Michael Yamartino | CEO, Route

When I joined Route 4 years ago, I couldn’t have imagined the journey we’d be on. Yet through a pandemic, massive changes in the startup funding environment, competition, and big internal transformation, Route has continued to grow and succeed. I’m incredibly proud of what this team has achieved.

Route is on a mission to connect the world’s commerce. We strive to build the best post-purchase experiences for our brands, and to help customers bring all their shopping into one convenient place. I’m thrilled to announce that we’ve recently added $40M of new capital to the business to help us achieve that mission. 

This is a huge vote of confidence from investors in our vision, our product, and most importantly in our team. Our investors see what we see:  ecommerce is transforming faster than ever, and Route is well poised to help brands win. By building premium post-purchase experiences that create trust, loyalty, and customer love, Route is on a path to being an essential part of every great brand’s ecommerce stack.

So before I talk about what this financing means for the future, I want to say…

Thank you.

First, a thank you to the entire Route team. Your commitment to a shared mission – to connect the world’s commerce – has transformed our product and our industry.

Route was founded in 2019 from a vision to provide exceptional experiences to shoppers. Our founder, Evan Walker, recognized the need for something better: a way to protect packages on their journey that would give confidence to the brands and their customers. Evan and Mike Moreno co-founded Route and built one of the fastest-growing companies in history. None of this would be possible without that creative spark and the incredible effort it takes to build a company from the ground up – thank you.

Since then, we’ve protected over $15B in merchandise for customers, saved brands over $100M in refunds and reorders, and tracked hundreds of millions of packages. We’re only able to do this thanks to brands who trust us with their most precious resource – their customers. To the 13,000 brands who trust Route – we thank you. We will continue to do our best by you and your customers.

We’re passionate about overdelivering for our brands and their customers. In fact, it’s one of our core values. Our team delights in exceeding expectations and obsesses over quality, ensuring we deliver something we’re proud of every time. 

The investors who funded our Series C had a front-row seat to this mission. Hanaco VC, who led this round, along with JAWS Ventures, Madrona Ventures, and Granger, have all been long-time Route investors. Their continued confidence in our product, team, and mission has allowed us to march steadfastly forward on our path to profitability. On behalf of the entire team – thank you.

What’s next for Route?

As always, we’ll start with customers, and work backwards from there. Happy brands and shoppers are our priority. Their success is our success, so we will continue to put their needs first. Always. 

We’ve been hard at work testing and launching new features and functionality to supercharge the post-purchase landscape. Speed is in our DNA, and we will continue to take smart risks and push forward to iterate and improve on our product. See our recent Product Updates here. 

You can expect accelerating product innovation from our team. While tracking and protecting every order is an important part of the post-purchase experience, there is so much more we can do between when a customer places an order and when they’re fully satisfied with their purchase. We will continue to lead the category we created, going the extra mile to deliver something we’re proud of every time.

Want to join the fun? See our open careers, or check out a demo of our product.