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
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- 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
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- 05:08 – Typical shipping pricing
- 05:30 – Shippo shipping rates
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- 05:58 – Volume metric
- 06:07 – Doing millions of packages a month
- 06:30 – Negotiation with shipping providers
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- 06:44 – Based on projected volumes
- 07:00 – Shippo is a pay-as-you-go; not SaaS
- 07:20 – Sample price per package shipped
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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
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- 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?
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- 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