535: Experience A New Industry Standard In The Yard, with Terminal Industries
Darin Brannan is the CEO of Terminal Industries and a repeat founder with a 25-year track record in technology. He began his career as a VC in Silicon Valley before transitioning to entrepreneurship, where he focuses on disrupting large, underserved industries with novel technology. Brannan's strategy involves building AI-native, verticalized companies that solve the hardest problems, a lesson learned from advising and investing in over 80 startups. He explains how Terminal Industries was co-created with industry leaders to address the critical issue of "yard blindness," developing a Yard Operating System that provides end-to-end visibility and automation. His approach is rooted in a systems engineering mindset, a perspective he gained from his early interest in aeronautics.
Today I’m joined by Terminal Industries, a different kind of logistics technology company that exists to create a new industry standard in yard operations.
Terminal is the industry’s only Yard Operating System – built to automate, built for control, built to scale, built for you.
Today, Darin Brannan, CEO at Terminal Industries, joins me to talk all about Terminal and what they do; the difference between a yard operating system and a yard management system; tackling the biggest yard challenges with a single solution for maximum throughput; and reinventing the future of logistics.
Guest bio:
Darin Brannan is CEO of Terminal Industries, the first AI-native Yard Operating System backed by global logistics leaders, that leverages computer vision and AI to provide a scalable, subscription-based solution that automates and optimizes yard operations for enterprise and mid-market global supply chains. Darin is a proven founder-operator and repeat CEO with a 25+ year track record scaling SaaS and infrastructure platforms from zero to category leadership, resulting in successful IPOs and multi-billion-dollar outcomes. He has raised $1.25B in capital, led 35+ acquisitions, and built three breakout companies: Verio (IPO at $1B, acquired for $6.2B; also launched VIAnet, with a carve-out IPO at $3.2B), Web.com (IPO at $2B), and ClearDATA (healthcare cloud category leader). Earlier, he spent nearly a decade in leading Silicon Valley VC firms – Norwest Venture Partners and Burr, Egan, Deleage & Co.; and has since advised and led buy-and-build strategies for PE platforms including Blackstone, Tritium, and Blue Sea Capital. He also enjoys investing/advising in high-growth companies at the intersection of AI, healthtech, logistics, and vertical SaaS—shaping the future of automation and intelligent systems. He holds a B.S. from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical Univ. and an MBA in Int’l. Studies (Paris) from UofH.
An introduction to Darin, his background, the recipe for business success that led to the founding of Terminal, and why Top Gun might just have inspired his University degree.
What Darin has learned from advising and investing in companies at the intersection of AI, logistics, and vertical SaaS, and the power of being AI native.
The big inhibitors to success in the yard logistics market, why SaaS doesn’t work, and an overview of Terminal Industries – who they are, what they do, and how they help their customers.
Why Terminal is ‘not a typical start-up,’ and why a commitment to co-creation with industry sets them apart.
The ideal customer for Terminal Industries.
The biggest challenges in yards right now, and how the issue of yard blindness and fragmentation is creating big problems downstream.
How Terminal reinvented a customer’s yard logistics and reduced check-in time from 14 minutes to 34 seconds, which in turn had a transformative downstream effect in the warehouse, and a closer look at the modular, configurable, AI-native yard operating system that makes it possible.
The difference between a Yard Operating System and a Yard Management System, and why the Yard Operating System is the future of logistics.
A case study detailing how Terminal helped a big customer, that was losing 15% of their gate and yard capacity leading to big costs and downstream impacts, improve throughput and accuracy, boost gate capacity, reduce costs and improve employee experience, delivering three to six times ROI within 12 months.
Terminal’s focus for 2026, and the next big transformation they’re driving for yard logistics in the future.
