SPEAKER_00: Today's episode of This Week in Startups is brought to you by Desk.com, the all-in-one customer support app for fast-growing companies. Visit Desk.com slash Twist to get your service desk up and running today for as low as $3 per month. And by Squarespace, an all-in-one platform that makes it fast and easy to create a professional website and now an online store. For a free trial and 10% off your first purchase on new accounts, go to Squarespace.com and use the offer code Twist. And by AWS Activate. It's easy to start and scale your business with Amazon Web Services. Check out free resources like one-on-one office hours with AWS Solutions Architects. Learn more and sign up at AWS.Amazon.com slash activate.

SPEAKER_03: Hey everybody, hey everybody, it's Jason Calacanis. This is This Week in Startups Today on the program, Ship, a new product, a new service that's going to

SPEAKER_05: revolutionize the way you move your ship around. Get it? Stick with us, it's going to be an amazing episode.

SPEAKER_14: Hey everybody, hey everybody, hey everybody. It's Jason Calacanis. And this is This Week in Startups, the show where we talk about technology, venture capital, angel investing, entrepreneurship, and building

SPEAKER_15: companies. If it's your first time here, welcome. You can follow me on Twitter. I am at Jason. You can follow the show at TWI Startups, as in This Week in Startups. You can find us on the web at thisweekinstartups.com. And we produce shows every Tuesday at 1 p.m. and every Friday at 1 p.m. Typically on Tuesday I do a nice fireside chat, just a discussion, if you will, with a founder. Sometimes it's a legendary 20-year founder that you know by name and they've built tons of great stuff. Other times it's an up-and-comer. Today we have an up-and-comer. It's Kevin Gibbon. He's the co-founder and CEO of the just launched SHIP, S-H-Y-P. And everybody's

SPEAKER_16: buzzing about this. And my friend Hunter Walk and a bunch of other friends of mine have invested in it. I am not an investor. I always tell you when I've invested in something, by the way. And typically, just so you understand the whole ruse going on here, I do the show. I love conversations. And then if I think, hey, this is a brilliant guy after the show, I'm like, hey, I lean over, hey, you know, is there

SPEAKER_15: any room for J-Cal? Can I put 25 dimes in? High Society maybe? Let's get something going here. Thank you to our friends at WeWork, this beautiful studio they built for me when they were building this building a year out. And we are here in San Francisco, Central Market neighborhood, right next to Twitter and all the great other startups that are reinvigorating this area of San Francisco. And it's really cool. The Golden Gate office of WeWork is awesome. I believe it's sold out. So I don't even know why I'm reading this promo. But you can go to WeWork.com if you want to get like a $500 a month desk. I love it. I advise all my startups to use WeWork or, you know, just not have to sign a lease in the first year. Just get five, six desks out of place so you don't have to go through the expense and annoyance. It's sort of desks as a service. And it's a great place, a great community. If you want to be on a private mailing list with me, producer Gina, Brandis, new guy Jacob, and the rest of the team, it's called the Twist List. And I'm not going to tell you anything else about it. But it's a secret list. It's a secret society. It's Illuminati level shit. Go to twistlist.co. T-W-I-S-T-L-I-S-T dot C-O and get into some Illuminati like crazy skull and bone stuff with me and the rest of the team. All right. Kevin, welcome to the program. Last week, everybody started buzzing. You

SPEAKER_19: launched a new product called Ship. What is it? Why did you build it?

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. I'm really excited. Thanks. Thanks for having me. Of course. Ship is essentially is kind of we're trying to build the easiest way to ship your stuff. We've all kind of been through the painful process of going to the post office, using FedEx, using UPS. And we're just trying to just make it really, really simple for

SPEAKER_15: everybody. So this is a pain point. Why? I mean, how would people previously do this? They have to put something in a box. Yeah. So walk me through exactly how the service works. Yeah, absolutely. I have, let's say I've got like an Amazon return. So I bought

SPEAKER_29: this, I don't know, I bought shampoo and I get it and it's like not the right shampoo

SPEAKER_30: I wanted. So I want to return it. Right. So for returns, like you'd have to package

SPEAKER_18: everything up yourself. Okay. Yeah, I've done that. You've done that, of course. You've got to save the boxes and it could be a hassle. I know friends of mine have a garage full of boxes. So you'd have to do that, package it up, get the actual prepaid postage from Amazon. They cover the postage, which is really awesome. And then either drop it off at USPS, UPS, wherever their postage is for. And then that's kind of it. But with us, you essentially,

SPEAKER_21: you don't need to worry about the packaging. You don't have to leave your home or office.

SPEAKER_18: You just give us like the item. So the thing you're returning back to Amazon, forward us

SPEAKER_21: the prepaid postage and we'll kind of take it, take it from here. So I take a picture of

SPEAKER_33: my shampoo bottle. This is a terrible example. Let me make something else. I ordered, I ordered

SPEAKER_05: a book. Yeah. That could be something oversized. What would be something big? Like, yeah.

SPEAKER_35: We did a mattress actually. We did a mattress.

SPEAKER_33: I ordered a mattress. Genius. Okay. So I got the mattress. It's not firm, whatever. I don't like it. It's in the back. So I take a picture of it. And then you tell me, Joe or Susan or

SPEAKER_14: whoever, your messenger, would you call them? What do you call them? Shippers?

SPEAKER_18: We call them ship heroes actually. Ship heroes. Yeah. Yeah. They're the people that save you from the pain of shipping items yourself.

SPEAKER_14: Yeah. So I see their picture on my phone. Yep. And do I see them coming to my house? Absolutely. Just like an Uber type thing?

SPEAKER_18: Yes. Yeah. So we aim to be there within 15 to 20 minutes. We'll take that mattress. We kind of limit it to anything that could fit in the backseat of a kind of a four-door car. And then we'll handle everything else for you. You don't have to worry about packaging.

SPEAKER_42: So what do you do after that? You bring it back to your warehouse?

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. So we have a central warehouse. And then that's where we handle all the packaging and where all the other carriers, we use all the major carriers. We use FedEx, UPS, DHL, USPS. And then we kind of package it and get all the postage and everything. And then

SPEAKER_21: they cut and pick it up from our location and then send it on until its final destination.

SPEAKER_46: And do I have some sort of tracking to know what happened? Absolutely. How does that loop work?

