Ep. #68: Sean Henry, CEO & Founder, Stord

Episode Transcript
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Andrew Silver (00:00):
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Welcome back to another episodeof The Freight Pod.

(01:32):
I'm your host, andrew Silver,joined today by, as usual,
another special guest.
They're all special.
This one's maybe especiallyspecial, I don't know.
These guys are coming off acouple big announcements between
a large fundraise and anacquisition.
Call him a prodigy.
This kid was buildingbusinesses when he was like
seven, or at least trying to.

(01:53):
This is Sean Henry.
I'm joined by today, the CEOand founder of Stord.
Welcome to the show, sean.
How are you doing?

Sean Henry (02:00):
Great to be here.
Thanks for having me, man.
Great to be here.

Thanks for having me, man.
So you know, your name firstcame across my purview, I guess,
through Ted Alling, and Ted wasone of my first guests and he's
a mentor and an inspiration.
He's just one of those guysthat you look at and you're like
man, I want to live my lifelike him.
So I want to start there.
He's so high on you and hassaid such great things about you

(02:27):
, said I should get you on theshow and so I'm just curious
talk to me a little bit aboutyour relationship to Ted and how
you met him.

Sean Henry (02:35):
Yeah, absolutely.
He is such an important part ofour story as a mentor to me and
an early believer in Stored andmet us at the time more when
you nailed it at the beginningof more trying to start
businesses, not necessarilyhaving major successes.
I think it's easy to look atStored, look at my age and
assume a one-hit wonder you trysomething and you make it kind

(02:59):
of thing, but you're spot on.
I mean, I sold my first producton eBay in 2003 and then I had
dozens of failed attempts atthings or not necessarily failed
, just never made it far andkept pivoting to the next thing,
the next thing, until finallylanding on Stored.
And so I met Ted, veryhappenstance, in the earliest
days of the company, while I wasa student at Georgia Tech, my

(03:20):
freshman year spring break, Iwas trying to use that week to
go extra hard in the businessand one of the things I was
doing at the time was trying toreach out to founders, maybe
like one stage ahead of me in asimilar industry, to learn from
and just say hey, I'm a youngfounder, I'm a student at
Georgia Tech, I'm trying tobuild this business.
I'd love to learn from you,specifically for X reason and

(03:43):
through that I met StephenVlahos, one of the co-founders
of Bellhops in Chattanooga, andhe was basically like hey, you
should come up to Chattanoogaone day this week if you have
time.
I want to introduce you to afew folks and just kind of show
you the lay of the land.
Ended up going to their office,walking down to what at the time
was the Lamp Post Group office,now Dynamoo, which was kind of

(04:03):
like ted barry allen's kind offamily office area.
They were incubating businesses,trying new things, and um ted
through, steven took the meetingand uh, uh, very fortunate that
he believed in me and uh, lovedthe not necessarily the vision,
because we were still very, uh,early stage, pivoting around,
thinking through some ideas, butbut maybe the experience and

(04:26):
kind of upbringing and some ofthe kind of early education I
had I did homeschool for twoyears.
It's an area I was able to spendmore time on the computer and
building some early businessesand that's something he was
doing with his kids, and so hereally just hit it off and
bonded and he was like youshould stay an extra day.
I want to show you X, y Z,introduce you to these people.
And at the end he said by theway, I'm about to launch this

(04:48):
program called Dynamo, wherewe're going to start as an
accelerator program, incubatebusinesses, invest a small
amount of capital to helpbusinesses get off the ground,
move to Chattanooga for a littlebit.
I'd love for you to move toChattanooga.
And I was like man, this guy'sjust trying to sell me to move
to chattanooga because he'sobsessed with this city.

Uh he's like the unofficial.
He's like the unofficial mayorof chattanooga.
I've never seen someone higheron their own city than than ted
exactly.

Sean Henry (05:12):
We used to walk around and joke like if only I
had a shirt that says I know tedall like you could get in
anywhere in chattanooga, youcould do anything.
Um, and it came just out overthe next few months like, no,
this guy's not just obsessedwith Chattanooga, like they are
building something special, hecares deeply about us.
There are real reasons to gothere and we ended up in the
program and I'll just kind ofput a pin in it with while

(05:34):
obviously since then we'veraised a lot of money, have a
lot of investors, board members,advisors, et cetera, ted has
always been one of those kind ofpersonal, deep friends as much
as business friends, the personthat checks in on you at family

(05:55):
events, holidays, reaches outwhen he knows something's wrong.
And I was telling a story Ithink it was a different maybe
it was a podcast I was talkingabout this recently but I hadn't
thought about it a while whichis he really leads from the
front lines and I think that'swhat's so special about him.
And someone was asking me howdid you get early sales success
at store?
And I said we actually did a lotof cold calling and cold
emailing early on and part of itwas because of the Dynamo
connection where they hadstarted a freight brokerage

(06:16):
prior and it was very much asmile and dial, cold calling
oriented culture.
And I remembered I hadn'tthought about it in a while.
There was a day in the DynamoAccelerator program where Ted
just paired himself off hour byhour with each business and said
I'm just going to sit down withyou and make cold calls.
He doesn't even know thesecompanies, he doesn't
necessarily know what they do aswell as the founders, he

(06:36):
definitely doesn't know how tosell it as well, but he knows
people and he wanted to showkind of that fearlessness, just
be willing to call, be willingto ask who, what department
should I talk to?
I want to talk about X, y, zand just put yourself out there.
And I think that was reallyspecial because it opened Jacob
and I's eyes early on to theimportance of kind of outbound
sales, cold calling, coldemailing and more, but more

(06:58):
importantly, the culturebuilding of showing your team
you're willing to do anythingyou're asking them to do.

Yeah, I think you nailed it.
I think that's one of thethings that Ted just does so
well, that concept of leadingfrom the front.
He's so facey and what I meanby that is you see him at the
front of his business doingwhatever it takes, and I think
that kind of willingness to getyour hands dirty on the hardest
jobs, showing your team membersthat you're willing to do it and

(07:28):
how to do it, is a lesson Itook from him too that I think
anyone in our industry can learnfrom and benefit from.
So I appreciate you kind ofjust walking through that
connection to Ted.
So you mentioned earlier thatyou sold your first product when
you were seven or something oneBay.
Talk to me a little bit about,like, what was going on there

(07:53):
and then a little bit of yourjust kind of upbringing that had
such an entrepreneurial itchand what that was like.

Sean Henry (08:00):
Yeah, for sure.
I always joke to people itsounds fake, but thankfully I
still have the same eBay accountand so I can still see the.
Oh, you can't see it here, butit says member since 2003 up at
the top there.
It's real.
I was seven years old and so Iwouldn't say it was an
intentional journey, but I got afew critical presents that I

(08:22):
was not perfectly satisfied with, and my reaction was well, I've
stumbled upon eBay.
I've bought a few things there.
I should try selling somethingthere, and so I listed these
products just pulled like stockimages off.
Google sold them for maybe like25% the retail value and I'm
like it's free money to me.
I didn't purchase these thingsand then ask my parents hey, can

(08:44):
you drive me to the UPS or thepost office and help me ship
these?
And hey, I don't have a bankaccount or any digital wallet.
If you pay me some cash, canyou transfer this out to your
bank and you can give me someconversion ratio and save some
money?
And they were pissed.
Who are you interacting with onthe internet?
It was a lot less trusted, Ifeel like in the early 2000s.

(09:05):
You're going to get kidnapped.
What are you doing?
We bought you these presentsthey were worth a lot more than
this, but thankfully they'vealways been very supportive in
terms of, like we want to enableour kids to follow their
passions, learn from the frontlines, experiential learning and
things like that and so theykind of leaned into it and I

(09:26):
think at the time it was just afunction of I'm very kind of
like math, engineering oriented.
I love everything kind ofmechanical.
I've always been breaking apartcars, car engines, car parts,
phones, all sorts of things.
My favorite show growing up washow it's Made, and so I was
always trying to, like, getinvolved in building things,
manufacturing things, and so Ikind of started selling on eBay

(09:48):
just whatever I had around,whatever I could convince
friends and family like, oh,I'll consign that for you
essentially.
And I basically started quiteliterally the boring business of
putting up those flyers thatare like we'll buy junk
electronics and phones,computers and phones, and I was
just breaking them down forparts and selling the parts on
eBay, liquidating them,repairing some and selling them

(10:08):
as working devices, because Iwas in middle school now at that
point and I wanted to buy anice phone, a nice computer, and
that was my way to do it?
Fast forward to high school.
I wanted to buy my first carand so I kind of pivoted to
automotive parts and, hey, maybeif I get involved in this kind
of value chain I can learn moreabout it and eventually afford
this.
I actually bought my first caroff eBay in the eighth grade,

(10:33):
way before I could drive, justusing the few thousand dollars I
had accumulated, telling myparents like I'm going to repair
this and restore this in ourgarage for the next few years
until it works for me to drive.
It was an old Toyota.
Thankfully it did.
They ended up making me sell itbecause they were like wait a
second, do we really want our16-year-old driving a car he

(10:55):
just fixed himself in our garageand airbags and all sorts of
things?
But I'm going a little toodetailed.
I think the point is I wastrying a lot.
I was trying to build apps.
In high school.
I had tried to source so manydifferent products.
I was doing drop shipping ondifferent websites.
I had my own website sellingspecialty Porsche, mercedes and
Audi's parts, and all these werejust kind of fun hobbies on the
side of school and really, as Iwas getting towards college, I

(11:20):
was buying a lot of automotiveparts.
That was my main business inhigh school and I approached
this one company.
I was buying a lot ofautomotive parts, that was my
main business in high school and, uh, I approached this one
company I was buying from, huoco, and just said, hey, I'd love
to meet your, your CEO, I'd loveto get to know the business.
I met their founder, or sorry,their CEO, chris, who, uh, was
from Germany but happened to bemoving to Atlanta.
They had a factory in Mableton,georgia, and his kids were

(11:41):
going into I think it was middleschool and he wanted to give
them some internationalexperience.
And they said he's actuallygoing to come out to the US in a
few months.
You should meet him at thefactory.
I think he laughed me out ofthe office almost that I was
their youngest and smallestcustomer and basically, what is
this?
But, like Ted, I'm verythankful that he believed in me
and leaned in and I basicallysaid for two years after that

(12:03):
I'll do anything at thisbusiness.
I want to work for you for free, I want to learn how you built
this empire and just teach meyour ways, so to speak.
And it was kind of weeks beforemy summer, before college.
I got like 13, I think it was,or maybe it was more plane
tickets in my inbox out ofnowhere and I was just like what
is going on here?
He was like, all right, yourjob starts next week, you're

(12:28):
going to fly to Germany for twomonths, then you're going to go
do this and this and this.
And so it was Germany, france,mexico, canada, enterprise,
alabama, mableton, georgia.
They had 23 factories or 21factories in 19 countries.
And I had to call him and belike you know, I have class
starting in two months.
I can't actually do this wholeschedule, but let's figure it
out, let's move some of theflights, let's do it.
And that was an incredibleexperience.

