After being led by its founder for nearly a decade, Plano-based PICKUP has a new top exec at the helm.
The last-mile delivery startup, which focuses on serving retail and commercial clients, has named Brian Kava, who joined the company in September of last year, as its new CEO.
“I look forward to building upon this foundation to create a growth strategy for PICKUP that is organized, sustainable and adaptable,” Kava said in a statement.
Kava started at PICKUP as the company’s chief revenue officer. Before that, he served as president of Acosta Sales & Marketing’s integrated marketing division Mosaic. He takes over from Brenda Stoner, who founded the company and has led it since 2014.
Stoner, who built PICKUP into a powerhouse delivery service for heavy items, will focus on what’s next in innovation for the last-mile startup.
Focusing on three key areas
In the new leadership role, Kava is planning to focus on three areas. One involves allocating resources to enhance delivery support. Another involves creating “enhanced education modules” for its independent delivery contractors, called Good Guys. The last involves continuing to grow the company. PICKUP said it’s planning to double the size of its more than 200-person team, after adding more than 100 employees over the past year. The expanded worker base will help support the company as it grows its operations beyond the 80 U.S. markets it currently serves.
“His expertise and experience in transforming technology strategies and unlocking future growth opportunities make him a natural fit as CEO, and I’m confident he will play a critical role in helping PICKUP reach the next phase of the company’s trajectory,” Stoner said in a statement.
Fueled by $15M Series B funding round
PICKUP’s growth is being fueled by a $15 million Series B funding round led by Arkansas-based NewRoad Capital Partners, which it landed last March. That funding brought its total to more than $30 million, and included previous backers TDF Ventures, Noro-Moseley Partners, and Florida Funders. At the time, PICKUP said it had nearly doubled its number of customers from 2020, something it attributed to the rollout of its “buy online, delivery from store” solution, PICKUP Enterprise. Last year, Stoner also told the Dallas Business Journal that PICKUP was expecting to approximately triple its revenue from 2020.
Kava’s hiring and appointment as CEO comes amid other C-suite level changes at PICKUP over the past six months. Shortly before he joined the company, PICKUP brought on former GameStop Director of Global Security, Architecture, and Engineering Tim Delgado as its new chief information security officer and former defi SOLUTIONS CTO Jason Zubrick, who has also held leadership roles at GameStop, to a similar role at PICKUP.
Quincy Preston contributed to this report.
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