Fabrice Grinda

Month: April 2022

Episode 33: From VC to Web2 to Crypto with Mark Lurie

Mark Lurie is the CEO and co-founder of Shipyard Software. Shipyard Software builds decentralized exchanges (DEX) for specific types of trades, traders, and instruments, starting with Clipper, a DEX with the best prices anywhere on retail trades

Key Takeaways

  • Learn to cold email. You only need one opportunity so don’t be afraid to take shots.
  • Crypto is so young that most components within Web3 could easily be improved. The impact of small product on UX is more dramatic in Web3.
  • Find out what makes you unique. Ask yourself what are my strengths, what are my interests, where are the overlaps?
  • Stay close to your customers, and listen to their pain points.

Starting a company

It’s not always rational to start a company. Often times it begins with a hunch. The most important thing is to choose an industry that interests you but one that is large. Start with a hypothesis and try to refute it.

Most people overestimate the risk involved in entrepreneurship. Entrepreneurship is less risky because you grow faster. It’s an asymmetric bet. Even if you fail, if the market is large you’ll likely end up further than if you joined corporate.

Starting backwards

Mark started a software company after Grad school but soon realized he didn’t understand business. The best way to understand business is to see from the backend what makes them successful. For this reason, Mark joined Bessemer Ventures. There he learned why companies succeed and fail.

Why Crypto?

When Mark began using crypto he saw that crypto is just another way of doing all the things we do in real life. For Mark, crypto brought together tech, economics, history, and building the future into one.

Crypto is still young. It’s where the internet was in 1995. The UX is terrible but the potentials are huge. Bringing normal users from Web2 to Web3 will be huge. But this requires bringing the best product practices from Web2 to Web3.

Why Shipyard

The first waves of DeX are one size fits all like Uniswap. Then the second waves are more specialized with more rigor.

This is the verticalization of Uniswap similar to what we saw with the verticalization of Craigslist

You can listen to the full episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

Thanks to IJ Makan for helping write the episode summary.

Episode 32: Building a shipping unicorn with Laura Behrens Wu, Co-Founder & CEO of Shippo

Laura Behrens Wu (@LauraBehrensWu) is the co-founder and CEO of Shippo. Shippo is an API-first company focused on building shipping for 21st-century e-commerce.

When Laura Behrens Wu launched her own e-commerce store in 2013, she discovered that shipping was difficult. This led her to build Shippo, where customers could select the best carriers for their packages.

Top takeaways

  • Build something that’s a pain killer, not a vitamin. This means finding a true pain point and solving it.
  • Constantly seek new customer acquisition channels.
  • Keep in mind that people who succeed at corporations are not always successful at early-stage companies.
  • 0-1 team members are not always the ones who will drive the company to 100x.

Keeping a pulse on customer needs

Early on it’s crucial that founders are involved with customer success because it helps you understand their customer pain points.

This is how Laura and her co-founder, Simon Kreuz, learned that SMBs was Shippo’s main customer base because SMBs wanted better ways to compete against big companies.

Shippo as a result doubled down on shippers and this allowed them to scale supply with increased demand.

The effects of COVID lockdowns

During COVID, there was an influx of new customers as Brick-and-Mortar business went online. Shopping behaviors rapidly changed and fast-forwarded the shift to digital faster. This also impacted investors as more of them became interested in e-commerce businesses.

As a result Shippo doubled the team in 2020, and then again in 2021. As founders, expanding your team requires both speed and precision. Remember not every successful person at a large corporation will thrive at early stage.

The future of Shippo

Shippo has been US-centric up until now. But shipping is a global business, hence Shippo is strategically seeking to expand globally.

You can listen to the full episode in the embedded podcast player.

In addition to the above Youtube video and embedded podcast player, you can also listen to the podcast on:

Thanks to IJ Makan for helping write the episode summary.

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