(12:50):
It was basically leanmanagement in factories, trying
to figure out how to reducecycle time for the machines, how
to reduce the amount of stepsworkers were taking, how to
improve the throughput, how toreduce the maintenance for the
machines, but really more.
Hey, germany is our kind oflike global standard.
Go figure out a processplaybook and kind of budget to
get each other facilityoperating at that standard.

(13:12):
Because there was a lot ofacquired facilities in that
business.
And so I mean, I literally myfirst week of class at Georgia
Tech took a one-day flight backto Germany to do a presentation
to their board, explain one ofthe budgets for the facilities
and come back and I was jokingto them like don't you know
about online meetings?
And it was just not part oftheir culture.
My point in sharing all of thisdepth is I was trying so much,

(13:36):
I felt like I had so much workexperience, but also I was at
the front line and it was justvery hard to go back, sitting
exclusively in class and notworking on anything kind of as
you and I were just talkingabout, and saying you know what?
I'm just going to startbuilding something, and I didn't
necessarily start store to saythis is going to be a massive
startup.
I'm going to raise venturedollars and so on and so forth,

(13:56):
just like the dozens of things Ihad tried prior was more.
Here's a problem.
Here's how, in a very capitalefficient way, I can kind of
insert myself in the value chainand get involved and it started
to grow from there.

I mean it's fascinating, I don't even.
So.
Was it pretty clear to you then, almost from day one at college
, that this was not going to beyour path and that you know you
were meant to be kind of in thethick of in the arena, kind of
building and fixing and anddoing things.
I mean, how, like, how did youthink about the kind of

(14:31):
traditional path of going toschool, given that you know
you've been homeschooled in thepast and you know within a week
of getting on campus you'replanning day trips to germany?

Sean Henry (14:43):
yeah, I think, uh, he definitely screwed me up when
it came to college.
I think that really threw awrench in it.
But I was very fortunate thatI'd gotten into some great
schools, some very expensiveschools, an Ivy League or two,
and I was looking at that morelike, wow, is this really the
culture I want to go to?
Do I want to go be in thiscollege town so isolated away

(15:04):
from kind of the city, thevibrant environment?
Frankly, connections I had madelike Chris at that point and
saying I'm going to go resetsomewhere.
So I was incredibly fortunatethat I had both the in-state and
then the Dean's Scholarship atGeorgia Tech, so it was free for
me and I even had some capitalfrom that scholarship.
That was helpful for housingand off-campus things like that

(15:26):
too.
And so that was very much myinitial like okay, I'm going to
college for free, it's anincredible school.
I'm not going to say I don'tlike college, I'm not going to
go.
But once it started to be, thetrade-off of the business was
growing.
I started at first semesterfreshman year.
I started it first semesterfreshman year.
I took my summer off and myfirst semester sophomore year

(15:49):
off just to work on the business.
So I only completed, I think,three actual class semesters at
Georgia Tech.
But by that third one, when Iwrapped up and I was actually
starting a fourth, the businessnow was a few million in revenue
.
We were raising our $2.5million seed round.
I had employees at an office Iwas going back and forth to
multiple times a day and I justfelt a little bit like an

(16:13):
analogy, maybe like an athlete,where I'm like, am I really
going to not take my offer to gopro because I really just want
to round out my degree first.
Like the switching cost ortrade-off cost of not pursuing
this opportunity right now whenI've already grown it as much as
I can, while doing both isgoing to be something I regret
and I've always loved the kindof regret minimization framework

(16:35):
of like go to your 80 90 onyour deathbed.
Which of these two would youregret more?
And I was like I willdefinitely regret not going all
in on the business and, uh, mysimple statement to myself and
to Georgia Tech, who wasincredibly gracious about it.
I mean, since then I've giventhe commencement speech, I'm on
the board, they just invested inthe business, they've been

(16:58):
incredibly close to us and I'mvery thankful for that.
What I said to them was this isnot at all that I don't believe
you're a great school.
It's simply opportunity costand I can either do two things
okay with part of my ability, orI can go all in on one thing,
and I think we all know goingall in on one thing is really
the way you get alpha andmaximum outcome for it.

(17:19):
So let me do this now, and I'dlove to come back if anything
doesn't work.
Thankfully it started workingand we were growing rapidly.
But it's kind of funny becauseI did get the Thiel Fellowship,
which is the kind of Peter Thielpay you to drop out of college
for at least two years, etcetera.
But I did get it after I wasalready been dropped out of
college for two years.

(17:40):
I was kind of like sure I'lltake the capital in the network,
but I kind of already steppedout on my own.

I mean, I was going to ask what it was like
trying to convince your parents,family, that you know this was
the move, but you just soeloquently explained the kind of
pros and cons that I feel likeit probably wasn't that hard for
you.

Sean Henry (18:01):
I think I had to give everything I just said plus
a little bit more.
I promise I'll go back if itdoesn't work, Don't worry, this
will just be a one or twosemesters, We'll see what
happens.
But I think that it was rightaround that $2.5 million seed
round, which was incrediblyvalidating to them and my whole
family, and again, they weresupportive from day one.
And by the time I think that itwould have been necessary to

(18:23):
maybe consider what's next.
We were raising our Series A,which ended up $12.5 million.
A great firm Kleiner Perkins andeven my parents had heard of it
from kind of decades of beingaround and maybe seeing it on
the news or things like that,and so I think all those proof
points just continued to makethem say amazing.
But even that statement soundslike there was some hesitance

(18:45):
for them.
I would give them all thecredit in the world that it's
all back to that kind of likeexperiential lifelong learning.
They were very much like wedon't want to spend our money on
like your frivolous, flashy,fancy, fun type stuff.
We want to spend it oneducation and you get a hands-on
and experiencing things foryourselves, making money for
yourselves and so on, and so Ithink that so long as they knew

(19:07):
I had the right intention and agood path, they weren't overly
fearful of leaving school.

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So take me to the kind oforiginal idea for Stored and how
it came about.

Sean Henry (20:20):
Yeah, so one of our core values today is learn and
iterate, and it very much comesfrom this, exactly that We've
always said we're very solutionsorry, exact opposite.
We've always said we're veryproblem obsessed, meaning we
want to make sure we're fixingthis problem and we're happy to
be flexible about the solutionand the details.
And so we've taken a windingpath over the years and if you

(20:43):
kind of snapshot stored at anygiven time, we look somewhat
like a different business.
And so my kind of startinginsight was I was working at
this automotive manufacturerafter having done multiple
e-commerce businesses myself.
The automotive manufacturer wasmostly like in-facility process
improvement, but they did ask afinal project towards the end,

(21:03):
which was how do we reduce ourinventory on hand globally?
And I started to dig into okay,we got these 23 factories, I
think it was.
Two of them have their ownwarehouse on site, but the rest
of them are raw goods in Lansingand machining lines all the way
through and staging to put iton trucks to go out Meanwhile,
while we do sell to small andmid-size customers and

(21:26):
wholesalers.
A lot of their customers werevery big automotive OEMs and so
a lot of them had safety, stockrequirements and more, and so we
had all these warehouses, 3pls,holding so much inventory.
And so I started to dig in andsay, okay, well, we have dozens
of global 3PLs they're alldifferent companies, from
Kuninagal and Expeditors and GXOand to local 3PLs in different

(21:49):
markets and all of them are ondifferent warehouse management
systems that none of them arereally integrated back into our
net suite.
And so we have plant managerssending emails back and forth
with them every day tocoordinate truckloads, to
coordinate inventory levels, andhow am I supposed to reduce
inventory on hand if we don'teven know really what inventory

(22:10):
we have, where we have a maybetwice a year accurate view, and
we do these kind of bankwalkthroughs and audits and
cycle counts and then every dayafter it starts to creep and
slip to inaccurate again.
And so the founding premise wasbasically okay.
The problem here is that,whether I was a small merchant
myself or this large business,everybody is trying to keep up

(22:33):
with Amazon-like supply chains,meaning rapid deliveries, good
tracking and visibility to thecustomer, simple returns and low
costs, and that premise is nowdriving so much of the consumer
behavior.
I think back to my days of eBayand Amazon and my own websites,
and probably 60% of my reviewswere about shipping experience,

(22:55):
and I'm like I'm just droppingthis off at this post office
like everybody else.
Why am I getting so muchreviews based on this?
And it's because over the lasttwo decades, these giants like
Amazon have realized.
Consumers used to walk into aretail store, you swipe your
credit card and you walk outwith your product.
You know where you're going togo return it and you trust it.

(23:16):
Well, today you're walking outof that storefront online,
swiping your credit card andwalking out with nothing besides
trust, and your trust isentirely.
Am I going to get this productwhen I thought?
Is it going to be what Ithought, undamaged, the right
quantities, the right size, soon?
Am I going to have the easiestvisibility through that process
and the simplest returns ifanything goes wrong?

(23:39):
And these companies like Amazon,walmart, target and more are
investing tens of billions ofdollars in solving that.
Yet it's creating thismassively uneven playing field
for everybody else, where, as asmall to mid-sized to even large
merchant, you just don't havethe economies of scale and the
volume to offer rapid deliveriesat that cost and build out all
this integrated tech.