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. So we will, at the end of the transaction, so essentially, so you don't even need to tell us, if you use UPS or USPS and you're shipping something out, you'll have to enter in the dimensions of it. You're going to have to weigh it or do all that stuff. You don't have to do anything with that. It's painful. It's awful. So you literally just take a picture, tell us where it's going. We'll pick it up. And then at our warehouse, we'll weigh and measure the items. And then after the transaction is done, we'll send you a receipt very much like a lot of the other services do. And we'll charge your credit card and give you the tracking information to track it to its final destination.

SPEAKER_51: All right. So the million dollar question is, how much does it cost and how do you charge for it?

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. So we charge a standard $5 pickup fee and then just the cost of postage. So in the case of a return, we don't take any money for the extra postage because Amazon or somebody else has already paid for that. But most of our customers are actually like online sellers. An eBay seller? Yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_47: A Craigslist seller? Yeah. Somebody who has a, what are those stores called? Consignment store? Consignment store. Junk store, whatever.

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. Like the Shopify, if you have a Shopify store, kind of Squarespace, like all those ones, that's kind of where our bread and butter is. And it's a really big pain point. Like people have like, they'll have a whole team dedicated to this. And it's essentially just

SPEAKER_38: use us and we'll take care of it for you.

SPEAKER_53: What if I got like 16 or 17 items? Like I'm an Etsy seller and I'm like, here, I got 16 items I'm sending out today. These four go to this person, these three go to that person. Right. So we have bags or something on the spot so they don't get mixed up.

SPEAKER_59: Yeah, absolutely. So we- Well, the pictures help, I guess.

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. So we do that all the time. Like we have our, we have multiple items per kind of pickup most of the time. And then we'll come and we'll make sure that the picture matches where it's going. And then we separate every single thing into each individual bag. And so every single bag has a QR code on it. So we have our drivers or our heroes, they have a QR app and they'll basically scan the bag, put the actual item inside and seal it up. And then that could go, that'll go in their backpack or in the back of their car. And then it goes to our warehouse where we literally scan the QR code, automatically prints out the postage and then we box it up and send it us away.

SPEAKER_45: All right. So now I understand how you charge us, but you can't pick a mattress up for five

SPEAKER_63: bucks though, or a flat panel TV, do you? Absolutely. Yes.

SPEAKER_15: Okay. Wait a second. So this is starting to remind me, like I'm getting a weird web van feeling like you're going to start losing money on every transaction and try to make up for it in volume.

SPEAKER_65: Yeah.

SPEAKER_67: So how do you manage to do this and not lose money? Where's the, where's the margin?

SPEAKER_18: Yeah. So the margin is not in the $5. Like that essentially just covers the cost of what we have to pay our drivers. Um, the hero, the heroes. Yes. Um, so how we actually make our money is basically on the price arbitrage between what we pay for, uh, UPS or FedEx or UPS and then what we charge our, our user. So we essentially, if you're going to, if you sell on eBay, we'll charge you the, whatever service we send, the retail price of that. And then we get really large discounts because we show up in volume. Right. So it's like, we get really.

SPEAKER_46: So it's no difference to me. I would have paid $15 to ship it by FedEx overnight. Yeah. But you get it for 10, right? Yeah. So we like, we will make, what is your margin? 30% discount? 20 to 80%. 20 to 80% discount. Yeah. And that's because you're delivering to the UPS warehouse in bulk and they don't have to pick it up kind of thing. Uh, so they'll

SPEAKER_59: still do the pickups right now. Um, but it's essentially like, it's, it's really expensive

SPEAKER_18: for them to do pickups or have storefronts or stuff like that. So instead of them going and doing it, they essentially just pick up a pallet, uh, a pre-packaged pallets, pre-sorted from our warehouse and then they put it into the rest of their, their infrastructure, which you're, they're extremely good. Like they all have networks that go span the globe. Right. Yeah. And, but it's really expensive for both the first mile and the last mile. So we're basically solving that first mile problem for them. So in turn, they give us really big discounts

SPEAKER_33: because it's cheaper for them obviously. Right. So this to me seems like something that used

SPEAKER_05: to be done by people's like people who, you know, rich people with personal assistance who get paid 20 bucks an hour. Like, Hey, send this back, return this, you know, whatever. Yeah. And why didn't UPS, FedEx, postal service? I mean, we know why the postal law service didn't mean U S postal service, no offense to the fine people at the U S postal service, but I mean, we don't expect them to, you know, innovate necessarily. Yeah. Um, but why didn't FedEx

SPEAKER_18: or UPS like get on this? I think it's, it's, it, they've kind of, it's really hard for them to, to come on new services. Like they, they have like their shareholders to answer to and everything. Um, and they essentially are like, they have these big, massive like infrastructures around the globe and that's really expensive for them. So for them to, to kind of be really innovative with this, it's just, it's just like any big company. It's like, it's, it's so hard for them to change something. They have dedicated routes that, that are, are predetermined and for them to say like, Oh, Hey, look, we're going to now do on demand kind of pickups within 15, 20 minutes. They just couldn't do that. That's just not part of their infrastructure. And it'd be very costly. And it's really hard for them to really see that that's a really big value. So that's why I think like there's, there's always like these, that's why it leaves room for companies like us to come in and be like, we could completely change, like rethink the way that things are being done. They've been done this way just because it's, this is the way things have been done and they've made a good money, but there's definitely just

SPEAKER_21: this huge missing part for the end user, uh, whether that be consumer or business.

