Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From Crowdfunding to Cutting Edge Tech: The Marathon of Startup Life with Alon Partuk of Octup

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From Crowdfunding to Cutting Edge Tech: The Marathon of Startup Life with Alon Partuk of Octup · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:05
  I don't know how to give up.
• 0:07
  I just don't know how to give up.
• 0:08
  In any aspect of my life.
• 0:11
  You will see that I always fight until, until forever for something to be successful, that I will do whatever needed again and again and again and again and I will try to meet this person and this person and
• 0:27
  I will never give up until something will be successful.
• 0:31
  Today we sit down with Alan Partuk, a dynamic entrepreneur who began his journey in product management before launching one of the most successful crowdfunding campaigns in the Design category, raising $2.5 million for his E commerce brand Apricote.
• 0:49
  Alan's hands on experience managing complex international operations and logistics pain inspired him to found Okta, a cutting edge AI driven platform transforming transpar and efficiency for 3 PLs and brands in the logistics space.
• 1:07
  In this episode Alan takes us through his evolution from building a global direct.
• 1:12
  To consumer brand to pioneering impactful tech solutions for the supply chain industry.
• 1:18
  He shares the AHA moment behind Octop, the challenges of shifting from physical products to scalable SaaS and why resilience, mental health and adaptability are crucial for entrepreneurial success.
• 1:32
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:37
  And if you love this podcast, please leave a review@ratethispodcast.com Beyond Fulfillment all right.
• 1:45
  Alan Partick, welcome to Beyond Fulfillment.
• 1:49
  Hey Dave, thank you for having me.
• 1:51
  Appreciate you being here.
• 1:54
  Of course.
• 1:54
  Excited?
• 1:55
  Absolutely.
• 1:57
  All right, so let's get right into it.
• 1:58
  Alan, how did your early experience in product management spark your interest in AI driven solutions for business?
• 2:10
  Great question.
• 2:11
  So I think that I have a very unique background.
• 2:16
  I study in the university economic and business management, but I found myself working with a growing startup company.
• 2:24
  I joined the company when kind of on the operational side of business, but very fast moved to the R and T to manage different product and solutions and basically after kind of seeing how it's like to build products
• 2:43
  and to kind of being behind the scene move to build my own businesses as an entrepreneur and I always have the technology background and the kind of product kind of desire in a sense that give me the option
• 3:02
  to look on challenges in a more comprehensive way like how we can better solve major challenges in the industry, etc.
• 3:12
  So I always kind of think about automation or to do things more efficient both from a technical background but also from kind of the side that was experienced the pain on myself as an entrepreneur and someone that did
• 3:31
  it and done that in a sense.
• 3:34
  Okay, and so what was the AHA moment that led you to believe that AI could really transform business efficiency and the way you've approached that with Okta.
• 3:48
  So when I, when I started Octap, basically it was after I experienced a lot of pain from my other business.
• 3:57
  I, I founded my own direct to consumer brand back in 2017 and I've been through everything this industry have to offer from a logistics standpoint.
• 4:09
  And one of the main challenges for me was the last mile area of the business.
• 4:14
  We were kind of managing for fulfillment centers from production in, in China and Bangladesh to distribution to more than 80 countries.
• 4:25
  And the last mile of the business was always a challenge.
• 4:28
  We, we didn't know, we didn't have the transparency as a brand to know what's going on, to catch the issues on time.
• 4:35
  And this is where the idea of Okta kind of coming to the world in a sense to solve these challenges from the 3 PL perspective.
• 4:44
  And when we build Octop, it was clear for us that data is the key.
• 4:50
  The, the logistics side of the, you know, the three PL side.
• 4:55
  And the last mile is, was growing a lot after Covid together with the exploded of the E commerce industry.
• 5:03
  But it caused a situation.
• 5:04
  There are many, many fragmented systems that not speak with each other and some of them are legacy platforms.
• 5:11
  And it's creating a lot of challenges for both brand and 3 PL to get visibility efficiently.
• 5:16
  So first it was clear for us that we need to create data layer data infrastructure that can consolidate all the data from all the different data sources and later on to implement advanced technology.
• 5:29
  That changed the way 3 PL and brand consuming data and conduct action.
• 5:35
  So the main kind of infrastructure and kind of robust job that we did.
• 5:44
  Was to make sure that we can.
• 5:46
  Connect to different data sources in the supply chain area to make them talk to each other and to make them speak in the three PL language and the brand language.
• 5:58
  And then on top of that it allow us to put an AI and agent that you can ask any question in real time about the operational side of the business, create any prediction in a second, in a real
• 6:11
  time.
• 6:12
  And when did the AI come into our life in the next, the last year or two.
• 6:18
  We already have the infrastructure to implement kind of this opportunity into the very robust data lake that we created.
• 6:28
  Okay, so you have this E commerce brand which is Apricot, and you're, you're selling this, this versatile coat scaling rapidly.
• 6:37
  You're in 80 countries, you've got four fulfillment centers doing business, you know, all over the world and you're having these challenges.
• 6:47
  So, and you realize you want to create this tech platform that'll solve these problems.
• 6:53
  But so when you have that epiphany like what happens next as far as how do you go about creating that?
• 7:02
  So it's a great question because it also was kind of a journey in the beginning.
• 7:07
  Octap was built from two apricotes, sorry by myself, meaning that I started to build Octop for my brand and for the provider that I'm working with in a very kind of not scalable way.
• 7:26
  So I want to create visibility to my own business.
• 7:29
  So I sat every night when I back home hours and hours creating codes and creating reports that will expose the anomalies, the issues, creating alerts, et cetera, et cetera.
• 7:42
  And when I started to talk about the solution that I created externally, I was finally get acknowledged from other providers.
• 7:54
  In the market that the problem that.
• 7:56
  I solve for myself is a huge.
• 7:58
  Problem in the industry and people started to reach out and ask me to use the same technology that I created.
• 8:05
  I was invited to talk about Google and Facebook stages to share about how I solved this problem internally.
• 8:12
  And this was kind of the point that I realized that I built something that is super valuable that can change a complete industry in a sense.
• 8:22
  So I reach out kind of to a few people that I know with the idea and basically decided to raise money kind of to start the company.
• 8:35
  And this is where I transformed the idea from something that we build customizably to my brand to scalable SaaS platform and much more robust solution.
• 8:48
  So we literally started with the idea that already implement and was successful to something that can support other companies in scale.
• 8:56
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• 10:40
  Okay, so when you originally started working on this, you were just trying to solve the challenges with your own business?
• 10:46
  Exactly.
• 10:46
  100%.
• 10:47
  Okay.
• 10:48
  And then you do that and you're starting to get recognition and praise from all these colleagues.
• 10:55
  And that's when you had the epiphany that wow, this could really be a scalable business.
• 11:01
  Exactly.
• 11:02
  I think that one of the most amazing moment was that I one day getting a phone call from a brand in Europe.
• 11:12
  It was a medium sized brand and he told me someone from Facebook that I work with told me about how you're managing your operation at your brand and I want to check if you can help us to use
• 11:23
  the same solution.
• 11:26
  So I realized there is something big here that we are solving.
• 11:30
  But when we move up in the journey building the platform, we realize that our solution can help more to do 3 PL themselves and by the 3PL providing value to the brand.
• 11:43
  So basically the brand side of the platform become an add on to the 3 PL solution that we are now offering.
• 11:50
  So if you remember, basically we have the internal platform that helping 3PL to be much more efficient, to create transparency, to be much more profitable.
• 12:02
  And on this basically a 3PL platform we are allowed them to provide to their clients, to their brand the external platform that create visibility and trust between the brand and the three pl.
• 12:15
  So we have both sides of the equation, both internal side that solving main pain point to the three plus itself and the three PL team and both the external side that working with the brand help them to to
• 12:28
  get a.
• 12:28
  Fully operational platform from the3PL himself.
• 12:33
  Okay, so you set out and you've got this, this tech solution now that you're.
• 12:42
  You're setting out to scale and you raise money.
• 12:44
  So how was this process different than scaling your e commerce brand?
• 12:52
  Completely different because when I started Apricot, we started from crowdfunding.
