Amazon’s Ex-Logistics Boss Takes on Supply Chain’s ‘Franken-Software’ Monster
Dave Clark, who created Amazon’s mammoth, world-leading logistics network, announced in a LinkedIn post that he’s starting his own venture.
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If your resume included creating Amazon’s mammoth, world-leading logistics network, you’d probably bet on yourself too.
Dave Clark, who spent 23 years at the online retail giant doing just that until he stepped down in 2022, announced in a LinkedIn post Tuesday that he’s starting his own venture. The “operating system” for global supply chains, dubbed Auger, aims to replace the patchwork of “Franken-software” that governments and companies have come to rely on for moving things around.
Burn in Excel
Last September, Clark was forced to resign as CEO of freight giant Flexport after just a year — it was amid a heated struggle with founder Ryan Petersen, who alleged he was overspending. CNBC, however, reported on internal documents that showed Petersen supporting and helping implement the very things he was being critical of.
Clark emerged Tuesday not with a new gig at a major firm worthy of his CV, but with his own startup and — because it doesn’t hurt — $100 million in backing from venture capital firm Oak HC/FT. Auger’s pitch to customers is straightforward:
- Lots of Fortune 500 companies pull data throughout their supply chain systems from a raft of different providers, which can leave the companies struggling to stitch it all together. For example, a 2022 Zencargo survey of 200 UK and European supply chain decision-makers in the retail sector found that just 4% trusted their data.
- Clark said in his LinkedIn post that there is “a shocking amount of the world’s supply chain running on Excel” and that “companies still rely on fragmented ‘franken-software’ — disjointed systems patched together from incompatible technologies that lead to inefficient workarounds.”
Walk the Talk: One thing that’s missing from the view of public scrutiny: Auger’s actual platform or product. Clark’s silver bullet for supply chain software — a.k.a. his company’s “product roadmap and key milestones” — will be revealed in “the coming months,” he said.