The Exchanges

Q before I say whether it's me or not, but it's not me. Uh, but as being described as the Uber for fuel. So do you think this is a fair assessment of booster fuels, and how do you view the broader on-demand economy now? With the proliferation of startups that then, I think there's like six or seven, even in the fuel delivery market. So how do you view that?

A Yeah, so I, I will admit I am guilty of using the moniker Uber for fuel occasionally. It has a ring to it. It's only three words. The, the short answer is I, I don't think anything could be farther from the truth of what we're trying to build. Uh, and this goes more broadly than what we're creating to the concept of Uber for X. I think That any, any entrepreneur, any starting company that is trying to simply apply what was a successful business model in a different space to their new vertical is setting themselves up for failure. A lot of people, they say Uber for, for X and what they, what I think they mean is just that we've created an app or you get to push a button and you get something. I look at Uber and the success there, and it's, it's very clear that that was not what drove the success of Uber. Uh, Uber had to be better and faster and safer and lower cost than taxis to win the big game, right? They had to get there and they had a very complicated path of the black cars and Uber X and markets that they pursued to eventually get there. And in the same way for us to succeed or for any on demand startup to succeed, we, we have to be better quality, more convenient, safer, lower cost, Then the incumbent in our business, and for us, that's gas stations, and so approaching our business from that mentality means a different set of how we treat employees, how we treat the equip…

AI assessment note: “I don't think anything could be farther from the truth of what we're trying to build.”

Q And that was, you know, that's something that you, you have to do to warrant the A. I have a question from, from Dave Wu at Maveron, actually on the A, and he, funnily enough, he was obviously in your A, and he asked, what did you look for in your Series A investor?

A Gosh, Dave is, Dave is incredible, and what struck out, I remember, for me, with Dave was a few things. First, a deep understanding of the challenges in unit economics and the drivers of the business. Someone who had done their homework. Someone who, ah, was innately curious and passionate about the, the space. Because we're all human beings, and if you're not innately passionate about, about a business, you're not gonna be able to dive in and really spend those late nights helping in the ways, ways that we need. Um, you know, we also looked for an investor that was very much an entrepreneur's investor, an entrepreneur's entrepreneur, someone who had taken a company through hypergrowth before, had been through those trenches, and as a result, could do two things. One could provide that real, tangible, experiential knowledge, also the empathy, and the patience, and the, you know, ability to get that we, you know, we are looking for voracious growth, but Doing that requires an obsessive nature about how do you keep every single customer happy? How do you focus on getting the foundation right before you, you grow very quickly? And, you know, we, we lucked out with, with Maveron. They, they have a great team that is very focused on those two things.

AI assessment note: “First, a deep understanding of the challenges in unit economics and the drivers”

Q So talk to me. You have this immense educational background with Princeton, with Stanford, with, with HBS, and, and you're actually a true rocket scientist. So, so why Booster Fuels? What's the founding story and the aha moment for you behind the business?

A Yeah, so I've, I've always been intrigued from an early age of complex operational challenges in the physical world, not so much the electronic world or the chemical world, but really the physical world around us. This drew me to outer space. I loved NASA and the vision of going back to the moon or going to Mars. Thoughts about how do you, how do you send a probe to a distant space? Uh, moon or how do you mine an asteroid and build a business around a futuristic dream like that really drew me, uh, to these challenges. And then it's funny one, one day I, uh, I became a father, beautiful daughter, and everything changed. Everything got much more real and it figuratively brought me back to earth. Life is pretty difficult for young parents who are trying to figure things out. And I, I can vividly remember this moment when I was working these hundred hour weeks, and then I would go to the gas station late at night. Uh, and I would do this for both my car and my wife's car because I, I didn't want her going to the gas station at night. It wasn't very safe, but I also didn't enjoy that experience. And so I really got to thinking, is there a better way to deliver fuel to people's cars? Why hasn't the gas station Changed in such a long time. I think that I was very lucky that in that moment, I was blessed to have the right life experiences necessary to give me this naive thinking that I…

AI assessment note: “is there a better way to deliver fuel to people's cars?”

