The Exchanges

Q And he's kind of an entrepreneur, but it's hard. I think, I understand he went from success to bankruptcy at least, like, multiple times. Like, how did that affect your vision of entrepreneurship? That, that would sound kind of scary and unstable to some people. Did that make you not want to be an entrepreneur, or, or how do you think about it?

A Yeah, it was, you know, it, it really, um, the instability scared me in the beginning, and I felt so much of the downside. So, like, one day, you know, you'd walk in, and I'm gonna age myself now, but I'd walk in and have 10 Nintendo games sitting there, right? Super excited, seems like we have the world in our hands, and then the next day, you know, or next week, we're talking to lawyers about how do we save our house. And it's just that industry was so cutthroat, you know, one day you're operating well, the next day, about a mile away, a competitor opens up. And so, you know, having to live through those different challenges was incredibly hard, and it really kind of stepped me away, scared me from, from entrepreneurship. I grew up in a high, high-end, middle-class area, and so, you know, I always kind of had to work to make up for it, because I really felt bad for my parents to try to give me anything. And so, I've always had that work ethic, But the, the, the fear of feeling the failure all the time was scary at first. It eventually became a superpower for me. But, you know, that was one of the lessons that I learned is ultimately not to run away from that, which I'll take you through.

AI assessment note: “the instability scared me in the beginning, and I felt so much of the downside.”

Q And so, and so after having experienced all that, all the entrepreneurship and ups and downs from your parents, like what did, what did you study? What'd you go into after?

A Yeah, it was interesting. So I, I went into business at first, you know, I grew up in an Indian family, so it's like, you know, business was kind of looked down upon at that point too. It's either going to medicine or something or be a lawyer or doctor. Exactly. So obviously like didn't, it's like how you do it on the Jewish side too. Yeah. So, um, but, so I studied business and it was, you know, as I continued to study business, I really became enamored by just How companies were built, how, you know, not really how to start companies at the time was always about, you know, how do you like deal making things of that sort that really excited me up front. So, you know, after school, that was my first entryway into Wall Street. And that was, you know, everyone kind of told me you want stability, like go be an investment banker, go learn the business. And so that's where I started my career, which is very different where I ended up. But, you know, I think half the battle for, for all of us is learning what you're not happy with. Right.

AI assessment note: “I studied business... after school, that was my first entryway into Wall Street”

Q What are some of the things you could do with that?

A Yeah, so today, I mean, we offer moving services. So when you get from point A to point B, um, we offer obviously storage services. We have Junking on the horizon. We have eventually, you know, concepts of how you share your stuff and sell your stuff. Um, but today it's really just, you know, moving and storage. How do we solve the biggest pain points of actually how to get your stuff from one place to the other or put it away somewhere? Um, and yes, interestingly enough, you asked an interesting question up front is, you know, how often do people interact with their stuff? What's their affinity with their stuff? Honestly, there's, when you look in our warehouses, you'd be surprised at the things people store. Like a broom that maybe costs four 99 that they can't get rid of. Right. And over the lifetime, customers actually interact maybe three or four times. And it's sometimes to take stuff out or sometimes to put stuff back in. And so it's very interesting dynamic. But I think the, the, the, the biggest assumption made by the incumbents at the time, because easy access can the unit economics work was proven wrong. We have 10 years of history now that, that is shown.

AI assessment note: “we offer moving services... storage services. We have Junking on the horizon.”

Q When you say 24 markets, like, is this like New York, San Francisco? What kind of markets are you in?

A I mean, so the main markets we were already in, like, New York, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, DC, you know, we, we complemented that with, like, Miami, with Pittsburgh, with, you know, Boston, with Toronto, which was our first international market, and the reason was because, because we didn't have that upfront cost of having to invest in supply chain, Like, even not utilize, we could utilize their drivers, etc. It was very simple for us to get up and running, and it was all about building that marketing muscle. Building that tech muscle. And that's what we were good at. And so that's what they allowed us to do. So we understood very quickly how our service could work beyond, you know, a handful of major markets. And that's where we saw tremendous tailwinds as we got into COVID, where you saw a big exodus into many cities from the main cities. Um, and that's where this business capitalized. And yes, you know, big question about, like, how does it, how did we end up merging with Clutter? And it was, you know, based on that success that we had, you know, Clutter also did a lot of things incredibly well, too, from a logistics standpoint. They built an incredible muscle with the, you know, they're basically managing a fleet of drivers. Also, within the warehouse, creating processes and systems that were really effective. And I think when we saw bringing those boats, both those strate…

AI assessment note: “so the main markets we were already in, like, New York, San Francisco, LA”

Q Don't forget your investors when you do the fun ones, man. Exactly. I'm just kidding. Exactly. But speaking of the market today, we're at the end of a historic bull run. Liquidity's tightening. Yep. There's not as much money in tech. How does that change your approach to your business, to your talent, your business development? Like, what's different now versus a year or two ago?

A Yeah, I think it's, you know, growth at all costs is not, We're, we've, we've actually not been focused on that for a long time, because the business is just so hard to scale as it is, that it's really important for us to prove out the unit economics of being able to do this, because so much of the market doesn't think we could, right? And, and I think we've done a good job of proving that, but it's really around being very thoughtful around the types of customers we acquire, how long potentially they stay with us, and what other areas we want to continue to kind of capture more and more customers down the road. And so, The team is really built around that. I think it's a good, um, balance of scaling and showing growth, but showing growth profitably. And I think that's been really something that's, that, you know, the team has kind of rallied around over the last nine months.

AI assessment note: “balance of scaling and showing growth, but showing growth profitably.”

Q It's pick up things for everyone. Like, like how, how, how big can you be over the next decade?

A I, ah, I, my dream has always been to work at a generational company. Most companies in first year, two years, three years fail. This has been the biggest lottery ticket for me to be able to wake up every day and work on something that I actually see a path to be here well beyond me. Um, and I know it's gonna take, you know, obviously we're just kind of getting started on that big part of the journey, but I do see this as that component of a really big company and a really big industry that's changing the way people interact with their stuff very differently from not just the incumbents in real estate or in storage, but how the moving companies operate. How container companies operate. How all these different versions of storage exist. Imagine having one platform that can do a lot of that. So I do see this business having a place in the world, having a big place in the world as to how big it can be. I mean, we're, we're, we're gonna go as, as, as big as we can.

AI assessment note: “as to how big it can be. I mean, we're gonna go as big as we can.”