The news: Booster Fuels raised $125 million to fuel growth of its mobile gas service used by fleet operators including Amazon, UPS, Imperfect Foods, and others.
The details: Founded in 2015, Booster got its start by partnering with employers to fuel up employee vehicles in private corporate parking lots. Now it is also fueling up more than 500 fleets for major logistics carriers and their contractors, delivering fuel directly to their vehicles. It also has a consumer business. Booster offers delivery of renewable diesel and also last year rolled out on-demand electric vehicle charging. Its revenue grew 125% year-over-year in Q1, and the company employs more than 400 people.
The downturn: Booster CEO Frank Mycroft said the company is not seeing any impact from a potential recession and ongoing economic uncertainty. He said the average customer sees 4-to-8% reduction in fuel consumption with Booster — “which is a big deal right now.”
“By eliminating the need for physical fuel cards, fuel theft gets virtually eliminated by Booster, which is a large part of this savings and increasingly a benefit customers are prioritizing,” Mycroft said. “We also eliminate unnecessary trips which further conserves fuel.”
He added: “Increased conventional fuel prices and international energy supply concerns also helped us partner with more customers to convert to 100% renewables, more locally produced with a small fraction the carbon intensity.”
The investors: Rose Park Advisors led the round, which included Chaac Ventures, Equinor Ventures, Mitsubishi Corporation and Thayer Ventures. The company has Seattle-area backers including Madrona Venture Group, Maveron, and Cercano Management (previously known as Vulcan Capital). Vancouver, B.C.-based Version One Ventures is also an investor.
Matt McIlwain, managing director at Madrona, wrote a blog post that detailed how Booster ran into trouble when the pandemic hit, as thousands of customer vehicle stopped leaving their homes. “The company’s initial value proposition evaporated nearly overnight,” he wrote. But then the following e-commerce boom, also caused by the pandemic, opened up an opportunity for Booster to fuel up delivery fleets.
The people: Mycroft, a former Boeing engineer, founded the startup in Seattle before relocating it to the Bay Area. Mycroft previously spent three years at Planetary Resources as vice president of strategy before starting Booster with Diego Netto and Tyler Raugh, who left in March.
“Given the extraordinary growth of the ‘delivery-of-everything’ economy, customers need reliable solutions that enable them to become more carbon-efficient today without compromising on cost or flexibility,” Mycroft said in a statement.