Q Absolutely, and you mentioned naivety there, and I'm intrigued by one aspect, and it's How important do you think naivety is for a founder starting out on their journey? Some, some investors say obviously it's incredibly important, otherwise you'd never do it. And some say, well, there's very much a limit to the benefits of naivety.

A Well, I think there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. I think that, and, and the naivety only, only really helps one. So there is the entrepreneur who has been in an industry for decades and is a technical leader In their domain, but is frustrated with how kind of the incumbent businesses are producing products. They are an expert. They can go out and create something new with a very high understanding of the market and the niche that they are serving. And I think for those naivete has very kind of like limits on its value. Um, it's much more of a practical, disruptive innovation by an expert. I think then you also have a completely different kind of entrepreneur who comes from a different world, a different industry, and looks at a problem from a different way, and looks at a market from a very different way, applying what they've learned from a different place. For those entrepreneurs who don't know the industry players, don't know the complexities of the business that they're trying to disrupt, you need a lot of naivete to, to actually jump in and do that. Um, but I think that there are so many naysayers that if you, if you hadn't had that naive nature to begin with, you would not have the potential for success that you end up having.

AI assessment note: “you need a lot of naivete to, to actually jump in and do that.”

Q I'm really intrigued. When do you think the transition point is then from inherent focus on kind of growth in the early days To a realization of the need for profitability and a focus on unit economics. So stealing from Malcolm Gladwell, when is that tipping point?

A Yeah, I think there is. Um, and I think it can be generalized to any of these on-demand startup business models. I would say take what you think is your minimum viable scale, right? That the minimum level at which you've got the density to make money on a consistent basis. And you should probably multiply that number By five to 10. Uh, and you should do that because it's a startup and stuff happens. You should probably have two different markets. You should probably have a wide range of different customers so that you can test different things. But once you have about five to 10 times what, what is your minimum scale, you know, economics, you have enough that you can play with. Uh, and what that means is that you have enough, uh, different pockets that could be Union economic scale profitable that you can start to apply different experiments to each one. And you may risk upsetting some customers, uh, or you may risk, uh, delighting others and really wanting to double down on another. So you need that bench of the ability to experiment before you, you dive into those unit economics. If you do it too soon, you'll end up with this negative feedback cycle. If you do it at the right time, it'll help you grow in a very, a very controllable and thoughtful way.

AI assessment note: “take what you think is your minimum viable scale... multiply that number By five to 10”

Q are a VC show. We probably should touch on it. Uh, but you, you know, investment from the likes of Dave and Rebecca at Maveron and Boris and Angela at version one, who we've, we've had on the show very luckily. Uh, so how was the fundraising process for you and how did the stages differ? You've now done seed and series a, so what are your take on this?

A Yeah, it's a great question. I think the fundraising process, we were blessed in, in both cases, the seed and the series a to have fairly quick financings. A lot of that had to do with the relationships that we had built over time with individuals in all of these firms. People at the seed stage are investing in people, and building that relationship cannot happen overnight. There are a lot of really good ideas at any given time, and I think investors at the seed stage are looking for that good idea that's timed right with the market, that is led by someone that they Can trust and believe in and, and back. That was the focus in, in the early days with the seed. It was telling this story and showing enough of the complex nuances and the ability to execute on a vision without resources, uh, that, that gets you over that hurdle. I think at the series A, what, what you're looking for is, it's pretty simple. It's okay. You raise money in your seed and you said you were going to do certain things. For us, it was Uh, we have a, a growth target, we have a profitability target, and we have a user delight target, and showing that you've made demonstrable progress towards those is really important. I think the, the key for the Series A for us was being able to show product market fit, being able to show that this was a problem we were solving that was very sticky, that, that people that we…

AI assessment note: “seed stage are investing in people... at the series A... show product market fit”

Q before I say whether it's me or not, but it's not me. Uh, but as being described as the Uber for fuel. So do you think this is a fair assessment of booster fuels, and how do you view the broader on-demand economy now? With the proliferation of startups that then, I think there's like six or seven, even in the fuel delivery market. So how do you view that?

