Latest / Beyond Fulfillment Podcast / From Bootstrapped Startup to Forbes Award, The Story Of Ordoro With Jagath Narayan

Transcript

From Bootstrapped Startup to Forbes Award, The Story Of Ordoro With Jagath Narayan · Beyond Fulfillment Podcast

• 0:00
  Jagath Narayan is the innovative co founder and CEO of Ordero, a pioneering logistics solutions platform for small to medium sized e commerce retailers.
• 0:13
  Founded in 2010, Orderow simplifies the complexities of shipping, inventory management and dropshipping coordination, helping merchants streamline their operations and achieve new levels of efficiency.
• 0:27
  Jagath brings a robust background in supply chain management, having worked with industry giants like GM and Chrysler before embarking on his entrepreneurial journey.
• 0:38
  Overcoming early challenges including bootstrapping the company and finding their first customer.
• 0:44
  Through an online forum, Jagath and his team have built a reputable and award winning service recognized by Forbes.
• 0:53
  In our conversation, Jagath shares his unique entrepreneurial mindset, emphasizing the importance of persistence, enjoying the journey and increasing one's lux surface area through active participation and networking.
• 1:09
  Get ready for an inspiring deep dive into building a successful business, maintaining a motivated team and scaling brand awareness.
• 1:18
  All elements crucial for any aspiring entrepreneur.
• 1:23
  As always, if you found value from this content, please like and subscribe.
• 1:28
  And now here's my conversation with with Jagath Narayan.
• 1:31
  Enjoy.
• 1:32
  Hello everyone and welcome to another episode.
• 1:35
  Of the Beyond Fulfillment podcast.
• 1:37
  I'm your host Dave Gulas and this week my guest is the founder and the CEO of Ordero, Jagath Narayan.
• 1:46
  Welcome Jagath.
• 1:48
  Hey.
• 1:48
  Hey.
• 1:49
  Great to meet you David.
• 1:50
  Yeah, so, so so grateful you could take the time to be here if you would for everyone.
• 1:55
  Jagath, could you tell us what Ordero is and how it got started?
• 2:00
  Yeah.
• 2:01
  So I can explain to you what Ordero does.
• 2:03
  In a nutshell we solve logistics problems for small to medium sized e commerce retailers.
• 2:08
  So if you're someone who's selling through let's say a Shopify or a WooCommerce store or you are selling through let's say the Amazon or Walmart marketplace as a third party seller, those then you could be a customer of
• 2:20
  order.
• 2:21
  And there are different logistics puzzles, different logistics problems that we solve.
• 2:26
  There are three different areas so we focus on.
• 2:29
  So the first one is shipping.
• 2:30
  So we have a multi calendar shipping app built in into our Doro.
• 2:34
  So let's say you're selling through Shopify and Amazon.
• 2:37
  We can aggregate all those orders into one dashboard and then from there you can easily create shipping labels, print out pick pack, pick and pack lists.
• 2:46
  So the entire pick pack, ship workflow, it's kind of built in.
• 2:48
  And we also because of our like large volume of labels that are getting created through our platform we have discounted rates, shipping rates with USPS and UPS and all of that.
• 2:58
  So that's the shipping part of the equation.
• 3:01
  Now another big piece problem that we solve is inventory management.
• 3:06
  So let's say you're selling through Shopify and it's selling through Amazon and Walmart.
• 3:10
  So we can keep track of the stock levels of all your products across all these sales channels and across your warehouse and maybe if you have multiple warehouses.
• 3:19
  So all of that is kind of built in.
• 3:20
  And let's say you sold one unit of a product on Shopify, detect that and automatically go reduce the stock levels on Amazon and Walmart.
• 3:28
  So a lot of inventory management functionality, if you are doing like any kind of kitting operation, kitting and bundling, we are really good for that.
• 3:35
  So there's a lot of, a lot of people love us for that.
• 3:38
  And the third part is let's say you're doing this fulfillment and inventory management, but you also want to outsource some of your fulfillment.
• 3:47
  Let's say you're shipping like let's say 80% of your products are being shipped from your warehouse, but 20% you want to ship out of a 3 PL or a dropshipper.
• 3:55
  Dropshipping is app comes in the picture and it really allows you to automate a lot of the workflows around where the order should be fulfilled out of.
• 4:03
  So yeah, in a nutshell, we solve shipping problem, inventory management problem and drop shipping problem for your typical Shopify, Shopify plus size merchant who's selling across either one channel or multiple channels.
• 4:17
  Okay.
• 4:18
  And Ordero has been around since 2010, is that right?
• 4:22
  That is correct, yeah.
• 4:23
  So we originally started in 2010, but we really started gaining traction I would say a couple of years later.
• 4:29
  So a little bit of the backstory before starting order, my background was in supply chain management.
• 4:35
  I worked for a company called, they were called ITWO then and now they called Blue Yonder.
• 4:39
  They were in the enterprise space.
