It was a lot of fun to welcome Lori Torres to Accelerate OC to share her amazing journey with Parcel Pending, a company she founded in 2013.  She was the founding CEO and remains in the role today, and I could hardly imagine anyone else ever replacing her!

Lori grew the company to over 150 people and thousands of customers around North America. She sold the company in January of this year to Neopost, a global company based in Paris.  Prior to Parcel Pending she was an executive at The Irvine Company, where she oversaw a huge apartment portfolio.  Lori had a very successful career in commercial real estate before becoming an entrepreneur.

Lori also has a great story in that she raised a significant amount of her early investment from a group of local investors, particularly folks in Tech Coast Angels here.  They were greatly rewarded when she sold the company!  Lori and Parcel Pending are a great example of a local entrepreneur and local investors working together to build a great company and achieve a great outcome.  And hopefully they’re now reinvesting here in Orange County in the next generation of entrepreneurs. 

Lori learned a ton through this process, as she’s shared with me, and she also had a lot of help along the way, which she talked about during our conversation.  She’s also continued to grow Parcel Pending post-acquisition, so we talked a bit about life inside a bigger company after an acquisition.

She’s a great example of a world-class leader here in our community, accelerating things in her industry, her business and in Orange County.