Mar 18, 2024 · 1h 24m · how-i-built-this
Weee!: Larry Liu
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
In this episode of How I Built This, host Guy Raz interviews Larry Liu, who details his journey from an Intel engineer and eBay reseller to founding Weee!, navigating near-bankruptcy, and pivoting into a multi-billion-dollar online ethnic grocery platform.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Guy holds 34.9% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Guy as informed peer 3.2 Guest teaching 2.6 Guest disagreement 0.1 Guy pushing back 0.1
speaking balance: gold is Guy, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 1:08:50 Clarifying expat vs. immigrant terminology
Liu pushes back on Raz's description of his customer base as expats, clarifying that they are rooted first-generation immigrants.
Hardest push from Guy ▶ 38:00 Pushing for clarity on group buying logisticsRaz refuses to gloss over the logistics of group minivans and asks Liu to clearly explain how the match between buyers and suppliers functioned.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 1:15:10 Historical analysis of the 1965 Immigration ActLiu educates Raz by citing the Immigration Act of 1965 to contextualize the demographic rise and unmet grocery needs of ethnic communities.
Guy holds their own ▶ 23:30 Demonstrating command of business strategy frameworksRaz immediately connects Liu's narrative to Jim Collins's hedgehog concept from Good to Great, demonstrating his strategic business knowledge.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Guy as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Guy pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Call-in Opportunity for Aspiring Entrepreneurs | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | Introductory segment consisting of host announcements and an overview of Larry Liu's entrepreneurial trajectory. There is no live guest-host interaction. | |
| Growing Up in Wuhan and American Cultural Influences | 2 | 3 | 1 | 1 | Liu explains how he picked his American name from Larry Bird and clarifies Chinese cultural differences regarding childhood ambitions, gently correcting Raz's assumption about wanting to move to Beijing. | |
| First E-Commerce Ventures on EachNet and Joining Intel Shanghai | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz asks about early ventures on EachNet and joining Intel. Liu shares how early e-commerce felt like a casual hobby among university friends rather than a deliberate startup. | |
| Relocating to California and Experiencing Asian Grocery Scarcity | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Liu describes the culture shock of arriving in Folsom, struggling with fast-food English, and the severe scarcity of authentic Asian grocers in the area. | |
| Scaling an Arbitrage Side Business on eBay | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz eagerly identifies Liu's eBay strategy as classic instant arbitrage. Liu elaborates on exploiting OfficeMax coupon loops to build a lucrative side hustle. | |
| MBA, Finance Career, and Automated Web Arbitrage | 4 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Liu details how he automated web scraping arbitrage between platforms, while Raz probes the mechanics and profitability of the algorithm. | |
| The 2012 Epiphany and Deepening American Curiosity | 5 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz and Liu discuss business literature including Jim Collins's hedgehog concept and Robert Caro's biographies, with Raz validating Liu's deep engagement with American history. | |
| Discovering WeChat Group Buying and Grassroots Demand | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Liu educates Raz on the emergence of WeChat community group buying in 2014, sharing the striking story of a mother organizing a $10,000 black cod order from Half Moon Bay. | |
| Founding Weee! and Leaving Corporate Employment | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz asks about leaving corporate life, and Liu explains how obtaining his green card finally allowed him to quit and self-fund Weee! alongside his wife's support. | |
| Launching Weee! and Expanding into Physical Warehousing | 4 | 3 | 0 | 1 | Raz seeks clarification on whether Weee! initially handled goods or just brokered deals, leading Liu to explain the transition into physical warehousing for high-demand items like pork belly. | |
| Early VC Funding and the Stalling of Group Buying | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Liu outlines raising early VC seed money and a $7.5M Series A, followed by the sudden growth plateau as group leaders became exhausted. | |
| Geographic Missteps and Facing Financial Depletion | 3 | 3 | 0 | 0 | Liu reflects on the strategic mistake of expanding geographically when unit economics failed, and recounts the rejection from both US and Chinese investors. | |
| Spinal Injury, Bed Rest, and the Core Grocery Epiphany | 3 | 4 | 0 | 0 | Liu explains the turning point while bedridden with a spinal injury, realizing that group buying was merely a clumsy workaround for basic grocery scarcity. | |
| Restructuring Weee! and Down-Round Refinancing | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz questions the severe dilution of the down-round financing. Liu describes selling his rental property and giving up over 50% equity to Goodwater to keep the company alive. | |
| Hands-on Rebuilding: Layoffs, Forklifts, and Delivery Logistics | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Liu describes the grueling operational turnaround, executing painful layoffs, driving forklifts between executive meetings, and personally delivering over 1,000 orders. | |
| Turnaround Traction, Viral WePoints, and Regional Expansion | 4 | 3 | 1 | 0 | Liu gently clarifies Raz's terminology regarding expat customers versus permanent first-generation immigrants, and explains the viral mechanics of WePoints order sharing. | |
| Pandemic Explosion and Expansion Across Diverse Ethnic Communities | 4 | 5 | 0 | 0 | Liu educates Raz on the demographic impact of the 1965 Immigration Act, explaining how it enabled immigrant communities across the US to reach critical mass for ethnic grocery demand. | |
| Multi-Billion Dollar Scale, Destiny, and Reflections | 3 | 2 | 0 | 0 | Raz asks reflective questions about handling multi-billion dollar scale and the balance between luck and destiny, concluding with a lighthearted exchange about frozen dumplings. |
Statements from this episode (27)
Liu: EachNet Was the Only E-Commerce Platform in Early 2000s China
“We have never seen this kind of thing before, and there was no e-commerce in China. Only each net.”
Liu: The Three Early EachNet Sellers Became Weee!'s Co-Founders
“At the time, three of us, actually all, now they are all the co-founders of We. So that was like more than 20 years ago. Three of us, we were just having fun.”
Liu says eBay side business made $30K to $50K annual profit
“It's probably between 30 to 50 grand a year at the time.”
Liu: Automated e-commerce price arbitrage remains viable across platforms today
“You can still do that today, and you can do, like, even more, right? So now there are, like, cross-border companies. You can actually scrape those companies and list down on eBay.”
Liu: Automated arbitrage side venture reached $2M in sales with >10% profit
“So at its peak, we were doing about two million dollars in sales and a little more than 10% net profit.”
Liu: E-commerce arbitrage makes money but creates minimal fundamental value
“It's a good vehicle to probably make some money, but we fundamentally did not solve any problems or create much value.”
Liu: Career choices require passion, skill, and a multi-decade industry runway
“Like a business, you have to choose something you're passionate about and you're good at. So, so for me I think it applies to your personal career choice as well. I wanted to choose something that, I'm really passionate about. I also want to choose something I…”
Liu: A WeChat mom generated $10,000 overnight in seafood group orders
“I remember one night, a mom in the group posted some information. She said, oh, I went to this harbor called Half Moon Bay. There was a fisherman's market, right? She said, I talked to this fisherman because I really liked the fish, the Pacific black cod. And …”
Liu: US Chinese immigrants organically organized WeChat grocery group buys in 2014
“So, so first of all, I saw this happening in many different groups, right? Not just this one group. And also, I talked to my friends in other cities in the US. People were doing this in Boston. People were doing this in Seattle. So Chinese immigrants were doin…”
Liu: Weee! Was Initially Self-Funded Using eBay Savings
“So we decided to run the business using our savings from the eBay days and to self-fund the business until we see significant traction, then we can try to raise money.”
Liu: Weee! reached tens of thousands of users by mid-2015
“So we released the software. I remember it's January of 2015. By mid-two 1015, we had tens of thousands of users already using our software to organize group buys.”
Liu: Hotmail co-founder Jack Smith wrote Weee!'s first $250,000 check
“He committed to write the first check we ever received, a 250,000 dollars, because he really liked the scrappiness and the creative ways that we approach this.”
Liu: Over 99.5% of early Weee! users used Chinese language app
“More than like, 99.5% of the users actually use Chinese language on our application, so almost all Chinese immigrants.”
Liu: Expanding geographically when a model fails locally is a mistake
“Now looking back, we were doing the exactly wrong thing, which is when something is not quite working in a smaller geographic area, we try to make it work in more areas, right?”
Liu: Weee! had under $1 million left by mid-2017
“By mid of 2017, we were running out of money. We had less than one million dollars left.”
Liu: US group-buying was a workaround for poor grocery access, not entertainment
“The fundamental reason people were doing this was because they couldn't have easy, affordable access to the food they love. I remember that's what I felt like the fundamental problem People were trying to solve using these group bias, but it was not the right …”
Liu: Founders should pivot execution on right goals, but quit fundamentally wrong ideas
“So if it's the right thing and you are just not doing it right, you should not give up. You should try to find a way to do it right. However, if it's not the right thing, You should not try to make it better, because it's not the right thing. You should stop r…”
Liu: A winning grocery delivery app cannot exceed brick-and-mortar prices
“We believe that to become the go-to grocery shopping app, we cannot be more expensive than brick-and-mortar stores.”
Liu: Goodwater Capital owned over 50% of Weee! by late 2018
“So, so by the end of 2018, they ended up owning more than 50% of the business.”
Liu: Weee! Downsized to 30 to 40 Employees Post-Pivot Layoffs
“We had about 30 to 40 people including all the warehouse workers and drivers, so very small already, and everybody had to do everything.”
Liu: Personally Delivered Over 1,000 Orders to Build Weee!'s Logistics Software
“I delivered more than a thousand orders myself. Because I had to figure out how to do delivery, how to write the software that, how to design the driver experience, and how to figure out the delivery part.”
Liu: Scheduled Batch Delivery Enables Viable Unit Economics Over Expensive On-Demand
“From day one, we knew that we couldn't do the on-demand delivery, because on-demand delivery is so expensive. So we did what we call scheduled delivery. That way we can aggregate a lot of orders, and we can do the route planning.”
Liu: Weee! Reached $500,000 Per Week in Sales by Late 2018
“A year and a half later, we were doing half a million dollars a week in sales.”
Liu: Typical E-Commerce Companies Spend $50 to $100 Per Customer on Ads
“People, other e-commerce companies spend probably 50 to a hundred dollars to Google and Facebook to acquire a new user, right?”
Liu: Weee! relocated warehouses overnight without halting daily operations
“And by moving the warehouse, we actually did not shut shutting down the business, not even for a day. We ship today's order. Then we put away the inventory. We disassemble the shelves. Then overnight we move the shelves and inventory to the new warehouse. We r…”
Liu: Startup success only buys entry to harder competition against stronger players
“All the success we had basically only earned our ticket to play the next game, and the next game is going to be harder. That's how I felt. I felt it's definitely harder than the early days, simply because we have bigger vision, we have bigger dreams, and we ar…”
Liu: Hard work and talent are baseline; ultimate scale depends on luck
“Hard work and the talents are just necessary, but how high you can go, how far you can grow, really has a lot to do with the situations you are in, what happened to you, what people you met, and you can loosely say those are all luck, or fate, or destiny.”