Mike Shebat (@mike_sheb), co-founder and CEO of Traba, joins Erik Torenberg and Lucas Bagno on this episode. Takeaways:
- There is a huge problem with meeting demand for workers at warehouses and fulfilment centres. There are 75% more jobs in those fields after the pandemic.
- Mike worked in warehousing and helped scale UberEats so has strong founder-market fit. Traba’s mission of connecting people to work is very meaningful to him.
- Mike met his co-founder Akshay through the On Deck Fellowship and they started working on projects together and did an extensive values questionnaire, both of which were very helpful when it comes to founder cohesion.
- They have emphasized company values from day one and hired for people who share those values, which has paid dividends.
- Mike recommends building trust with your existing investors by sharing challenges and how you plan to solve them. He recommends bringing your existing investors along for the ride into future rounds.
- Mike calls Miami “Singapore and New York in Latin America” and loves the optimistic attitude of the people there.
- When hiring, Mike looks for people with a high slope and asks them “what was something your manager wanted you to improve on a few years ago and what did you do to become better at it?”
- Mike’s vision for a Traba mafia, akin to the PayPal mafia, some of whose members are backing Traba.
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