[alexpetralia]

My opinion is that this is not really a tech problem, this is a business problem. Will the traders at Cargill, Vitol, Exxon, Trafigura, Glencore buy it? Do they want to take the time to "learn" another tool? Does it "just work", without any "let me get back to my product people"? Also, of course, every commodity market is completely different and has a whole web of intricate details in logistics, regulation, product, people, etc.

I'd guess that only an established (or former) trader already using the tool with a deep network of contacts could convince other traders to use it. And then of course there is the whole other problem of enterprise sales and penetrating big financial companies (legal, compliance, procurement, infosec, etc.). So maybe you start with small traders? But my understanding of commodities trading was that is kind of like high frequency trading - there are only large, very established players.

[KyleManuel]

Yes you have some really good points. There are a lot of business problems to overcome here!

Our CEO Philip is exactly that, a commodities trader with 8 years experience and a wide network for us to tap into.

As for every commodity market being different with its own intricate details, you are right. We are taking an approach to start in agriculture (sugar, coffee, cocoa) because these have similar supply chains. However, we are building configurable tools from the foundation to support more complex customizations to allow companies to easily tailor the solutions to their needs.

We have also had some calls recently with commodity producers who have shown a lot of interest in the platform so far, because they many of them manage their own logistics teams internally, which opens up an additional market outside of just the big trading players.

I really appreciate your feedback, thank you.

[btown]

From what I'm reading above, the pitch is more "I can keep using my existing systems, but use this tool as a layer on top to help me with my data entry and anomaly detection, and our clients/external parties don't need to know that we have these superpowers."

It's a great way to break into a market, but there's also less lock-in and forced virality relative to a system that you encourage suppliers/partners/counterparties to use. Which can be compensated for by word of mouth and ease of onboarding! But this can be a double-edged sword, particularly when investors are evaluating whether you're (planning to be) necessary or expendable to the industry.

[KyleManuel]

Yes this is our approach. We noticed that all our customers spend a significant amount of resources getting their tech infrastructure configured. We want to "supercharge" their existing solutions, not rip and replace.

[simonCGN]

So it is not a fully fledged TMS such as Cargowise from Wisetech, correct?

[KyleManuel]

Today, and for the next few years, we don't anticipate competing directly with Cargowise. We see ourselves as an application that lives on top of Cargowise / CTRMs, etc. That allows a holistic view of operations from a single place.

[Svdc]

This is exactly one of the main issues if not the biggest issue of B2B products.

>> Will the traders at Cargill, Vitol, Exxon, Trafigura, Glencore buy it? Do they want to take the time to "learn" another tool?

I worked for this company that was built on a consortium of the biggest players, and adoption requires a lot of effort. Not only on the relationships you have to build, either by the account management team or by a product person, and trust also plays a big role - a lot of babysitting and support is required.

But trust me when i say that if they find that "yet another tool" provides the time-savings and the cost savings they are after, then they will use it. It will take take, which for most companies is not an option, but patience is key.

My experience also tells me that what one company is after does not mean it is translated easily to another. A Trader in one company might be very open to new tools and new business processes, others not so much. I would also say that if a specific role has so many nuances from company to company, that will also be true from commodity to commodity.

On another note, we had in the past product specialist to help on the product development side, and they had come from very robust backgrounds from logistics operations. But what they knew was very specific to how the companies they worked before operated and that didn't resonate sometimes for other clients.

Its a difficult industry to penetrate, smaller to medium sized companies are more likely to adopt disrupt technologies, while bigger ones tend to take longer.

[c_o_n_v_e_x]

>Will the traders at Cargill, Vitol, Exxon, Trafigura, Glencore buy it? Do they want to take the time to "learn" another tool?

Traders like money. Anything that would enable them to keep more of what they "kill" at bonus time would be popular.