Alex Lugosch, CEO of Rumbleship



Alex Lugosch doesn't look or talk like a banker. It's not surprising. He grew up in an entrepreneurial household and used to run a business-to-business ("B2B") marketplace for the cycling industry. Nevertheless, as CEO and co-founder of Rumbleship, he's become something of a banker in order to make life easier for B2B e-commerce sellers and their buyers. Recently, I spoke with Alex about how Rumbleship can help B2B sellers solve their accounts receivable management challenges.



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Read the TranscriptThe following has been edited to make it easier to read:



Dave Bayless: Alex, what problems does Rumbleship solve and for whom?



Alex Lugosch: One of the things about B2B e-commerce as we know it today—and I don't really care if you're using an ERP or Magento or any of the e-commerce platforms out there—it's really when you get to the payment portion of the transaction. You've filled your cart. You've reviewed it. You've put in your address information or it's saved, and then you go to pay for your items. There's no good way to do that in B2B. Inventory purchasing is not supported in any effective manner by credit cards or PayPal.



Our system plugs in like a gateway, and it basically removes the need for a B2B supplier to do any kind of out-of-band invoicing. What I mean by that is sending a Bill.com, sending a paper invoice, doing any offline billing with respect to the inventory purchase. Literally, a buyer can check out, select the terms they want—net 30, pay now, net 60, whatever's negotiated—immediately connect their bank account, and authorize the transaction. Then that supplier is paid in advance of the term or whenever it's negotiated, and then that retailer is automatically charged and debited upon the day that they had selected. So it completely automates the invoicing process for B2B online transactions.



Dave: So tell me a little more how that works. I gather that there is a plug-in or an API that the seller connects to. How do the buyers get approved to participate in the program?



Alex: There is an open API that people do use and integrate against, and there are several plugins now. There's one for WooCommerce, one for Miva, one for Tradegecko. Those are the easy integration points.



In terms of buyer onboarding, that happens in various ways. Typically, what will happen is a supplier says, "This is my buyer list." They send us that in a CSV. We upload those buyers and approve them, so they can see the gateway. Only approved buyers can see the gateway.



As for new buyers, typically what happens is in B2B you have what's called a dealer application or a wholesaler application. Those applications get ported over to us as they get filled out, and we add those buyers as well. It means that basically, a buyer does not have to set up a separate account to transact with us.



Dave: Without sharing your secret sauce, what are the features that distinguish Rumbleship's approach versus other forms of managing B2B accounts receivable?



Alex: I think we're a lot more than an accounts receivable product. We completely eliminate the need for accounts receivable from a supplier's perspective because we always pay them, no matter what, on time, every time. So, when it comes to what makes us unique, we are the only checkout application like this that really handles everything end-to-end.



There are not separate credit apps. You're not borrowing from a bank. There aren't credit lines that need to be retired. It's all integrated. That's really the special part of this.



Dave: How do you get paid?



Alex: We get paid based on transaction fees that are charged to a supplier.