(23:59):
And so you go out to theinternet and you either run into
Amazon saying, order this now,get it by 8 am tomorrow.
Or you run into the majority ofwebsites saying $7 for five to
10 day delivery.
Hope that's good enough for you.
And so we kind of looked atthat problem and said well,
what's really preventing it andare preventing brands of all
sizes from having prime, likelogistics?

(24:22):
And our premise was really it'stwo or three problems.
One, they don't have the scale.
So how can we combine the scaleof many merchants to offer the
package volume necessary to getAmazon, like speeds and costs?
Two, they don't have thenetwork.
Typically these companies aredealing with one or two
different 3PLs.
They have one warehouse on theEast Coast, maybe the same one

(24:43):
on the West Coast, but theydon't actually have a flexible
self-healing network that theycan keep moving inventory across
nimbly to actually stockinventory in, let's say, five to
10 points even closer tocustomers.
And then three, technology.
All of that network istypically on disparate warehouse
management systems, but a branddoesn't really operate off a

(25:05):
warehouse management system.
They're operating out of theirShopify or their ERP or their
QuickBooks.
And then they're trying tofigure out how do I integrate
all this down into all theselogistics systems that hopefully
I can stay out of as much aspossible.
And I would just note thatthese brands we're dealing with
and e-commerce fulfillment is alot different than, let's say, a

(25:27):
factory manager, amanufacturing manager or even a
trucking manager at one of thesebrands who is used to
constantly dealing with theirdifferent trucking companies,
and they have the time tocoordinate each load.
You don't have time tocoordinate every single one of
the five 10,000 e-commercepackages.
You're getting a day.
You need a platform and anautomated solution.
But, long story short, theydon't even live in the WMS.

(25:49):
And so what are they evenintegrating all those systems
back to Shopify directly?
Random data lake they're makingand trying to create rules
about when to send it to theEast Coast warehouse versus the
West Coast warehouse.
So what if we build thevertically integrated system,
the WMS that runs thefulfillment centers, the TMS
that runs the parcel last mile,the OMS that orchestrates that

(26:11):
network to do inventory planning, order planning, routing,
parcel selection, trying to makesure you always have your
inventory in the cheapest andmost optimized points we're
always routing orders to thecheapest and most optimized
points and then, finally, theconsumer experience layer, which
is once we have this, we canactually talk to the customer
more like Amazon and in the cartpower, that delivery promise,

(26:33):
those shipping options, thepost-purchase tracking emails
and the full stack returnsportals.
And so we really combine thosethree pillars to provide
Prime-like logistics to brandsof all sizes.
And our pitch is very much hey,don't go set up a data center,
tap into the cloud, tap into AWS, azure, gcp or other.

(26:53):
Don't go piece together your3PLs, your different pieces of
e-commerce technology and OMSand more.
Just tap into us as aninfrastructure, as a service, to
get the fastest, cheapest, mostoptimized deliveries.
I know it's a super long answer,but I would really just round
out, as we had to pair that howdo we compete with Amazon
delivery with?

(27:14):
Well, we're two 18-year-olds,we have no capital and we don't
have billions of dollars to gobuild a prime-like network and
we don't have all the scalenecessary to get that package
volume and speed and cost wewant.
And so we kind of had to stepdramatically back from that
whole mission and say, well,what's like the smallest thing
we can do to start.
And we had a strategicperspective that, out of this

(27:37):
kind of end-to-end Amazon-likevalue chain, what is it that
makes them so much better thaneveryone else.
It's the fulfillment centersand that is where they control
the speed and cost the most interms of the journey.
They can't really change wherethe product's manufactured, they
can't really change where theconsumer is, but how optimized
that facility location is doesspeak to speed, cost and

(28:00):
distance the most.
So if we start there, not onlyis it a market that not a lot of
people have tapped, so we werelooking at the time saying, well
, you have networks andtechnology in freight brokers
and freight companies.
Who is the kind of warehousenetwork and broker out there?
There isn't really one.
So what if we build a networkof facilities, build the tech
into them to standardize theiroperations, the inventory,

(28:23):
reporting and more?
And from there it began to growout from just partner
warehouses to warehouses andlast mile to warehouses, last
mile and inbound trucking, tolaunching our own fulfillment
centers, to building this top tobottom tech.
And it gave us the ability tokind of have a wedge to start
and keep expanding and growingfrom there.
But as a result we're very muchkind of like a company of

(28:46):
different building blocks orchess pieces.
We're constantly trying to move, saying we didn't really even
reach our initial vision andvalue prop to customers,
probably until 2022 or 2023after starting in 2015.
And over the last two, threeyears since then, that's why
we've been growing even faster,enhancing our unit economics
even faster and winning evenmore in the market.

(29:06):
Because once you have this kindof moat of scale, technology
and network and the value propyou want, it's very hard to
compete with for the traditional, let's say, fulfillment 3PL.

So that's so fascinating to me.
I mean I think it's sointeresting how you were able to
kind of digest and understandthe end goal at such an early
stage and yet know that as two18 year olds or however old you
were at this point like you wereso far away from that end goal.
Like I'm just curious about theidea of kind of taking bite

(29:52):
sizes at a time, focusing on thefulfillment early, seeing that
that was where you could wedgeyourself in, like what was the
experience of kind of navigating, selling the dream to potential
customers while only having 5,10% of that kind of product
developed?
My understanding in sellingsoftware is when you're selling
an unfinished product isextremely challenging.
Nobody wants to be the guineapig of some big, expensive

(30:14):
software or just big software ingeneral.
So I'm curious, what was thatexperience like, those early
days of trying to land customers?
How hard was it, given that youwere kind of committed to a
dream that was very far away?

Sean Henry (30:26):
yeah, and I think two other important points in
that are uh, one principle weagree with a lot which is a lot
like that kind of like regretminimization, um, and we we
steal a lot of these.
Then we're not making these up.
Amazon has some greatleadership principles that we we
try to learn from um.
Another one is they do thesekind of PR FAQs, go to the end,

(30:47):
write the press release of, like, what this dream product looks
like, write some happy customerquotes, et cetera, and then
build a plan of workingbackwards from that.
How do you get there, insteadof standing here and say how do
you work forward, what's thenext thing?
The next thing, the next thing.
And I think that's a little bitof how we said, okay, well,
this is the vision, but we can'tactually provide this.
What can we provide today?
And the second point would be Ithink that was the most kind of

(31:10):
crucible moment for us because,frankly, at the time there was
and I think you and I could havesome fun debating this topic or
we might be on the same pagethere was a lot of pressure on
well, there's all thisexcitement around this digital
freight broker or this digitalfreight forwarder, and why
aren't you doing these segments?
And we were kind of scratchingour heads saying, well, we

(31:31):
already know, especially beingpart of Dynamo, we already know
some very successful freightbrokers and we're pretty sure a
lot of them use technology.
And my point in that is more,we really thought about the kind
of value and ROI of what's yourright to win, depending on
where you start and when.

(31:52):
You want to make this argumentof we're going to be this very
tech enabled business.
When you're in freight, let'ssay and we still move freight
today when you're in freight,let's say, ocean, you may be
talking about $5,000 Shenzhen toLA and if you have, let's say,
10,000 units on that boat,you're spending 50 cents per

(32:16):
unit.
And when your average brand has92 days of inventory on hand
and you can't really use tech tosay I'm going to make the boat
go faster, it's very hard toactually kind of charge more or
get even better pricing power orso on just because you have a
little bit more technology forthat ocean movement.

(32:36):
What it can help with isdecreasing the cost to manage
the load, which is internalenablement, which is great, but
it's not as much customer facing, let's say, and similarly on
trucking, when you're going tothen take that from the LA port
to your warehouse in Las Vegas,you may be spending $500 on that
truck or a thousand dollars.
You may be spending five, 10cents per unit at that point.

(32:57):
And then when you go to ship itto a consumer's house which is
really more our kind of core youmay be spending $7 to $10
shipping that single individualunit.
And you're not talking about,hey, I can't really change the
speed of that boat or truck.
You're talking about hey, I canreally change the speed of that
package delivery from sevendays to one or two days on

(33:18):
average.
And hey, that $7 is actuallylike 15% of your economics as a
business, of your margin, ofyour total revenue is spent on
that last mile fulfillment andreturns, and so I can really
enhance your gross margins.
And so when delivery speed isso much of your CAC with a
consumer, so much of your marginwith the order and so much of

(33:40):
your lifetime value and repeatshopper rate and you can
actually impact the outcome thatwas our whole argument early on
of, like we got to start in thewarehouses it feels like the
place to go and thankfully, five, ten years later it really
proved, I believe to be, uh, theright approach in comparison,
where you can be an incrediblefreighter ocean company.
Those are incredible servicesand we work with a lot of uh

(34:02):
partners, but the kind of here'show it's going to be
transformed with technologypitch, I think we can both
acknowledge, struggled in someof them to really get where they
wanted, and so I kind ofdeviated heavily from your
actual question.
But we had to be veryintrospective at the time and,
frankly, we were getting a lotof flack of like why aren't you

(34:22):
growing as fast as that digitalfreight broker?
Why aren't you growing as fastas that company?
And we're like well, we'regrowing a lot faster than our
incumbent peers and than a lotof our direct competitors, but
we're not really quite as muchselling a commodity which you
can throttle based on pricing.
And so that was interestingearly on, because I do think

(34:43):
that as a founder, you gettested a lot where it's like how
much conviction do you reallyhave in what you're saying right
now?
Because I, as an investor or soon, I'm going to pass on you or
push you harder on this andtell you you're wrong, until
only time will tell over thenext few years who is actually
right so I haven't thought aboutit the way you just described

(35:06):
it and it's it's.

It's a fascinating thing to recognize
like you kind of saw everyonegoing one direction and thought
I don't really think it makessense to go that direction.
And you know, the proof is inthe pudding.
I mean, here we are 10 yearslater and, um, everybody's
gung-ho about your business,with, with everything you just
you know your recentannouncement, the fundraiser,
and then talk about digitalfreight brokers.