• 4:41
  So they were the typical customers of Blue Yonder were like the large corporations like gm, Chrysler and all of that.
• 4:47
  So I was there for I think seven to eight years and really got deep into solving a lot of these supply chain problems at a very large scale.
• 4:57
  So I was working as a supply chain consultant on projects like gm, Chrysler Group model, the Corona Beer guys, Airbus in Europe.
• 5:09
  So and I was really helping them solve their demand forecasting problems and their supply chain communication problems.
• 5:18
  So I did that for a while.
• 5:19
  I always wanted to start something on my own.
• 5:21
  So after I, I left that job and moved to Austin to join the business school at ut.
• 5:29
  And during that time I was exploring a Lot of different ideas and I kind of realized that there is an opportunity to solve the E Commerce was like really starting to pick up at that time.
• 5:39
  Shopify was just in the, in the early growth phase.
• 5:42
  There's like big commerce, Magento, all of these.
• 5:45
  And I realized that there's going to be a lot of these small businesses that are going to be selling online and they don't have all the sophisticated software to solve logistics problems.
• 5:57
  So most of these people are still managing using spreadsheets or like really like not, not good quality software.
• 6:03
  So I partnered up with a couple of other people and we decided to launch this company right out of business school.
• 6:10
  So in the beginning it took us a while to kind of like get it off the, off the ground and then get a few initial customers.
• 6:16
  So a lot of it is like really bringing about, bringing all those supply chain capability, supply chain software capabilities that the large companies have.
• 6:25
  But how do you bring all of that into the SMB space in a very easy to use software at a lower price point, almost self serve.
• 6:33
  That's, that's the vision behind the Ordo company.
• 6:38
  Okay, so it's 2010, right?
• 6:42
  I mean E Commerce is just starting to take off Shopify and all these people are coming into the space, right?
• 6:47
  Future looks very bright for it.
• 6:49
  And you and a couple buddies from business school, you have this idea for this software system where it looks like there's a big, big need in the marketplace and it could, there could be something here.
• 6:58
  But again, right, you're, you're in business school, you don't, you don't have a background with this like what was the process like turning this idea and this, this passion to go do something big into an act like a
• 7:10
  tangible product?
• 7:12
  It was, yeah, it was a very interesting, exciting, I would say maybe even like painful journey.
• 7:18
  So we, when we teamed up, when the three of us teamed up, the other two people that I partnered with, they were all like my business school classmates, right.
• 7:27
  And none of us had launched the startup before.
• 7:29
  We were all used to working.
• 7:30
  We all worked at like large companies.
• 7:32
  So we were all like employees at large companies.
• 7:34
  So we didn't have the startup background.
• 7:36
  And when we decided to launch in the beginning we thought that okay, maybe we can like purely bootstrap it for a while without racing around.
• 7:45
  Pretty quickly we realized that that's not a possibility because we are launching a tech company and then we will need to hire a few, maybe a few engineers.
• 7:53
  And none of us had like pure software development background.
• 7:57
  So we started looking to Raise some money.
• 8:01
  And that was, I think it was like 2010, right?
• 8:04
  So 2008, if you remember, the financial world had collapsed.
• 8:08
  Everything was down.
• 8:10
  There was a recession, people were struggling to get a job and we had just graduated.
• 8:14
  So we decided to kind of like just go through the process.
• 8:19
  Painful.
• 8:20
  In the beginning, we were looking to hire maybe we thought, okay, we can hire some UT computer science graduates as our first team.
• 8:28
  That didn't quite work out.
• 8:30
  We found a couple of contract developers in the beginning and since we didn't have cash to pay them, that wasn't super easy.
• 8:37
  But we finally found someone who was willing to work for a little bit of equity stock options.
• 8:43
  So that is how we got really started the very first prototype of the software we built using that.
• 8:49
  And at the same time we were like really trying to figure out, okay, how do we find the first customer?
• 8:54
  And we were like going through forums, like ebay had a forum, I think Amazon had a forum at that, that time.
• 9:02
  And we were like cold calling a lot of e commerce retailers and none of nothing landed.
• 9:08
  But somehow, luckily for us, we found one customer who was asking precisely about the problem that we solved on a forum.
• 9:18
  And we called them and we realized that they were in San Antonio.
• 9:21
  So I'm here in Austin.
• 9:23
  San Antonio is like what, an hour drive away from here.
• 9:26
  We realized that they were in San Antonio and also realized that the business owner there had worked for my.
• 9:33
  Com, the previous company before.
• 9:34
  So we had, we had worked in the same company.
• 9:36
  We didn't know each other at that time.
• 9:37
  So that really clicked.
• 9:39
  And she said, okay, why don't you guys just drive down to San Antonio and then we can just, I'll show you my warehouse and we can talk.
• 9:45
  So we, the three of us got into a car, just drove to San Antonio, spent a lot of time, spent like maybe a couple of hours with them and realized that this is, there is an opportunity.
