“Just because an investor turns you down, doesn’t mean that you’re not worth it, that you don’t have a good idea, that you don’t have a good product. The only proof is in actually providing value to customers.”

– Farah Ali, CTO & Co-Founder of FreightWeb

The most important idea is not always the most revolutionary one. In many cases, the most important idea is the right solution for a specific company or industry applied at the moment of readiness. This approach to problem solving makes it possible to pull ideas from very mature industries into ones that are a few years (or decades) behind: not reinventing the wheel, just strategically reapplying it.

In some ways, this is exactly how Farah Ali, CTO & Co-Founder of FreightWeb, has made her mark. From gaming to technology to transportation and logistics, she has experience in a number of different companies and verticals, and this allows her to recognize similar needs and transfer solutions to address them.

In this conversation, Farah tells Supply Chain Now Co-hosts Greg White and Scott Luton about:

· The opportunity created by the highly fragmented nature of the U.S. trucking industry

· How FreightWeb started with a visibility challenge, moved to an optimization challenge, and the work they are now doing to help carriers become more data driven

· Why failing fast and being “customer obsessed” are critical to building a successful startup