Shoaib Makani
Co-Founder and CEO, Motive. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
founderexecutiveinvestorLinkedIn ↗gomotive.com ↗
Shoaib Makani co-founded KeepTruckin in 2013, which rebranded to Motive in 2022 and provides fleet management and operations software. Prior to launching the company, he was an investor at Khosla Ventures, where he led early-stage investments in technology startups including Instacart.
2shows
2appearances
24statements
1resolved
1supported
0contradicted
100%fully supported
1said about them ↓ Everything Shoaib Makani said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
Makani: Motive shut down a new marketplace business at a $100M run-rate
“We started a new marketplace business. And it was very high potential. It fit our founding narrative. It was the right story. And it actually scaled pretty rapidly to north of a hundred million dollar run rate. In something like 18 months. But we realized actu…”
Makani: Do not launch a second product until the first dominates
“I think the first product has to land and it has to be not just at a stage of product market fit, but like product market dominance and where it's a go to market play to take it to scale rather than continuous product iteration. There's always gonna be iterati…”
Makani: Company culture means absolutely nothing without a winning product
“Are you building, if it's a technology company, are you building technology that solves a very real problem that people are willing to pay for over and over again? If you don't have that, nothing else matters. And so, I mean, you could have the most, most ethi…”
Makani: Venture Capital Experience Helps Founders Avoid Pursuing Bad Ideas
“And I think venture doesn't by any means guarantee success as an entrepreneur, but I really do think it kind of makes sure that you don't at the minimum pursue bad ideas. And that does improve the likelihood of having an outcome.”
Makani: No major company is ever built on a single product
“The reality is no big company is Has ever been built with just one product.”
KeepTruckin expands every single customer cohort across all time periods
“And in fact, it's net negative from a revenue retention perspective. We expand every one of our accounts, every cohort all time.”
Makani: Silicon Valley would compound faster by letting more talent in
“Let more people in. This place can and should compound at much higher rates.”
Makani: Building Freight Marketplaces Requires Bringing Supply Online First
“To build an electronic marketplace for freight, you had to first bring the drivers and trucks online.”
Makani: Full startup resets almost invariably lose people and momentum
“If in fact, you know, you're not digging in the right place, it is really, really hard to redirect a team around a whole new opportunity or a whole new market. You can generally kind of pivot on the margins, but doing a whole reset, you almost invariably lose …”
Makani: CEO responsibility shifts from building product to building the company
“In the early days, you have to be so narrowly and obsessively focused about the detail and in the micro. You have to really be inward focused. And for me, that meant to build the product. But really, I think it was the inflection point happened when I realized…”
Makani: Never launch a second product while forcing core product growth
“When you have to still force your first product, I think that's when you know you're perhaps not ready to go on to number two.”
Shoaib Makani: Attracting talent is a board member's highest-leverage role
“Really, I think the highest leverage thing a board member can do for you is to help you attract and close great talent.”
Makani: I will hire a full-time recruiter from day one next time
“I think next go around, if there is one, I will hire a full-time recruiter from day one.”
Shoaib Makani: Startups should use external specialist search firms for executive hiring
“It's possible that you can build an executive search Capacity internally, but they're not going to be exceptional. One individual is not going to be exceptional at four different types of roles. And so you do want, I think, to leverage the external specialist.”
KeepTruckin used a free driver compliance app as a fleet management wedge
“Give away a free application to the driver around compliance, and then use that to then wedge into the broader fleet management opportunity.”
Makani: Startups should never fight a fair fight in sales
“I never want to fight a fair fight. When it comes to sales, I want to have a leg up and, you know, I'm constantly looking in our own business for what is our advantage.”
Makani: Direct Distribution And Retention Must Precede Paid Advertising
“Branding and performance are Can be an accelerant to your business, but ultimately you have to be able to reach your audience directly. You have to be able to. Buy your product, and your product has to be good enough that it stands out on its own, that people …”
Makani intentionally omitted hardware from KeepTruckin's seed pitch deck
“And to be honest, I actually just left the hardware piece out of our seed deck.”
Makani: Hardware SaaS has higher acquisition hurdles but vastly superior retention
“While the threshold for winning an account is high, the retention dynamics are dramatically better than versus like pure optional software, what I'll call.”
Makani: Corporate culture is mimetic because actions override words
“I mean, corporate culture is super mimetic. You know, the what you do is what other people will follow. No matter what you say, it's gonna be about what you do.”
Makani: The name KeepTruckin became a constraint on the business
“The company's name used to be Keep Truckin'. It was perfect at the time we started the company. It became a constraint pretty quickly thereafter and we knew we needed to change the name.”
Makani: KeepTruckin initially focused solely on 1.5 million for-hire trucks
“We focused initially on the 1.5 million for hire trucks. That's all we cared about, the trucks that carry goods for others.”
Makani: Founders must track where regulation is heading, not current rules
“Deeply understand the regulation, both what is the current regulation and what's proposed. Regulation is constantly evolving, and you actually want to be close to where it's headed, not just to the current state.”
The other half of the tape: Shoaib Makani's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 1 time in 1 episode across the shows. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Shabih "Shabby" Rizvi 1
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 1
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Shoaib's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Motive | 1 | 19 | 100% 1/1 | full record on 20VC → |
 SAASTRLEDGER | Co-Founder and CEO, Motive | 1 | 5 | — | full record on the Official SaaStr Podcast → |