SPEAKER_47: All right. When we get back from commercial break, I want to ask you the question that

SPEAKER_14: probably is on everybody's mind right now, which is, um, Uber launched a bike messenger

SPEAKER_15: service in, uh, New York. And there's rumors of sort of like a, you know, transportation API

SPEAKER_14: from them. And how do you think about Uber, uh, full disclosure, I'm an angel investor Uber. How do you think about them as a competitor when we get back from this very important message

SPEAKER_80: from our partner? Hey, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning into this week in startups. And, you know, independent media like this is not cheap to produce. We work really hard, you know, half dozen people building out the show over the last four or five years. And we are able to do that because we look at all the great products that we use as a team and desk.com is one of them. And we approach those people and say, Hey, we love your product. Would you like to be on the show? Um, and desk.com is a great product that we use here at, uh, this week in startups and launch to manage customer support because people are talking about our events and our launch ticker and our product all over the place. Now we want to speak with one voice and we look at customer service, you know, Tony Shay has been on the program a lot of times as our chance, customer services, our chance to bond with the audience. We want to be able to have them love us and understand that we care. So if you take the time to tell us, we suck on Twitter or to be upset us on Facebook or send us an email because you're disappointed, any of those things, we see that as an opportunity to reengage you and turn you from somebody who we disappointed because we made a mistake into maybe somebody who is happy with us and thinks that my God, I can't believe that somebody responded so professionally and told me where the, to get the episode that I missed because the RSS feed was down or we, we made a typo or something. Um, and desk.com makes this universal inbox of all of the, uh, feedback you're getting for customer service. And it starts at only $3 per month. Go to desk.com slash twist desk.com slash twist. And it works everywhere. Desktop, tablet, mobile, you know, the story, there are some of these enterprise companies now that just make an extraordinary product. They keep adding features and they keep lowering the prices or keeping them steady while they add all these great features. Desk.com by Salesforce is one of those amazing, amazing companies. We use it here. Like I said, uh, and it's absolutely fantastic. I give it my highest recommendation. Go to desk.com slash twist. All right, let's get back to the program.

SPEAKER_15: Hey everybody. Hey everybody. Uh, you're listening to this week in startups. Of course, this is the podcast where we talk about entrepreneurship and creating companies, startups, if you will. And my guest today is Kevin Gibbon. He is the co-founder and CEO of the just launched ship. That's S H Y P. Is it ship.com like that? It is. You got a four letter domain name. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_14: That's pretty tight, kid. And what you got, you got the at handle too? We do get them all. Wow.

SPEAKER_86: Look at you. We are branding a savant over here. Was that hard to get those, that combo? It was a few

SPEAKER_87: tricks we had to work. Yeah. A few tricks, huh? Yeah. I think that's a, that's a, I'll tell you how much

SPEAKER_90: you pay for that domain. It's misspelled, but it's four letters. It's, it's, it's a domain that costs

SPEAKER_14: between if you got lucky and some individual owned at 25, if a domain squatter owned it, you could

SPEAKER_92: pay up to 150. What'd you pay? It was a domain squatter and we paid a lot less than 150, but a

SPEAKER_18: month 25, a lot less than 25. What is the reason is they didn't realize it actually was, could be used

SPEAKER_03: as a word, right? They just thought it was like, it's just four letter random things. So you get it for 10 times. And then what about the Twitter handle? Um, well, you're not technically allowed to buy it, right. But if someone were to work out and negotiate a deal where somebody gave them that

SPEAKER_53: and they hired them for a consulting assignment on the side, what would the consulting assignment

SPEAKER_18: cost? I've heard that you could get Twitter handles for a few hundred dollars, especially before it's an, a company's been formed around. All right. So if anybody wants that Jason, you know,

SPEAKER_53: if you can give me 500 bucks, Jason Bateman, I'm talking to you. Um, I, you know what? I wouldn't give away at Jason. I wouldn't. Well, I'm trying to think about what dollar amount it would take.

SPEAKER_46: Yeah. I don't need money, but if somebody were to donate to charity, a number, I don't know. I'm so selfish about that. I'm so self-centered that it's like so important to me,

SPEAKER_99: the Jason handle. You can never get it back, right? You can never get it back. So what would I,

SPEAKER_53: what would you suggest I sell at Jason for on, for donation to charity? A donation to charity?

SPEAKER_100: I don't know. I like it's 5,000 a well. Right. So would I do it for 10 wells? No,

SPEAKER_86: no, I'm too selfish. A hundred wells? I don't know. No, 500,000, a hundred wells. No, I say no wells. No wells. I mean, I feel like a horrible person,

SPEAKER_103: but I would not give it up for a hundred wells. It'd be tough. Yeah. Does that make me a bad

SPEAKER_100: person? I don't think so. I don't think so. I think it does make me a bad person. You think so? I think I'm a bad person. Well, you can make up for it, but I just, I just do something else.

SPEAKER_15: Yeah. Yeah. I just buy a well. All right. Listen, um, let's talk about Uber. I'm not just bringing up cause I'm an investor. Obviously this is a very related and also box B, which was at the launch

SPEAKER_108: festival and I'm an investor in. Right. So there's a lot of people buzzing around this. Um, are there any other last mile shipping kind of companies right now? There's a lot. What happened to Google's?

SPEAKER_109: Does Google Shopping Express? Amazing product. Like what is it called? Google Shopping Express.

SPEAKER_18: Okay. What did they do? So there's, so I think there's like three different, um, kind of pieces. Take me through the competitive ones. Yeah. Three different pieces of, um, getting moving items around. So there's kind of, there's the, the first mile, which essentially that's what we do. And we do it really well. So like, we'll come to your house. We'll, we'll pick up the unpackaged items and we'll kind of figure out the lowest cost, but most highest reliability option to, to kind of ship it there effectively. And that's what we do. So there's nobody directly in that space.

SPEAKER_14: What's really nice about that, by the way, I hate to interrupt. Um, you figure out for me,

SPEAKER_46: right, which is the best option. Absolutely. Because I don't, I mean, who knows what UPS and I mean, they, they seem like they all have different scams or schemes to charge you less. And when you go to the store, it doesn't feel like the store, cause a lot of them are resellers or something. It doesn't feel like they have your best interest in mind. Do they? Cause they, I feel like they got their thumb on the scale where they're like, yeah, there might be a cheaper option, but I'm going to go with the bigger option where you get the biggest commission. Is that true? I don't know. Like I can't,

SPEAKER_18: definitely can't talk for, there's just so many of them. Right. Um, but I've heard like, if you remember when back in the day, all mailbox, et cetera was around, um, before they were purchased, um, they, they would basically, they would, they would take like a really hefty surcharge for them. Cause they had to pay for, for all their stores and stuff like that. So I heard that they were

SPEAKER_23: like marking up what they actually paid by maybe three, four X or something like that.

SPEAKER_18: Wow. So it was really expensive. So if you're going to ship maybe like a t-shirt, it was going to be packaged. Like it could be talking 30, $40 or something like that.

SPEAKER_46: For a $5 t-shirt. Right. Insanity. Right. And then people don't know about things like media mail, like U S postal service. Right.

SPEAKER_86: Because people kept shipping DVDs and books. Yeah.

