About Mamora

Built by people who
actually ran a zone.

Mamora was started in 2022 by trade-compliance operators and software engineers who were tired of watching multi-billion-dollar supply chains run on tools designed when fax was still a verb. We're rebuilding the FTZ category — module by module — for the era we actually live in.

The story

It started with one frustrated trade-compliance director.

In 2021, our co-founder was running trade compliance for a mid-cap retailer. They had four FTZ locations, $300M in annual imports, and a software stack that looked like a museum: a green-screen ERP module from 1998, a Windows desktop app that occasionally crashed when filing 7501s, and a shared Excel sheet that the team called "the Bible" — because no one was allowed to question it.

Every quarter, the team spent ten days reconciling the ERP against the FTZ system. Every audit, they spent three weeks pulling documentation. Every tariff change, they spent an afternoon manually re-pricing. And every CFO conversation about "FTZ savings" was a guess, padded with the right number of qualifiers to look defensible.

It wasn't that the work was hard. It was that the tools were broken. After a year of pitching internally for a replacement and being told "the existing system works fine," our co-founder left, called the smartest infrastructure engineer they knew, and started building.

Mamora is the platform we wished we'd had — and that nobody else was building.

What we believe

Five principles. No exceptions.

01

Compliance is operations, not software.

An FTZ isn't a tool — it's a way of running a warehouse. We treat the software as the substrate, and our customers as the operators. Our job is to make the substrate so good it disappears.

02

Pricing should track value.

If we don't save you 10x our fee, we shouldn't be your vendor. We underwrite every deal against that bar. We turn down opportunities that don't meet it.

03

Audit-readiness is non-negotiable.

Every event, every adjustment, every transmission to ACE is timestamped, signed, and exportable. Not because we believe in paperwork, but because if a customer's program is challenged, we want them to be the most prepared person in the room.

04

Build for the operator, not the buyer.

A lot of enterprise SaaS gets sold by impressing the CIO and abandoned by the people who actually use it. We optimize for the trade compliance manager who logs in every day, not the procurement officer who logs in once.

05

Say the inconvenient thing.

If we think your zone doesn't justify an upgrade, we'll tell you. If a competitor would serve you better, we'll say so. The fastest way to lose trust is to pitch when you should be advising. We don't do that.

06

Customs is a partnership.

CBP isn't the adversary. They have a job to do, just like we do. The healthiest FTZ programs treat their port director and audit team as partners. We build our software the same way.

The team

The people behind the platform.

A mix of trade compliance veterans, customs brokers, ex-WMS engineers, and software people who have learned more about HTS codes than any of us anticipated.

EM
Elena Marchetti
Co-founder & CEO

15 years in trade compliance. Previously Director of Customs Operations at a Fortune 500 retailer. Licensed customs broker.

DK
David Kwan
Co-founder & CTO

Built infrastructure at two unicorns before this. Believes deeply that "boring software" is the highest compliment a system can earn.

RP
Renee Patel
VP Compliance

Former CBP Senior Officer, 11 years. The person who tells our customers what auditors are actually looking for.

TS
Thomas Sokolov
VP Engineering

Spent eight years at a major WMS vendor watching FTZ modules get added as afterthoughts. Came here to do it properly.

JM
Jasmine Moreau
Head of Customer Success

Onboarded 40+ FTZs in three years. Knows every Grantee on the Eastern seaboard by first name.

CV
Carlos Vega
Head of Solutions

12 years implementing trade software across retail, automotive, and pharma. Speaks fluent ERP.

SH
Sarah Hoffmann
Head of Trade Policy

Former trade attorney. Tracks USTR and OFAC so our customers don't have to.

YN
Yuki Nakamura
Principal Engineer

Built the reconciliation engine. Once found a $40k duty rounding error by reading EDI logs at midnight.

Backed by

Investors who actually understand supply chains.

Sequoia a16z Founders Fund Flexport (strategic)

Series A · $34M · 2024 · plus operator angels from Flexport, project44, and Bringg.

Where we are

Three offices, near every major port.

HEADQUARTERS

Charleston, SC

221 Meeting Street, Suite 400
Charleston, SC 29401

Engineering, compliance, and customer success.

WEST COAST

Long Beach, CA

100 W Broadway, Floor 18
Long Beach, CA 90802

West coast customer success and trade policy.

EAST COAST

Newark, NJ

744 Broad Street, Floor 22
Newark, NJ 07102

Sales, partnerships, and broker relations.

Come build with us.

We're hiring engineers, trade compliance specialists, and customer success leads. If broken legacy software annoys you as much as it annoys us, talk to us.

See open roles → Get in touch