Delivering Fulfillment
April 2022
Born on the streets of Bogota, Brian York was abandoned at an orphanage and eventually adopted into the United States — events that shaped the course of his entire life.
Blessed with a knack for building tech startups from scratch, he launched two ventures in San Francisco before traveling to Colombia with the hope of reuniting with his biological family. While there, York saw an unmet opportunity to digitize the logistics space in Latin America, so he founded LiftIt, an immensely successful last-mile cargo-delivery startup.
Photo: Cubbo Founders, (from left) Josu Gurtubay (COO), Brian York (CEO) and Ignasi Vegas (CTO)
But the COVID-19 pandemic was reshaping urban life in Bogota, changing the way that people shopped and the way that retailers managed their inventory. “City space will be forever changed,” York observed, and he wanted to play a role in that transformation. “With my experience, I have to build, I have to get back into supply chain, and I want to focus on warehousing and take advantage of the distressed real estate in the city.”
Cubbo’s cheaper and more efficient approach to storage and fulfillment saves customers more than 20%
As the CEO and Co-founder of Cubbo, York and fellow co-founders Josu Gurtubay and Ignasi Vegas are transforming city space throughout Latin America by providing a tech-driven fulfillment solution for e-commerce direct-to-consumer brands. Cubbo’s e-commerce fulfillment platform facilitates last-mile delivery, who use Cubbo as their urban hub to deliver items on time. The startup’s more cost-efficient approach to storage and fulfillment saves customers more than 20%. Their largest clients are global brands from Europe and the United States shipping direct-to-consumer, which is groundbreaking for the industry.
Photo: Cubbo Founders smiling after their fireside chat at the 2022 SVLC Summit
Since completing its first order in April 2021, Cubbo has made substantial strides, with 60% month-over-month growth and operations in Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. In the year ahead, the Cubbo team will deepen its focus on these markets, scaling up the business with local and global brands.
York says his motivation goes beyond the bottom line. “I love providing jobs and seeing how it impacts families,” he says. “Now that I’ve met my biological family and I know my biological brother — who grew up on the streets for his entire life — I realize that could have been me. Providing jobs and helping the ecosystem is priceless for me.”
Photo (from left): Brian York (CEO/Co-Founder), Consuelo Valverde and Josu Gurtubay (COO)