The View from the Office. 

I met up with Jack Kennedy, the founder and CEO of Platform Science, at the Omni Berkshire Place, a hotel in Manhattan for breakfast. 

I had scrambled eggs, bacon and toast. Jack had the healthier option of oatmeal and berries. The hotel had installed ping pong tables in the lobby and restaurant to mark the occasion of the U.S. Open Tennis tournament. 

Jack was in town from San Diego. We met through a mutual friend, Paul Traub, who assured me that I would be fascinated by his personal and professional story which led to his founding of Platform Science in 2015. As always, Paul didn’t disappoint. 

Jack graduated from the Naval Academy and served in the Navy in the late 1980s on E-2 Hawkeyes, a carrier-based airborne early warning and command and control aircraft. He participated in the first Gulf War as a naval flight officer. 

Afterward, he went to Harvard Business School and did a stint in venture capital before working on start ups that led him to a career in digital media and technology. 

He joined Fox in 2006 as the Senior Vice President of Corporate Development and played a key role in creating Hulu, a groundbreaking joint venture with NBC Universal that transformed digital entertainment and TV consumption. 

Jack said the creation of Hulu was significant because media companies cooperated on the streaming platform in the face of emerging competition from a number of digital properties, including YouTube, which was acquired by Google for $1.65 billion.

Almost a decade later he would team up with Jake Fields to form Platform Science, which helps trucking fleets streamline logistics operations, from back-office tools to in-cab apps. 

Specifically, the company provides software solutions that connect trucking fleets with the tools to develop, deploy, and manage mobile devices and applications on commercial vehicles.

Jack says the trucking industry is being disrupted by the combination of changes in manufacturing processes and the proliferation of technology aimed at driving enormous efficiencies for the big fleets. 

He notes that there is a huge volume of information to connect and an enormous number of tasks that need to be coordinated for the industry to meet its true potential. 

But he says it’s coming fast, because there is a lot of innovation happening under the hood. 

You can connect with Jack on LinkedIn or DM me for a warm introduction.