Crossing $1.1 Million ARR in 6 Months

I am writing this on the way back from Hamburg to Istanbul, at 10,668 metres, and I want to share my excitement and thoughts on a couple of things. The first is that we crossed $1.1 million in annual revenue at the end of October, six months after we started serving our first corporate customer. The second is realising just how far ahead our technology is, after attending one of Germany's best mobility summits.

For those who don't yet know how we got here, let me give a short recap: Volt Lines was founded on 20 October 2017. After the company was formally incorporated, it took us a little over six months to enter the employee shuttle market both commercially and technologically. The biggest reason for that was that the employee shuttle market is largely one where traditional methods are preferred and the phrase "software is eating the world" is unfamiliar (if you don't follow the podcast of Marc Andreessen, who coined "software is eating the world", make sure you click here and subscribe).

On 9 April 2018 we began carrying the 16 subscribers (or seats) that came with our first corporate customer, across a total of 3 shuttle lines. Today, a few days after our first birthday, we carry 1,000 people every day across 120 lines. Including the evening overtime shuttles, our operation today consists of 150 lines out of 5 hubs, running roughly 2,000 trips a day. The exciting part: we aim to triple that over the next 6 months. After five years spent working on a solution to Istanbul's traffic, I can't wait to see the impact of what we are building on the city's congestion!

The biggest boost to our growth came when an entire office tower in Kağıthane switched over to Volt Lines. Most of the companies at Ofishane joined our existing network as of 1 October. A few of them: Güven Varlık, Fibabanka, Metro Properties, Hakan Plastik, and Hedef Filo, one of our investors. Below is a shot from our Ofishane operation.

As for Germany… I was invited to Hamburg by my friends at Wunder Mobility, a smart urban mobility software company that recently raised a $30 million Series B. They put on a fantastic event called the Wunder Mobility Summit. The industry's most pioneering brands were there too. With Tesla, BMW, VW, Moia, MyTaxi and many mobility-focused VCs in attendance, it was genuinely exciting to look around and see every piece of the future-of-transport puzzle under one roof.

From electric scooters to smart shuttle buses (if you haven't seen it yet, you can see the Moia minibus at this link ), it was clear that the future is already here — it just hasn't reached everyone yet.

Robert Henrich, COO of Moia

I met wonderful people throughout the event and felt surrounded by very smart, very experienced people in urban mobility, from hardware to software. But I also realised how distinctive and solid our business model is and — most importantly — how far ahead and how well thought through our technology and our service are.

This is of course only a beginning for us, and there is a lot of road still to cover. I wanted to write this post to thank everyone who helped build Volt Lines and to celebrate our small victories. I can now see that our go-to-market strategy and our software capability are what allowed us to specialise in smart shuttles and optimised transportation networks.

By the way, we are in the process of closing a significant funding round that will take us to a Series A in early 2019. As our growth accelerates, we keep looking for people who are passionate about urban mobility and smart transportation. Positions opening soon: Data Scientist, Finance Manager, Operations Manager, Corporate Sales Managers, Back-End Developers, Web App Front-End Developers and Product Manager. We will publish these roles on our careers page soon, but feel free to comment on this blog post already or reach out to me on social media!

Stay tuned for more news! 👊

Wunder Mobility Summit 2018 — PROTOTYP — DAS AUTOMUSEUM IN HAMBURG