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Benjamin Gordon | |
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Benjamin Gordon | |
Born | September 11, 1973 |
Occupation | Entrepreneur & investor |
Benjamin Gordon (born September 11, 1973) is an American entrepreneur who founds, advises, and invests in supply chain companies. He serves as CEO and Managing Partner of BG Strategic Advisors and Cambridge Capital. He lives in Palm Beach, Florida.
Gordon was born in Ann Arbor, Michigan, and was raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree from Yale College and an MBA degree from Harvard Business School. Transport and logistics ran in Gordon's family -- in 1904, his great-grandfather started a New York-based horse-and-buggy business, and his grandfather founded a truck-leasing business in New England where he had worked summers. [1]
In 1999, while at HBS, he and classmate Tania Yannas founded 3Plex, recognized as one the early internet logistics companies, with The New York Times crediting Gordon for imagining "a business-to-business Web site that would allow shipping agents to communicate better with both truckers and shippers." [1] Business Week cited Gordon among early entrepreneurs using the web to "streamline the consolidation and outsourcing of freight trucking," noting that the 26-year-old's fledgling business had attracted $15 million in venture financing. [2] In 2000, their company was a finalist in the HBS New Venture Competition. [3]
Gordon served as CEO of 3PLex from its inception, leading the company through three rounds of fundraising totaling $28 million from investors which included Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BancBoston Ventures, CNF, and Ionian. The company was acquired by Maersk in 2002. [4]
In 2002, Gordon founded BG Strategic Advisors (BGSA), an investment banking firm focused on mergers and acquisitions in the transportation, logistics, and supply chain sectors. BGSA hosts an annual conference of supply chain and logistics executives in West Palm Beach, Florida. [5]
In 2009, Gordon founded Cambridge Capital, which focuses on investments in logistics and supply chain companies. The company's noteworthy investments include XPO Logistics, Grand Junction (an e-commerce and last-mile logistics technology company sold to Target), and Bringg (an ecommerce and last-mile logistics technology company [6] ). [7]
Also in 2009, Gordon founded EcoSquid, an e-commerce marketplace enabling consumers to resell or recycle their used electronics. [8] In 2012, the company was sold to uSell. [9]
In 2019, Gordon appeared as a commentator and analyst on CNBC. [10] [11] [12] He has been quoted in The Wall Street Journal , [13] The New York Times , [1] Bloomberg, [2] Forbes, [14] Fox Business, [15] and Authority [16] and interviewed as an authority on corporate governance by CorpGov in the wake of the failed WeWork IPO, published in Yahoo! Finance. [17] He authored several articles in the area of logistics. [18] [19] [20] [21]
In 1997, Gordon founded GesherCity, a non-profit that connects young adults to Jewish communities through online and in-person experiences. It was one of the first social networks to allow people to create online communities based on self-selected categories. The project scaled up to 20 cities and 100,000 members by 2007 before merging into the Jewish Community Center Association, and was recognized repeatedly in the JCCA's annual report for that year [22] and Jewish community media.
Penske Truck Leasing Co., L.P. is a joint venture of Penske Corporation, Penske Automotive Group, and Mitsui & Co. Headquartered in Reading, Pennsylvania, the company was founded by Team Penske owner Roger Penske on December 1, 1969. The firm serves customers in North America, South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia; among its services are full-service commercial truck leasing, truck fleet maintenance, truck rentals, and used truck sales. The company currently employs more than 36,000 workers worldwide and operates and maintains a fleet of more than 300,000 vehicles. Brian Hard is the president and CEO of the company.
Alibaba Group Holding Limited, also known as Alibaba Group and as Alibaba.com, is a Chinese multinational technology company specializing in e-commerce, retail, Internet, and technology. Founded on 4 April 1999, in Hangzhou, Zhejiang, the company provides consumer-to-consumer (C2C), business-to-consumer (B2C), and business-to-business (B2B) sales services via web portals, as well as electronic payment services, shopping search engines and cloud computing services. It owns and operates a diverse portfolio of companies around the world in numerous business sectors.
Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe (WCAS), also referred to as Welsh Carson, is a private equity firm. WCAS was formed in 1979 and focuses on investing in two growth industries, technology and healthcare, primarily in the United States. WCAS has a current portfolio of approximately 30 companies and has organized 17 limited partnerships with total capital of over $27 billion, consisting of 13 equity partnerships and four subordinated debt partnerships. WCAS is currently investing equity funds, including WCAS XII, L.P. and WCAS XIII, L.P.
Harvard Business School (HBS) is the graduate business school of Harvard University in Boston, Massachusetts. It is consistently ranked among the top business schools in the world and offers a large full-time MBA program, management-related doctoral programs, and many executive education programs. It owns Harvard Business Publishing, which publishes business books, leadership articles, case studies, and the monthly Harvard Business Review. It is also home to the Baker Library/Bloomberg Center.
Francisco Partners is an American private equity firm focused exclusively on investments in technology and technology-enabled services businesses. Founded in August 1999 and based in San Francisco and London, Francisco Partners Management L.P. has raised approximately USD $14 billion in committed capital. The firm currently has five active funds and roughly 50 current portfolio companies, including Verifone, Renaissance Learning, Bomgar, GoodRx, Quest, BluJay, ClickSoftware Technologies, SmartBear Software, and SonicWall.