(35:29):
You hear that term more oftenused in a graveyard than you do
on podcasts these days.
So I just think that's reallyinteresting.
Now, if I remember correctly,the business initially was kind
of like an asset-lightwarehousing network essentially,
and that was early days and nowyou've, as you mentioned,

(35:51):
pivoted, but I think we'rereally more evolved.
Um, is is the right way tothink about it where you own
facilities, you license out thesoftware, if I'm correct.
Can you talk about kind of theevolution of the business and,
um, kind of some of theevolution of the business and
kind of some of the biggerchanges you've made over time
strategically and like why thosechanges were made?

Sean Henry (36:13):
Absolutely.
I think that, going back andkind of combining with your
prior question, it was afunction of like, well, what
building blocks can we solve?
And I had a great friend,another early mentor, one of
those people.
I reached out to AndrewMcConnell in Atlanta and he
walked me through a story of hisbusiness, which was an online

(36:35):
platform for rentals, and hebasically said we spent hundreds
of thousands of dollars at aweb development and software
development agency to build ourinitial MVP.
We put it out there.
We got zero transactionsthrough that platform after a
year.
Then we made a Googlespreadsheet and started listing

(36:58):
all the properties and rentalswe knew of and inviting people
to collaborate and we got tomillions of dollars of
transactions in a matter ofmonths.
Why?
We made it simple.
We learned the user behavior,we learned what they cared about
.
We didn't have a brand thatpeople trusted to go to this
website and book, but theytrusted us, kind of hand to hand
, talking to them, and fromthere we built a website, we

(37:19):
built the platform, designed itaround that flow and grew it
dramatically.
And so that was very kind ofstuck in my head, because when
we started, you're spot on.
Well, actually, I would evenacknowledge a little even more
naivety, which is I don't eventhink we knew what to build.
We said, okay, we got to buildthis software, this kind of
order management layer in themiddle.

(37:40):
But like what, do the brandseven care about Inventory orders
?
Okay, that seems obvious.
What else?
And so we actually started dayone let's contact warehouse
partners, cause again to be aprime like network.
I'd say like at minimum youneed uh, uh upwards of like six
facilities If you want a reallyrapid delivery, be able to

(38:00):
position inventory correctly andif you want to estimate that on
the low end, each facilitiesmaybe $5 million and a high end
maybe 25 plus million dollars.
We definitely couldn't go opensix facilities.
So we said we're going to dothis asset light, we're going to
partner with existing operators.
And day one became like let'scold call fulfillment centers
and warehouses and we kind ofthought we were giving them this

(38:21):
Airbnb, uber-like pitch of likehey, we want to pull you onto a
network, we want to kind ofmanage the customer service,
manage the payments.
We learned a lot of kind of thepitching to them from kind of
that freight broker backgroundof we'll manage the insurance,
the payment flow, the customerservice, you just manage the
capacity, provide us goodservice and we'll keep you happy
.
And it wasn't very Airbnb andUber like, because Airbnb or

(38:44):
Uber are calling you saying useyour home or your car for the
first time to do this.
We're calling businesses whoare set up to do this.
So they're like, of course,sure, bring me customers, I'll
talk to you when you bring me acustomer.
We're like okay, we don't haveas much to convince there, we
just got to bring them demand,that's all they care about.

(39:30):
No-transcript document websitethat tracks all the import
records into the U S.
We got tens of thousands ofphone numbers and emails.
We started blasting them,calling them all the time.
We were getting crazy responseslike this is a military base,
how did you get this emailaddress?
We were getting some funny ones, but our pitch was basically

(39:56):
hey, we haven't built technologyyet, but we have a network of
now I think it was maybe 25, 50warehousing partners that have
agreed to our terms of service,insurance et cetera.
We're managing the network.
We can make you flexible acrossthem.
So we had a pitch also of like56% of warehousing contracts are
three plus year agreements.
All of these are going to bemonth to month.
We've negotiated entireflexibility for you.
And so our first customers wereactually a lot of Chinese based

(40:20):
importers into the US whostarted saying, oh great Cause,
I have no idea geographicallywhere I should be in the US,
what the good prices are, Idon't want to manage the time
zone difference, you manage thisfor me.
And we said, okay, well, we'regoing to build technology around
you.
And they said, that's fine, I'mjust doing it over email with
my 3PL warehouses today.
So if you can just do it overemail and spreadsheets, I'm

(40:41):
happy.
If you can just kind ofstarting volume.
We went way more B2B at firstbecause we said it's a lot
easier to manage pallets in andpallets out of a warehouse on
spreadsheets and emails thanwhen you're in the thousands of
orders a day per brand and everyminute counts and getting that
package out the door you justcan't.
And so let's start very B2B,let's just get volume flowing.

(41:02):
And if the only value prop wecan have today is a flexible
network, fine.
And then we started building thetech and from kind of end of
2015, early 2016 through reallyend of 2018, that's all we were.
We were just a network ofpartner warehouses getting that
initial volume, getting trustfrom brands, and we got to our

(41:25):
kind of series A in 2019.
And we were maybe 10 to 20million of revenue.
Maybe 10 million of revenue.
We had some real customers, butwe were still just holding
pallets of goods everywhere.
We said, all right, it's time todo two things.
We want to one, go heavily intoe-commerce.
We have enough of thetechnology now where we can

(41:45):
manage a higher order volume.
And then, two, we don't want tojust be go heavily into
e-commerce.
We have enough of thetechnology now where we can
manage a higher order volume.
And then, two, we don't want tojust be the dots on the map,
all these warehouses.
If we want to be the prime likenetwork, we have to be the dots
, but also the connecting points.
And so we got to be able torebalance inventory between
facilities.
So we got to open a truckingdivision and we got to be able
to do the last mile out.
And that's really the big part.

(42:07):
If we think about storedtransportation, trucking is a
very small part of our businessbecause it's more hey, we're
happy to move inventory betweenfacilities, but if you want to
get an inbound, yourinternational forwarder, your
customs, your freight broker canprobably handle it.
If you need us to do thedrayage, we're happy to, but a
huge part of our business isthat last mile.
And so over those next few yearsit became okay, we're going to

(42:29):
build the trucking volume, we'regoing to build the asset light
network.
But as we started to get intothis high velocity e-commerce
segment, we want a customer.
One of our first high volumee-commerce customers was doing
over 10,000 orders a day, whichis a pretty big customer.

(42:54):
That customer, frankly, we didnot perform well for in our kind
of asset light partnerfacilities because all we were
was this order managementsoftware integrating down into
the existing WMS of thesepartners, whatever their
processes were and so on.
And we really realized, okay,if we want that Amazon-like
value prop of fastest, cheapest,best in the world, we got to be
willing to do this ourselves.
Kind of back to that Ted Allingcomment of if we're going to go

(43:15):
to our partners and say you gotto re-layout your facility, you
got to use our WMS.
We want to build now, not justlet us integrate into your WMS
and you're going to listen to usabout how to run the facility,
how to staff the facility, theSLAs that matter.
Who are we to tell you thatwhen we're just in an office in
Midtown, we've never run awarehouse in our life, and so
that was our initial pitch toour investors.

(43:37):
Hey, we're breaking the assetlight model.
We're going to go open our ownone facility and we're going to
use it to build our own WMS, tofigure out the best in class
engineered processes, layoutsand more, and use it to build
trust with all of our otherpartners.
So if you go look at that pressrelease years ago, it was like
stored launches it's onlyinnovation center in Atlanta and

(43:57):
quickly customers just fell inlove with it, and so did we.
They love the value of weight.
I have some dedicated storednodes where I'm guaranteed the
capacity, the quality, thestandards.
But then you have the networkwhere you can be flexible and
you can push me to the edge andyou can cross-stock for me in
this.
That the other, the WMS we built, was starting to enable us to
just watch the cost per unit, togo down and down and down Still

(44:19):
today, every month and quarter.
It's better, faster, cheaper,and so we just said well, let's
double down on this.
Just because we started sayingasset light doesn't mean we have
to stay that way forever.
And it's funny because eventoday we still get to like
aren't you guys asset light?
Why do you have thesefacilities?
We're like we are asset rightis the joke.
Whatever our customers want andwhatever best serves the

(44:41):
business, that's what we want tobe.
We don't want to be like well,we're either this or this and
we're not going to touch theother.
And that same thing goes towe're very software plus
fulfillment.
We have actual software, arr aspart of our revenue, but then
actually all of our revenue isdriven by our software.
That's another one where it'slike investors want you to be
one or the other and we're likeif this is the customer, they're

(45:02):
happy with what we're providingthem.
That's all we care about.
And you can see that in theresults of our business.

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So AssetRight is as good of ajoke about asset as I've ever
heard.
I've heard some good onesbefore when people are like oh,
you have assets and they're likemy assets are my people, things

(46:17):
like that, but AssetRight I'venever heard and that was really
good.
So what, I'm kind of trying toput myself in your shoes and a
big difference in the business Ibuilt, or my team built, was
like we kind of knew our pathfrom the onset.
We just knew if we keep doingwhat we're doing, it will work.
What I'm really curious andfascinated by is you had this

(46:43):
kind of flexible storagebusiness that seemed to be
working to some extent.
I mean, you had $10 million inrevenue-ish and such a massive
change in your strategy ininvesting heavily and building
out this other technology andthen going and getting your own
space.
I'm just curious how you thinkabout such significant decisions

(47:06):
.
Was there any part of you thatwas a little more risk averse
that thought, hey, you know,this is kind of working.
Maybe we should just stick onthis path of flexible
warehousing and get it to 30 andthen 50 and 100 million.
So was?
Was there any part of that?
Also, are there any bigdecisions you've made over the

(47:26):
years that just you weren'tright and invested heavily in
something that didn't work?
And what was that process like?
So two separate questions, butkind of tangential.