SPEAKER_18: They do media mail for what, a dollar? It's very heavily subsidized. Yeah. What does it mean? Email is tricky because you have to, so explain what it is. It's for, it has to be for educational content only. Okay. Um, and that's still pretty broad. It's, it's very broad. And that's still something that we're struggling with, uh, to use it because that would basically, we, cause we're the ones shipping these items. So you have liability. We'd have to prove that they're actually educated. And as far as like operationally goes, it's extremely tough. So right now it's not something that we're, we're currently offering, right. But we, there's still like, we, I use that media mail. Yeah. It's, it is a great service. So love that. So basically, yeah. So we basically will navigate the shipping kind of ecosystem for you. So when you are going to send something domestically or especially internationally, there's a lot of different options and there's, there's different carriers and this is really tough to figure out what it is. So essentially like we boiled that down to three different options. So the default is like kind of the cheapest. It's like, just get it. I don't really care when it's going to get there. It'll get there in a week or two or whatever. Um, but I'm just really care about the price. Um, that's the first option. The second option is kind of a, an in-between option. It'll probably be domestically and maybe it'd be like two, three days or something like that. So you'll pay a premium. Um, and then the, the kind of the third option is the fastest, like get this there overnight. So what we do for each individual shipment is we, we kind of, we, this is all done through, through our, our algorithms, but we essentially look at all the different options and choose the best ones for you. Um, for the,

SPEAKER_62: kind of pull it up. So yes, essentially there's three different options. Cheapest,

SPEAKER_14: the middle option, and then the fastest. And then you give me the best speed. Yeah. Yeah. And then I get the tracking code and everything back to me and it's all stored inside the app. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So you were also talking about, um,

SPEAKER_15: the different options. You said there were three options. So the first is what you do. The first mile, not the last, the first mile, getting it out of my house,

SPEAKER_128: getting it in a box and putting a stamp on it, so to speak. So there's a space there. Oh yeah. Look at that. Yeah. Yeah. So it says up here six days, five days, next day. Yeah. And you get to pick boom, boom, boom. Yeah. So simple. It's beautiful app by the

SPEAKER_132: way. Thank you. Yeah. That's my design. Yeah. My co-founder Josh, he's an amazing. Yeah. But

SPEAKER_133: you got the hamburger in there. The, the little, the, the little, what do they call that menu bar on the top? The menu bar. Yeah. I thought that Apple was like, yeah, no more of that. Yeah,

SPEAKER_21: I'm not too sure. We, uh, it seems to work. Okay. Well, we, we're always improving and we're always looking

SPEAKER_33: for like the, the best kind of user experience. So what are the other competitors that you have? And when you have a, a space that's boiling up and with a lot of competitors in it, take me through the discussions

SPEAKER_134: with your investors as to, is this fundable given the competitive landscape? Yeah. So, so you're,

SPEAKER_18: I'll go back. This might be a bit better way to explain it. So there's three different areas. So there's a first mile, there's all the middle miles, and then there's kind of the last mile. Um, so all the middle miles, like the FedEx, UPS, the postal service, they're actually really good at that. Like they have like trucks and planes going like moving items around the world. Um, and then the last mile is basically, um, the, the actual delivery itself. Um, so it's from the, maybe if you, if it went through FedEx, it's like the actual truck that's going to come from the distribution center to your home and they're going to try to deliver it and you're not home. It's kind of a painful experience, but that's kind of the last mile. So there's a few different, so in the middle miles is basically all of the, the kind of the existing infrastructure, FedEx, UPS, all the guys, big trucks, lots of planes. Uh, and the last mile, that's where there has been, um, some innovation. Um, so there are, you have the Google shopping express, which will essentially move items from, uh, it's actually interesting. It'll move items from, uh, a retail store. So like a target or something like that, right to your home. Um, and they're actually, it's free as well, which I think it, they're

SPEAKER_63: probably losing money on it. Of course they're losing money. They're just trying to test it to see what

SPEAKER_18: it could be. And there's a few other ones as well. Like there's to live as well. Um, Postmates. Postmates. Yeah. So they're, they're a little different, but there's not an investor in Postmates. Yeah. So they're a little, they're, they're a little different cause they're mostly food, but they're kind of last mile as well. They're very inner city. Task rabbit. Task. Yeah. They, they could, yeah, they kind of do a lot of, they do everything, but yeah, they could do that stuff. People have used them for that. Yeah. So it's, and that's, this is where also where, where Uber rush is like kind of consider like the last mile, last mile slash like within the same city, like a courier service. So there's courier service. Yeah. They're, they're really good at moving kind of items within a city. So it's a much different, um, customer than it's going to be for a customer like for us. Um, so that's kind of, so we don't have any direct competition per se, but that's kind of the, the, the landscape. Um, so like, uh, somebody who's going to use Uber rush is probably going to be like a lawyer, somebody who needs to move things within a city. Somebody who's going to use us is going to be an eBay seller, an Etsy seller, somebody that's, that's selling their items around the world.

SPEAKER_46: I mean, I really feel like the packing of everything is a bit, is that half of the value

SPEAKER_151: is the packaging and putting it in the box. Yeah. What a pain in the ass. It's boxes. Yeah. And we're,

SPEAKER_18: it's something that we actually love doing. We're, we're, we're trying to be extremely innovative. So that will actually, one of the things we're working on right now, um, is making everything, um, as compact as possible. Like you, you get a lot of the items from, from Amazon and I'm sure

SPEAKER_67: Oh my God, with those big air bubbles in it. Yeah. What are they doing? Why?

SPEAKER_18: It's, it's just because they're trying to really, they're, they're trying to optimize as much as they can. And they basically boiled that down to like between 30 and 50 box sizes in their warehouse and

SPEAKER_45: certain items that just can't fit. So no, I get toothpaste sometimes like on a subscribe and save.

SPEAKER_46: And I'm like, okay, you really sent me this toothpaste in a box that could fit 20 of them. Yeah. What is going on over there? It's, it's also because they,

SPEAKER_59: they work with the UPS and FedEx and stuff like that. So, and they go for the lowest cost as well.

SPEAKER_53: What does a box like that cost for that? That when, when I get an Amazon box, is that a dollar

SPEAKER_21: 50 cents? For them cents. It's 10 cents, 20 cents. Yeah. It's, it's pennies. It's really.

