Gozova
It’s been almost a year since Gozova – an early-growth, on-demand Fort Worth company whose app pairs movers and crews to businesses and people who need items picked up and delivered or stored – secured $500,000 in seed capital from Fort Worth investors Ed and Sasha Bass, Bobby Patton, and two other angels.
Since then, the company has expanded statewide; opened in Colorado, Florida, and Tennessee; started a storage business; forged partnerships with apartment locators, universities and interior designers; broadened its network of transportation providers to include significantly greater numbers of moving companies; and added employees.
The company, accepted last spring into the Capital Factory’s Accelerator, giving it greater access to capital and talent, is also nearing completion of a $2 million round of equity financing, Goran Krndija, the CEO, said. The company’s growth has provided a success story in Fort Worth, a market short of available venture capital.
“Prior to (securing the $500,000 in VC), we were kind of a garage startup,” Krndija said in an interview. “We would meet at Starbucks, my house. We brought in more structure. We really said, who do we want to be when we grow up. We started tackling those points.”
Krndija, Chief Technology Officer Cameron Moreau, and software engineer Kolten Sturgill – friends since they met while attending the University of Texas at Arlington - started the business in 2017 with a mobile app that consumers could use to schedule a pickup and driver if they needed an item moved from one place to another.
Gozova
Chief operating officer Gabe Deale and CEO and co-founder Goran Krndija
The business did $17,000 in revenue in 2017 and $70,000 in 2018. Revenues have continued to grow (the privately held firm no longer quotes revenues, citing competition), thanks to partnerships with groups like the popular Tanglewood Moms and TCU. Still, prior to the VC deal, the firm’s business was limited to Texas. “Our investors were skeptical,” Krndija says. “We were just one market.”
One major aspect of the company’s strategy shift in the last year: “Instead of going directly to the consumer, we partnered directly with a lot of apartment locator companies,” Krndija said. “Really, where our business lies is B2B to C. It gives us that much more business.”
The company – already having expanded into B2B in 2019 – started a storage business after receiving inquiries over the years from interior designers and consumers who needed temporary storage, Krndija said.
Those included university students and homeowners doing renovations. “Customers kept asking. We were moving customers into (other companies’) storage. We saw we were losing a lot of money.”
The company’s interested in opening storage businesses in its other markets. “We didn’t want to build around it, but I think it’s going to differentiate us a lot,” Krndija said.
Gozova
The company today has partnerships with apartment locators in all of its markets, Krndija said. It also has as many as 40 moving companies on its platform, offering an array of vehicles and sizes, and 500 people signed up to be movers.
“We went after a bunch of apartments,” Krndija said. “Somebody said you’re doing this the hard way.”
The partnerships with moving companies “have really helped us” and heightened the consistency of the service, Krndija said. “Anybody can drive an Uber; to move something stuff up and down, takes a lot of skill.”
Gozova’s app offers a flat price, based on square footage, floor, destination and mileage. Customers can select closed vehicles like box trucks, or open ones like pickups – a harkening to the company’s beginnings. “We’re super-transparent with the client,” Krndija said.
Gozova
In Texas, the company – already in Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin and Waco before the VC deal – is now also in Houston and San Antonio. In Florida, it’s in Tampa and Orlando. And in Tennessee, Nashville. On its web site service map, Gozova plots as “coming soon” markets in Southern California, Arizona, Kansas City, Chicago, Georgia, North Carolina, and up the Eastern Seaboard.
“It’s mainly due to our partnerships” that the company has been able to expand, Krndija said. “We’re thinking of one new market a month. It’s pretty aggressive.”
The company has added 10 employees in roles such as marketing and operations to back up the owners – Krndija, Moreau, Sturgill, and Oscar Perales, who started as a driver and is now head of warehouse. The firm opened offices at WeWorks downtown, although about half the team works remotely, Krndija said.
The company’s rapid growth has helped Krndija confirm the business’ viability. The VC round of financing was convertible debt. After the equity round closes, he said he’ll remain the largest shareholder.
Not too long ago, “I was just pushing a truck with another person, helping move stuff around,” Krndija, 34, says. “I’ve thought about quitting numerous times. I just kept going.”