• 9:57
  The software they were using, they were really struggling with it.
• 10:00
  So we could easily solve their problem.
• 10:02
  And they agreed to become our first beta customer.
• 10:04
  They said that, okay, once you have like a prototype, we are willing to sign up and start using it.
• 10:08
  So that was one part.
• 10:10
  Another part that really helped was during business school.
• 10:14
  Usually in business school, pretty much everyone looks for internships at large companies like Google or McKinsey or IBM.
• 10:24
  So I decided that, okay, I don't want to go that route.
• 10:27
  Instead I want to go do an internship or what I call as an internship.
• 10:31
  It will basically just go spend the entire summer at a small Business.
• 10:34
  So I found a local e commerce retailer.
• 10:37
  They were selling, they had like decent order volume.
• 10:40
  They had a small warehouse with like three or four employees.
• 10:43
  So the entire summer I spent in their warehouse looking at their operations, helping them pick pack ships.
• 10:49
  And so all of these things kind of like guided us towards building really, like narrowing down onto what problem we need to solve and also signing up like the first customers.
• 11:02
  And that was a big milestone.
• 11:04
  So we had a contract developer, we had this first customer, and slowly it took us a while to build the first version of the software.
• 11:13
  But once that was live, within a few months they wrote us the first monthly recurring subscription check.
• 11:22
  And that was it.
• 11:24
  Like, that was proof that, okay, we are solving a real problem for e commerce retailers and someone's willing to pay for it.
• 11:31
  And that was the first huge milestone for us to really get started.
• 11:37
  Okay, so when you even got your first customers, the software wasn't even done.
• 11:42
  You just had this concept of what it could do and then you're bootstrapped and struggling to get funds.
• 11:49
  So you basically get the developer and give them some equity.
• 11:53
  And that's how you got the first version of the software.
• 11:56
  And you had a beta client that it turned out to work perfect.
• 11:58
  A chance meeting with someone nearby and it turned out to work perfectly.
• 12:03
  So all these instances came together and basically got you a finished software and ended up in a paying client.
• 12:11
  But wow, who could have drew it up that way, huh?
• 12:15
  Yeah, that is exactly.
• 12:16
  And that's the thing, like I, when I read and I talk about entrepreneurship, a lot of it is serendipity.
• 12:21
  There is this like, concept that I absolutely love.
• 12:23
  It's called how do you increase your luck surface area.
• 12:26
  Right when you're doing a startup, Particularly if this is your first startup and you don't really have background, it's never going to be easy.
• 12:33
  So you got to, what you got to do is like, you got to show up in so many different places where something, one of those items may click.
• 12:41
  And I'll tell you another story on how we raised our first.
• 12:43
  So we did raise a little bit of money after that because we realized, okay, we need to hire employees and, and start growing.
• 12:50
  So the way we raised our first round was we really struggled in those early days.
• 12:54
  We really struggled to go race around from typical VCs.
• 12:59
  We went that path and didn't fully work out.
• 13:02
  Maybe it was the timing, maybe it was the fact that we were out of business school.
• 13:06
  And VCs inherently everything against business school.
• 13:09
  They prefer like engineers, even though I'm an engineer, so I have, like, an engineering degree.
• 13:13
  I have an undergrad and a master's in engineering.
• 13:16
  And then I did the business degree.
• 13:18
  So it wasn't easy.
• 13:19
  And.
• 13:20
  But we kept showing up.
• 13:21
  We would go to so many pitches.
• 13:22
  We would go to all these pitch events.
• 13:24
  And one of the things I always remember is we went to a pitch event pretty.
• 13:28
  I mean, right outside of Austin.
• 13:30
  And we realized that that was a bad fit for us because we were the only tech company there.
• 13:35
  And all the other people pitching there were like, small businesses, like someone who was selling.
• 13:39
  There was a company that was selling pies, someone who was selling, like, a locally distilled vodka.
• 13:44
  So we felt kind of out of place where we were the only tech company.
• 13:49
  And we thought, okay, nothing's going to come out of it.
• 13:51
  And yeah, nothing came out of that event.
• 13:52
  Like, there was no.
• 13:53
  There was no interest.
• 13:54
  There was usually like rich individuals, angel investors looking to invest.
• 13:59
  But one of the things that happened was there was a.
• 14:01
  There was a guy in the crowd.
• 14:02
  The only question he asked was, okay, where are you guys hosting your software?
• 14:08
  And at that time it was Rackspace.
• 14:09
  And we said, yeah, we are hosting on Rackspace.
• 14:11
  And he said, okay, thank you.
• 14:12
  And that's it, right?
• 14:13
  So we were like, okay, that was a weird person.
• 14:15
  Nothing came out of it.
• 14:16
  We left that event a couple of weeks later.
• 14:21
  I was having lunch in Whole Foods downtown.
• 14:24
  I was just alone there.
• 14:25
  I picked up my lunch and then I was walking to sit in the corner and eat.