SPEAKER_53: Okay. So your box is made out of cardboard, crush you 25 cents or something.

SPEAKER_18: Uh, yeah. Ours are more, more expensive just because we're not at that scale.

SPEAKER_59: So 25, 50 cents. What's that? 25, 50 cents.

SPEAKER_18: Yeah, absolutely. Okay. It's, and so what we're trying to do is like make kind of the, the correct box for that particular item, which saves you money. Like, cause we charge you the retail costs. Ah. So that's another. And you can fit more on the pallet?

SPEAKER_29: Yeah, absolutely. Um, so. How many box sizes you have then? Or do you plan on having them?

SPEAKER_18: Well, we're actually, we're, we're actually working to make custom box sizes. What? Yeah. We're working some really cool stuff. Whoa. How do you do that? It sounds.

SPEAKER_62: 3D printed box? Yeah. You'll have to come by our warehouse. Uh, I'll kind of, I'll show you.

SPEAKER_53: But, uh, it's some really innovative stuff. So you basically have like a way to cut a custom box and wrap it around it? Yeah. Yeah. Cause people do kind of interesting stuff like that in packaging when they wrap. Yeah. Paper around stuff. So why couldn't you do it with a, with cardboard, with cardboard or something?

SPEAKER_92: Absolutely. And then that saves you money. And then it's, it's better for everybody.

SPEAKER_18: Lighter fit. Yeah. It's lighter. Um, you can fit more, um, with on a pallet in a, in a plane. It's, it's really great. Um, and so that's where we could be like the best at it. I think, I love the companies like this to just focus on one thing and do it really well. Like we're not going to do, we're not going to do like the middle mile or something that like the first mile is like a big enough pain point that we're just going to be extremely good at that, at packing and doing all of that.

SPEAKER_15: All right. We all see these videos on the local news or on YouTube going viral, whatever, Buzzfeed. FedEx guy is bowling with my bag, you know, with my package. This guy's kicking them, you know, like everybody's got drop cams. Right. How come drop can hasn't been on the show? Gina,

SPEAKER_14: make a note. Let's get drop cam on the show. That's a kick ass product. I love that. You got a drop cam?

SPEAKER_168: Uh, I do not, but I love them. Yeah. Dude, you have to have one for your warehouse, dude. You have to have five drop cams. So cheap. We have, we have some. Yeah. Yeah. You have cameras

SPEAKER_53: there. You're probably paying five grand, three grand or whatever. You can put those things up for like a hundred bucks and you get amazing 30 day DVR for like 300 bucks, seven day for 150. It's ridiculous. It's great. Anyway, just putting that aside. Um, when we get back from, uh, the commercial

SPEAKER_172: break, the partner break, I want to know why should we trust your drivers, your heroes,

SPEAKER_173: with an electronics or expensive item that's not in a package. I mean, people are concerned enough

SPEAKER_53: with people stealing and breaking and all this nonsense that these FedEx guys and UPS guys and gals we see all the time, them abusing our packages. How do you build a company at scale that doesn't with raw naked product doesn't get screwed up when we get back from the spring? I love doing a read for

SPEAKER_80: Squarespace. Everybody knows I love Squarespace. It's gorgeous. It's the most wonderful CMS publishing system on the planet today. And I'm not kidding you because I use it myself and we can use any product we want, but all of the launch, uh, events, all of the blogs, everything we do is powered by Squarespace. Now, why did we make that choice? Because I want my people to be able to go to the website, move stuff around and make it perfect and not have to go talk to the tech people. That's just a waste of time. And it creates this game of telephone. Squarespace is 24 hour support seven days a week for creating exceptional looking sites. It's so easy to use. Um, and they're constantly improving it. So they, you know, commerce on all plans, you can sell products, um, which is incredible. You can take donations and we have to look into that. And, um, it's what we use for all launch sites. So go check out launchbeacon.co. That's our new New York event about local and commerce and beacon technology, launchbeacon.co. And you can see how beautiful these sites are. Um, go to squarespace.com, try it out for free. Now, no credit card is required. Great services never require the credit card because they're so confident in their ability. And it starts at only $8 a month, which is ridiculous. It should start really at $80 a month. They're giving that much value. Um, if you decide to keep your site after the trial, then go ahead and use the offer code twist. Squarespace is everything you need to create an exceptional website. And it gets my highest recommendation. I'm telling you everybody in my family, friends that are like, Oh, what should I use? I got to put a website up for my business. I got to do this. And I'm like, Oh my God, they're going to want me to build them a website. And they're like, Oh, you work in the website business, right? Yeah. I'm in the website business. Of course. That's what I'm in. And I say, go to Squarespace. And that was like, wow, it's so beautiful. It's so easy. The templates are so gorgeous. Go check it out. Um, and they're all, I mean, obviously responsive. So if you pull it up on an iPad or iPhone or desktop, it all just works perfectly. You don't have to like hire seven different people to try to fix it on every single platform. Squarespace is doing that every day. Uh, while we are just out there doing our jobs in the real world. Okay. Listen, thanks Squarespace. And go ahead. Everybody out there say thanks at Squarespace for supporting independent media, like at TWI startups, this week in startups. Okay.

SPEAKER_15: Let's get back to this program. Hey everybody. Uh, welcome back to this week in startups. You can follow us on Twitter, the Twitter at TWI startups. I'm at Jason. And of course, go to twist list.co to join the twist Illuminati group. Uh, so with me today, uh, Kevin Gibbon, who you can follow on Twitter, Kevin Gibbon, G I B B O N of ship S H Y P.com. He got the domain name for 125 dimes, pretty savvy guy. Um, and at ship S H Y P. Um, so you pick it, you take a picture, you pick it up, you pack it five bucks. Genius. You make a little margin on the, uh, UPS charge because you get a discount in bulk. Genius. You pass, you don't, you kind of pass that on to me in the form of this amazing service for free. Um, but why should we trust you? Like, what if I want to

SPEAKER_14: package this like Canon EOS rebel, like cost three dimes or my red camera that I'm sending to my brother for the weekend and I'm handing you a $15,000 red camera and you're hiring people for, I'm guessing 20 bucks an hour, 15, 20 bucks an hour for hero. Yep. Yep. Yep. 20 bucks an hour. They can pay 20 bucks an hour. Absolutely. To double the minimum wage in San Francisco and triple the minimum wage in the country almost. That's a, that must've been a very, maybe I answered my own question. Sorry about that,

SPEAKER_128: but why should we trust you? And how did you come to $20 an hour? It seems incredibly generous.

