Laura Behrens Wu, the co-founder and CEO of Shippo. Listen as Laura talks about how a laundry list of shipping obstacles with her previous e-commerce store birthed the idea for Shippo.
Famous Five:
Favorite Book? – The Hard Things About Hard Things What CEO do you follow? – Patrick Collison Favorite online tool? — Slack Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— “I wish” If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? – “Trust that things will turn out right”
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:45 – Nathan introduces Laura to the show 02:13 – E-commerce business Laura had 02:27 – Started at Shopify 02:40 – Sourcing unique items from NGO 03:07 – Shipping problem 03:32 – Revenue with the e-commerce business 03:50 – Laura was 21 when she started her business 04:13 – Financing with Shippo 04:17 – Drop shipping 05:08 – Typical shipping pricing 05:30 – Shippo shipping rates 05:58 – Volume metric 06:07 – Doing millions of packages a month 06:30 – Negotiation with shipping providers 06:44 – Based on projected volumes 07:00 – Shippo is a pay-as-you-go; not SaaS 07:20 – Sample price per package shipped 07:30 – What if I’m shipping a 10 lbs. dumbbell? 07:44 – “We only provide the software” 08:06 – How Shippo works in an e-commerce website 08:10 – Will compare different shipping providers 08:30 – Not a standard shipping rate 08:47 – How the shipping providers get the package from the seller 09:07 – Why clients use Shippo’s service 09:37 – Shipping providers are not tech company 09:55 – Number of unique customers 10:12 – Average shipping volume per month 10:29 – Memebox 11:10 – Nathan’s proposed deal for Shippo and Memebox 11:54 – They raised $9M in 2014 12:20 – Team size 12:50 – Use of the extra money 13:23 – Minimum monthly revenue 13:33 – Upselling 13:50 – Shipping insurance 14:11 – Tracking as a product 15:28 – Bigger revenue stream 15:37 – $ 7 million in series A round, March 2016 16:00 – How to keep the balance when you have a big account 16:38 – Travel expenses last month 17:25 – Will you sell the business for $ 47 million? 17:45 – Ideal exit assuming there’s a good fit 18:03 – Built an app on top of Shopify 18:11 – Connect with Laura through her Twitter, LinkedIn and email 20:00 - The Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Keep your customers updated and excited. Spend money on the right things and appreciate what you have. Don’t get upset on your first try – everything falls into place given patience and time.
Resources Mentioned:
Toptal – Nathan found his development team using Toptal for his new business Send Later. He was able to keep 100% equity and didn’t have to hire a co-founder due to quality of Toptal developers. Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible. Freshbooks – The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts. Leadpages – The drag and drop tool Nathan uses to quickly create his webinar landing pages which convert at 35%+ Audible – Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5 hour drive) to listen to audio books. @LauraBehrensWu – Laura’s Twitter handle LinkedIn – Laura’s LinkedIn account laura@goshippo.com – Laura’s email address Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives
