{"id":388455,"date":"2010-03-04T11:39:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-04T16:39:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gigaom.com\/?p=103406"},"modified":"2010-03-04T11:39:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-04T16:39:17","slug":"austin%e2%80%99s-uship-profits-off-slow-growth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/388455","title":{"rendered":"Austin\u2019s uShip Profits Off Slow Growth"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Matt Chasen, CEO and Founder, uShip<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Six years ago I attended a business plan competition where I watched a couple of guys explain how they wanted to streamline the process of shipping bulky items across the country by linking folks up via the Internet. The social web was starting to heat up, but I liked how these guys and their company, uShip<\/a>, were trying to take the web and use it to bring people together, not to swap songs or photos but to take advantage of empty space in moving vans. uShip will hold a panel at the upcoming South by Southwest<\/a> conference explaining how to build a profitable business, so in the meantime, I decided to check in with the company to see what the founders have learned.<\/p>\n

uShip, which provides a matching service that connects people who want to send things across the country and those who happen to have space in their vehicles as they drive across country (and also offers an alternate revenue stream for\u00a0 professional shippers) is now profitable, thanks to commissions the company takes when it matches shippers and shippees. The Austin, Texas-based company brought in between $5 million and $7 million in sales during 2009, double that of the previous year.<\/p>\n

uShip has raised $7 million in outside capital from Benchmark and DAG Ventures, and has helped broker more than $140 million in shipping contracts — with about 85 percent of those occurring during the last two years. Last week, it received its 1 millionth listing on the site. So I asked founder and CEO Matt Chasen for a few lessons he learned as part of building uShip and he offered up via email the following tidbits:<\/p>\n