• 14:29
  And I recognized that the guy who asked the question, he was just sitting there.
• 14:32
  So I was like, I'm not usually the kind of guy who.
• 14:35
  I'm not like, super extroverted kind of guy, right?
• 14:37
  So I usually would just be ignored.
• 14:39
  But I thought, okay, I'm just gonna go say hi to him.
• 14:41
  So I just went and told him, hey, I think.
• 14:45
  I don't know if you remember me, I was at this event two weeks ago.
• 14:48
  And I think you had answers.
• 14:49
  He said, like, yeah, I remember you.
• 14:50
  You.
• 14:50
  And there were two other people and we just started chatting.
• 14:54
  And he basically said that, okay, in the beginning he said that I don't have much.
• 14:59
  Yeah, I'm kind of like retiring from my investment.
• 15:02
  I'm not interested in any of this.
• 15:03
  But we just kept talking.
• 15:05
  And by the end of that 45 minute conversation, he said, you know what?
• 15:08
  Maybe I'm going to change my mind.
• 15:09
  I really want to invest in you guys.
• 15:12
  Why don't you and your co founders come and meet me at this coffee place next week.
• 15:17
  So we all met, went and met him and he wrote the first, it was like 300, 000 or something.
• 15:23
  He wrote us the first angel investment check and that was the next big milestone.
• 15:28
  Now we actually had some money, we could go hire investors.
• 15:30
  So if you think about that, right, that would not have happened if we didn't show up in that event.
• 15:37
  If you had done research on that event, maybe we would have decided that this event is not for us, that pitch event, because this is not like really a tech software pitch event.
• 15:45
  And we would not have shown up and maybe that wouldn't have happened.
• 15:47
  So there's a lot of serendipity in it and that keeps happening.
• 15:50
  There are so many different places that I keep, I keep seeing that.
• 15:55
  And, and it's not, obviously I didn't come up with the concept that a lot of people, a lot of very successful entrepreneurs talk about it.
• 16:01
  So.
• 16:02
  Yeah, and that's, that's one of the exciting parts of this journey is that you just, you just have to keep working.
• 16:08
  You just have to keep showing up and keep doing the right things.
• 16:11
  And the universe eventually makes things happen.
• 16:15
  So yeah, I love that as far as keep showing up, right, because you know, hindsight's always 20 20, but when, when you're going through it, right, and you, you're, you're like, you're looking for that next investor or you're
• 16:28
  looking to just get, you know, get off the ground or whatever, you never know where that next good break is going to come from.
• 16:34
  So like you said, when you just make a habit to keep showing up, you really do increase your chances of, you know, meeting the right person and getting that, that next, you know, that next break that you need.
• 16:46
  Exactly, yeah.
• 16:47
  And a lot of this is like, you can kind of, there's this whole idea of like systems versus goals.
• 16:53
  Some of these things you cannot pre plan accurately to say, okay, I'm going to show up in this event and from there I'm going to get this outcome right.
• 17:00
  It doesn't work that way.
• 17:01
  You just need to build a system saying that, okay, once you know that, okay, showing up in these events is important for you, just try to maximize that and that increases your luck surface area and things just work
• 17:13
  out.
• 17:13
  So not everything goes according to plan.
• 17:15
  A lot of things you are, a lot of, a lot of times you're not going to find the results that you're looking for in the intended action, but there are side effects of it, which is probably where the
• 17:26
  next opportunity lies.
• 17:27
  And it's impossible for you to predict that beforehand.
• 17:29
  And I've had like, you know, I've seen that so many different times.
• 17:34
  And another question here, Jaganth, because, okay, it's one thing right now.
• 17:38
  You guys have been in business 14 years, got a lot of customers.
• 17:42
  You've built up a really, you know, you know, a loyal customer base.
• 17:47
  You just got a big award in Forbes, which we'll talk about.
• 17:50
  But when you're on that journey and you're early, in the early days and you're, you're growing the business, but you know, things don't work out or you think something's going to be a good idea and it's not, and
• 18:00
  you end up falling in your face like, what was your process for really staying committed to your vision and staying positive through the inevitable pain and struggle of those.
• 18:11
  Early years of entrepreneurship?
• 18:14
  Yeah, that's a great question.
• 18:15
  And then we absolutely had a lot of those moments where things were really difficult.
• 18:23
  We were like, okay, maybe this is not going to work out.
• 18:25
  So we went through a lot of that.
• 18:27
  So for me personally, the thing I always look at is I'm just looking at the fundamentals.
• 18:34
  To me, the most important question is, are we solving a problem?
• 18:37
  Are we solving a real problem?
• 18:39
  Right.
• 18:39
  And the answer to that is obvious.
• 18:43
  Yes, we are.
• 18:44
  People are.
• 18:45
  E commerce is growing.
• 18:46
  Like you said, E commerce has exploded and now it's massive and it's going to projected to continue to grow at least for the very, for the foreseeable future at a very strong rate.