SPEAKER_18: Yeah, absolutely. I think that, so we basically look at, we have, um, two different customers. We essentially have like yourselves that are shipping the items, but we also have the heroes as well.

SPEAKER_187: Um, you consider your employees customers. Absolutely. Yeah.

SPEAKER_18: Okay. Because they're, they're the only, like they are the, the only actual touch point with, with, with yourself. Yeah. And if, if they're going to be happy, like if they're, if, if they have a job that they love and like riding around and on a bike or in a car in San Francisco, that's pretty awesome job. Um, but also if they're going to be compensated well, like they're just going to perform much better at the job and we do tons of other things. And we really make sure that they're like as happy as, as possible. Um, and so I think it goes to like how, why should you trust us? I think it's because we put a lot of effort into that and, and we go above and beyond and we reject a lot, a lot of, a lot of different people that come and want to become, um, heroes because it's just that important. And we know like if, if you did, if you, if you ship this $15,000 camera and something happened, that would be a nightmare for us. So I think it starts with that, but it also, we, we have other safeguards into our process that, that make, make it. So things, if we could kind of, um, if things do go wrong, we could kind of react to them. Um, one of the things we do is we, for every single shipment we have, we offer automatically, you have to pay anything extra, uh, a thousand dollar guarantee that is going to arrive at its end destination. So you're self-insuring in a way? We're self-insuring up to a thousand dollars. Wow. That's great. It's yeah, it's really

SPEAKER_53: cheaper for you to do the self-insurance thing than anything else. Yes. And you also have the backup of FedEx and UPS's guarantee of up to a hundred dollars a package or something. Um,

SPEAKER_18: yeah, it's different for every single service, but it's, it's actually quite lower in some cases.

SPEAKER_33: Um, so you, you basically say we're going to decline the insurance from those people to save money and then you put your own plan on it. Or did you actually insure from them?

SPEAKER_18: Well, as a backup, we're working with the different, a few different options. Um, but essentially like if you use us, just, just know that if anything ever did go wrong, like even if it, if it happens, like FedEx kind of, they screwed up and it's FedEx's fault. It's FedEx's fault. We'll, we'll cover that. And we'll like, literally cut you a check within like 48 hours if we can. Uh, you don't have to deal with like

SPEAKER_53: insurance. You background check all these heroes? Absolutely. How do you, I don't know, it's a technical question. What's a valid background check for this new category of employment that

SPEAKER_18: you've created? Yeah. I think like we, we just use another service that does it all for us. Huh? Um, so you make sure they're not felons? Yeah, absolutely. So you don't hire felons? You can confirm? I can confirm that. Yes. I'm thinking if I can. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Like, yeah, absolutely. We're, we, we, we make sure that they're, they're the best, absolutely the best. Let me ask you this. We go above and beyond the background check. Do you

SPEAKER_03: test them in their first day by giving them a secret like pickup? We, um. Cause that's what I would do. Right. Cause I'm, I would be a little obsessive about this because you know, you're hiring

SPEAKER_14: people for what is, let's face it, like a manual labor job. Yeah. You're paying them a great rate,

SPEAKER_53: but hey, there's a little bit of, uh, you know, a little bit of riskier. So would you actually test them by saying like, Hey, pick it up at this person's house and like, see how courteous they

SPEAKER_92: were and everything? We may have done that early on. Um, and we are still looking at ways we could

SPEAKER_18: do that. That's kind of scales, um, as well. Like if you imagine if we're, if we have a thousand of these,

SPEAKER_67: uh, heroes in the city, that could be quite costly. That's what I think when you hit scale, it's going to, it's going to be hard to manage this, huh? Yeah. Well, I think like we're definitely,

SPEAKER_18: uh, the way that we really created this is like with scale in mind, like we want to blow this up, like every city, every city in the world, hundreds of cities, as many, as fast as we can. Uh, and we've, like we're using San Francisco as like a test bed to, to test how things are and then scale San Francisco and then kind of go, uh, to as many cities as we can. So I think like for the, the, the training that the heroes go through, we call it a hero academy. Um, and it consists of a few hours of training. Uh, and then they'll go on a few kind of dry runs of pickups with, with some of our mentors. Um, and we'll kind of deem if they're, if they can cut it and if they can't like, then we have to find somebody else. Cause like our level of quality is, is very, very high. When you pitch this

SPEAKER_16: to the VCs, I know Homebrew is an investor and, um, they're going to be on the program soon. Um, Hunter Walk.

SPEAKER_14: Um, how do you, is the competitive landscape something that comes up and, and did you lose investors who just thought, ah, this is going to be something that FedEx will eventually do or Amazon's working on the last mile. So why not the first or maybe Uber or Postmates, whatever. It's a very crowded field. How did you get VCs and angels through the competitive landscape? I think so.

SPEAKER_18: I think this is a relatively kind of young field, especially for innovation, um, in the tech sector. So I think that, um, it looks like it's a crowded field, but it really isn't like for any new, uh, kind of industry that's being, uh, innovated on, it looks very broad. Like if you, if you look at like cloud computing, when it first came out, it's like, wow, this, this just one category in this, well, there's so many different competitors, but when you really break it down, there's so many different areas. So I think that the answer is that we literally, like the first mile is something that we don't have any direct competitors on and something that is massive. Like it is huge. It, it is bigger than the, the Ubers and the Lyfts. Um, as far as the market goes, it's just in the U S it's a $50 billion industry, uh, small package shipping. It's, it's just massive. So even if they're like, I'm sure we will obviously, um, as any good kind of company

SPEAKER_62: has is we're going to have competition. Um, and I think it's just being one step ahead of absolutely everybody. And we're just dedicated. It doesn't seem to have slowed you down. You raised 2.1 million

SPEAKER_16: from 22, 21 or 22 investors here, including homebrew and Sherpa, um, which is of course Shervin, uh, Perchevar's company. Homebrew is, um, Hunter Walks, a venture firm, but then you also got, uh, Tim Ferriss and Naval and Kamal Ravikant, the brothers. Uh, you got Josh Schecter from delicious fame. I mean, it's a pretty good group of high profile people. Um, some might call this a party