A Yeah, so I, I will admit I am guilty of using the moniker Uber for fuel occasionally. It has a ring to it. It's only three words. The, the short answer is I, I don't think anything could be farther from the truth of what we're trying to build. Uh, and this goes more broadly than what we're creating to the concept of Uber for X. I think That any, any entrepreneur, any starting company that is trying to simply apply what was a successful business model in a different space to their new vertical is setting themselves up for failure. A lot of people, they say Uber for, for X and what they, what I think they mean is just that we've created an app or you get to push a button and you get something. I look at Uber and the success there, and it's, it's very clear that that was not what drove the success of Uber. Uh, Uber had to be better and faster and safer and lower cost than taxis to win the big game, right? They had to get there and they had a very complicated path of the black cars and Uber X and markets that they pursued to eventually get there. And in the same way for us to succeed or for any on demand startup to succeed, we, we have to be better quality, more convenient, safer, lower cost, Then the incumbent in our business, and for us, that's gas stations, and so approaching our business from that mentality means a different set of how we treat employees, how we treat the equip…

AI assessment note: “I don't think anything could be farther from the truth of what we're trying to build”

Q refreshing approach to regulation, not being kind of downhearted by ordering the Uber, uh, move fast and break things, and then try and worm the way out of it. So it's kind of, is the move fast and break things approach to regulation in the on-demand economy a very prominent one? You know, do a lot of, um, on-demand startups Uh, act first and think later with regards to regulation.

A I think you see a lot of that. Regulators have a hard time moving at the pace of startups. The model with which we create regulations is not one that easily allows for pilots to demonstrate safety and data. You know, one good example is, uh, there are many regulators that would have loved to pilot something like, like an Uber model in the very early days. I know they would have, but they may have been hindered by the fact that if you want to pilot something as a government agency, you have to put out an RF You have to make it very blind. You can't just pick a single company. You've got to run this massive behemoth process so that you are not at risk of being sued by, by some other player, and it just slows things down. And that drives a lot of frustration on both ends. We've met many regulators that want to, to work and innovate, but feel so much pressure to, to not do so simply because of how the model works. The, the key there again is Go to the places where those bureaucracies are lesser and work with them early on so that you can provide that example that others can then follow. And that's something that I think more, more startups could place emphasis on and probably reap rewards in the long term.

AI assessment note: “I think you see a lot of that. Regulators have a hard time moving at”

Q So talk to me. You have this immense educational background with Princeton, with Stanford, with, with HBS, and, and you're actually a true rocket scientist. So, so why Booster Fuels? What's the founding story and the aha moment for you behind the business?

A Yeah, so I've, I've always been intrigued from an early age of complex operational challenges in the physical world, not so much the electronic world or the chemical world, but really the physical world around us. This drew me to outer space. I loved NASA and the vision of going back to the moon or going to Mars. Thoughts about how do you, how do you send a probe to a distant space? Uh, moon or how do you mine an asteroid and build a business around a futuristic dream like that really drew me, uh, to these challenges. And then it's funny one, one day I, uh, I became a father, beautiful daughter, and everything changed. Everything got much more real and it figuratively brought me back to earth. Life is pretty difficult for young parents who are trying to figure things out. And I, I can vividly remember this moment when I was working these hundred hour weeks, and then I would go to the gas station late at night. Uh, and I would do this for both my car and my wife's car because I, I didn't want her going to the gas station at night. It wasn't very safe, but I also didn't enjoy that experience. And so I really got to thinking, is there a better way to deliver fuel to people's cars? Why hasn't the gas station Changed in such a long time. I think that I was very lucky that in that moment, I was blessed to have the right life experiences necessary to give me this naive thinking that I…

AI assessment note: “I really got to thinking, is there a better way to deliver fuel”

Q Absolutely, and you mentioned naivety there, and I'm intrigued by one aspect, and it's How important do you think naivety is for a founder starting out on their journey? Some, some investors say obviously it's incredibly important, otherwise you'd never do it. And some say, well, there's very much a limit to the benefits of naivety.

