When goods enter the United States, they must be declared to US Customs so that they can charge the importer appropriate taxes. This applies to everything from consumers ordering clothing from overseas-based brands to all items on a huge container ship.
When it comes to commercial imports, filling out the required documents is manual and boring. Many large importers either build their own internal methods or outsource customs to customs brokers. DocunLock wants to automate processes.
DocunLock is a platform used by customs brokers to streamline the filling of necessary documents that importers need. DocunLock is integrated into your custom broker emails and automatically forwards related emails and documents to DocunLock. The platform uses AI to aggregate and fill out these forms of unstructured data that it requires. Customs brokers take it from there.
“We flag them certain important details and really make their lives easier and more efficient,” said Sepehr Fakour, co-founder of Docunlock. “They use their domain knowledge to make sure everything is done according to customs regulations, make sure everything is classified correctly, and not spend manually copying and pasting. You can focus on checking. 8 hours a day.”
Fakour co-founder Ned Cartmell told TechCrunch he experienced the issue firsthand while working at Flexport. So he ended up building a valid software that they threw, and having people try to fix it manually and look for an external solution.
“In the end, we significantly improved the way we worked at Flexport, but we didn't get close to eliminating it in the way we thought we could,” Cartmell said. “That's why I was hooked on the problem.”
When advances in AI began to unfold in 2022, Cartmell and Fakour realized the opportunity. They met with many customs brokers to see if their process experience lined up with Flexport's Cartmell. They discovered it was overwhelming.
“Even the first one, like the broker sitting across from us on a zoom call grabs us and says, 'Don't leave us without doing anything'.” Fakur said. “It seemed like a pretty strong signal for verification.”
DocunLock was founded in 2023 and began with an introductory version of the product. The prototype was enough to sign customers, so they started building it further. The company has been growing strong ever since. DocunLock refused to share details about the company's customer base, but said it had a 100% retention rate and had significant growth through word of mouth.
The company recently raised $3 million in seed funding from a mixture of VCs, including GTMFund and Barrel Ventures. It also added angel investors and early Flexport employees, including Nicolas Dessaighe and Julien Lemoine, co-founders of former Fakour employers Algolia.
In 2024, $4.1 trillion worth of goods were imported exclusively to the United States. Fakour said the customs broker market is vast and it's a mix of thousands of American companies, ranging from mamas and pop shops to large organizations. Brokers from other countries. This will make DocunLock a substantial, scattered market for it to tackle.
DocunLock hopes that its platform can automate the boring aspects of customs brokers' work, and that it will allow it to focus on using domain expertise to navigate this ever-changing field. Masu.
“It's something people really don't know,” Cartmel said of the customs process. “And you know, for good reason. It's happening in the background, but it touches everything. Every time something enters or leaves the country, this process is It happens.”