Zander Adell, co-founder and CEO of Doorman. Zander’s aiming to solve the frustrating problem of finding a note on your door, instead of your Amazon or FedEx package. He left his job as technical director at Pixar to go to business school, and wound up solving one of the stickiest problems in e-commerce. Listen as Zander and Nathan talk logistics, changing a business ecosystem, and dreaming big.
Famous 5
Favorite Book? – Good to Great
What CEO do you follow? — Jeff Bezos
What is your favorite online tool? — Slack
Do you get 8 hours of sleep?— Yes
If you could let your 20 year old self know one thing, what would it be? — To focus on the big dream, not the little pieces along the way
Time Stamped Show Notes:
01:26 – Nathan’s introduction
02:00 – Welcoming Zander to the show
02:20 – Zander left Pixar in his early 30s to go to business school
02:50 – He wanted to understand how to get a business off the ground
03:10 – Fascinated by the logistics element of apps
03:40 – Worked in the gaming industry briefly before starting Doorman
04:10 – Doorman aims to solve the e-commerce problem of getting your stuff delivered
04:40 – It lets customers schedule when a package will come to their house
05:10 – We’re still in a transitional period between shopping in person and online
05:30 – The existing logistics infrastructure isn’t ready to interact with consumers
06:00 – Revenue comes from both retail partnerships and consumer customers
06:40 – Items are delivered to Doorman’s warehouse; customers then choose a delivery time
07:10 – Warehouses in San Francisco, Chicago and New York
07:20 – Working with retailers is currently more profitable
07:50 – Launched in 2014
08:00 – One co-founder and a team of 10 people
08:15 – Raised a little over $3 million through 500 Startups
09:00 – Around 10-20% growth of users per month
10:40 – Delivered over 100,000 packages
11:10 – “We’ll deliver pretty much anything” - anything under 45lb is a normal package
12:00 – Furniture etc. costs a little more
12:40 – Doorman is currently trying to build economies of scale
14:15 – A big win in 2016 would be hooking up with a large retailer
15:00 – Don’t consider themselves a SaaS business - but use SaaS measures
16:00 – Logistics margins are tight - they can get down to 5% in big companies
16:50 – “We can scale without really owning anything”
17:10 – Delivering 15-20 packages on average for top-quartile customers
18:25 – People’s buying doubled when they started using Doorman
21:20 – Famous Five
3 Key Points:
Logistics companies can learn from the pared-down model of SaaS. It’s possible to grow without owning bricks-and-mortar infrastructure, or fleets of lorries.
Assess whether what you’re doing right now is serving your long-term goals. If it isn’t: change what you’re doing.
When you solve a problem in an ecosystem, you change people’s behaviour. Simply providing an effective solution can make a market develop.
Resources Mentioned:
Freshbooks - The site Nathan uses to manage his invoices and accounts.
Host Gator – The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for cheapest price possible.
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.
Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives