Mapping the B2B Supply Chain
An interview with Makersite CEO Neil D'Souza
Greetings,
This week we sit down with Neil D'Souza, the CEO and founder of Makersite, a Product Lifecycle Intelligence tech company. Makersite raised an $18mm Series A in October of 2022 which included investment from strategic CVC Hitachi Ventures.
Neil gave us exclusive insights as we discussed the inception and growth of Makersite, which he founded in 2018. We broke down Makersite’s ability to empower procurement and product design teams to make better material input decisions. Makersite’s customer portfolio includes companies like Microsoft, Lush, Cummins, and Vestas. By mapping the supply chain and manufacturing processes, Makersite enables product design and procurement professionals with information on substitute materials, which inputs are better priced or more easily sourced and - ultimately - how to optimize inputs to your manufacturing needs.
In this interview:
34% of the supply chain is covered by Makersite. 🚢 [link]
Will Makersite evolve from a SaaS offering to a platform that facilitates transactions in a marketplace model? 🛒 [link]
What B2B verticals have you focused on and why? 🧪 [link]
Distributors using supply chain tools and solutions? [link]
How does Makersite help its customers optimize for sustainability? 📈
Partnering with strategic investors. 🤝 [link]
Not all tech startups lose money. How Makersite has generational company aspirations. 💶 [link]
Why now is the time to leverage technology to do more things with less. ⚒ [link]
Everything In The World is Made From Only 1,000 Processes.
Neil explained to us how Makersite is able to gain a full view of a value chain by combining a customers knowledge of their product with integrated datasets from a relatively fixed number of underlying manufacturing processes. From there, Makersite can predict changes in costs, material availability, environmental impact, and regulatory red tape 6-12 months in advance.
“Supply chain is not procurement, it's not logistics. It is step-by-step, how do you construct.”
To really have a clear view (and in turn protect) a supply chain, it’s necessary to go beyond just procurement and logistics. Neil, giving the example of manufacturing a car body, discusses step-by-step how the manufactured body of a car needs sheets of steel, which come from ingot, which requires ore to be mined to produce. To understand, optimize, and safeguard against disruptions to a supply chain, you need vision into all the processes, regulations, geography, geopolitics, and environmental factors involved from the raw material to the end user.
What B2B Verticals Lend Themselves to Supply Chain Innovation?
Everything in B2B is tied to a supply chain in some way but where do you start? In response to my questions about choosing B2B verticals to focus on for Makersite, D'Souza explained his approach.
He emphasized the convergence of supply chains as industries move upstream, highlighting the need for materials like steel, thermoplastics, and aluminum in various manufacturing processes. Makersite takes into account two factors when considering industries to target. Firstly, they assess the customer's willingness to adopt cutting-edge technology, as their solution requires acceptance and integration within the organization. Secondly, they consider the external pressures and challenges faced by different industries. Neil mentioned that sectors such as automobiles, consumer electronics, chemicals, and building materials are among the main industries that Makersite focuses on.
What about distributors?
Are you a distributor working with manufacturers in the verticals Makersite is focusing on? I’d encourage distributors to look at how they could combine solutions and programs with tech providers like Makersite to bring new supply chain solutions to a common, shared customer base.
Taking On Strategic Investors
Those who have been reading Distribution Technology for more than 5 minutes know that we’re bullish on distributors becoming strategic investors in B2B technology companies. We asked Neil about what it’s been like partnering with strategics of which Markersite has worked with two, Hitachi Ventures and AEI HorizonX (a VC formed in partnership with The Boeing Company).
You might recall we also discussed strategic investors with ChemDirect Founder Tyler Ellison, hear what he had to say about Schneider National, a leading incumbent transportation and logistics company, investing in ChemDirect’s $6.6mm Series A funding round.
Going from B2B SaaS to B2B Marketplace?
We’ve written before and recently talked to Fabrice Grinda about how many B2B SaaS tools have aspirations to become a marketplace. The playbook is typically to build scale as a SaaS offering and then begin to facilitate transactions on platform.
We asked D'Souza about this trend and he was candid about his vision for the business model of Makersite to