I am in Montreal today for a fintech conference, hosted by my friends at Portage (P3VC). I have not been to Montreal in a few years so I was excited to come back and see some old friends and catch up on the Canadian fintech scene. I will head to Toronto tomorrow.

Late last night I made it over to Schwartz’s, a famous ‘smoked meat’ restaurant that is not for the feint of heart. I am a little woozy this morning as I write.

This was after having a great steak and fries lunch at one of my favorite spots in New York – L’entrecote.

Today I will sneak out for some of Montreal’s great Lebanese food.

Enough about food…

My partners Gary and Tom recently led a Social Leverage investment in Logixboard which aims to modernize freight forwarding.

A freight forwarder, forwarder, or forwarding agent, also known as a non-vessel operating common carrier, is a person or company that organizes shipments for individuals or corporations to get goods from the manufacturer or producer to a market, customer or final point of distribution.

If you’re not at the scale of Apple or Amazon, transporting goods internationally is extremely challenging. Freight forwarders reserve space on trucks, trains, ships and planes. They ensure cargo is properly transported from carrier to carrier and port to port. And they prepare and provide customs documentation. They are the project managers of the shipping industry, managing logistics and transportation. These are all specialized skills, performed by upwards of 500,000 worldwide companies. This is a multi-trillion dollar industry that is largely unknown.

And yet, the front end of this industry is manual and outdated. It takes an average of 50 emails back and forth between a shipper and a freight forwarder to agree on details for a shipment. Behind the scenes, freight forwarders scramble through spreadsheets, send out emails and figure out logistics each and every time. The user experience is broken.

Founder/CEO Julian Alvarez and his brother Juan Alvarez have created Logixboard to positively impact this industry. Their first product improves the user experience for freight forwarders’ customers. Shippers can now long into a modern web app, easily create new shipments, see the status of their inquiry and ultimately track their shipments.

Gary has more details of the investment and Logixboard on our company blog.

PS – This Sunday I took David Perell to a fave Sunday Brunch spot in New York called ’12 Chairs’.

I am a big fan of his Monday Musings newsletter. He is only 25!

This essay he dropped on Boeing – ‘Why Did the 737 Max Crash’ is a great read.