision-making. Sometimes the best decision we can make for our organization is letting the data dictate what we do.
“The thing that we’ve learned time and time again is that when it comes to monitoring and executing our risk mitigation strategies, humans are oftentimes deficient because we allow emotion to get in the way.”
Still, Santosh acknowledges the broader challenge of job displacement– job losses are inevitable, he explains. The more AI tools get adopted, the more limits there are to where you can reallocate someone’s time, attention, and energy.
“This isn’t just our industry. But where do those people go? I don’t have an answer. When I’m asked to come talk about this, the thing I also press on them is: you have to be open, transparent, and help these people who might be impacted, understand how they need to reskill.”
AI won’t replace people — but people who learn to work with AI will replace those who don’t.
In this episode, you'll learn all about :
Here's what had to say on the importance of interpersonal connections:
“It’s about putting people in front of clients, having dinner, being thoughtful, rather than, “Hey where is that load?”
This week's episode is brought to you by Epay Manager, WireBee, and CtrlChain.
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One thing they wish more brokers understood:
"We are okay making you a lot more money than we do. We are moving our trucks back to a power market. Just understand things happen in trucking, but we communicate."
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ICYMI: FreightCaviar is travelling across the U.S. Here's what the first three weeks have looked like: Sponsor meetups, subscriber photo shoots, premieres, truck stops, Elk Grove to Phoenix, and more. FOMO starts now.
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