We recently connected with Josh Moser and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Josh thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. What was it like going from idea to execution? Can you share some of the backstory and some of the major steps or milestones?
Laborjack started as an extremely simple concept out of Colorado State University in Northern Colorado in 2016. The original premise: “Uber is the biggest taxi cab company in the world and they don’t own a single vehicle; let’s build the biggest moving company and never own a single truck or van.”
The “Gig Economy” was just beginning to change peoples way of thinking towards what was possible in the modern workforce and service industry through distributed platform models – and we wanted to shake up the labor industry, starting with moving services.
We had no investors and no technology, but we leveraged free resources and advertising online – as well as group text messages and spreadsheets to validate the concept. We proved that the model was working by connecting college students to people in the community who needed moving help and were willing to rent their own truck. We were able to produce tremendous cost savings for our clients vs. hiring a traditional moving company – and were able to accomplish a lot more volume in moves because we were not limited to our own equipment and inventory.
Next, it was time to build a product and software (a staff management CRM and mobile app) so that we could operate with greater efficiency and scale. It was at this time, and throughout the Covid pandemic that we realized the problem stretched far beyond the moving industry.
Today, we operate along the entire Front Range of Colorado and provide variable staffing for businesses in construction, warehousing and logistics, stadiums and events, and so much more! The platform we have built gives our workers access to a variety of jobs in these light-industrial industries and we are on a path to take Laborjack across the country over the coming years.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
As a college student trying to become an entrepreneur and launch a venture, it was never easy. Although, at the time I had nothing to lose and I became sparked with tremendous passion towards the idea of owning a software company in the gig economy.
I had no experience managing people, building software, launching marketing campaigns, or building financial pro forma… but that is the amazing part about entrepreneurship – you HAVE to become familiar with each of these and grow your knowledge and skill sets in many unique facets.
I am most proud of the fact that, given the limited experience we had in the early days, we never quit. Perseverance was truly our biggest key to success as cliche as that may sound. Today, I manage our entire product ecosystem and help build the software tools and designs that make our brand and system accessible and usable for clients, workers, and admins on our team.
It is the combination of all of these efforts through automation, systems, and software that enable us to operate at our current scale. These are also the systems that will aid in our expansion to be a national provider of temporary labor services across a variety of industries.
Have you ever had to pivot?
Pivoting (in life or in business) is inevitable. Sometimes, pivots are the result of light bulb moments and happen immediately. Other times pivots are the combination of slow change over time and you look back and realize a pivot was occurring the entire time.
The latter best describes how Laborjack evolved into what it is today – a platform that makes finding and connecting reliable workers extremely trustworthy, affordable, and simple to use.
The original vision was to disrupt the moving industry, and now we are positioning ourselves to disrupt both B2C and B2B industries with a unique business model and platform.
Can you open up about how you funded your business?
Funding can make or break a startup in it’s early days. Fortunately for us, we were long-term focused and did not need to raise capital immediately because the business itself was cash flow positive from our very first day operating.
Over time, we did realize that growth without funding, as well as furthering our team and product would be difficult without securing capital. We raised in 2021 and have since tripled our annual revenues.
As we look to the future, we will need to jump into another fundraising journey that will be the catalyst for nationwide expansion of the Laborjack model.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.laborjack.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laborjack/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/laborjack/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joshmoser-laborjack/
- Other: Fort Collins Business Spotlight Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zmao1y6rQ6s&t=11s