Alex joined us as an Entrepreneur in Residence after completing his MSc at LSE, and has since then gone on to join the Expansions team. He speaks fluent English, German, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese and has been invaluable in establishing contacts across the world to help cargo.one expand it’s airline partnerships and enhance offering for them, as well as growing our freight forwarder network. 

What is special about cargo.one? 

What makes cargo.one so special really is a couple of factors to me.  On the one hand It would be hard not to mention the part that makes it really special to me, which are the people. A great combination of people who are incredibly fun but also incredibly smart and incredibly ambitious and that just want to get stuff done. I think that is one side of the equation for sure. The other side of the equation to me is that we are making a change.  We are actually changing or at least trying, and I want to say succeeding in changing an entire industry which has been stuck in the past, and we are effecting change in something that desperately needs it. 

Factor number 2 also on a more personal level is that we are not only pioneering digitalisation of cargo but also pioneering the future (or in our case the present) of work. To be at the forefront of trying to find new ways to work together, in what we call Dynamic Work,  that combines the needs of the org with the needs of the people who work in it, making sure that flexibility and mental health are a priority. I think that is a big building block that makes cargo.one special.

What is the biggest challenge working at cargo.one?

For me the biggest challenge to be honest is the sheer responsibility that you get when working in cargo.one, basically from day 1. It means that you are constantly put outside of your comfort zone. I had this from day 1 and it’s amazing because of the impact that it gives you. The challenge in that simply comes with the fact that that also brings some inevitable ‘imposter syndrome,’ where you are put in a situation where you might not feel like you are ready. I started straight out of college at cargo.one and here I am talking to senior VP of Cargo in the US. I’m like “how did that happen? What?!” So that sometimes can be a challenge, and I feel like most people experience this because of the sheer impact you can have and the responsibility that is given to you since day 1. Luckily the other aspect of cargo.one is that there is a great feedback culture so you are always sure to get the right feedback and usually if you are doing things right people will be quick to tell you “no you are not an imposter, you are doing a great job”, and what you have done in the past is an indication that you are the right fit for the role that you have. 

Which is your favourite of the cargo.one Leitmotif’s?

I think if you are at cargo.one you might resonate more with one than with others but most people embody at least in to some degree all of them. The easy one to pick would be growth as a priority, it has facets of all of them. The fact that we care about growing cargo.one, but we also care about growing ourselves, right- professionally, personally, so I think it would be hard not to pick that one. If I had to pick one which inspired the biggest change in me since I joined it would definitely be the “take ownership, move beyond the ordinary, exceed expectations” one. The one phrase that I will always remember is “don’t be the object of the situation” - it’s hard for that not to stick in your head. I don’t want to say I didn’t have this before I joined, but it is just a mindset- if you see something that isn’t right, don’t be passive, be the subject and do something about it. 

What does a typical day look like for an Expansion Associate? 

As is the case with many roles at cargo.one, the greatest thing about working in expansion is that you work heavily on both sides of the marketplace. It means that you are heavily involved on both the partnerships side but also on the FF side meaning both on the supply and demand side. So what does a day right now look like for me, opening the different markets that we are opening? There is a part that is supply which basically means getting the airlines ready and onto the platform, so at the beginning of this phase it’s basically getting commitment from airlines. So I might be in a meeting on a Tuesday morning with airlines to talk about the expansion of Brazil, getting their buy in, their commitment to open up the offering to the new market, on the other end on another airline who has already given their commitment and we are working on the offering.  So what I might be doing is some Alpha testing, which means checking the offering on the platform, checking with the airline to make sure that it is the best possible offer quality once we open and so being really close to the product and making sure that the supply that is showing is right.  

On the other end, that might be one market, another market might be open with most airlines and we are mostly looking at winning new users. So I am sending out emails to new users who have expressed an interest in the past, or even going in completely cold, drafting email and sending it to people, and then people will sign up to our platform, and then I can onboard them, I can give them access. I call them up, give them a demo of the platform, answer their questions. 

So a typical day looks at almost all facets of the platform which is super amazing, and doing this in an international context. Expanding means almost like being a start up within a start up. What we like to say in the Expansion team is that what we do is bringing things from 0 to 1, where there is nothing we build something, and when there is something we pass it on to the respective function.