Hyper growth CFO joins FreightWaves

Spencer Piland, a startup veteran with a successful background in subscription and market-place based platforms, has been appointed as CFO at FreightWaves. In this role, Piland will oversee all financial and strategic analysis functions for one of the fastest growing enterprise software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies on the planet. 

Piland has led finance teams through periods of hyper-growth at four venture-backed startups – Namely, Plated, NJOY and LivingSocial. Over the course of his career, Piland has played key roles in over $700 million in equity capital raises, $150 million in debt capital raises and $3 billion of merger and acquisition transactions.

FreightWaves is the largest provider of near real-time market data, news, and context for the global freight and logistics markets. The company has two primary business lines: a media business which offers news, context and commentary for global freight markets across all modes; and its SaaS offering known as SONAR that offers over 1,000 unique index types, pulling in data from all modes of freight movement. 

Both businesses have best-in-class unit financial profiles and generate positive contribution margins. In addition, the businesses are complementary and help to expand the community that FreightWaves is helping to drive. The media business brings context to the data offered inside of SONAR and the editorial team benefits from having near-real time analytics and data instantly available. This empowers the 35 full-time journalists to identify trends and events that can impact freight market participants around the globe.