Shotput YCombinator Application

http://shipping.derivatived.com/#/dashboard

Stripe for managing Supply Chains. We handle the post-manufacturing supply chain to the customer for small to mid-size product companies by connecting directly to manufacturers. We have developed a standard process to manage the supply chain for many product companies and allow for some flexibility during key points of the supply chain.

Now: Jersey City, NJ. After YC: We’ve seen growth in NYC & Boston, will evaluate our experience in the Valley.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPwBahapz3I

James & Praful have known each other since 2010 at Northeastern University. They worked on building iMadeIT together and built small projects together. Praful & Shawn met through a Self Driving Vehicle meet-up that was setup to build prototypes of autonomous vehicles in April 2013. James & Shawn met in May 2014 at our old office in New Brunswick. All 3 of us have been working together full time on this as roommates in Jersey City since June 2014.

James & Praful: http://www.northeastern.edu/entrepreneurs/programs/northeastern-io/ In 2010 we co-founded iMadeIT (now NU.io), an entrepreneurial club that teaches students of all levels and backgrounds to create their own websites. Our members were primarily composed of business majors with lots of ideas and no background in programming. Within 2 years, we became the biggest entrepreneurial club at Northeastern. The club still runs successfully today and grew to over 100 active members by the time we passed it over to other student leaders.

We have a web app with a beta customer and a beta warehouse. In the warehouse, our software manages 50,000 orders per month. Our beta customer has prepaid and is shipping out 1103 orders in December.

~5000 lines

Currently testing our beta with customers

1 Beta Customer

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undefined_(mathematics)

$110.30

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We are passionate about solving logistics problems because they have a large societal impact and require small investments in technology to gain leverage. Originally, we were making software to increase storage density in warehouses to dramatically lower storage costs. That led us to learn a significant amount about warehousing and the supply chain process and why warehouses have so much trouble investing in technology. Additionally, Praful’s previous startup developed hardware and he knew the difficulties of managing his supply chain. Finally, James and Praful knew the problems that product companies have based on their experience mentoring startups and within 2 weeks of switching to the new business, we were able to get our first check.

We want to make it as easy as setting up an API account with us to get started with fulfillment. No one else has made it that easy to start providing fulfillment solutions for companies. Typically, start-ups go two different routes. 1. They do the fulfillment themselves. This means a large portion of their effort is taken away from product development and marketing. 2. They find a 3PL. Often times, they are overpaying and the facilities are initially misinformed about the product which delays shipments. To find warehousing today is a long and arduous process of calling individual facilities to see if they can manage a given product. Each warehouse has a slightly different pricing structure, different process of fulfillment, and different understanding of the same product.

Competitors: ShipWire, SymphonyCommerce, JaggedPeak, Amazon Fear the most: Amazon

Our competitors and the experts in the field focus too much attention on the differences between each company’s fulfillment operations. For our first account, it took over 200 phone calls and 10 days to get a handful of quotes. Most facilities refuse to work with startups due to inconsistent volumes. We found by aggregating products under a major account, providing a standard procedure, and packaging requirements, we eliminated 80% of the fulfillment differences. There will still be custom operations which will be beyond our scope but most startups have similar requirements and dimensional-weights for their products.

We charge 10 cents per order. The average crowd-funded customer has 2000-3000 orders in the first month so we will make $200 – 300/month per customer. The successful companies increase to average 5000 orders/month by the end of the year, providing $500/month in revenue. There are 500 successfully crowd-funded hardware projects on KickStarter and Indiegogo since November 2013. This number excludes other product companies such as apparel, non-hardware physical goods, and food-related projects. The number of orders/customer and number of new products are expected to increase every year.

We currently get customers by reaching out to recently over-subscribed, crowd-funded projects on KickStarter & Indiegogo. We have found startups by partnering with TechStars, Northeastern IDEA, and Kairos Society. We are also working to become preferred vendors for KickStarter & Indiegogo. As our customer base grows, we will continue to optimize the process of fulfillment for even higher cost-savings thus increasing our ability to close more customers.

Have you seen how many bathrooms some warehouses have?? They have some of the highest densities of bathrooms in a workplace. One union negotiated a clause that every employee must be less than 90 feet from a toilet at all times.