Hauler Hero Raises $10M Seed Round to Improve Waste-Management Industry
How an Ex-ServiceTitan Sales Executive Raised $10 Million For His Software Company
Business San Diego delivers in-depth profiles of founders and insights on San Diego's most successful companies, executives, and technologies. Subscribe to make sure you don’t miss the next story.
In December last year, Mark Hoadley, co-founder and CEO of Hauler Hero, a 4-year-old tech startup, announced that his company raised a $10 million seed funding round to revolutionize the waste-management industry.
Before starting his own company, Hoadley spent three and a half years working as a top sales representative for ServiceTitan — which is one of the handful of software companies to successfully debut on Wall Street and go public in recent years.
He recalled facilitating $10 million in annual recurring revenue for ServiceTitan, at a time when the company had about a $20 million run-rate.
“I got to see a lot of how that business was built,” said Hoadley. “I got to sell to progressively large customers. I did the largest deal in the company's history.”
After a three-year run at the tradesperson software company, he was promoted into a director role overseeing its strategic accounts team and reported directly to the chief financial officer.
Fast forward to 2020, he decided to co-found Hauler Hero, with his brother-in-law and Ben Sikma, who has M&A experience in the waste-management industry.
The company has a unique opportunity to deploy a more efficient, less clunky software solution than competitors, according to the co-founders. Since launching, it has partnered with more than 120 residential and commercial customers, growing revenue by 200 percent in 2024.
High-Level Overview
Founded in 2024, Hauler Hero is a software management company for the waste and recycling industry.
Founded in San Diego, it was co-founded by Mark Hoadley and Ben Sikma.
What makes it special? It uses AI and cloud-based technology to help waste haulers improve their operations, increase efficiency and reduce costs.
It serves residential, commercial, government and industrial haulers, including those who serve major institutions like Verizon, Wells Fargo, McDonald's, UPS, PG&E, US Army and Marriott.
Founding Story
Hauler Hero was launched to provide similar software platforms for the waste management industry, which remains underserved from a technology perspective.
In the early days, the duo won over clients using an MVP. They built multiple product lines right out of the gate, which provided them a higher probability of getting to yes.
“From day one, there's always been this chicken and egg problem — for example, you need customers to get funding; you need funding to create a product.
Our MVP was a prototype that was a clickable design, which allowed us to demonstrate what the experience would be like to use Hauler Hero.
That was enough to generate excitement and get our first few customers to take a chance on us,” said Hoadley.
All-in-One Software Platform
Hauler Hero’s platform works with waste-management companies on everything from route planning and management to billing and more.
Its software also taps AI to help automate some of these tasks like invoicing and route management to find inefficiencies and help companies save money.
The startup reportedly saves company’s roughly “14 hours per week by office employees” while also driving improvements in cash collection, customer churn and client satisfaction.
As of today, it serves residential, commercial, government and industrial clients including Verizon, Wells Fargo, McDonald's, UPS, PG&E, US Army and Marriott.
“They’re saving us countless hours and dollars per week on unnecessary work from separate software and in-house custom reporting. We’re excited to see what they roll out next,” said Joe Parmenter, owner of Greenleaf Recycling.
“Hauler Hero is the first software that has taken the time to listen, understand the pain points and challenges that my team and I face daily, always working to construct a software that is making our lives easier.”
Thoughts on San Diego
Formerly living in the Los Angeles area, Hoadley moved to San Diego during the middle of the pandemic, mainly to be closer to his co-founder Ben Sikma.
Hauler Hero has an office presence in Mission Valley and has 23 employees, with about half of them working in the San Diego region.
“I've been in Southern California for a decade now. San Diego is a smaller Metro than LA, but from a concentration of tech talent, it’s probably denser than LA.
There’s great companies here — Intuit has had a presence for many years. You got Platform Science, Lyt, and Housecall Pro.
There was no downside to being in San Diego at all relative to any Metro, because any metro was equivalent, since there were basically no in person meetings happening for that period of 2020 to 2021,” said Hoadley.
Looking Ahead
Hauler Hero plans to use the funds to hire more engineers and salespeople and to continue working on product development.
A relatively crowded industry, other legacy software companies, including Capterra, WasteWorks, and cieTrade, among others.
Current investors on its cap table include I2BF Ventures, K5 Global and Somersault Ventures, among others. It has kept somewhat quiet about their capital raise until late last year, however it closed their seed round back in May 2024.
“There could possibly be another fundraising that we do in the next six months,” said Hoadley. “We haven't decided when we want to do that. We do have some optionality right now, which is a great position to be in.”
Love to see more businesses taking care of waste management making our planet a more sustainable place!