A Well, I think there are two kinds of entrepreneurs. I think that, and, and the naivety only, only really helps one. So there is the entrepreneur who has been in an industry for decades and is a technical leader In their domain, but is frustrated with how kind of the incumbent businesses are producing products. They are an expert. They can go out and create something new with a very high understanding of the market and the niche that they are serving. And I think for those naivete has very kind of like limits on its value. Um, it's much more of a practical, disruptive innovation by an expert. I think then you also have a completely different kind of entrepreneur who comes from a different world, a different industry, and looks at a problem from a different way, and looks at a market from a very different way, applying what they've learned from a different place. For those entrepreneurs who don't know the industry players, don't know the complexities of the business that they're trying to disrupt, you need a lot of naivete to, to actually jump in and do that. Um, but I think that there are so many naysayers that if you, if you hadn't had that naive nature to begin with, you would not have the potential for success that you end up having.

AI assessment note: “I think there are two kinds of entrepreneurs... and the naivety only, only really helps one.”

Q refreshing approach to regulation, not being kind of downhearted by ordering the Uber, uh, move fast and break things, and then try and worm the way out of it. So it's kind of, is the move fast and break things approach to regulation in the on-demand economy a very prominent one? You know, do a lot of, um, on-demand startups Uh, act first and think later with regards to regulation.

A I think you see a lot of that. Regulators have a hard time moving at the pace of startups. The model with which we create regulations is not one that easily allows for pilots to demonstrate safety and data. You know, one good example is, uh, there are many regulators that would have loved to pilot something like, like an Uber model in the very early days. I know they would have, but they may have been hindered by the fact that if you want to pilot something as a government agency, you have to put out an RF You have to make it very blind. You can't just pick a single company. You've got to run this massive behemoth process so that you are not at risk of being sued by, by some other player, and it just slows things down. And that drives a lot of frustration on both ends. We've met many regulators that want to, to work and innovate, but feel so much pressure to, to not do so simply because of how the model works. The, the key there again is Go to the places where those bureaucracies are lesser and work with them early on so that you can provide that example that others can then follow. And that's something that I think more, more startups could place emphasis on and probably reap rewards in the long term.

AI assessment note: “I think you see a lot of that. Regulators have a hard time moving”

Q I'm really intrigued. When do you think the transition point is then from inherent focus on kind of growth in the early days To a realization of the need for profitability and a focus on unit economics. So stealing from Malcolm Gladwell, when is that tipping point?

A Yeah, I think there is. Um, and I think it can be generalized to any of these on-demand startup business models. I would say take what you think is your minimum viable scale, right? That the minimum level at which you've got the density to make money on a consistent basis. And you should probably multiply that number By five to 10. Uh, and you should do that because it's a startup and stuff happens. You should probably have two different markets. You should probably have a wide range of different customers so that you can test different things. But once you have about five to 10 times what, what is your minimum scale, you know, economics, you have enough that you can play with. Uh, and what that means is that you have enough, uh, different pockets that could be Union economic scale profitable that you can start to apply different experiments to each one. And you may risk upsetting some customers, uh, or you may risk, uh, delighting others and really wanting to double down on another. So you need that bench of the ability to experiment before you, you dive into those unit economics. If you do it too soon, you'll end up with this negative feedback cycle. If you do it at the right time, it'll help you grow in a very, a very controllable and thoughtful way.