• 18:56
  So more and more businesses are going to be selling online.
• 19:00
  So yes, we are in the right market.
• 19:02
  We are in the right market.
• 19:05
  And people are going to be shipping, they're always going to be, they're going to be shipping physical goods.
• 19:10
  They have.
• 19:10
  And if you're shipping physical goods, you need to keep track of where the goods are.
• 19:13
  So we always knew we are solving a problem and we knew that we are solving a problem that people are willing to pay the money for.
• 19:20
  Is there competition?
• 19:21
  Yes.
• 19:22
  A lot of this market keeps evolving.
• 19:24
  New players come in.
• 19:25
  A lot of players.
• 19:25
  I've seen so many companies go out of business, some in a good way.
• 19:29
  Some people have.
• 19:30
  Some have been acquired and then gotten shut down, shut down by the acquirer and others just run out of money.
• 19:35
  So the fundamentals are we are in a market where there is a real problem and people are willing to pay for it.
• 19:43
  So that is the first part of it.
• 19:46
  The second thing is, do you, are you having fun doing this Right.
• 19:50
  So we had, so when we initially launched straight out of business school, we all had like MBA program.
• 19:58
  There was a, a lot of, we all take like student debt and then not having.
• 20:03
  We were all like paying, working for like $0 for the first few years.
• 20:06
  We had no, the company couldn't pay us because the company didn't have a big bank balance.
• 20:11
  So that was extremely difficult.
• 20:13
  And the thing we were, thing that I always focus on is am I having, am I really enjoying the process?
• 20:20
  And for me, yes, I would.
• 20:22
  I.
• 20:23
  This is, this is absolutely the idea of like creating software and solving a problem and then growing the, the team and everything.
• 20:31
  This is, it's a very, it's a very fulfilling process.
• 20:36
  So, so we just like you're in the right market and you are enjoying the process and you're, you keep doing the things.
• 20:45
  There are a lot of problems.
• 20:46
  So the problem that I'm, I'm absolutely focused on right now is which you'll come to when you talk about Forbes.
• 20:53
  We have grown primarily through word of mouth.
• 20:56
  We have not really done put in this lot of effort on marketing and like increasing brand awareness.
• 21:03
  So how do you do that in a very cost effective way?
• 21:07
  That is the, that's what I'm focused on right now.
• 21:10
  Right.
• 21:10
  So there are always a lot of problems to solve and as long as you love solving those problems and have this marathon mindset of like, it's really like you need to focus on the journey and the outcome will
• 21:22
  happen.
• 21:22
  It's kind of going back to my previous example of like you just need to show up in different places.
• 21:26
  Similarly you just have to focus on different areas and you just have to keep doing it and the result will come about.
• 21:32
  You need to have that mindset.
• 21:33
  If you don't have that mindset, people will burn out.
• 21:37
  Like in the VC space they say that again, when you raise the first round, you need to be in it at least for 10 years.
• 21:42
  And people who get in there, because everyone reads about these overnight success stories, right?
• 21:48
  Like someone raised, I know someone raised like $2 million and then within a year they are worth like a billion dollars.
• 21:55
  Those kind of things happen.
• 21:56
  But those are the outlines.
• 21:57
  You only hear about outlines.
• 21:58
  So you need to be prepared for the long journey and you need to enjoy it.
• 22:02
  If you don't enjoy it, you're going to burn out.
• 22:05
  So yeah, just keep the, so pick the, pick a problem that you want to solve and have, get into the mindset that it's going to be a long journey.
• 22:13
  And then I think That's a trick to it.
• 22:18
  In my world, a personal brand is invaluable.
• 22:22
  A year ago, Easy DC was brand new with just a couple of customers and no online presence.
• 22:28
  Then I found Hicks Marketing.
• 22:29
  They helped me amplify my personal brand, build a solid content strategy, publish my podcast, and 10x the number of customers we serve, all in less than one year.
• 22:40
  Do you need a marketing partner who gets you and cares about your success?
• 22:44
  Reach out to aliciaicksmarketing.com for more info.
• 22:47
  And Teller Dave Gula sent you.
• 22:50
  Okay, so it sounds like just preparing yourself too for.
• 22:53
  It's going to take time.
• 22:54
  It's not going to be easy.
• 22:56
  You need to really enjoy what you're doing and obviously you need to be committed to the vision because that's going to sustain you through all the difficulty that's going to be inevitable.
• 23:05
  Exactly.
• 23:05
  Yeah.
• 23:06
  If you don't enjoy it, it's going to be really miserable because you can probably make a lot more, you can get paid a much bigger salary if you just go work in a large company like I know, like
• 23:18
  a Google or a Facebook.
• 23:19
  If you're, if you're, if you're a tech person, they're going to pay you a lot more.
• 23:23
  But you saw, yeah, you're sacrificing a lot and then you need to, you need to have the right mindset to go through this journey.