Sean Henry (47:37):
Yeah, really good one, and I think it also speaks
to just me as an entrepreneurand I don't mean that in a good
way, I just mean that for rightor wrong, in my style, I think
I'm very impatient,unfortunately, and a little
distracted sometimes.
Just very.
I want to do this, I want to dothis, I want to do this, and so
I'm kind of always stackingmore value on top.

(47:59):
The thing I've alwaysreiterated, though, is, as long
as we're in the same mission, inthe same customer, that's where
I'm comfortable.
If we start to deviate and say,well, we could launch this
division, or we could startserving this other customer, or
so on, that's where I get veryuncomfortable, because I'm like
we understand this customer andwe understand this problem.
That's what we can keep kind ofiterating and pivoting behind.

(48:20):
But you're spot on where not allthese have played out perfectly
, and there's been a lot ofthings we've shut down and
stopped doing, and or a lot oftimes where we got a lot of
flack, for is this the rightstrategy?
Why are you going that way?
And we had to just lean in withthat conviction.
A few examples, so, like fromthe asset to our first facility

(48:40):
perspective.
That was a huge debate.
There were a lot of ourinvestors, partners and more who
were like this is your worstidea, yet You're ruining the
whole foundation of why you'redifferent, what you've built and
so on, and we just had to sayyou might be right, but we at
least have to try this based onall these other qualities, and
if it doesn't work, we'll figurethat out and we'll undo it.

(49:01):
And there's other examples ofthat, too, where the opposite
has occurred.
So I talked about trucking andsaid we're not the biggest in
trucking.
We'll do any in-network moves,so we'll do rebalancing between
facilities, we'll do directinjection to our parcel partners
, we'll do zone skipping, we'lldo some drainage if customers
want, but it's just not reallyour focus because it's not as
tied to our kind of e-commercefulfillment, where we really

(49:25):
focus with these brands andthere's incredible companies
that that's all they do.
But when we got into trucking in2019, um, or uh, uh, at the end
coming into 2020, uh, there wasa time when anyone wanted any
capacity anyone could offer, andso our trucking brokerage went
to almost a hundred million inrevenue in 12, 18 months and

(49:46):
we're like, oh well, this isamazing, this is exciting, great
, this is easy, the easiestbusiness in the world.
What is Andrew talking aboutall the time?
I'm just teasing, you're good,but if we really step back, we'd
look at it and say like, wow,the margins we had were horrible
because we don't know whatwe're doing.
The customer experience we'reoffering is not really better

(50:08):
than others.
It's just people need capacityright now and so even still when
that division was pretty large,we were looking at it and going
through like, well, this iswhat we want to be when we grow
up from a value prop tocustomers.
Up here I'm literally thinkingabout our board slide.
This is the value prop wewanted to have for customers and
these are the financialqualities we want to have to
equal the kind of long-termoutcome we're hoping for.

(50:31):
And here's why trucking as abig business is incongruent with
that.
It's not our kind of marginprofile.
We typically sign three tofive-year contracts.
Now it's all kind of day-to-daybidding.
We don't plan to invest any ofour R&D team behind building
software for our truckingbrokerage.
So we're falling behind allthese companies that that's all
they're doing and they're sodedicated and focused to this.

(50:53):
Long story short and somethingthat I had personally fought for
.
Our board and investors, likewe're going to open a trucking
division, we're going to go dothis Every day was looking at
our load boards, looking at ourvolume, looking at all the
metrics, talking to brands.
I ended up, when it was maybenow down, maybe like 50 million,
shutting it down and justsaying, hey, we're going to

(51:13):
start directing customers to apartner, but instead it's not
for us, we'll do the moves wehave the right to win, not let's
just go be everyone's freightbroker.
And so that was a hard one, butit was also a really powerful
one, because it showed the teamlike we're willing to undo
decisions that weren't right andwe're willing to stay focused.
And the amount of focus we gotafter that was just so dramatic.

(51:35):
There's one other one where Icommented on it a little bit,
where I said I don't likeselling differently, and at one
point we said, well, let's gosell all of our tech to other
3PLs.
That'd be a great idea, andit's not that it's a bad idea,
but it all of a sudden createdthis division internally of well
, these are the people talkingto 3PLs and warehouse operators

(51:55):
and owners, and they know how tosell to them, they know how to
customer service them, they knowhow to build products for them,
and it's entirely differentthan our core 90% of the
business or more customer.
And so, same thing.
We shut it down and said, well,it's working, people are liking
it, it's growing, but it'screating so much tension and
division internally that maybethis is when we're just so so

(52:16):
massive, one day we'll do this.
But I really think that my kindof principle is, as long as
we're operating in a mission, weknow, with a customer, we know
and we're very thoughtfullymaking very light bets, and when
they work, growing them rapidly, we'll do it.
And so we're very kind of evenstill we're trying to create

(52:38):
playbooks for, like, how do welaunch new products and
divisions internally?
Because, it's true, we have ourpartner network of warehouses,
we have our own fulfillmentcenters, we have last mile
delivery, we have returns, wehave some trucking, we have
packaging, we have value-addservices like embroidery,
cleaning, all sorts of things.

(52:59):
We have different softwares,like our OMS, our consumer
experience software, our shipand protection, which is an
insurance that a consumer canpurchase in the cart.
There's a lot and so it is alot to keep track of and even
just right before this it's ameeting going through kind of
product adoption, engagement andsuccess metrics across all of

(53:20):
those for basically like, how'sthe investment, how's the bet,
how's the adoption?
Going across the whole base.

That's incredible , I mean.
So thank you for sharing thelevel of depth you did around
some of those decisions.
I completely see you know onthe trucking example why that is
kind of doesn't jive with therest of your business, or at
least the profile you're tryingto build out for your business.
What's the process for making adecision like that in general,

(53:50):
if you're thinking about, I mean, you just laid out I don't know
15 different service offeringsor value offerings, how do you
decide what the next one's goingto be?
If there is going to be a nextone, what does that kind of look
like?

Sean Henry (54:08):
Yeah, it's a good question Because part of it is
throwing darts at the wall andvision of here's what we think
the market wants.
But then we've gotten moredisciplined over time to say we
have all these thoughts writtendown, but let's only really lean
in when customers say something.

(54:29):
I think that, if I can creditstored with anything, I do think
we're incredibly customerobsessed.
We try to just stay so focusedon let's put our blinders on,
stop listening to anythingexternal from investors,
competitors, the market,whatever.
Let's just listen to them andas long as we're serving them
we'll be okay.

(54:49):
And there's again another greatBezos Amazon quote of as far as
I know, my competitors havenever paid my bills, only my
customers.
So that's who I'm going tolisten to.
And so today it's much more of adiscovery process of kind of
back to that.
What do we have the right towin?
And that's probably where wefocus the most and say like,

(55:10):
okay, if we look at the kind oftech stack we are for the
customer and the value chain weoffer, what else are they
leveraging around that?
And that was a little bit ofthe thesis of well, if we're the
kind of OMS in all thefulfillment, we have all their
inventory data, all their orderdata, all their consumer data,
all their sales data.

(55:31):
There's so many products,particularly digital products,
software, built off those coreelements.
So if we can really win the OMSand the fulfillment network, we
can start selling all thesemodules up here off the OMS or
similarly in fulfillment, likestarting with our network and
going into our own.
We can start winning all sortsof things off that, like the

(55:51):
inbound drayage, the last mile,the returns, the value add
services and the packaging.
And so I think that for us, wetry to think through and we have
a long list we try to thinkthrough.
Are we actively hearing thisfrom customers that they're
looking for a solution?
Are we hearing a repeatedsolution where everyone's
clearly adopting something inthe market like they need it?

(56:12):
Does it fit again, that kind ofvalue prop we want and metrics
we want to live into in terms ofthe qualities of our business
we want?
And then, frankly, do we havethe time and the capacity and
that's probably the hardest one,which is it is really hard to
carve out people to go figureout a new business and instill

(56:32):
that kind of entrepreneurialnessin them of, well, here's how
you start this new division.
Here's how we're going to makemeasured bets and test your
success and watch you in daysand weeks, not in months and
quarters like the broad business.
And that's probably my biggestchallenge always as a leader is
I want to keep injecting newkind of products and new next

(56:54):
phases of what we can become.
And even today we have a wholein like our board decks, in our
investor decks and in ourinternal memos for the company.
We have like it's probably fouracts for stored and building
the prime, like fulfillmentnetwork, which all of this fits
in is really only act one.
We have other thoughts afterthat and how we keep adding more

(57:16):
value and more value, andthat's what I love.
I think that a lot ofentrepreneurs I talk to kind of
like we were just talking beforethis.
You kind of get in that likewell, what do I want to do next?
And sometimes there's this likeI want to go launch a business,
get out of it, launch abusiness, get out of it, launch
a business.
And I'm also think that's anexciting path and something I

(57:36):
could be passionate about.
But what gets me reallypassionate is also the compound
businesses.
Back to my favorite I'm going tosound annoying Amazon that
start with one thing and thenjust keep adding more and more
and more into perpetuity and youkind of get to be an
entrepreneur at scale where youdon't have to do everything
yourself to get somethingstarted.

(57:57):
You don't have to unless whatyou don't have to, what you're
enabled with, is a great team,capital and customers to go test
and iterate things off of.
But again, there's a lot ofpluses and minuses, because if
you do it wrong, you can quicklystart to distract, you can
quickly start to fragment yourteam and in some ways to your
question of like well, what ifyou just kept doing that partner

(58:19):
asset-light network forever?
You can start to kind of giveup the golden goose of like what
made you so successful?
What got you here?
What is the core value?
You can start to kind of giveup the golden goose of like what
made you so successful?
What got you here?
What is the core value?
You can't stop focusing on itand get distracted by these
other things.
And so definitely pluses andminuses.

At Molo.
We built a great company andI'm proud of the work we did.
We knew when to ask for helpand sometimes that meant going
outside of our own company.
I'm proud we built an ecosystemof trusted partners like
Metaphora.
When we needed differentiatedindustry expertise in business
consulting or technologyservices, we looked at Peter
Ryan and the team at Metaphora.
They've consistently deliveredvalue in the transportation and

(59:01):
logistics space for over adecade for mid-market and
enterprise brokers, for shippers, carriers, private equity and
freight tech companies.
Thank you, selecting andbuilding software.
Go check them out atmetaforanet.
That's M-E-T-A-F-O-R-Anet.

