Case study · E-commerce SaaS
Route.com
From pre-revenue to unicorn: a $12M seed round, 16,000+ partner merchants, and $15B+ in tracked merchandise.
Player 1 · RedSky · Stage 6
Final score
Run for Route.com
- 1 Merchandise tracked Purchased products tracked and insured on the platform RedSky architected.
- $15B+
- 2 Partner merchants E-commerce firms running Route’s embedded SaaS today.
- 16,000+
- 3 Market valuation Route’s valuation today, from pre-revenue at the start of the engagement.
- $1.4B
- SaaS Architecture
- Backend Engineering
- iOS & Browser Apps
- Outsourced CTO
The run
Two worlds. One boss.
World 1 · Stage 1 · The vision
Delivering Amazon-like benefits without becoming Amazon
The intent behind the birth of Route.com was simple: give e-commerce merchants of all types the product-tracking functionality and related benefits offered by the largest e-commerce players in the world.
World 1 · Stage 2 · Boss · The challenge
Transforming Route’s vision into a shipping product
Route raised $500,000 in pre-seed funding in early 2019, the year it was formed, but had yet to generate revenue. It had been unable to turn its business concept and legal groundwork into a functioning first version of its envisioned SaaS platform.
It had burned through two Chief Technology Officers and two I.T. teams trying to bring v1.0 to market. It was in that environment that Route engaged RedSky Engineering in what became a two-phase engagement.
World 2
How RedSky delivered
A two-phase engagement: architect and ship v1.0, then rebuild the internal I.T. team as Outsourced CTO.
World 2 · Stage 1
Architect
As Route’s Product Architect, RedSky opened with a deep-dive review of Route’s initial efforts. Four I.T. outcomes emerged: ship an easily embeddable SaaS platform giving end users near-instant tracking updates; let partners offer low-cost add-on insurance on lost or damaged products; use v1.0 to land Route’s first paying customers; and help Route rebuild an internal I.T. team.
World 2 · Stage 2
Build
RedSky defined, refined, and implemented a SaaS architecture that integrated cleanly into Route’s business ecosystem, engineering the backend systems, email integrations, and email scraping systems. Phase 1 closed with three applications launched in stealth: an iOS app that auto-tracked orders from partnered merchants, a Gmail extension covering non-partner purchases, and the Route+ insurance program.
World 2 · Stage 3
Deliver
Before those offerings went public, Phase 2 began: Route hired RedSky to serve as Outsourced Chief Technology Officer. That role mapped out and then hired the minimum I.T. team Route needed, and built an engineering culture distinct from the eat-what-you-kill approach common on tech sales teams. RedSky’s Outsourced CTO also joined Route’s go-to-market presentations as the technical voice in the room.
Boss down 3 hits · Route.com cleared
The outcome
Unicorn status, 16,000+ e-commerce partners, and $15B+ in tracked merchandise
Near the end of the two-phase engagement, Route emerged from stealth to announce a $12 million seed round with $8.85 million in projected ARR from its initial partners, supported by a staff that had grown from 5 to 100 in under a year.
Building on that work, Route’s SaaS platform and internal I.T. team have now tracked and insured over $15 billion in e-commerce purchases from more than 16,000 partner firms. Route carries a market valuation of over $1.4 billion today.
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