“Did I celebrate after signing? I had a shot with the team and returned to work, “says Jan Bednář from Florida, the founder and head of the logistics company ShipMonk. The investment company Summit Partners is buying a minority stake in it, for a whopping 290 million dollars, ie over 6.3 billion crowns.
According to Forbes, the valuation of the entire company is well above $ 700 million. Even considering that ShipMonk has only passed one investment round so far, two years ago in Series A, Jan Bednář safely enters our ranking of the richest Czechs with transactions.
He started relatively innocently, when he sent packages to his friends in the Czech Republic from Florida, where he went to study. A series of favors eventually became a business called BedaBox in 2014, which later evolved into the complete provision of logistics for American e-shops under the ShipMonk brand.
From humble beginnings is a business that will attack $ 150 million in revenue this year with EBITDA of about 15 percent. By the way, ShipMonk has been in black numbers from the very beginning.
He never hid the fact that he didn’t want to grow old with the company. The current partial sale was only a matter of time.
“It’s a massacre, we started the process eight months ago with Goldman Sachs and I’ve been in one round since then, I couldn’t concentrate on business at all… But it was worth it,” says a Forbes 30 under 30 member just before the peak of the season. e-shops, where he now directs all his and his company’s strength.
With Summit Partners behind them, who were Avast’s first investors by the way, ShipMonk wants to invest even more in technology, automation and expansion. Next year, the company will open its first logistics center in Europe and add another in Texas.
“We will scale the team so that we can manage growth,” confirms an entrepreneur who has not yet left the company or its management. “When I realize what we managed to build, all the stress along the way was worth it,” says Bednář confidently.
And how does he want to give his efforts the final crown? Within a few years, he would like to get ShipMonk listed. The American dream as embroidered.
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