• 12:59
  So we did one of the biggest campaign ever been done in design category in Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
• 13:06
  We found ourselves after one month with 2.5 million dollar in bank and 14000 clients from more than 80 countries.
• 13:17
  So the business started before we had a business where I needed to basically learn everything from scratch.
• 13:23
  I took myself to China and look for factories, look for fulfillment.
• 13:29
  I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to do that.
• 13:33
  And I remember myself talking every night with different people just to understand even the basic terms of logistics.
• 13:40
  The basic terms of production and our way to grow was completely different because we needed to meet demand, we needed to produce products, etc.
• 13:51
  Etc.
• 13:52
  Different challenges.
• 13:53
  When you build technology company the journey is a little bit different because when we started you need to spend a lot of time to build the infrastructure of the business.
• 14:04
  So when the product will be ready.
• 14:06
  You will be able to scale the.
• 14:09
  Investment of infrastructure and the patient that you need until the product out there.
• 14:14
  To the market is can be frustrating for.
• 14:19
  For entrepreneur that always used to sell product and to get the feedback very fast.
• 14:24
  Because when you sell item like a physical jacket for an end client after a few days you can already get a picture of them traveling with your jacket, whatever.
• 14:34
  Here it was different.
• 14:35
  I need to, you know, to sit to plan to build the platform in a way that can be scalable.
• 14:43
  And one of the main challenges that we saw in the beginning was the same problem of fragmented system.
• 14:50
  We realized that there are many, many different application, many different data source, even unstructured data, even Excel sheet that this industry is working on.
• 15:00
  And one of the main challenges that.
• 15:02
  We need to to deal with how we can create this data infrastructure can support in so many different data sources in scale.
• 15:14
  So we build advanced technology like an AI tool that can read any unstructured data.
• 15:20
  We have Today more than 150 different integration that we are supporting is out of the box.
• 15:27
  So when we launch the application it's able us to grow and to grow fast.
• 15:32
  And today we have clients from small medium 3 PLs to mid market to super enterprise that we can work with completely scalable.
• 15:41
  We don't care how big are you or how small are you.
• 15:44
  Seems like we are not seems like we are providing value across all industry.
• 15:50
  So I think that to build a technology company is very different from building an e commerce brand.
• 15:56
  In both of them you find yourself dealing with a lot of challenges.
• 16:00
  You need to be very resilient and to look at the end goal.
• 16:06
  But I really like what I'm doing a sense I'm really excited about our growth and how we're helping our clients.
• 16:14
  Okay.
• 16:15
  And it sounds like you went from one extreme to the other where you, you got a huge amount of funding and clients and like you said, you.
• 16:26
  You built the business before you even had a business right through the crowdfunding versus yeah.
• 16:31
  Then you transition to this, this tech platform, this AI solution where there's a huge investment and a huge amount of front end work to to develop the solution before you can even begin to sell it.
• 16:45
  So how.
• 16:47
  How much did that process test your resolve?
• 16:54
  Well, it's a good question.
• 16:56
  I think as entrepreneur, you need to, to know how to adjust and to learn kind of very fast.
• 17:06
  And I think one of the main kind of character that I have is the ability to, to, to work in, on.
• 17:17
  On one side, to understand that this is the journey, this is a marathon that you need to, you know, to run in a certain rhythm and to understand it's going to take some time, but on the other side,
• 17:31
  to do the short cycles of a learn, adjust.
• 17:38
  And to improve so every day to.
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  Be better than the day before.
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  And if something is not going as.
• 17:45
  Planned, which sometimes we just need to change direction or to test different angles, and this is part of the journey in a sense.
• 17:54
  So we're in octop.
• 17:55
  We also had many things that we built and it was not successful.
• 18:00
  So we realized very fast that it's not providing the value that we wanted.
• 18:03
  So we took it out from the platform, even if we spend time and effort to build it.
• 18:09
  And it was a shame.
• 18:11
  And there's something that we quickly saw the need and even launching the same day, and boom, it was the kicker for clients to join and to get like an amazing value.
• 18:23
  So for me as entrepreneur, it's always important, and I'm telling that to my team as well.
