In this episode, Sunny Ray sits down with Ryan Kaliski, co-founder of WareMatch, a marketplace helping third-party logistics (3PL) operators market their warehouse facilities and connect with brands, shippers, and importers. Ryan explains how outdated, spreadsheet-driven quoting processes create massive inefficiencies across the logistics industry, and how WareMatch's bidding platform and scope builder streamline the entire discovery and quoting workflow. He traces his path from a finance degree at McGill and a brief investment banking stint, through starting a medical supply distribution company during COVID (after being one of the first COVID cases in Quebec), to identifying the warehousing bottleneck that inspired WareMatch. Ryan shares how he teamed up with childhood friend and co-founder Ben, recruited technical co-founder Rahul after interviewing fifty engineers, and raised two million dollars in funding shortly after launching in January 2025. The conversation covers building trust with investors, attracting global capital to a Montreal based startup, and why logistics is a truly global, underappreciated industry ripe for digital transformation.
WareMatch's founder explains how his Zillow style marketplace is fixing the broken, spreadsheet driven world of 3PL warehouse quoting.
What does WareMatch do, at a high level?
WareMatch is a marketplace where 3PL operators dynamically market their facilities, and where brands, shippers, importers, or other 3PLs can find and connect with them. We have a bidding platform plus digital marketing tools for 3PLs, since their marketing is pretty archaic. If people know what a facility actually offers, it streamlines the whole quoting process. We're becoming like the Facebook for the space, letting 3PLs connect with peers and send each other deals or scopes.
Were you always entrepreneurial as a kid, tinkering with computers?
No, not at all. I was studious, zero entrepreneurial in university. I had a 4.0 GPA at McGill in finance and did five internships. I couldn't sell ice to an Eskimo, probably. I went into investment banking and hated being told to work at 11pm on a Friday, so I wanted to try something entrepreneurial instead.
Running a distribution company in your early 20s is no joke. What was the hardest part?
I learned a lot of valuable lessons young. You really only learn lessons if you pay for them. I was naive in due diligence like any young 20 year old, made mistakes, and lost significant money at times, dealing with scammers and warehousing issues. But messing up when it costs you means you won't repeat that mistake, and I matured tremendously because I had to.
Was there a moment you realized you needed to build something bigger than the distribution business?
Freight pricing was commoditized with market prices and bidding software, but warehousing was always a bottleneck. Finding a 3PL was easy through matchmakers and brokers, but I never knew if I was dealing with the best fit, and none of them helped with the actual quoting process. When I asked other big companies for warehouse recommendations, nobody gave the same answer, which told me there was a real gap to fill.
When did it click that this was a massive problem worth solving, and how did you and Ben decide to take the leap?
There was never one single moment, it was all heart and feedback. Me and Ben sat down, designed a wireframe, and interviewed fifty people to find an engineer. I'd flown eighty flights in 2022 visiting warehouses and always asked managers how they received quotes, they'd say email and Excel. We spoke to hundreds of 3PLs, took their feedback, rebuilt constantly, and the product kept improving.
How did you and Ben connect?
Me and Ben have been best friends since growing up, we were hockey linemates and have known each other forever. We each started our own companies after university that were doing okay but weren't scalable. I'd had the WareMatch idea for two years and wanted a partner, so I had Ben source 3PLs for my medical supply deals to show him the issue firsthand, and we just got to work.
How did you convince a technical co-founder to bet on warehousing?
To this day I don't know why Rahul joined us. He's from India, went to university in Edmonton. Me and Ben interviewed fifty people over two months, including PhDs from big universities, but Rahul had the heart. He turned down a 170 grand job offer. I think he saw something in us as people and just believed we'd succeed, and it all started working out from there.
WareMatch launched in January 2025 and raised two million dollars almost immediately. How did fundraising happen so fast for a first time founder?
Honestly it was easy because we're solving a prominent, easy to see global need that nobody was addressing well. Our product wasn't great in January, we only had 25 buildings, but investors believed in the team, in me, Ben, and Rahul. Some investors were people I'd done business with before who trusted me, and trust is huge in getting people to back you.
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