Dear reader,
The arteries of our globalized, trading world are the shipping industry's boats, ports, crewmen, custom officials, etc. The flurry of different actors working in this sector is too lengthy to name.
After a stint at Azerbaijan's central bank and the IFC, Ali Gara founded MagicPort to serve one specific niche of the shipping industry: port calls.
These refer to the period of time during which a ship loads or unloads (merchandise, supplies...). These port call operations also implicate a flurry of actors, ranging from the tugboat operator to the ship's local agent, who deals with local paperwork. This motley crew traditionally uses email and Excel to get their work done.
MagicPort wants to clean up those messy processes with an elegant software platform. It has raised around $2M to do so. Structuring messy ecosystems is a topic we've already covered with Prima in Mexico and iFarmer in Bangladesh.
In this exclusive 2,500+ word interview with Ali, we cover:
- How Ali went from institutional investor to founder
- An explanation of port calls' intricacies
- How to break into an network-driven industry as an outsider
- How MagicPort calculates its TAM
- MagicPort's new sanctions compliance software
- Ali's tempered view on AI in the industry
... and much more.
Paid subscribers can read the full interview below.
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