• 18:30
  To listen to your clients, to be very, very open to the feedback that you're getting, to work in a very short loop if you can, to adjust and to provide the best value that you can in a short
• 18:46
  time.
• 18:47
  And because we are a technology company, and again, we build this infrastructure before it will allow us to, to move very fast and also to grow very fast in the market.
• 18:58
  Okay.
• 18:59
  And a lot to unpack with that last answer too.
• 19:03
  So I love what you mentioned too, about business being a marathon, because so often, right.
• 19:09
  You know, you see entrepreneurs where they have a long, long road before they really hit their stride and they have that success, right.
• 19:17
  And a lot of failures, a lot of effort that no one really sees or appreciates.
• 19:23
  So for someone that's done this and done it with a couple of different companies, like, how do you handle that long road and those challenges to where, you know, you have this grand ambition and you want that success,
• 19:36
  but it's.
• 19:37
  It's taking a long time and you have to continue to persevere before you really see.
• 19:44
  See that.
• 19:45
  That success come to fruition.
• 19:49
  Wow.
• 19:50
  This is a very good question, and I think it's something that really touch in the bottom heart of every entrepreneur I Think that the basic thing for me that I really like what I'm doing, I really enjoy although
• 20:06
  all challenges every day of the journey.
• 20:09
  And I want to say completely honestly that it wasn't like that all of my journey where I've been many challenges and we don't have the time even to, to talk about all the challenges that I've been through.
• 20:24
  But just to give you an example, when I did the Kickstarter campaign, me and my partner back then literally did all the mistake in the book.
• 20:34
  It's like someone gave us the book of mistake and we mark line by line, okay, this was, this was the scenario and it's left us with a huge potential, but $1,000 in the bank, think about it, $2.5 million
• 20:48
  super profitable campaign that in the end leave us with kind of zero resources but huge, huge, huge potential.
• 20:57
  And I took a risk.
• 21:00
  I left my day to day job in the growing hide the company that I have a very good salary and you know, a clear way to a.
• 21:10
  Career and took my computer to a.
• 21:13
  Small old office and started to bootstrap the business to be a multimillion dollar operation.
• 21:20
  And I needed to get the first financing, I needed to get the first production, etc.
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  Etc.
• 21:25
  And it was hard, it was super hard.
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  And I remember myself don't sleep at night.
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  You know, I was working in, in different time zones.
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  I have a lot of pressure, a.
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  Lot of pressure on myself as a solo entrepreneur.
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  And I just remember going back at home, eating dinner, be with my wife.
• 21:47
  Few hours and continue working until the.
• 21:50
  The, you know, the long hours of the night and just remove completely the sleep because it's not make sense to sleep one hour then to get to additional day.
• 22:00
  And I think that very fast.
• 22:03
  After a few months I realized that if I want to be successful as an entrepreneur, I need to do kind.
• 22:11
  Of a process with myself to disconnect alone as a person, to alone as a business.
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  Meaning that you can do as much as you can as an entrepreneur, to support the business, to keep running, to always be resilient to challenges.
• 22:28
  But alone as a person is healthy, he has family, is happy and everything will be good.
• 22:34
  Although there are challenges and maybe the business will not be successful.
• 22:38
  But alone as a person is fine, is healthy.
• 22:41
  And it took me some time to do this kind of split between myself and the business.
• 22:47
  But today when I look in on myself, my mental health is super strong and I sleep better at night because I know that I do whatever I can and I work super hard to bring My business to be
• 23:01
  huge, to be successful.
• 23:03
  And there are some things that are not dependent on me and part of life, but I do whatever I can do.
• 23:09
  So I think that on the basic side of things, it's not for everyone.
• 23:13
  And I always said it to a lot of friends that I have a dream that I may have a dream to build a business, to build that it's not for everyone.
• 23:20
  It's a hard journey and you need to have a very strong personality to know how to manage family life, to know how to manage business and to do this long journey while you still enjoying the way.
• 23:35
  And there are some days that you wake up in the morning and you feel on top of the world because you have a big deal that you success or you have a investor that give you a good deal
• 23:49
  that you wanted.
• 23:50
  There are some days that you feel that this is it, this is the end because the client give you a bad feedback or you lost the deal.
