Freight-Exchange Monetisation Board Adviser

The mandate

The exchange has achieved useful density on several European lanes, yet its economics still rely on transaction take-rate experiments that cause large shippers to route around the venue and smaller carriers to suspect preferential treatment. The board’s standing question is which scarce capabilities—verified capacity, workflow certainty, settlement, forecasting or benchmark intelligence—customers will fund without eroding the participation that makes the market valuable.

The adviser will join a monthly chair-led review, hold one working session each month with product and commercial leaders and attend two in-person Copenhagen strategy sessions. The cadence will test price architecture, packaging hypotheses, cross-side subsidy logic, data rights, service-level promises and the governance protections needed when anchor participants seek commercial exceptions. Short written challenges will precede each board discussion.

The appointment runs for eight months. Continuation beyond that term requires a new strategy-committee minute after management has tested at least three monetisation propositions and shown their effect on lane liquidity, match quality and participant concentration. The role is deliberately finite: its endpoint is a board-ready economic thesis and a repeatable method for rejecting attractive revenue that would damage the exchange.

The adviser has no line authority and assumes no executive responsibility for pricing, product releases, customer negotiation, sales targets or market operations. Management owns experiments and implementation; the board retains approval of material fee changes, data products and participant rules. Advice must expose confidence levels and dissent rather than becoming a shadow sign-off that allows executives to avoid accountable choices.

Conflicts must be declared before reviewing lane, participant or pricing material, including work for freight brokers, carriers, shippers, exchanges, visibility platforms and logistics investors. The adviser will not use participant-level data outside the engagement, introduce vendors for compensation or advise a competing freight venue during the term. Recusal protocols apply where a prior relationship could distort perceived neutrality.

Why the board wants this voice

Management’s revenue debate has polarised between increasing the take rate and postponing monetisation until scale arrives, leaving differentiated service value largely unexamined. Participant councils also interpret every fee through a history of broker opacity and unequal bargaining power. The board wants a platform economist who understands physical freight behaviour to challenge both simplistic choices while protecting the exchange’s claim to neutrality.

What you will own

• Test the causal link between each proposed paid capability and measurable shipper, carrier or network value.
• Challenge take-rate, subscription, assurance, workflow and data-product economics across dense and immature freight lanes.
• Examine cross-side subsidies, free-rider behaviour, multi-homing and off-platform leakage before supporting any package recommendation.
• Review whether participant rules, ranking logic and commercial exceptions preserve credible neutrality for smaller carriers and shippers.
• Define guardrails for benchmark products, derived data, consent, anonymity, contribution rights and customer-specific intelligence.
• Supply the strategy committee with concise challenge memoranda, disconfirming evidence and decisions that cannot safely be deferred.
• Leave a monetisation test scorecard linking willingness to pay, liquidity, match quality, concentration and trust indicators.

Candidate qualifications

• Has advised or led monetisation for a two-sided B2B marketplace where transaction liquidity mattered more than registered-user growth.
• Understands tendering, spot freight, carrier economics, lane imbalance, service failure and why logistics participants route off-platform.
• Has designed subscriptions, transaction fees, premium assurance or data products without covertly privileging the largest market participants.
• Can interrogate willingness-to-pay research, experiment design and cohort economics rather than accepting sales anecdotes as market proof.
• Has handled commercially sensitive participant data under board-level conflict, confidentiality and recusal expectations across competing networks.
• Communicates dissent in short decision papers that distinguish reversible tests from choices capable of damaging marketplace trust.

Non-negotiables

• Can maintain the monthly remote cadence and attend both scheduled Copenhagen strategy sessions during the eight-month term.
• Will disclose mandates, investments and close relationships across shipping, brokerage, freight software and marketplace businesses.
• Brings marketplace monetisation evidence tied to liquidity and trust; generic SaaS pricing experience alone is insufficient.
• Will not accept referral fees, success commissions or any compensation from prospective platform partners or data suppliers.

1. 49 words maximum. Describe a marketplace fee that increased revenue while weakening the market it was meant to monetise.
2. 49 words maximum. Which indicator would warn you that a premium freight workflow is damaging lane liquidity?
3. 49 words maximum. How would you challenge an anchor carrier’s request for preferential economics without dismissing its contribution?