What up founder faithful!
Back again with another edition of The Founder Newsletter - this is Episode 4. If you’re new here, my goal is to give you a quick synopsis of what got me thinking from this week’s episode of The Founder Podcast in 5 minutes or less. (If you missed them, check out the previous episodes on cookie dough, boots and customer service).
(But what’s The Founder Podcast?)
The Founder Podcast is a weekly show where I sit down founders and have real-talk chats about the highs and lows of their entrepreneurial journeys. We cover things from where the spark for their idea/company came from and making prototypes to marketing tactics, tips from investors and their morning routine. Basically, it’s me going head to head with Guy Raz in the podcast octagon (just kidding Guy, you’re awesome and welcome for the backlink).
I’ve found the conversations really helpful for motivation, inspiration and generally fascinating to learn more about my favorite brands - I think you might too.
Alright, to get this out of the way - Here’s the podcast show link, here’s our website (mission control), here’s our Instagram (where I spend way too much time making quotes and audiogram content) and here are all the discount codes we’ve gotten from the companies we’ve had on the show.
(And who are you?)
I’m Kallaway - a future founder trying to get some answers before I jump in the ball pit myself. Let’s get it.
This Week’s Episode (Ep 4) 🧺
John Lee, Founder and CEO of Loopie.
Listen to the episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Google
Get your first wash & fold service FREE by entering code TRYLOOPIE at checkout in the Loopie Laundry app (only available in the Greater Seattle area of Bellevue)
Summary 🔍
What’s the business?
You’re gonna love this one. Raise your hand if you hate doing laundry (🙅me). Raise your hand if you love doing laundry (🙋). Either way, this one is a winner for you.
At its core, Loopie is the Uber for laundry. It’s a peer to peer marketplace that connects customers who don’t want to do their laundry with washers who want to pick up a few loads for some extra cash.
After hearing this concept, you might wonder “how has this not been done before?” According to John, the founder, there have been a couple other companies that have tried to build a big business in the laundry space, but have failed because of the high capital expense of owning laundromats. In short, they ran out of cash.
With Loopie, John and his team have created a marketplace without owning a single washer or dryer. Here’s how it works:
First, you put your dirty clothes in the Loopie duffel bag - as much as you can fit while still being able to zip the bag. Next, you order your laundry to be picked up on the Loopie app. You put the duffel bag outside your door and you’re done.
Loopie will send someone to pick up your laundry and deliver it to a washer. The washer then washes, dries and folds your laundry and it is magically delivered back to you in 24 hours.
Today Loopie has pretty impressive traction in Seattle and is planning to launch to new markets soon.
Who’s John?
John is a first-time founder who graduated from Whitman College in 2016, but don’t let that fool you. Out of all the founders I’ve talked to, he has one of the strongest “can’t fail, won’t fail” attitudes I’ve ever seen.
He said he’s always had an obsession to create a dual benefit venture, the type of company that is able to benefit multiple parties, simultaneously. He’s recruited some pretty stellar team members and raised a seed round to chase his dream.
The Loopie vision doesn’t stop with laundry. When the COVID-19 outbreak first started, John and his team quickly created a derivative of Loopie called Shippie. Shippie enabled users in Seattle to micro-ship items across town. Shippie proved that the peer to peer marketplace concept for uses outside of Uber/Lyft/Postmates/etc. could have some legs. I’m pumped to see how Loopie scales in other markets.
John’s Startup Manifesto 🗣️
What’s a Startup Manifesto?
At the end of every episode, I ask my founder guests the same question:
If you had to write a Startup Manifesto with 5 of the most important key lessons or pitfalls to avoid when starting out, what would they be?
Here’s what John had to say:
Startup Manifesto 📜
Think through your business model in a sufficient way up front. Even if it’s simple and you don’t know the price point, you need to know how you’re going to generate revenue.
Don’t underestimate your customer acquisition cost. How are you going to get customers and how much are you going to pay to get them? Assume that it’s going to cost more money to get customers than you think so you don’t destroy your unit economics.
4 & 5. 🙃 Don’t listen to the bad feedback from other people. Early on, there’s going to be some good feedback and there’s going to be some bad feedback. It’s so easy to be influenced early on by bad feedback. Try to get your idea out there and make adjustments based on how it performs. Don’t listen to the naysayers.
What Got Me Thinking From the Episode 🤔
After reflecting on my conversation with John, there were a couple of things that really got my wheels spinning:
1. Figuring out the business model early on 💵
One of the things that John kept coming back to when he was describing his experience with Loopie thus far was his lack of clarity around business model unit economics. Acquiring customers was a lot harder and cost a lot more than he’d thought originally.
I imagine one of the pitfalls that a lot of first-time founders fall into is not thinking about the business model early on. The infamous, “if I build it, they will come” trope is all too true in this case. We live in a digital world where even amazing products go unnoticed because of the sheer amount of noise online. When founders assume the business model will figure itself out down the road, it seems like they often run into a cash issue pretty quickly.
What John mentioned is interesting. He said, think about the business model early and understand where your money is going to come from, even if you don’t know the pricing strategy and aren’t ready to turn on the monetization. Having this awareness undoubtedly helps guide the product development and strategic conversations early on and I think is a must for all early stage companies.
During my adventure with Tallyo, we briefly thought about monetization pre-product, but it was a long path to get there. That wasn’t what killed us, but should have been a huge red flag when we were building out the early solution. In my mind, building a product that is revenue generating from day 1 is huge. The days of “free app -> millions of users -> monetize the data” are long gone.
2. Unwillingness to fail 😵
As I talked to John, I got this unreal sense that this guy was just not gonna fail. As he described different obstacles Loopie has faced along the way, he seemed to shrug them off and took meaningful lessons away from each of them. I think this is the most important quality in a startup founder. At the end of the day, the unwillingness to fail is what differentiates the companies that live vs the companies that die.
John seems just like everybody else. The craziest thing about all this is that he is. The difference between you and him is that you’re going to give up before he does. That sense of not being afraid to fail because you won’t let yourself is an incredible backstop. I imagine getting rid of that fear-driven anxiety opens up a lot of creative doors.
In the conversation, John said one of his biggest regrets was not hitting the streets with flyers and personally passing them out to customers in the early days. Who says that?! That’s the kind of person that isn’t afraid to be told no. The kind of person that will not fail no matter what happens.
Now that you’re ready to run through a wall, go do some laundry.
Wrapping it Up 📕
I hope you found this semi-interesting and inspiring/helpful in any way. If so and you want to help support The Founder, here’s a couple things that would be valuable to me and the show:
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Till next time ✌️
Kallaway