• 23:56
  And when you understand that this is the journey, one day you feel down.
• 24:00
  One day you're going to be up.
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  But you need to make sure to.
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  Continue and to be consistent.
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  This is where things started to, to.
• 24:08
  Make sense and to organize in a way that you can keep running.
• 24:11
  Think about it.
• 24:12
  When you start to run, you have kind of the first few minutes of the.
• 24:16
  The run when it's a little bit hard, when you adjust to the rhythm and your body kind of adjusted and you can run 5, 10 km.
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  This is how I see kind of the.
• 24:29
  The entrepreneur life in a sense.
• 24:32
  Okay.
• 24:33
  Wow.
• 24:33
  And love that.
• 24:34
  And especially too.
• 24:35
  Right.
• 24:36
  I'm sure everyone can relate to those long nights and you feel like you have to do whatever you can to get the business going.
• 24:43
  And if it's not working, sometimes the instinct is to just grind harder and you know, do it that way.
• 24:50
  But like you said, you know, separating Alan, the person from the business and making sure that whatever happens with the business that, you know, you are focused on being happy and your mental health and your physical health and
• 25:05
  your family life and making sure that all those things are going to be fine regardless.
• 25:10
  Did I say that right?
• 25:12
  Yeah.
• 25:12
  100.
• 25:13
  And I want to add on top of that, there is something in my personality that it's, it's.
• 25:19
  It's related to a lot of stuff that I've been through in my life.
• 25:23
  I don't know how to give up.
• 25:25
  I just don't know how to give up in any aspect of my life.
• 25:29
  You will see that I always fight.
• 25:32
  Until.
• 25:34
  Until forever for something to be successful.
• 25:38
  That I will do whatever needed again and again and again and again.
• 25:42
  And I would try to meet this person and this person and I will never give up until something will be successful.
• 25:48
  When I focus on something, it's going to be very hard or very impossible to bring me to a place that I'm saying I'm giving up, I can do it anymore.
• 25:59
  And this is part of the thing that allow me to understand, okay, it's going to be a journey.
• 26:06
  I know that I will not going to give up.
• 26:07
  I know that I will keep continue and every challenge that I will be facing as an entrepreneur and I'm going to be facing a lot of challenges.
• 26:16
  I'm going to do whatever needed to overcome this challenge.
• 26:19
  Even if it's hard, even it seems.
• 26:21
  Like there is a dead end, there is always going to be a way out.
• 26:25
  And where do I understand this as.
• 26:26
  A, as an entrepreneur?
• 26:28
  Every issue become an opportunity.
• 26:31
  Sometimes it seems like, wow, this is.
• 26:33
  The worst thing that can happen to me right now.
• 26:36
  But then you stop and you say, I've been so many challenges.
• 26:41
  It might be the one thing that.
• 26:45
  You need right now to continue fast.
• 26:48
  So you go to sleep, you wake up in the morning, you reorganize and you continue and you find a way to move on.
• 26:55
  And I believe that it's helped me a lot to build a great business in a great company because you always understand there is a way out.
• 27:03
  You just need to be, you know, consistent, to work organized and to be resilient in the set.
• 27:11
  Love that.
• 27:13
  Okay.
• 27:13
  All right.
• 27:14
  And Alan, if people want to reach out, find more about Octa, how it can potentially help them or get in touch with you for, for any other reason.
• 27:22
  What's the best way that people can.
• 27:23
  Reach out to you?
• 27:25
  So I'm really active in the social media, LinkedIn.
• 27:29
  You can follow me to see kind of a lot of.
• 27:32
  I'm sharing a lot about my journey and octop journey and reach out to me in a personal, personal message and yeah, happy to talk with people from the industry and to share knowledge etc and of course, if you
• 27:46
  are a 3 PL, reach out to see how we can help you to be even better and stronger and to be much better business.
• 27:56
  We'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 27:58
  All right, well, thank you so much for being here today, sharing all this valuable wisdom and the lessons from your journey with our audience.
• 28:06
  We greatly appreciate it.
• 28:07
  Thank you, Dave, we're great.
• 28:10
  All right, we will see you next time.