• 23:32
  Okay.
• 23:33
  And so you know, like we said, you're 14 years in and now you're to the point where you're scaling and a whole new set of problems.
• 23:40
  But what's, what's the company like?
• 23:42
  What's it look like present day as far as like your day to day and the customer issues and kind of what you're focused on.
• 23:52
  Yeah, so I focus on.
• 23:54
  So the way I have.
• 23:55
  One of the strongest parts of the company which I'm most proud of is the employee retention.
• 24:00
  We have had people, I think it's like average five years or something, including the latest employees.
• 24:05
  But I have people that I hired back on day one, 2012, after we raised around.
• 24:11
  They are still there.
• 24:12
  I have.
• 24:13
  So the leaders of different teams are people who have been with the company for a very long time and for me personally, that's been a very helpful thing because the way I operate is that I'm the kind of
• 24:24
  person who really like to, I like to roll up my sleeves and get into the, in, into the deep areas and then figure out what's working and what is not.
• 24:34
  So the way I personally operate and this is, this is not only, I guess different people are different leadership styles.
• 24:39
  My style of operating is if there is an area where I think it needs attention, I get in there.
• 24:44
  I spend like 80% of my energy there and then kind of try to build a system that is operating well and then hand it off to someone, to someone else within the company to run it.
• 24:57
  So I have been able to do that, luckily for quite a bit.
• 25:01
  So when in the very early days when we didn't even have employees, I was doing customer support for the company.
• 25:07
  So I was the one who was answering customer support emails and customer support phone calls.
• 25:11
  But pretty soon we hired a person and she.
• 25:15
  I think we hired her.
• 25:16
  2012, I think.
• 25:17
  So it's been like she's been with me for, with the company for almost like 12 plus years and she's absolutely amazing.
• 25:23
  And she pretty much ramped up and that was like, she didn't come with like a lot of leadership experience, but she grew into a true leader inside the company.
• 25:31
  And then she does an amazing job of our customer support.
• 25:34
  If you go look for our reviews, pretty much everyone highlights the quality of our support.
• 25:40
  And that's all because of the leadership that Tristan brought into the team.
• 25:44
  So she has a really good team and I don't need to worry about customer support because I completely trust and I know that she, she does a great job.
• 25:52
  Similarly, like, on the engineering side, I spend a lot of energy there and we have, we have a very stable engineering team now.
• 26:01
  We went through a lot of struggle, I would say around 20, maybe like 2015 ish.
• 26:08
  And it's been stable and I think the people in that team have been around for like six, seven years.
• 26:13
  It runs very smoothly.
• 26:15
  So my, so that's another example that like, I don't, I don't spend a lot of energy on it.
• 26:20
  So similarly, like the product management function, which we went through a lot of like struggle in like defining that.
• 26:26
  But now that's stable, the sales is stable.
• 26:28
  And the area that I'm focused on right now is like marketing and brand awareness.
• 26:33
  So I would say 80% of my mental energy goes into that area now.
• 26:38
  We have.
• 26:39
  That team went through a lot of turmoil.
• 26:41
  A lot of things were not able.
• 26:44
  Things were not quite working the way we wanted to and.
• 26:48
  But I think it's stabilizing now.
• 26:50
  We are getting more mentions, our organic search volume is going up.
• 26:55
  We are getting new partnership requests, like inbound podcast requests.
• 27:01
  So a lot of that is because of us building the brand awareness.
• 27:04
  So, so my vision there is that.
• 27:06
  Okay, I keep working hard in that area and then after a few months kind of have like a someone who's like really operating that on a day to day basis and then my attention will move to maybe whatever
• 27:17
  the next area that needs, that needs focus on.
• 27:21
  Okay, so it sounds like your process too is getting really hands on and like 100% in the weeds for know, as long as you need to, to get a full grasp on how it works, fix it as best
• 27:32
  you can and then you start looking to hire somebody to basically take over what, what you've been doing.
• 27:38
  Is that, is that fair to say?
• 27:40
  Yeah.
• 27:40
  Yes, except for the last part.
• 27:41
  So the way I typically operate is that I don't hire people after I figure it out.
• 27:45
  I'm usually hiring someone with whom I'm figuring it out with the idea that, okay, we're going to work together and we're going to figure it out.
• 27:51
  But in the, in the, once you figure it out, it's going to be like I'm going to like slowly move away from it and then it's.
• 27:59
  You're going to be running that.
• 28:00
  So it's always like a joint system because a lot of it is also like the, you need the right kind of person.
• 28:06
  Right when you.
• 28:07
  So it's better to build it, build the system with someone rather than okay, I have the entire system functioning and then now I'm going to hire someone.
• 28:14
  So.
• 28:14
  Yeah, but that's the idea.
• 28:16
  I like to get into the, yeah, that figure out all the details of how, how something works.
• 28:23
  And that's just, that's just my nature.
• 28:25
  I have tried other approaches because I think a lot of people talk about just delegating, which is great.
