Shipstra:The lean start-up of a digital freight-forwarding marketplace

The process of designing a business model is arduous, particularly when creating a digital platform aimed at disrupting a market that is used to operating in a non-digital manner. The leaders of Shipstra (www.shipstra.com), a transformative digital marketplace for the freight-forwarding and shipping sector, successfully met this challenge. The organization's lean start-up illustrates how entrepreneurs and managers of new ventures in tradition-bound industries can sidestep the pitfalls of building a business model for digital disruption. Underscoring the value of industry experience, attention to customer feedback, and personal relationships, it also sheds light on the conditions that make possible the rapid iterations essential to success in an ever-evolving digital environment. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc