Kyrgyz Founders Built a Service for US Transport Companies and Reached Over $500,000 in Annual Revenue
Улукбек Самаков и Фарух Усманов
In 2023, Ulukbek Samakov and Faruh Usmanov founded LoadConnect, a startup built for the US freight market. The company’s product helps carriers find and book profitable loads faster by estimating trip costs and profitability. The service has now been downloaded nearly 20,000 times, while its ARR has surpassed $500,000.
For Astana Hub and Digital Business’s “100 Startups from Central Eurasia” project, Ulukbek and Faruh shared how they built the product in just a couple of days for a friend who worked as a dispatcher, and how they are now promoting it in the US and growing by almost 20% a year without raising venture capital. They also talked about how they now plan to grow from a single “magic button” into a standalone platform for carriers.
“For every four or five ad views, we got one download”
– Faruh, Ulukbek, how did you come up with the idea for LoadConnect?
Ulukbek: – In 2022, I was living in Dubai, but I came back to Kyrgyzstan quite often. A lot of my friends here were working remotely as dispatchers for US trucking companies. One day, a friend and I were about to go out when, at the last minute, he said, “I can’t. I need to find a load for a driver right now.” So I stayed with him and started watching what he was doing.
He had several monitors set up. On one, he was searching for loads, opening Google Maps, calculating the distance, working out roughly how much he could make, and then manually messaging the broker, the middleman between the company that needs something delivered and the carrier. And he was repeating the same steps over and over again.
I watched him and thought, I’m a developer, I can automate this. So over the next couple of days, I built the first version of the extension, installed it on his computer, and showed him how to use it.
The next time I came by, I saw that pretty much the whole office was already using it.
Faruh: – Ulukbek and I have been friends for a long time, and by then we’d already spent a few years talking about starting something of our own. In early 2022, we took YC Startup School together, discussed the lectures, and kept thinking about what kind of product we could build ourselves.
At that point, LoadConnect wasn’t meant to become a standalone business at all. Ulukbek had simply created the tool for a friend to make his job easier. But by the end of 2022, other people had started using it too, and that gave us a very strong signal. Whenever something went down, people would practically panic and message us straight away: “We can’t work without this anymore.”
That’s when I said, “Ula, we’ve been looking for that big YC idea, but here we already have a real problem and people who need the product. What if this is it?”
From 2023, we started treating LoadConnect as a serious startup and focused on growing it.
– How did you get your first users?
Faruh: – We paid $50–100 for a few ads in Telegram groups where dispatchers were already active. The conversion was incredible: we got one download for every four or five views.
What worked best was a simple GIF showing the product in action. Ulukbek would record his screen and walk people through what the extension could do. That really caught the audience’s attention.
“Finding and booking loads became 10 times faster”
– What exactly did LoadConnect do that made it so useful for dispatchers?
Ulukbek: – Say a dispatcher spots a load that looks like a good fit. They still need to open the route, calculate the distance, work out how far the truck will travel empty and with the load, estimate the costs and see roughly how much they can make. If the numbers look good, they take the details from the load card, switch over to email and message the broker to say they’re ready to take it.
The problem is, dispatchers have to do this over and over again. To secure a single load, they might send 30–40 of these requests. And they’re competing with other carriers for the best loads, so the faster they can evaluate an offer and contact the broker, the better their chances of getting it.
So dispatchers end up repeating the same sequence of steps dozens of times, constantly switching between different windows, and every extra minute can mean losing the load.
Faruh: – LoadConnect automates that whole process. It works as a browser extension on top of the load board. We integrated it directly into the interface dispatchers already use, so they don’t have to change their workflow or learn another piece of software.
Before LoadConnect, figuring out whether a load was worth taking could take around 10 minutes. Dispatchers had to check the route, calculate costs, look at factoring, and then manually email and call the broker. With LoadConnect, the whole process takes less than a minute: open the load, see the key numbers, and if everything looks good, email the broker with one click. As a result, users save around 90% of the time they would normally spend searching for loads.
Right now, LoadConnect helps dispatchers find loads. The next step is for it to manage the truck itself: choosing the next loads and planning the route a week in advance.
– What’s changed in the new version?
Ulukbek: – We’re already helping dispatchers with the next stages of their work too: keeping documents, past load history, and broker information in one place. Little by little, we’re adding more of the tools they use throughout the working day.
So the extension is staying, but LoadConnect itself is evolving from a single tool into a full-fledged platform for dispatchers.
– Is it mainly standard automation, or does it also use AI?
Ulukbek: – Not exactly. The extension itself is based on automation, but LoadConnect has already grown into a broader tech platform that brings together different services, data sources, and AI. For example, we integrate with Gmail, FMCSA, and OTR Solutions to automate communication, check brokers, and get information on how reliable they are.
Faruh: – As for AI, our customers receive a lot of emails and documents every day, and normally they have to go through them manually. AI pulls out the relevant data automatically and organizes it for them. That makes it easier for dispatchers to pass information on to drivers, review their history with brokers, and build long-term relationships with them.