• 28:33
  I mean, obviously in my case I am delegating different functions of the company.
• 28:36
  But people just talk about, okay, you just need to define this is the role and then hire someone and let them do it.
• 28:40
  I've tried that.
• 28:41
  It didn't quite work out.
• 28:43
  It doesn't mean that I've given up on that.
• 28:45
  So.
• 28:46
  But this is the, this is the modem I'm in right now.
• 28:49
  I mean it sounds like that can be a really powerful strategy for vetting.
• 28:53
  Vetting if you have the right people, meaning working on this project side by side with them to solve whatever problem you're working on.
• 29:00
  Is that right?
• 29:01
  Exactly.
• 29:01
  And that's exactly how I've done that.
• 29:04
  Because you can interview people, they can come in from great references and the person, they may be a very high quality person and maybe they have a lot of experience in Solving this problem with other companies.
• 29:14
  But every company is different, right.
• 29:17
  If you hire someone from a large corporation, the experience that they're bringing may not be the right experience that you need.
• 29:24
  Maybe it's a person that interviews really well.
• 29:26
  You never know.
• 29:27
  So you are taking a risk.
• 29:28
  You obviously need to go through all that vetting and interviewing and all of that.
• 29:31
  But once they come into the company, the best way to know if they are the right fit is to see them in action.
• 29:39
  Because I'll really give you a lot of knowledge on, okay, how are they in the real work environment in our company?
• 29:48
  Even if, even if he hired someone from a competitor, it doesn't mean that it's going to be a slam dump.
• 29:54
  Because maybe the company is in a different.
• 29:57
  That competitor was in a different stage of evolution.
• 30:01
  Maybe the ecosystem was very different and they cannot, maybe they're not able to translate.
• 30:05
  So, yes, you're taking a risk with every hire.
• 30:08
  But if you find the right hire and they work out, that's.
• 30:12
  That's amazing because that kind of helps you really run a company without.
• 30:17
  That's not in like firefighting mode.
• 30:19
  That's the thing.
• 30:20
  Yeah, I guess that's another way to look at this.
• 30:22
  Right.
• 30:22
  I've been lucky that I have not had to do a lot of firefighting.
• 30:27
  Of course, any company runs into their.
• 30:30
  You run into crisis.
• 30:32
  But the way we have built out the company, we hardly, we don't run into.
• 30:37
  We are not always in like a panic firefighting mode.
• 30:41
  It's mostly smooth sailing and sometimes things go wrong and then we can really focus our energy there.
• 30:47
  So all the saved up energy, you now you're going to like deploy into solving that problem and then you can like again go back into stable situation.
• 30:55
  And I think that's also part of going back to one of your earlier questions on how do you prepare for the journey?
• 30:59
  It's like marathon versus sprints, right.
• 31:01
  If you're always in that sprint mode, you're going to run out of energy and you cannot sustain it.
• 31:06
  But if you're in the marathon mode, yeah, you are in that.
• 31:09
  You're doing that slow burn.
• 31:11
  But maybe either.
• 31:12
  Occasionally something happens where you need to really put in you, you need to have that adrenaline rush and then really deploy a lot of energy.
• 31:21
  You can do that.
• 31:22
  So.
• 31:23
  And that's all part of like how, how you build your company, how you build a company culture, hiring the right people, all of that kind of plays into how you build this out.
• 31:34
  Yeah, I love that.
• 31:35
  And it sounds like you're Much more focused on fire prevention than being a firefighter.
• 31:39
  Exactly.
• 31:39
  Right.
• 31:40
  Yeah, that's exactly when we do some things, even if you look at our product release process.
• 31:46
  Right.
• 31:46
  So we build a new feature and the feature is tested by our customer support team.
• 31:53
  They act as a QA and they have the final say on, like, can we release this feature or not?
• 31:58
  Because if they detect, let's say, something, they've introduced a new bug, the customers start complaining.
• 32:04
  The team that's going to get hit first is the customer support team.
• 32:07
  So they have an incentive to make sure that we don't release a problem, we don't release any bugs because they have.
• 32:16
  So they have the.
• 32:17
  They have the ability to decide whether a new feature is ready for customers or not.
• 32:22
  So that goes into the fire prevention strategy, because since that team is the gatekeeper for product releases, we generally tend to have very few product fires.
• 32:33
  Yes.
• 32:33
  Occasionally things break.
• 32:35
  Happens to every software company.
• 32:37
  But if you look at our track record, things generally work smoothly because there is a very thorough vetting process for every feature that's going out into the wild.
• 32:46
  And the right team, the right incentive, is the gatekeeper for it.
• 32:50
  So that's one small example of how do we do fire prevention in our space.
• 32:57
  Okay, now let's talk about this Forbes award.
• 33:00
  So you were selected as one of the best inventory management Software picks for 2024 by Forbes.
• 33:11
  So what was it like when you found that out?
• 33:13
  That was.
