{"id":182251,"date":"2022-02-24T07:15:22","date_gmt":"2022-02-24T12:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=182251"},"modified":"2022-02-23T16:14:20","modified_gmt":"2022-02-23T21:14:20","slug":"i-run-to-the-fire-serial-entrepreneur-uconn-alum-nadav-ullman-tackling-supply-chain-nightmare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2022\/02\/i-run-to-the-fire-serial-entrepreneur-uconn-alum-nadav-ullman-tackling-supply-chain-nightmare\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018I Run to the Fire\u2019: Serial Entrepreneur, UConn Alum Nadav Ullman Tackling Supply Chain Nightmare"},"content":{"rendered":"

When UConn alumnus and serial entrepreneur Nadav Ullman \u201812 (BUS) created Project N95<\/a>, a national clearinghouse vetting PPE from around the world in the thick of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020, he discovered something more daunting than a shortage of surgical masks and gloves.<\/p>\n

He realized the whole global supply chain process was broken.<\/p>\n

Despite a $9 trillion logistics industry, no one could tell him where his orders were at any given time. The vital link connecting international commerce was a calamity.<\/p>\n

Ullman set out to fix that with his new company, Leverage, an artificial-intelligence-driven supply chain visibility platform. The company has raised more than $7 million, including a recent $5 million funding round that will be used to expedite its software engineering and customer-support teams.<\/p>\n

\"A
Nadav Ullman ’12 (BUS). (Nathan Oldham \/ UConn School of Business)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cCOVID further exposed how fragile the global supply chain is today, to the point that now everyone feels the effect of supply chain issues,\u2019\u2019 Ullman says. \u201cThe true problem is far more than just a few folks being frustrated that their Amazon orders are late.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cInternational trade and robust sustainable supply chains are the glue that keeps nations around the world connected and working together,\u2019\u2019 he says. \u201cAt Leverage, we\u2019re creating sustainable, long-term technical solutions to solve these issues at a global scale.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Leverage is drawing tremendous interest, and is currently focusing on manufacturing, retail, and consumer products, all industries with numerous suppliers. Working with a company\u2019s existing programs, Leverage creates a dashboard that tracks product from order to production to delivery.<\/p>\n

\u201cDemand for our services is growing quickly and it\u2019s very exciting,\u2019\u2019 Ullman says.<\/p>\n

Ullman Became an Entrepreneur at UConn<\/strong><\/p>\n

As an undergraduate at UConn, Ullman and friend Thomas Bachant \u201913 (ENG) created Sobrio, a safe-ride service for college students. The two met through UConn\u2019s Innovation Quest competition and their company ultimately expanded to six other college campuses. Sobrio preceded the arrival of the popular transportation-for-hire companies.<\/p>\n

After graduation, the friends founded Dashride, a provider of mobile dispatching software for transportation companies. The business helped taxis and other automotive fleets improve efficiency and compete with ride-share services. \u00a0In 2018, Dashride was acquired by Cruise GM, an autonomous driving company.<\/p>\n

Subsequently, Ullman and Andrew Stroup created Project N95, which helped source personal protective equipment for frontline workers during the peak of COVID-19 pandemic. Ullman, Stroup, and their team worked with the COVID White House Task Force, the National Governors Association, investor Mark Cuban, Amazon, 3M, and countless major and regional healthcare organizations to acquire PPE.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt first I thought it was only a vetting problem,\u2019\u2019 Ullman says. \u201cBut we ended up needing a 250-person team to run the global-supply chain operation. I looked for tech to solve it, and it just wasn\u2019t there. The PPE was the first dilemma but then I realized the whole supply chain was broken; there was a bigger, macro-problem going on.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOne company might have as many as 500 suppliers, and tens of thousands of orders,\u201d Ullman says. \u201cA huge portion of their employees\u2019 day is spent calling and emailing and asking, \u2018Where\u2019s my stuff?\u2019 It is highly inefficient.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018I Run to the Fire\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although Ullman brings expertise in transportation, software, and artificial intelligence to a project, it is the thrill of the challenge that draws his interest.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe core of it is that there are big problems that other people aren\u2019t solving, and I\u2019m in a unique position to help out,\u2019\u2019 he says. \u201cWhen there\u2019s overlap of technology and logistics, I\u2019m intrigued. I guess I\u2019m drawn to the big, hairy problems. I run to the fire!\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

In his business partnership with Stroup, they share the belief that without modernization, the next global supply-chain crisis is right around the corner. Stroup is the formerly the Director of Product and Technology for the Obama administration, as well as a former entrepreneur-in-residence for Bank of America. Like Ullman, he began his entrepreneurial journey in college.<\/p>\n

Mark Cuban Predicts Leverage Will Succeed<\/strong><\/p>\n

The heart of Leverage\u2019s work is to help supply-chain managers handle data, including PDFs, email attachments, and faxes, more seamlessly. The platform uses a central dashboard so that all stakeholders know the status of any order in real time, from purchase-order tracking to delivery.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat competes the circle is the fact that we\u2019re helping customers make demand forecasts based on supply-chain history,\u2019\u2019 Ullman says. \u201cNow we can help companies predict what their future orders need to be and better predict risk.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Leverage\u2019s latest funding round includes Las Olas Venture Capital, Great Oaks Venture Capital, the Gaingels investment syndicate, and entrepreneur Mark Cuban. In a written statement, Cuban said he is excited to be investing in the startup.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s clear there\u2019s going to be a lot of disruption in the supply-chain space, and I\u2019m making the bet that Andrew and Nadav are the ones that are going to make it happen,\u2019\u2019 he says.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Building a new way to track goods and supplies from order to production to delivery <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":182252,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[147,1731,1862,2235],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2105],"class_list":["post-182251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-alumni","category-entrepreneurship","category-busn","category-today-homepage"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-11 13:07:36","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182251"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182251\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":182265,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182251\/revisions\/182265"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/182252"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182251"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=182251"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=182251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}