Austin Ventures (AV) is a private equity firm focused on venture capital and growth equity investments in business services and supply chain, financial services, new media, Internet, and information services companies nationally with a focus on Texas. The firm, which is based in Austin, Texas, was founded in 1984. AV has raised approximately $3.9 billion since inception across ten private equity funds.
James W. Breyer is an American venture capitalist, founder and CEO of Breyer Capital, an investment and venture philanthropy firm, and a partner at Accel Partners, a venture capital firm. Breyer has invested in over 40 companies that have gone public or completed a merger, with some of these investments, including Facebook, earning over 100 times cost and many others over 25 times cost. On the Forbes 2016 list of the world's billionaires, he was ranked #722 with a net worth of US$2.4 billion.
Yosef Sheffi is the Elisha Gray II Professor of Engineering Systems at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He founded or co-founded five companies, has authored numerous scientific publications and six books.
John Anthony Harvey is a British entrepreneur and logistician whose seminal contribution was to lead the intercontinental logistics service provider Tibbett & Britten Group plc during a 20-year period of diversification and growth. He is an Ambassador, and former Chairman of the Trustees, of Transaid Worldwide - the international transport charity. Since 2004 he has Chaired The Keswick Enterprises Group Limited, a UK-based private equity investor.
XPO Logistics is an American multinational transportation and contract logistics company that manages supply chains for 50,000 customers, including 69 of the Fortune 100. It operates in 30 countries, with approximately 100,000 employees. XPO Logistics, Inc. is the 7th best-performing stock of the last decade on the Fortune 500, with share prices rising more than 1,000% from the time its CEO, Bradley Jacobs, took control. XPO's corporate headquarters are located in Greenwich, Connecticut. Its European headquarters are located in Lyon, France.
Crescent Enterprises is a multinational company headquartered in the United Arab Emirates. It operates through four platforms: CE-Operates, CE-Invests, CE-Ventures, and CE-Creates across several sectors including ports & logistics, business aviation, power & engineering, healthcare, private equity, venture capital, business incubation, food & beverage, and sustainable mobility.
Space Capital LP is an early-stage venture capital firm that invests exclusively in space-based technologies. Formed in 2016, and based in New York City, Space Capital is the parent brand of Space Angels, an online angel investment platform, and Space Talent, a career platform and central node for space industry jobs.
Prologis, Inc. is a real estate investment trust headquartered in San Francisco, California that invests in logistics facilities, with a focus on the consumption side of the global supply chain. The company was formed through the merger of AMB Property Corporation and ProLogis in June 2011, which made Prologis the largest industrial real estate company in the world. As of December 31, 2019, the company owned 3,840 buildings comprising 814 million square feet in 19 countries in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. According to The Economist, its business strategy is focused on warehouses that are located close to huge urban areas where land is scarce. It serves over 5,000 tenants. Prologis created a venture capital arm in 2016.
Gateway Distriparks Limited, a company based in Mumbai, India, is a logistics company with three verticals: Container Freight Stations (CFS), Inland Container Depots (ICD) with rail movement and Cold Chain Storage & Logistics. The company was founded in April 1994, and originally promoted by Newsprint Trading & Sales Corporation (NTSC), CWT Distribution Limited, NUR Investment and Trading Pvt. Ltd. and Intercontinental Forest Products Pte. Ltd. (IFP) as a joint venture company to conduct the business of warehousing, container freight stations and all related activities. As of November 2015, Prism International Private Limited is the sole promoter of the company.
Allcargo Logistics Ltd, part of the Avvashya Group, is a logistics firm headquartered in India. Its services comprise global multimodal transport operations, pan India container freight stations, inland container depots, third-party logistics, warehousing, contract logistics and logistics parks. The company operates across more than 160 countries through more than 300 offices. As one of India's largest publicly listed logistics companies, Allcargo Logistics has a consolidated revenue of INR 7346 Cr as of March 2020.
James Gerard Dinan is an American investor, hedge fund manager, philanthropist. He founded York Capital Management in 1991.
Flexport is a freight forwarding and customs brokerage company based in San Francisco, California.
Toast, Inc. is a cloud-based restaurant software company based in Boston, Massachusetts. The company provides a restaurant management and point of sale (POS) system built on the Android operating system. Toast was founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2012 by Steve Fredette, Aman Narang, and Jonathan Grimm. In February 2020, Toast received $400 million in a round of Series F funding including Bessemer Venture Partners and TPG, at a valuation of $4.9 billion. Toast is used in thousands of restaurants, from small cafes to nationwide enterprises, across the U.S.
Gati is an Indian multinational courier delivery services company headquartered in Hyderabad, India. It is known for supply chain solutions with express distribution and also offers warehousing, freight forwarding, trading, cold chain, e-commerce and fulfilment services. Gati has offices in all major cities of India, with presence in Singapore, Hong Kong, China, Nepal and Thailand.
Jennifer Fonstad is an American venture capital investor and entrepreneur. She co-founded Aspect Ventures, a female-led venture capital firm that invests in early-stage technology companies. She is also co-founder of angel investing network Broadway Angels. Fonstad has been recognized as a top 100 tech investor on Forbes’ Midas List twice and was named 2016 Venture Capitalist of the Year by Deloitte.