Baltimore Entrepreneur Marcus Whitfield Raises $22 Million for Port Logistics Startup

Marcus Whitfield's Baltimore-based logistics technology startup, HarborFlow, closed a $22 million Series B funding round this week, capital the company plans to use to expand software that helps trucking companies schedule pickups at the Port of Baltimore more efficiently.

Whitfield founded HarborFlow six years ago after spending a decade working in operations for a regional trucking company, where he grew frustrated with the manual phone-based scheduling system used to book container pickup appointments at the port. The company's software now handles scheduling for roughly 40 percent of container traffic moving through Baltimore's marine terminals.

"Truckers were burning entire days sitting in line because nobody had built a real scheduling system for this port," Whitfield said. "We built HarborFlow because I lived that problem before I ever thought about it as a business."

The Series B round was led by a Washington-based growth equity firm, with participation from two existing investors who backed the company's earlier seed round. Whitfield said the funding will support expanding HarborFlow's platform to ports in Virginia and the Carolinas, markets the company has fielded inbound requests from for several years.

HarborFlow currently employs 65 people at its Baltimore headquarters near the Inner Harbor, and Whitfield said the company plans to add roughly 30 engineering and sales positions over the next year as it expands beyond Maryland. The company has not yet turned a full-year profit but Whitfield said it reached positive cash flow in individual months over the past year.