Billy
Bill Smith: serial founder who sold Shipt for $600M by age 33
Sam marvels at Bill Smith, who sold a credit card company in his 20s, then self-funded Shipt (an Instacart clone out of Alabama) and sold it for ~$600 million, and is now building Hello Landing, all by about age 33.
“So he started like a, uh, like a credit card company in his 20s and he sold it right away for millions of dollars. Then his second hit was starting Shipt. So Shipt was based out of Alabama. It was basically very similar to Instacart, but he self-funded it and then he sold it for like $600 million. Now he's got another thing and the guy's only like 33. He's got another thing called Hello Landing that I think is really badass.”
Idea
Fridge No More: a cloud convenience store with 15-minute delivery
Shaan describes Fridge No More, a Brooklyn startup running tiny dark stores in a 1-mile radius with electric-bike messengers for 15-minute delivery. Unlike Instacart, they are the grocery store: they buy wholesale and sell at retail, so the markup is built in rather than added as fees.
“Fridge No More themselves is the grocery store. So they go buy wholesale snacks and all the shit. They create a small, tiny cloud, you know, corner store, and then they sell it to you at the normal retail price. That's how they make their markup is just because they buy wholesale, they sell retail. So unlike Instacart, Instacart goes to a normal grocery store, they buy retail and sell at double retail, right?”
Steal thisFor ultra-fast delivery, own the inventory and sell wholesale-to-retail instead of layering delivery fees on top of store prices.
Billy
Instacart's founder bought one of everything at Trader Joe's to launch
Sam recounts Max Mullen telling him how Instacart launched: Trader Joe's wouldn't share inventory, so Mullen spent $25,000 buying one of everything in the store, hauled it to an apartment, and photographed each item. He repeated it for Whole Foods and five other stores.
“our first store was Trader Joe's and they wouldn't let us go in there and they wouldn't give us all their inventory. He goes, I took it. He goes, it cost $25 grand. I bought everything in the store. We brought it to apartment, took a photo of it, took pictures of every single thing.”