SPEAKER_14: round. Um, you just, why did you decide to go with so many investors? If you have 22 investors, does that mean you met with 200 people to get to them? Or did this just all come together on angel list as like some like woohoo kind of round? Yeah. So it definitely looks like there's a lot of

SPEAKER_30: investors, but I think, well, there are a lot of investors. There are a lot of investors. It

SPEAKER_213: doesn't look like there's a lot of investors. 22 investors in a 2.1 million dollar is a lot of

SPEAKER_214: investors. Is a lot of investors. You realize a lot of companies don't have 21 investors in their

SPEAKER_18: lifespan. I agree. Okay. Um, but you chose to do this as a founder. Why? It was, um, so we have a few, like for, as far as like the makeup of the round goes, uh, homebrew, um, and Tim Ferriss, he did a syndicate. Um, so like that was the majority. So that's a million, boom,

SPEAKER_105: um, 500 each, 750 each, something like that. Yeah. More than that. But, and then it was just,

SPEAKER_18: it was just around like just talking to these people and, and how much they could offer. And it's like, yeah, let's, let's like, let's have a really great team behind us. Um, and they all offered something different for us. Yeah. Um, and I think that's a lot of meetings and a lot of paperwork, isn't it? Um, as far as the paperwork, it's like, it's, it's not, it wasn't too bad. Like everything, like as soon as we closed it, everybody has the same terms, obviously. So, uh,

SPEAKER_21: it was just another kind of email. So it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't too awful.

SPEAKER_33: And the value you think in having that many investors is that they're each going to bring

SPEAKER_14: something different to the table. Yeah, absolutely. What do you look for in these angel investors in terms of value as a founder? Because you now have to manage 21 relationships, not one, right? Like if you, you could have probably closed this round with just one VC. You agree? Yeah, absolutely. And you probably had that ability. Yeah. So by consciously choosing to manage 21

SPEAKER_53: relationships, what did you look for in the other 20 relationships that you didn't,

SPEAKER_18: wouldn't get from one VC? So I think, um, so how the, the round kind of came together, it was, we had a lot of angel investors up front and then the, the homebrews and then Tim Ferriss, and it kind of was that later on a little bit. So at first, like myself, I'm, I'm actually, I'm from Canada and same with my co-founder Josh. Um, when we came here, like we, our networks were nothing. Like we didn't know anybody. So literally like we went on AngelList, Naval featured us, um, and we would just kind of like take, take kind of money. And then we started getting a lot of interest from amazing people. Um, and that's kind of how it came together. But as far as like what, what we, we look at what you realistically expect from them. Um,

SPEAKER_53: you expect Tim Ferriss to like use the product and tweet how awesome it is.

SPEAKER_230: Tim's actually very, he's actually a very active investor. He's, you know, I know,

SPEAKER_14: Tim and I are in some products together. We trade emails and Tim's never been on the show, which really he keeps saying he wants to be. So it's strictly a failure on producer Gina's part.

SPEAKER_15: I'm just, she's such a perfectionist that I just got her so good. Cause Tim keeps emailing me like,

SPEAKER_66: yeah, totally be on the show anytime. And then I'm like, Gina, what's up? Right. She said, Gina,

SPEAKER_05: come on. Um, but we will get him on the show. I promise. Before episode 500, please. Um,

SPEAKER_18: but what do you expect him to do what? So Tim, Tim is like very involved in, um, uh, marketing PR, even product as well. Like he's, he's, this is kind of different guy. Like you, if you know, I'm like, he has his hands in a lot of different things and he's extremely helpful as far as he can, he'll, he'll give like open up his network and everything. Um, but does he email you and say

SPEAKER_02: like, Hey, we got to do this. Hey, we got to do that. Hey, we got to do this. Or do you say, Hey, I could use some help with this or that. I think it's both like, like Tim,

SPEAKER_18: like Tim specifically doesn't like, doesn't push anything. He's like, he's not like, you have to do this. It's like, Hey, would you ever think about this? And like, I think that's really good, especially like for like a founder. You definitely like, you want to, you want to be the ones running the company. Um, and you can't. Yeah. He's not

SPEAKER_240: saying we have to do this. He's saying, have you considered? Yes. Yeah. And that's absolutely

SPEAKER_18: something you do not look for an investor, but I think like everybody, like all the people that we got involved, like, I think it's always different. Like, as far as like, some people have a really great network and we, we may need that down the line when we start looking at partnerships, integration, stuff like that. Some people are really good at press. Um, just tons of different reasons. Yeah. But I think that at the end of the day is like, you just want to surround yourself with the best people and then amazing things happen. Like we, so as far as managing all the, all the relationships, it's literally like for a few of our investors are more active than everybody else. Homebrew, like Tim, like a few of those people are very, very active. Um, and other ones, it's like, we send out our monthly update and then some people will perk up like, I could help you out with this. Um, and it's been really great. So it's not like we have to like, I'm on the phone, like 20. Yeah. Yeah. So it's like they're on demand.

SPEAKER_14: Yeah. And you might hear from them once in a while when they have a suggestion. Right. But you know, if you can get a good tweet out of them or an intro to another VC or the press, Hey, that's helpful. Yeah. Um, now you did the syndicate. Yeah. And Tim Ferris is pretty large syndicate. Right. I mean, he's definitely in the top five. Yes. So he's got over a million bucks in a syndicate, but there's a 99 investor limit per syndicate. I just did my first. So how much was the syndicate? And so you have another 99 investors. So you really have 120 investors right now. Yeah. What's it like to have those other 99? Do you know the names of them? Do you care? Do they

SPEAKER_46: care? Yeah. Explain your thinking on Tim Ferris that the 99 people standing behind Tim Ferris with

SPEAKER_18: checkbooks? Yeah, I think so that was really good opportunity. So how we basically worked it is that we basically, um, gave Tim an allotment. It was for $750,000 for his syndicate. Uh, and then we did something unusual. Uh, we used Tim's kind of, um, his reach. And when I'm not sure if you remember, but when general solicitation lifted, um, we were kind of like, we want to be the company to be like, Hey, this is how you can actually do participate. So we, that makes it a little bit harder though.

SPEAKER_46: Cause now you're doing like an open general solicitation, right? All through Angelus.