(59:30):
I'm curious about your ownevolution.
You know, 10 years ago orhowever long ago, you were 18
and you raised two and a halfmillion bucks and you and a
partner and whoever else butlike you went out and started
building you personally.
You, here we are this week.
You just raised $200 million,which we're going to talk about,

(59:52):
how you're going to deploy that.
You talk about building out newproducts and having trust in
people to go build it and thatprocess and how that's
challenging.
I just think about the 10-yearjourney from where you were at
18 to where you are today.
What has your personalevolution looked like?
What are you kind of most proudof in terms of your personal

(01:00:13):
development, and then what havebeen the most challenging things
for you to grow into in thisrole you're in today?

Sean Henry (01:00:23):
Yeah, I think that an investor said it well, I
think it was Founders Fund inour Series B which was the
number one indicator of successin a founder or executive we've
ever seen is just pace oflearning and how fast can you
kind of see the next chapter andadapt to the next chapter?
Because the opposite statementyou often hear in Silicon Valley

(01:00:45):
is building a team which couldinclude the founder is like
painting the Golden Gate Bridgeby the time you make it to one
side, turn around and start over, because everyone is not going
to be ready for the next chapterand you're going to need
different leaders for that nextphase of growth.
And so I think the thing I'mmost proud about is making it

(01:01:06):
through those phases of growth.
And, frankly, I just did a chatwith Kleiner Perkins, one of
our investors, in their podcasta few weeks ago I think it's
probably a few months out fromreleasing and Ilya from Kleiner
actually brought up that onetime.
I called him in 2022, maybe andsaid am I the right CEO for

(01:01:28):
this business?
Do you believe that?
Should we talk about it?
And that's not me thinking I'mnot.
It was more a function of like.
I want to make sure that we'reiterating together, learning
together.
I'm keeping up with the pace.
I don't want to be thebottleneck for this company and
so, if I go back, I definitelywas not the leader and
individual I am or aspire to betoday.

(01:01:48):
Back when we started thebusiness, I mean I was more the
like walk in and start tostutter, You're nervous about
the pitch, nervous about sayingsomething wrong.
And frankly, back to Ted andDynamo like they helped beat
that out of you for sure.
I mean they literally made usgo stop I think it was 25 people
in a day on the street and juststart giving them our pitch and

(01:02:12):
have them sign something thatwe gave it to them.
And they made us go in pairsand find the busiest area we
could and just start giving ourpitch at the top of our lungs to
everyone who would listen.
And so you definitely get moreconfident or comfortable with
public speaking and all thosethings.
But long story short, I think ifyou go through the chapters,
the hardest thing when westarted was to actually hire

(01:02:32):
great people.
We had incredible firstemployees and that's not what I
mean.
But those are the early mid-20swho are willing to take that
bet on these two 18-year-oldcrazies willing to take the
salary cuts to a lot, Getting toreal leaders and employees who
had faced real chapters andchallenges at businesses for

(01:02:53):
five, 10 years.
Hiring our first leaders.
That was incredibly hardbecause we barely had any money.
This was maybe before or rightcoinciding with that seed round.
We didn't have a lot ofcredibility, we didn't have a
lot of experience and, frankly,I mean I literally got on an
interview with someone who wassupposed to be a sales leader
interview once.
This was back when we just hada free office.

(01:03:15):
There was like four of us andhe literally just said I just
want to stop the call before westart.
I just read an article as I wasprepping for this.
Are you 19 years old?
Are you kidding me that I'mgoing to work for you?
And he hung up.
I remember it.
I was like, okay, wow, I shouldgo phone my guy today.
But that's where finding thefirst leader, our first VP of

(01:03:38):
engineering and then our VP ofsupply chain, who today is our
COO, were so incrediblytransformative because they
brought Amazon experience or acompany called BetterCloud and
CloudSherpa's in Atlantaexperience.
So incredible engineeringleader, incredible operations
leader and it really startedthat snowball of hiring.
But one thing I'm proud of iskeeping up with that learning
curve over time.

(01:03:59):
But also some of our leaders.
One of our first employees, oursecond employee, Alex Kett,
still with the business, SteveSwan, who we hired as our VP of
supply chain, coached him fromAmazon.
I almost dropped my phone whenhe told me what he was making at
Amazon, saying yeah right, wecan get this guy.
And thankfully he went all inon equity and wanted to build
something.
And I've only found outrecently that he had an offer

(01:04:23):
from one of our directcompetitors who was bigger than
us at the time or better,capitalized.
We've now crushed since thenand he chose us just because he
believed in the team, believedin how we were executing that
much more.
So those are some of the thingsI'm proud of, but I think, as
you really fast and still beinghere today as such a big leader

(01:04:45):
in the business, same with myco-founder, Jacob.
But I think, if you really fastand still being here today as
such a big leader in thebusiness, same with my
co-founder, Jacob but I think,if you really fast forward, the
chapters change right and like,the hardest period for me was
probably the 2022 to 2023 periodwhere what got us here isn't
going to get us there, Meaningwe started the business 2015 to
2021 as kind of grow at allcosts, just build, build, build.

(01:05:06):
Who cares about margin orbottom line?
We have all these venturedollars, Everything's great, and
the market changed dramaticallyand it was hey, those
ridiculous multiples no longerexist and people really want to
see the proof point in the uniteconomics and the bottom line.
And a lot of people won't makeit to the other side.
And so that's where, as a leader, you kind of have to really

(01:05:35):
no-transcript.
You say here's the five or sixthings we got to do over the
next few years, but you alsodon't even know are they right?
You believe they're right, butyou could be deeply wrong.
And you have to be thatconvicted over multiple years
saying trust me, we're stillcharging through them.
We're in the middle of turningthe ship and, yeah, as we're
turning, we're going to bepressing against turbulent water

(01:05:56):
.
It's not going to feel great,but we're getting on the right
path.
And if you fast forward from2021, we were less than 50
million in revenue to today,we're over 10 times that and
from a pretty red bottom line toprofitable and real sustainable
margins and customers andgrowing 70% a year and all these

(01:06:18):
qualities we can really zoomout and say that was the right
approach.
And so I think that that chapteris the hardest, because you
have to go from this like I'mjust this optimistic founder.
Everything I'm doing is justmore and more and more.
I can go sell to customers andso on, but I'm not going to deal
with a lot of these problemstoo.
All I'm going to deal with isthe problems and all I'm going
to deal with is the midline, thebottom line every headcount,

(01:06:41):
every customer decision, everypricing decision, every product
decision and trust and empowermy team, but also get incredibly
in the details and in the weeds.
And I think that there's a kindof joke out there that during a
hard time at Facebook early on,Mark Zuckerberg said every day
for the next year, I'm coming ina suit, and I think he did.

(01:07:02):
It's a show like we're seriousand we definitely didn't do that
.
There's a lot of rituals likethat, from being in the office
constantly to being all in thedetails of customers, spend,
headcount approvals and more andback to like showing the team.
If this is the hard work we'regoing to have to go through.
I'm not sitting in some ivorytower telling you good luck.
I'm in it with you, having ashard of a time with you and

(01:07:25):
helping personally try torebuild each team and each
function until we get to thisplace of greatness.
And it kind of coincides simplywith our product evolution too,
which is, I think, inherently.
Since day one, we wanted aflywheel, we wanted this mode.
We wanted to say, okay, there'ssome reason that as we get
bigger, we get better and we getfaster, but you don't have a

(01:07:48):
flywheel.
Day one and we were saying it'sgoing to be more package volume
equals lower prices, fasterspeeds and more trust between
brands and consumers who haverecognized or seen a delivery
from store.
And for the first seven yearsthat was nothing.
None of those were clicking andwe were just like, oh well, I
hope eventually it startedworking.
And then now we can actuallyjust watch them.

(01:08:11):
I mean, we can look from 2021to today and say, from a few
million packages in 2021, maybe2 million or a few million to
this year, we should be over 50million packages, approaching 60
million packages.
To cost, we're about 60%cheaper per order compared to
that period in terms of ouractual last mile and in building

(01:08:34):
, picking and packing to speedfrom five plus days to two-ish
days on average, and thatincludes all international
weekend, et cetera, or two tothree days if you include all
those with our best metros beingnext day.
And then finally, trust wedelivered to 12% of US
households last year unique UShouseholds.

(01:08:56):
We delivered about 1% of BlackFriday, Cyber Monday.
We won 41% of all new deals andcustomers we met last year
because they had talked toanother brand that uses storage
and had heard great things, andso we saw this start to click
and so kind of muddying thewaters of the few topics.
But I think a lot of this justcomes down to leadership and

(01:09:17):
company building is having allthese ideas and not knowing for
years if they're actuallyworking and clicking and paying
off.
And I think this, this round,this acquisition and more, is
really just kind of the, thecrucible moment where over a few
quarters all of our investmentsin a lot of the markets saw oh
wow, it is really paying off andwhat stored said they were

(01:09:37):
going to do is is working.

Andrew Silver (01:09:45):
It's incredible, it's very impressive, and you
know that chapter you talkedabout being the most challenging
, the one where you kind of gofrom this environment where grow
at all costs and you're a heroas long as that revenue dollar
keeps going up and everyonewants to give you money to the
whole world, kind of saying,yeah, maybe that doesn't make so
much sense, now I want to seeprofit.
It's a really hard pivot tonavigate within a business that

(01:10:09):
has historically raised quite abit of money or done multiple
rounds, especially because it'sa delicate dance to do it in a
way that allows your nextfundraise or decision, financial
decision to be one that youknow doesn't look like a big
down round or have challengingcircumstances tied to it.