AI assessment note: “once you have about five to 10 times what, what is your minimum scale”

Q you know, it makes perfect sense. Why would I not want you to come and fill up my car while I'm at work? But, you know, there's always challenges and there's always hurdles. You know, one of which for many people in your sector is regulation. To what extent is regulation a limiting factor for you? And are there any other prominent hurdles that you're, you're very much mindful of?

A Yeah, uh, the, it's a great question, and, ah, we're fortunate, one of our, our seed investors, we were led by Madrona Venture Group up in Seattle, and, ah, one of their partners was the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and I can remember vividly him telling me that to win and build meaningful partnerships with regulators, you have to start the conversations very early, and I think I take a different perspective than The kind of, a lot of our, our players in this sector in believing that the regulators are a very important part of the ecosystem, and that you have to engage them very early in the discussion, and when you do, it can be a very good thing. Um, two points there. One, one is that in every new industry, there are Very good world-class actors, and then there are those that aren't, and regulators are there to make sure that those that aren't have at least as high enough of a bar so that safety and, um, kind of the, the quality of operations is, is consistently good. When I look at our business, I have great confidence that mobile refueling can be vastly better than the status quo of gas stations, right? We look at Uh, the reduction in crime and the hazards that people have because they pump their own gas relative to having a safe alternative, like pushing a button and going into work. We look at the, the trip reductions and the road decongestion that …

AI assessment note: “to win and build meaningful partnerships with regulators, you have to start the conversations very early”

Q And then I want to finish today on the next five years for you and for Booster Fuels. What have we got in the roadmap? You know, geographic expansion, product line expansion, what's this, what's in store?

A Yeah, one of our, one of our core goals or cultures in the company is, is focus. And, uh, we believe in doing one thing and doing it one thing really, really well. People forget that about 10% of all consumer spending is fuel. So there isn't much of a need to expand drastically beyond fuel for a long time. Uh, and, and because it's such a large spend, you can do a lot in small geographies for a very long time as well. You know, what I will say about this that does get me excited long term is that we view parking lots as an underutilized asset, especially in this day and age with real estate prices being as high as they are and mobile technology allowing you to Pinpoint locations very precisely, and so we believe that, uh, there will come a day where you can come back to your car from wherever you've been, and it's filled with fuel, it's filled with groceries, it's been serviced, and all of these things have just happened for you while you're away. That's kind of a world that we're pretty excited about.

AI assessment note: “there isn't much of a need to expand drastically beyond fuel for a long time”

Q you know, it makes perfect sense. Why would I not want you to come and fill up my car while I'm at work? But, you know, there's always challenges and there's always hurdles. You know, one of which for many people in your sector is regulation. To what extent is regulation a limiting factor for you? And are there any other prominent hurdles that you're, you're very much mindful of?

A Yeah, uh, the, it's a great question, and, ah, we're fortunate, one of our, our seed investors, we were led by Madrona Venture Group up in Seattle, and, ah, one of their partners was the former head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and I can remember vividly him telling me that to win and build meaningful partnerships with regulators, you have to start the conversations very early, and I think I take a different perspective than The kind of, a lot of our, our players in this sector in believing that the regulators are a very important part of the ecosystem, and that you have to engage them very early in the discussion, and when you do, it can be a very good thing. Um, two points there. One, one is that in every new industry, there are Very good world-class actors, and then there are those that aren't, and regulators are there to make sure that those that aren't have at least as high enough of a bar so that safety and, um, kind of the, the quality of operations is, is consistently good. When I look at our business, I have great confidence that mobile refueling can be vastly better than the status quo of gas stations, right? We look at Uh, the reduction in crime and the hazards that people have because they pump their own gas relative to having a safe alternative, like pushing a button and going into work. We look at the, the trip reductions and the road decongestion that …

AI assessment note: “believing that the regulators are a very important part of the ecosystem”