SPEAKER_18: Like you have to be a credited investor. So it's not like you're tweeting it. Uh, we did tweet like Tim tweeted to all his network. It's like, we, we had the 750 K and we, we closed up, uh, 500 K really quickly. And then we saved another 250 for the day the general solicitation was, and we, we, we closed it in 53 minutes or something like that. It was insane. It was insane. Sick.

SPEAKER_14: Yeah, it was crazy. What was the secret to why it closed CFS? Was it, do you attribute it to Tim Ferris's, you know, rabid followers? Yeah. Or do you attribute it to

SPEAKER_46: the packaging of the company? And if it's both, what percentage reach? I think it was like everything.

SPEAKER_18: I think like the Tim does have, uh, an amazing, um, following. So they would invest no matter what it is. Yeah. I, I think so. Maybe I, I definitely, I can't, I can't say, speak for them, but I think it was everything. I think that like the team that we have, like we're extremely focused on user experience and this is like definitely an idea. It's like, yeah, why doesn't this exist? Right. Kind of like, like, like Uber was, it's like this, yeah, of course this shouldn't exist. Well, I should have thought of that kind of thing. Right. Yeah. Um, so I think it's like the idea, the, the team that we put together, the amazing design, um, kind of, and with, with Tim's network, just everything and the investors were already had at that point,

SPEAKER_23: we just had, we left the two 50 open. Um, so all the investors we already had, it was kind of together as a package looked really, really good. All right. So you got the 2 million,

SPEAKER_16: you're, you're building up the company. Um, after you deploy this 2 million, where will you be at?

SPEAKER_15: Like, what's the next milestone for the company after raising this, what you would call in the old days,

SPEAKER_16: an A round, but now it's sort of like a super angel round. Yeah. You got the super angel, you're going to deploy this over the next year, I assume, or nine months or 14 months, whatever it is. Yeah. What, what will you have accomplished if you do your job? Um, I think that definitely for,

SPEAKER_69: for this round, it was all about like proving that, proving there's a need for this, proving that we

SPEAKER_18: have the product to really solve it and proving it in one geo being San Francisco. Um, and I honestly think that we're pretty much there. Like the kind of, we launched two weeks from, from this taping right now. Uh, and the, the kind of the response and the reuse has been on any like incredible, like it's

SPEAKER_67: unbelievable. Dozens of trips a day, hundreds of trips a day. What is the early usage line?

SPEAKER_53: We've, we've shipped thousands of, of packages around. Oh wow. Who's the biggest shipper? I'm not, not by name, but number items and like, what's their characteristic Etsy shipper or whatever?

SPEAKER_159: Yeah. So it'll be the, the Etsy. Who was the number one specifically, you must track the whale.

SPEAKER_18: Who's the whale? Who's your mobile? We do. We actually, we don't have like somebody who's like out front with like four X everybody else, which is really good because we don't rely on one,

SPEAKER_39: one person. So the biggest group of people has how many packages shipped?

SPEAKER_16: Um, I think it's hundreds. Really? Yeah. Wow. So you have Etsy sellers or whatever sellers doing

SPEAKER_169: hundreds. Yeah. That's amazing. Absolutely. And in the short time.

SPEAKER_15: You kind of proved it then. I agree. You proved it. So now you maybe got to set up your angel,

SPEAKER_18: your A round. Yeah. Time for an A. Yeah. We only go as fast as we can. And like, this definitely is a company that is going to take capital to grow. And, uh, we're not afraid to do that.

SPEAKER_15: Raise your A now. I don't know. Do it. No, I'm telling you. Okay. Raise your A now because you know what? Putin could go into Finland. You know, the stock market's going up and down like a yo-yo. Yeah. Yeah. You know,

SPEAKER_14: there's all kinds of crazy stuff going on in the world. I mean, this plane went down and what if it's a terrorist attack? Right. I mean, all we need is for that to be a terrorist attack. Yeah. It's proven it's a terror.

SPEAKER_15: If that gets proven as a terrorist, this is my thinking as an, and hopefully, anyway, I'm not sure when this actually pre-tape will come out, but my thinking is, I was having this conversation with somebody last night. I was like, okay,

SPEAKER_14: the stock market's been going up and down 1% a day. If the stock market, you know, takes a 10% hit, they find out that that was a terrorist attack. And you know,

SPEAKER_173: Putin does, you know, send some troops into whatever country he thinks he deserves to own next.

SPEAKER_140: Yeah. Like you could have a 30%, 40% correction in the market and all these, uh, investors might be like, yeah, let's take a pause for a year or two. Yeah. Yeah. That's all it takes.

SPEAKER_21: Yeah. And definitely like I've lost, like when, when you could raise money, you should definitely raise when you can. Right. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_63: That's my advice to all the people listening. All right, listen, let me wrap up. Kevin,

SPEAKER_140: I wish you great success with this. I'm looking forward to having you on in exactly 24 months when you've absolutely crushed it and you have it in 10 cities, uh, which I think you will. Thank you. Um, don't sell. It's going to be a great business. Uh, you're gonna get a lot of buyout offers. I predict. Thanks to WeWork for hosting us here. Everybody follow Kevin Gibbon on the Twitter. Everybody follow at WeWork on the Twitter. Go to WeWork.com. Thank you to our partners, uh, and sponsors for the program. God, you guys and gals are the best for making independent media like this week

SPEAKER_53: and startup possible. God, producer Brandis, I am going to miss you. Uh, but welcome to the team, producer Jacob and, uh, Gina, you're crushing it. I was giving you a hard time about Tim Ferriss being

SPEAKER_140: flaky, but, uh, we'll get that worked out. And, uh, she's actually been getting great guests. The guests have been, you wouldn't believe the numbers. Literally the mark, I saw the,

SPEAKER_279: the statistics for the Mark Cuban episode. Yeah. Millions of downloads. Wow.

SPEAKER_140: Millions. And producer Gina got us listed like on iTunes twice or iTunes select us twice. I mean, it's not like Gina has the ability to tell this. It feels like she has the ability to put anything up there, but we're getting good. Thank you to my friends at iTunes for loving the show and loving the guests. Uh, but mostly to Gina for getting great guests. Hey, Luke and Brandon DeMont, thank you for keeping the lights on. And Andrew, the launch ticker is delightful. Thank you, Emily, uh, unsung hero, making sure that all the events go down without a hitch. We'll see you next time on this week in startups.