Chicago Entrepreneur Marcus Donnelly Raises $20 Million for Logistics Startup

Marcus Donnelly's Chicago-based logistics technology startup, RailPoint, closed a $20 million Series B funding round this week, capital the company plans to use to expand software that helps trucking companies coordinate intermodal freight transfers at Chicago's rail yards more efficiently.

Donnelly founded RailPoint seven years ago after spending a decade working in operations for a regional trucking company, where he grew frustrated with the manual phone-based coordination system used to schedule container pickups at Chicago's intermodal rail terminals, among the busiest in the country. The company's software now handles scheduling for a significant share of container traffic moving through the region.

"Truckers were burning entire days sitting in line because nobody had built a real coordination system for these rail yards," Donnelly said. "We built RailPoint because I lived that problem before I ever thought about it as a business."

The Series B round was led by a Chicago-based growth equity firm, with participation from two existing investors who backed the company's earlier seed round. Donnelly said the funding will support expanding RailPoint's platform to intermodal terminals in Ohio and Missouri, markets the company has fielded inbound requests from for several years.

RailPoint currently employs 60 people at its Chicago headquarters near the Loop, and Donnelly said the company plans to add roughly 25 engineering and sales positions over the next year as it expands beyond Illinois. The company has not yet turned a full-year profit but Donnelly said it reached positive cash flow in individual months over the past year.