• 33:14
  It's amazing because we are.
• 33:17
  So the challenge that we run into, and I often hear this from a lot of people who talk to me, is that you guys seem to be doing great.
• 33:25
  I looked at your reviews and it's all like five star.
• 33:29
  Like we have, I think on average like 4.9 out of five star reviews across, like a lot of different places.
• 33:35
  You are seeing like, amazing.
• 33:37
  I'm seeing amazing customer stories about you, but I never heard of you before.
• 33:42
  I accidentally found you.
• 33:43
  Like, why is that the case?
• 33:44
  Right.
• 33:44
  So some.
• 33:45
  There's like someone in my company jokes about it saying that we are the.
• 33:48
  Well, we are the best kept secret in our space, which is not a great thing to be because once.
• 33:54
  What I've seen is once a merchant and a retailer discovers us, the likelihood of them becoming a customer and staying for a very long time, like several years, is very high.
• 34:05
  But the challenge is like, how do they first discover us?
• 34:07
  Right.
• 34:08
  And that's an area where historically we did not spend much time focusing on.
• 34:13
  In hindsight, yeah, I think I should have spent more energy there.
• 34:16
  But Anyway, hindsight is, and that's the area that I'm focused on.
• 34:20
  So since we are in that mode, every one of these recognitions contributes to that, that goal, that vision of like, we need to create awareness of our brand.
• 34:30
  We need to get in front of a lot of people.
• 34:32
  So when you will see that a huge brand like Forbes recognizes us and they, they picked us, I think they put us in the position too for as best for multichannel sellers.
• 34:42
  That's amazing because that's exactly our ideal customer profile.
• 34:46
  Our ideal customer profile is a small to medium sized merchant who's selling across multiple channels and they picked us as the best inventory management for multichannel sellers.
• 34:55
  So that was great.
• 34:56
  I was very excited.
• 34:57
  I wrote a LinkedIn post about it and was like, it's always good, like good dopamine hit when you get a lot of likes on it.
• 35:03
  So yeah, it is good because it kind of validates that a lot of the work that you're doing to create awareness, it's working.
• 35:12
  You're getting recognition for everything that you're doing.
• 35:17
  And it's like, yeah, you need some, you need wins, right?
• 35:19
  As part of the just going back to the marathon or the long journey metaphor, the way you keep yourself energized is that you celebrate these wins.
• 35:27
  It doesn't matter how big the win is, how small the win is, you need to have those wins.
• 35:31
  And that's how you know that, okay, you're progressing and this is a huge win.
• 35:35
  For me personally, it was, it was huge.
• 35:37
  And I'm very, feel very fortunate to get listed.
• 35:42
  And that was all purely inbound.
• 35:43
  Like, it's not like it was unsolicited.
• 35:46
  They, I think they were doing a, they were doing a research article on, they wanted to pick like top 10 and they, they found us and they studied what we do and they said that, okay, we are, we
• 35:59
  are an ideal software for these customers.
• 36:02
  Wow.
• 36:03
  All right, well, congrats.
• 36:04
  Awesome.
• 36:05
  Thank you.
• 36:06
  So Jag, if people want to get in touch with you, learn more about Ordero and find out if you can potentially help them, what's the best way that companies can reach out to you?
• 36:16
  The best way is just visit our website and then you can sign up for a free trial if you like.
• 36:22
  And some of the plans, like if you're purely using our shipping app, you can just use it on your own.
• 36:27
  You don't need help from us.
• 36:30
  If you're using inventory, maybe you have questions, you can just schedule.
• 36:34
  So if you go to our homepage, you'll see two buttons.
• 36:36
  One is to sign up on your own, second to schedule time with one of us internally.
• 36:41
  And then you can do that, or you can email us info@ or doro.com or you can find me on LinkedIn.
• 36:47
  I'm pretty.
• 36:48
  I'm fairly active on LinkedIn.
• 36:50
  I do a lot of posts about the company and about this journey and a lot of other things.
• 36:53
  You can follow me on LinkedIn or, like, connect me there, but the easiest way is just, like, go to our website and just schedule time to talk to one of us and.
• 37:02
  Yeah.
• 37:02
  And they can learn more about us and see whether we can help solve your e commerce problems.
• 37:08
  All right.
• 37:09
  And we'll link all that in the show notes for everyone.
• 37:11
  Okay, awesome.
• 37:12
  Thank you.
• 37:12
  All right, well, Jagger, thank you so much for taking the time to be here.
• 37:15
  We appreciate the conversation.
• 37:17
  Yeah.
• 37:18
  Awesome.
• 37:18
  Yeah, it's been a pleasure.
• 37:19
  David.
• 37:19
  Yeah.
• 37:20
  Thank you for reaching out to me and thank you for giving me this opportunity.
• 37:26
  Yeah, absolutely.
• 37:28
  All right.
• 37:28
  And that is all the time we have for now.
• 37:30
  We will see you next time.