The $3.8 Billion Startup That Vanished in Three Days | The Convoy Story

In 2022, Convoy was worth $3.8 billion. Backed by Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates and Bono, the Seattle startup promised to fix trucking with an app — the "Uber for trucks." In October 2023, it was gone. Almost overnight. Hundreds of employees were laid off without severance. Truckers were left with unpaid loads. And one of the most hyped startups in America became a cautionary tale about what happens when a company has too much money. This is the story of Convoy: the idea, the rocket ride, the cracks, and the three days in October that ended it all. CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold Open 0:45 Introduction 1:54 Chapter 1: The Idea (2015) 4:14 Chapter 2: The Rocket (2016–2022) 7:10 Chapter 3: The People on the Road 9:29 Chapter 4: The Cracks (2022–2023) 12:29 Chapter 5: Three Days in October 15:13 Chapter 6: The Goodbye 17:38 Chapter 7: After the Storm 20:23 The Lesson Which company should Billion Dollar Ghosts cover next? Tell me in the comments. Sources: FreightWaves, GeekWire, The Seattle Times, CNBC, Trucking Dive, Overdrive, The Verge and court records. Some scenes are dramatized reconstructions and are marked as such in the video. Narration: AI voice (ElevenLabs). Runtime: 22 minutes. Image credits below. Captions are also burned into the video. IMAGE CREDITS (Wikimedia Commons, CC licenses; full list with links available on request): Sixflashphoto (CC BY-SA 4.0) SounderBruce (CC BY-SA 4.0) Diego Delso (CC BY-SA 4.0) SounderBruce from Seattle, United States (CC BY-SA 2.0) Sea Cow (CC BY-SA 4.0) Dougtone (CC BY-SA 2.0) Joe Mabel (CC BY-SA 3.0, CC BY-SA 4.0) Joël van der Loo (CC BY-SA 4.0) Dllu (CC BY-SA 4.0) Cacophony (CC BY-SA 3.0) Daniel Schwen (CC BY-SA 4.0) High Contrast (CC BY 3.0 de) Steve Groom (CC BY-SA 4.0) Quintin Soloviev (CC BY 4.0) Pierre André Leclercq (CC BY-SA 4.0) bluesbby from Mountain View, USA (CC BY 2.0) mjdemay (CC BY-SA 3.0) Kidfly182 (CC BY 4.0) Mike Mozart from Funny YouTube, USA (CC BY 2.0) joiseyshowaa from Freehold, NJ, USA (CC BY-SA 2.0) Hannes Grobe (CC BY-SA 4.0) DanTD (CC BY-SA 4.0) McGhiever (CC BY-SA 4.0) Matthew.kowal (CC BY-SA 4.0) Coolcaesar (CC BY-SA 4.0) Atomic Taco (CC BY-SA 2.0) Bernie Ongewe (CC BY-SA 4.0) 4300streetcar (CC BY 4.0) Marcin Wichary from San Francisco, U.S.A. (CC BY 2.0) CGP Grey (CC BY 2.0) Famartin (CC BY-SA 4.0) Seattle City Council from Seattle (CC BY 2.0) Salesforce. (CC BY-SA 2.0) World Economic Forum (CC BY 3.0) Christopher Michel (CC BY-SA 4.0) The Presidential Office of Ukraine. (CC BY 4.0) Robert Scoble from Half Moon Bay, USA (CC BY 2.0) Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0) Marc Merlin (CC BY-SA 4.0) Collision Conf (CC BY 2.0) Stock video: Pixabay (Pixabay Content License). Public-domain/CC0 images not listed. Narration: ElevenLabs AI voice. #Convoy #StartupFailure #BusinessDocumentary