(01:10:31):
So, you know, incrediblyimpressive for you to take the
business to where it is today.
I guess what I'm curious aboutis like how did you so you?
You just this week or last weekannounced the $200 million raise
plus the acquisition.
I have a feeling those kind ofwere done hand in hand and one

(01:10:53):
maybe wouldn't have happenedwithout the other.
But I am curious specificallyabout raising money coming out
of the environment we were in or, as the chapter has, as you
move from one chapter to thenext.
Can you talk about just thethought process of how you got
to the decision point to raisemoney?
And if it is tied into theacquisition, then let's talk

(01:11:15):
about that as well as kind ofone thought process.

Yeah, I think you nailed it.
It which is it's also anincredibly isolating time, right
, like when you're going fromthe market or all these people
telling you everything's amazingto everything's terrible and,
uh, what you've built is amazing, what you've built is terrible.
You're like what just happenedyesterday, um, and it's.
It's an interestingself-reflective period and I

(01:11:42):
think that over the kind ofcoming years after that, we
really sat down and back to theworking backwards.
We quite literally so.
When we did our seed round,chad Byers from SUSE gave me
really good advice, which wascall every investor in this
round on one call and say whatis the metric we all agree on
will lead to our series A, andthat's the only metric we should

(01:12:05):
all talk about and focus on.
Of course, there's a millionmetrics under it, but that
should be the headline of everyinvestor update.
That is what we care about.
Are we all aligned?
I think that was good advice.
It's a lot like that workingbackwards one where, similarly
so, 2022 happened.
The market changed, we had justraised capital and I think a
lot of investors were confusedbecause we called all of them

(01:12:27):
and said, hey, we want to getyour alignment because we know
you just invested off of thisplan and so on.
But if you're watching theheadlines, like us, the whole
world has changed and that planis going to have a very bad
outcome for us next time.
We're going to burn through allour money in the next 12 months
and hope there's more.
That's a little bit of ahyperbole.
But my point is that what we'regoing to get rewarded for has

(01:12:50):
changed.
And so I want to bring us alltogether and say, before we
pivot our operating, let's agreeon what we're working backwards
from.
And so I kind of wentintrospective, worked with some
bankers, worked internally andjust said, like what is the comp
for us?
What do we want to look likewhen we grow up again?
That's where we really createdthose two buckets of that value
prop we want and that thosefinancial metrics that should

(01:13:13):
match and kind of prove thevalue prop.
And that's things like what'sthe level of GMV we want to
power, meaning the merchantvolume we're supporting.
What's the level of revenue wewant?
What's the level of grossmargin we want?
What's the growth rate we want?
What's the product attachmentacross customers we want?
How many products on averageper customer?
What's the contract length wewant to prove?

(01:13:34):
This is a real sticky solution.
What's the profitability wewant, what's the kind of like
rule of 40 thereby we want?
And like, bluntly, we laid allthose out and said here are the
metrics that we believe if wehit, we'll have a good next
round.
And if you look at where ourmetrics were compared to the
ones we were putting out, it waslike, oh, we're screwed Good,

(01:13:56):
nowhere near it, nowhere near it.
Again, we said in that, we said500 plus million of revenue.
We were less than 50, all thesethings.
And it was like good luck, okay, uh, very silent meeting, uh,
frankly, and um, uh, I think,just over a multi-year period,
we just kept charging andfinally hit those qualities and

(01:14:16):
uh, had a really good roadmap todo so and said here's kind of
strategically, 2022, 2023, 2024,what we're gonna do year by
year to get there and bringingeveryone along for the ride.
Frankly, while having a lot ofdebates with people, is that the
right path?
Is that the right path?
And I don't think those debatesstopped until maybe halfway
through and starting to see, ohwait, it is really clicking and

(01:14:37):
is really getting to where wethought it was, and so I think
then the decision to raise moremoney really came from a
perspective of we said let's usethe capital we've raised.
It's the last dollars that willever come into the business and
we have to stay alive forever.
We have to get the profit offthe dollars we have and we did
three different layoffs.
Those were incredibly painful.
It was very hard for our teamto understand.

(01:14:59):
Wait, we just raised $100million.
Why are we doing a layoff?
Less than six months later, theplans changed what we're trying
to execute.
Just because you have dollars,if you're spending at a certain
rate, doesn't mean you have themforever.
And so the thought process wasokay, we started to get
profitable in the middle of 2024.

(01:15:20):
We said, okay, let's go justbuild the forever balance sheet
now with that profit, meaninglet's go raise the right debt
that can help us for workingcapital, as we're now seeing
large payment in APR volume andso on.
Let's go raise the right debtthat could either help us with
acquisitions in the future, helpus with working capital.
We don't know if the equitymarket is there yet and we

(01:15:41):
kicked that process off andended up closing a $120 million
debt facility and during thattime, which is a line of credit,
it's not really burdening us.
We can tap it for capacity asneeded and in that process we
created our materials.
We're talking to the market.
A lot of investors started tore-approach us again and say

(01:16:02):
like, hey, we keep hearing goodthings about stored.
Everything we're seeing comingout of you seems like you guys
are launching new products,winning all these customers.
We've talked to some of yourpeers and we're curious about
you and it kind of naturallykicked off.
We had been saying, okay, inthe middle of 2025, we'll
probably raise our next round ifthe market's there as just like
the permanent balance sheet,not because we need it but

(01:16:22):
because it gives us massivedurability.
And it ended up that we signed aterm sheet in January with
Strike Capital as they wereexcited about what we're doing
and seeing all that progress, aswe started to share materials
and got super excited.
And I think in that it was areally interesting conversation
because it was twofold from acapital need and evaluation.

(01:16:42):
From a capital need, it was alittle bit of a.
We don't necessarily need thesedollars to survive, but if we
want to build the lasting,generational, potentially public
company and win this missionand really separate ourselves
from our peers and keep beingaggressive when others are being
conservative.
That'll help us get the kind ofpermanent balance sheet.

(01:17:03):
And then, secondarily, from avaluation perspective, we
actually started higher, in theconversation with many of them
and others, than the 1.5 billionthat we landed on, and the
logic was well, we don't want tocreate any overhang again.
We don't want to feel likewe're growing into something and
there's an existential crisisif we don't get there.
We want to figure out what iskind of the right value from a

(01:17:27):
capped downside, uncapped upsideperspective that all of our
shareholders in this round willmake a lot of money if we're
very successful with our planand we kind of outlined to them
like, okay, we've raised X, thatmeans our liquidation
preference is Y, our revenue isZ, and so even in our worst
industry multiples, we shouldclear the amount of capital

(01:17:48):
we've raised.
At our current valuation,current revenue, profitability
and growth rate least get yourmoney back.
In our bad case, our upside isreally uncapped because we're
growing 70 plus percent.
We have this foundationalplatform that we think has a
moat of capabilities, price andquality.
We're winning so many customers.

(01:18:09):
We have a strong product marketfit that's driving that growth
and we're still so small in themarket we could serve, even
being over half a billion inrevenue we can be so, so much
bigger and margins.
We've gone from this to this,but we still want to get to this
and that's even more alpha foryou.
So my point is we actually wantnew investors to either
potentially get some day onevalue or actually participate in

(01:18:34):
multiple expansion as we roundout these last one or two
financial qualities we want tobe.
I think that's what yielded agreat round for both the
investors and us, and I thinkwe're incredibly proud, both by
the lead and getting ourexisting investors, like Kleiner
, perkins and Founders Fund andBond in.
What I'd really say we're proudof is also some of the very
public investors, not likeFranklin Templeton, who was

(01:18:55):
already existing, but let's say,bally Gifford, who's basically
like a Franklin Templeton of theUK massive public asset manager
and really driving intenseunderwriting processes, really
believing over two months maybe,or plus most of these firms and
getting to the conviction andI'm way more proud of that than
I am of the one day rounds thatoccur in 2021 where it's oh,

(01:19:19):
business is growing.
What should we value at?
Here's a term sheet.
Take some cash.
Yeah, feels fine, but itdoesn't necessarily feel like we
earned this, and that's where Ithink we are today.

Yeah, this one feels much more validating.
And where did where to go comeup in this process?
Was that tied into this or itjust happened at the same time
simultaneously?

Yeah.
So actually totally unrelatedto the capital raises, which is
a strange timing on theannouncement, but if a lot's
going to happen, it's thewhatever Murphy's law or
whatever the right one would be,for it's all going to happen at
once, basically, and I thinkthat for us it's a story of
patience and it's also a storyof David versus Goliath.

(01:20:04):
We're incredibly close with UPS, the corporate, but in many
ways when to Go was launchedbecause there were companies
like Stored starting to grow andsay let's compete with that and
so, of course, when it happenedand we knew UPS at the time but
they said we can't really beclose anymore because we're
actually doing this ourselves wewere terrified as maybe 20 year

(01:20:24):
olds at that time with a lotless capital.
And I think when you fastforward and we became multiple
times the size, growing muchfaster all these other qualities
we have now been relativelyacquisitive.
We've bought three fulfillmentbusinesses before where to go
been relatively acquisitive.
We've bought three fulfillmentbusinesses before where to go
now being our fourth, and in allof them it's well, if we look

(01:20:46):
at those pillars of scale,network and technology, we're
really buying more network andmore technology and more scale
and bringing our technology and,for example, we bought a
company called ProPack in Q2 oflast year and the revenue, the
EBITDA, the customer happinessjust wish I could share the
metrics just through the roof.
And that's been really theplaybook for each acquisition

(01:21:09):
dropping in our consumerexperience, oms, wms to run the
business.
And so we were kind ofopen-minded.
But we were growing so fast.
We beat our last four quartersof sales targets.
In the most recent quarter wedid two and a half X our target
for the quarter.
We were incredibly excited andour board and us actually said
we're not going to do anyacquisitions in 2025.

(01:21:30):
We're growing so fast.
Let's just keep our head down.
But having known where to gosince the day they started seven
years ago and having been intouch with the UPS leadership
team over the last 24 months,saying hey, I think this could
be a good idea for both of us.
I think we could combine scale,combine network, bring our
technology and be the best inthe industry together.

