“Basically there are three challenges to building a company.”
     The speaker is Nathanaël de Tarade Chief Commercial Officer of Wiremind.
     “Firstly, you have to convince people that buying your product will make their lives or job better.
     “Secondly, as a small company, the challenge to reach a global audience means that you have to work all the time and figure out how to remain a small company for a decent amount of time so that you can control things.
     “But of course with growth, the third major challenge is to be able to recruit young people that are not exactly looking at air cargo.
     “As a career, face it, air cargo does not have the sex appeal of so many other industries that are out there recruiting.
     “We are a company of originals with an idea and a product and a plan quite unlike many recent entrants into the industry that spend inordinate time raising vast sums of money to grab a piece of the traditional air cargo market.”
     A solution to help air cargo shipments make better use of ULDs while pumping up operational volume was on display at CNS last week.
     Space being money was not lost on a pair of bright eager 30-somethings from the Ile de France.      Colin Girault-Matz, CEO & Co-Founder and the aforementioned Nathanaël de Tarade , along with their third partner Charles Pierre, CTO & Co-Founder combined their tech savvy minds about three years ago and came up with something completely different.
     “Our software program, branded SkyPallet, delivers an immediate answer to the ever burning question of ‘do I have enough capacity?’ when a shipment is being accepted,” said Nathanaël.
     “What that means is the user can adjust pricing based on real operational volume and thus move capacity control into an exact science,” he added.
     “SkyPallet,” CEO Colin enthuses, “allows users to easily handle things such as LDP/MDP dimensions, as well as special contours of shipments, authorized overhangs, centerline loadings, and pivot weights, while also delivering 3D visuals with complete detailed information of all the aforementioned.”
     So was SkyPallet born when a light bulb suddenly went off above these guys’ heads?
     We should mention that Colin served in revenue management at rail giant SNCF in France.
     Nathanaël worked for Air France/KLM in Atlanta in revenue management with the challenge of trying to figure out how to maximize cargo space within a ULD.
     “I thought, why not build a good software program and decided to go it alone,” Nathanaël said.
     “So I quit my job, got together with my partners, and SkyPallet is the result.
     Six months ago one of the top ten airlines in air cargo inducted the program.
     A GSA in France has also come on board utilizing SkyPallet.
     Asked if his old alma mater AF/KL is onboard or soon to be with SkyPallet, Nathanaël smiled and said:
     “We are hopeful.”
     One thing is for certain, these young, energetic, and connected people are putting out a pretty nifty version of algorithm & blues.
Geoffrey