– How does that work?
Faruh: – Imagine this: a dispatcher finds a load, the carrier completes it, and the broker pays well. Next time, the dispatcher could reach out again and say, “Hey, we’ve worked together before. If you have a similar load, we’d be happy to take it.” But with so many emails coming in, those contacts usually just get lost.
Ulukbek: – So when a dispatcher is looking for a load on a similar route again, LoadConnect can prompt them: “You’ve worked with this broker before. Give them a call first.”
That way, we want to help carriers build longer-term relationships with brokers instead of losing touch after a single deal.
“Downloads are approaching 20,000”
– What kind of feedback have you had from users?
Ulukbek: – At first, we were surprised that people were paying for the product. We weren’t even completely sure users understood how it worked or what value it could bring them. I started calling customers and asking, “What made you decide to buy our extension?” One of them told me, “LoadConnect saves me time. I used to message brokers manually all day, and by the end of the day even my hands were tired. Now I can do it all with one click.”
Early on, customers were simply happy to have the product. But as it has evolved, their expectations have grown too. Users are suggesting new features more and more often, saying things like, “Guys, you should add this. How come you don’t have that yet?”
– How many users do you have now?
Faruh: – We’re approaching 20,000 downloads. That includes users on paid plans, people in their trial period, and those using the free version.
– Who tends to pay for a subscription more often: dispatchers or trucking companies?
Ulukbek: – Usually, a dispatcher signs up first. Then they tell their colleagues about it, and LoadConnect starts spreading across the company. At some point, a manager gets in touch with us and asks to set up, say, 100 accounts.
Faruh: – We don’t usually go in through the company like a typical B2B SaaS business would. We tried that, but when dispatchers are told from above that they have to use a new tool, the reaction is often negative. They’re basically thinking, “Seriously? I’ve already got enough on my plate, and now I have to learn this too?”
– Tell us about your revenue. What’s your ARR?
Faruh: – Our ARR is now over $500,000, and it’s growing by nearly 20% a year.
– How are you funding the project?
Faruh: – We’ve been bootstrapping from day one, funding the project ourselves. We’ve had opportunities to raise investment, but we’ve often faced the same choice: follow the traditional venture-backed path or keep control of the company.
In the end, we chose the second option. We both came from regular jobs, where someone would give us a task and we’d just get it done. We wanted to do things our own way, and bootstrapping gives us that freedom.
Faruh: – We also have a third shareholder, Canadian trucking company ET Transport. It has been operating since 2005, moving freight across Canada and the US. The company has more than 100 trucks and 200 trailers.
For us, they’re also an important industry partner. The ET Transport team helps us test new features, gives us feedback from a carrier’s perspective, shares its industry expertise, and supports us with marketing and connections in the sector.
– How did you meet, and what made ET Transport decide to invest in LoadConnect?
Ulukbek: – We actually approached them about advertising. ET Transport and its representatives, Ronen Gilkarov and Roman Yakobov, have a huge following in the trucking industry, with more than 500,000 followers across different platforms.
Faruh: – We started out working with them on advertising, but pretty quickly realized there was an opportunity to become partners and grow the product together. In the end, Ronen Gilkarov joined LoadConnect as Chief Marketing Officer.
“80% of our users are based in the US and Canada”
– Where are your users based?
Ulukbek: – Around 80% are in the US and Canada. The remaining 20% are users in Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan who work remotely for overseas companies.
– LoadConnect is a Kyrgyz startup, but you also have a legal entity in Kazakhstan. How did you get involved with the startup ecosystem there?
Faruh: – Our first real step into the international startup scene came through the High Technology Park of the Kyrgyz Republic. We got into the Dive Into Silicon Valley program and traveled to the US.
Once we were in Silicon Valley, we connected with Silkroad Innovation Hub and later got into AlchemistX. Along with the Silicon Valley Residency, the program was part of a joint initiative by Astana Hub and Silkroad Innovation Hub. The local experts are doing genuinely valuable work. They helped us look beyond our local market: through the program, we met some of the strongest teams in the region and started thinking about the scale of the business very differently.
One of the requirements was to have a legal entity registered in Kazakhstan or the AIFC. So we set up LoadConnect Ltd in Astana, and we still have the company there today.
The US is our main market right now, and that’s where we want to focus on our plans first. But we’re still based in Central Asia, and we see opportunities for the product here as well. I think once we reach certain milestones in the US, we’ll start looking at what we can do for our own region.
– How do you plan to grow LoadConnect?
Faruh: – Our immediate goal is for LoadConnect to do more than just help find loads. We want it to plan a truck’s next moves too, picking the next loads and mapping out routes several days ahead. But our ambitions go much further than that. We want to build a strong presence in the US market and turn LoadConnect from a browser extension into a full platform for trucking companies.
Ulukbek: – The next step is a system that doesn’t just make suggestions to the dispatcher, but handles some of the work itself. The user will be able to set the criteria, for example, where they need the load to go from and to, and the system will find suitable options, assess them, contact the broker, and help book the shipment.