(01:21:50):
It coincided with when it madesense for them.
Ups has been focused on theircore and ultimately not back to
what we said.
Not distracting with separatemissions or customer bases is a
big thing for companies likethem as much as it is for
companies like us, and so wejust determined we could be
stronger together.
And so, to go from existentialcrisis and I'm talking like

(01:22:13):
literally a family group chatwhere someone's like has
everyone seen this companylaunched by UPS, should we all
be worried about Sean?
To hey, we actually own thatcompany now and UPS is a great
partner and a strategic partnernow of ours moving forward.
That's a proud one too, andI've used proud a lot on this,
which I don't feel like I leaninto as much, but it's more just

(01:22:35):
when there's something souncertain and you decide to see
it through and it pays off.
That's the moment that feelsthe best, I think 100%.

I mean because only you, only you can look at
like a moment, can take a momentand look at the five years or
eight years of work that got youthere.
And people often focus on thework itself, like the time and
energy put into doing something,and not as much time is thought

(01:23:06):
about the uncertainty and thestress and the risk and the
concern that you feel as the oneresponsible for the decision,
as the one pushing the decisionon everyone, and you believe in
it, but you don't know for sureit's going to work, and so like
to be able to sit in a momentand say like I see, like to see

(01:23:27):
all the time that went on.
But all that worry, the concern, the risk, the, the stress, no
one feels or understands that,the way that you do.
So that's, I think, one of thereasons that you can be so proud
of seeing something come tofruition like that.
It's hard to even put intowords the years of feelings that
come with that, but Iunderstand it, so I you know you

(01:23:49):
know it as well as anyone.

But no, I totally agree and I think you did say it
.
Well, it's just.
I was talking to someone aboutthat the other day.
It's like why do founders haveasymmetric outcomes in terms of
if it goes well, it can goreally well for them and I'd
like to think I work very hard.
It's more that, like theconstant existentialism the
constant will I fail tomorrow?

(01:24:13):
The constant I have thousandsof people whose families rely on
me.
The constant I'm telling themall here's why we're making this
decision and do they believe it?

(01:24:34):
It's all that uncertainty, riskand more that you have to live
with every day, which you haveto have like a little screw
loose to want to live with it.
Maybe and it's hard and it goesback to that period was

(01:24:55):
challenging anything with whatit means for our customers to
actually really live into thevision, to where we are
providing them the product orservice we set out to.
But we could not at first.
And hearing that back from themand hearing that feedback,
watching that NPS and the valuefor customers just keep going up
year after year, watching thatwin rate go from single digits

(01:25:16):
to teens, to 20s, to 40 lastyear, which I think is
incredibly high.
I'm hopeful we can maintain,but it's hard.
The customers validating usalways feels 10 times better to
me than the investor validating,because that's who's going to
keep paying my bills forever ifI don't ever go tap that
investor again, I feel likeinvestors' pride.

getting kudos from an investor feeds the ego,
but getting it from a customer,that feeds the soul, because
that's where you really do thework, and so when you see it and
hear it from a customer, you'relike holy cow, this symphony
I'm orchestrating is reallyworking.
The time and energy,everybody's really doing a good

(01:26:03):
job.
We're actually catering to thepeople we're trying to.
When the investor does it, Ithink it feeds the ego more.
Maybe this was just a me thing,but it just felt like that.
Those two different styles, inmy mind at least, I've never
heard it said, but I think younailed it.

The second you said it I was like, yeah, I think
that's exactly it.
You feel like, oh, yeah, I'mcool when the investor says it.
And then when the customer saysit, you're like, oh, we did it.
That's amazing.
I was telling one of my teammembers.
I was like my happiest momentof this fundraise and
announcements was actually thatI got an inbound email from all
of our top five customers, Justcongrats.

(01:26:41):
This is incredible Good for you.
Here's why we are supportiveand happy to be included in it
as a logo etc.
Just randomly, all five of themsent me different emails over
three days, just saying congrats, and I was like that feels good
, Because if they were sayingwe're worried, crop or blank or
so on, this is not what we'refeeling or we're not happy or

(01:27:04):
whatever.
It's just so different.
And so that was a happy moment.

So we're coming up on time here and I, just
before we finish.
You know you're wise beyondyour years.
Clearly, you've built anincredible business.
To this point you're still veryyoung and there are plenty of
aspiring entrepreneurs likeyourself.
Hopefully, some of them willlisten to this, and my question
to you is what?

(01:27:31):
What advice can you give to theyoung aspiring entrepreneur
that you can take from yourexperience, from your learnings?

that you can take from your experience, from your
learnings?
Yeah, it's a good question, andI go back to that uh, uh,
founders fund.
Uh uh, kind of memo and talk Ihad when they did rb.
Uh, because, uh, part of it wasnot just, oh, I'm young, pace
of learning, whatever theyactually put in their memo that
we believe, by the time Storedgoes public, sean will be
roughly 30 years old, which willgive him an incredible runway

(01:28:06):
of another 20, 30 years as apublic CEO, and I was like, wow,
you're really signing me up fora very long tenure here in this
note, but it seems like from atimeline perspective, they might
not have been far off, but Iwas very privileged to do the
commencement speech at GeorgiaTech in 2022, which is actually

(01:28:29):
back to this conversation.
It was hard for me to do becauseI was like I don't feel good
right now, but if the worldthinks I look good and they want
me to do this, okay, and theywant me to do this Okay, and my
kind of theme or title wasbasically like why not you?
Because I don't particularlybelieve I have any sort of
special skills or insights orbrain or anything.

(01:28:50):
I just try and fail a lot and afew of the principles I tried
to lay out in there of, like,what has helped me the most are
things like don't be afraid toask.
From the earliest days, myparents were helping me write
letters to business people thatI wanted to learn from, to ask

(01:29:12):
them if they would mentor me toall sorts of things.
Like that Just put yourself outthere.
The worst thing you can get isa no.
That Like just put yourself outthere, the worst thing you can
get is a no.
Another one was there's a greatkind of Steve Jobs quote that
had always influenced me since Iheard it when I was young,
which was basically like whenyou're growing up, you're always

(01:29:33):
told that the world around youis the way it is and your job is
to make a little money, save it, have a family, not bump into
the walls too much.
But the second you realize thateverything around you that you
call life was just made up byother people and you can mold it
and change it and influence itand be part of it.

(01:29:54):
Your whole life changes andhonestly, I think my life
changed when I heard that and Iwas just just like wow, like
from literally the chair I'msitting in to.
Everything I see is justsomething someone out there made
up and was passionate about and, uh, there's no kind of like
preordained answer.
It's all just people trying.
Why not try?
And why not put yourself outthere?

(01:30:15):
Um two, I think my final onewould just be like, just start
and just try.
I tried to make a joke likeI've always teased my team that
I don't love Nike's just do itin the sense of it's so hard to
accomplish these things.
But if it was just started, Ithink very passionately about

(01:30:38):
just get moving, go try, gostart and make a tiny bit of
progress every day.
And then the very last one inthis tile together would be
something about like back tolike, don't be afraid to ask,
but use mentors.
And I think that it's not thecheesy like oh, go, be part of
every professional developmentgroup out there and go have a

(01:31:01):
personal board of mentors andthings like that.
It's like just try to findpeople that, on whatever vector
of advice you need, are whereyou want to be.
With that advice, I'm very muchthe like don't take the workout
advice from the person that'snot in the shape you want to be.
Like, find whatever specificpiece, who is the best at that

(01:31:21):
where you want to be and go askthem.
Try to find someone one stepahead of you.
If you're trying to startworking out, maybe you shouldn't
go ask a professionalbodybuilder.
Maybe you should ask somebodywho is two years into their
journey and has made insaneprogress.
Find that person.
When I was a Georgia Techfounder, I was trying to find
seed stage founders series, astage founders I wasn't going to

(01:31:43):
who's pre-IPO or a public CEOfounder and can they give me all
the advice and ask a lot ofquestions, because I think, at
least personally, I'm sure youfeel the same.
Giving back those experiencesis a source of good feeling.
You want to help enable thatnext generation of an
entrepreneur and say I didn'thave anyone telling me these, or

(01:32:06):
fortunately I had some withsome of those mentors.
The hardest thing about being ayoung founder is the unknown,
unknowns.
What don't I even know that I'msupposed to know?
Sorry, if I need to know how todo something, but I don't even
know that I need to know how todo something.
How do I get through both ofthose rapidly?
And the more you can justshorten those cycles by leaning
in with someone that one phaseahead you've always found so

(01:32:28):
much value.
But sorry to go deep on a list,I just think that a lot of it is
just putting yourself out there, trying and being willing to
not always look the brightestwhen you fail.

The second one was so true, just the idea that
everything was done by someoneat some point who didn't know
what they were doing, but theywere willing to try.
And it's so disarming because,whether it's imposter syndrome
or just the constant doubting ofourselves that we have, it's

(01:33:02):
very grounding to hear andrealize that everything was
created by someone who didn'tknow what the heck they were
doing at one point.
So why not you?
I really like that.

So I couldn't agree more and I would only round it
out with I still tell peopletoday I probably don't know what
I'm doing.
I'm just trying my best everysingle day and I think when
you're a founder, especiallywhen you've had an incredible
exit and success, like you guys,everyone looks at you like oh,
you must have some answers thatwe don't know, and you're like I
don't know anything unique, I'mjust trying.

You almost can develop more imposter syndrome
after the success, because nowit's expected that you have
answers and you're still thesame kid who 10 years ago didn't
have the answers and was maybescared to admit that.
So I think you know beingwilling to just try being
unafraid of being the one whodoesn't know the answer.
I think those are great pointsand I really appreciate you

(01:33:56):
coming on the show today Tell meyour story and to end and learn
more about Stored.

It's an incredible business you've built and
continue to build, so yeah, itmeans a ton, andrew, it's been a
lot of fun to hang out with you.
I feel like we've known eachother from afar and bumped into
each other a lot over the years,but it's really fun to go deep
and share a little bit moreabout the story and really
appreciate you having me on.

Thanks, man, with everyone else, we'll see you
next week you.

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Ep. #68: Sean Henry, CEO & Founder, Stord

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