My guest for Ep168 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Shippit, Will On.

Will and his co-founder Rob started Shippit in 2014. They raised $500K as their first funding round bringing in a number of strategic investors on board when it was just the two of them in the business.

Fast forward 8 years later and Shippit now has a 200+ strong team and recently raised a $62m Series B2 funding round led by Tiger Global and Tidal Ventures.

In this interview we covered a range of topics including:

• navigating the challenges of early stage startups
• lessons from Shippit’s Co-CEO model
• secondaries
• how fundraising changes from Seed to Series B
• & much more

Timestamps 

• 03:16 – William’s backstory
• 05:20 – Feeling like a “misfit” during university
• 08:31 – The early days of building Shippit
• 12:36 – Advice for founders when evaluating potential external business partners
• 15:07 – How the co-CEO relationship has worked for William and Rob Hango-Zada
• 20:19 – Early challenges Shippit faced in gaining momentum
• 24:45 – How the approach to raising capital has changed during the last 7 years of Shippit
• 27:03 – Advice for founders currently raising capital
• 32:35 – Secondaries and how it’s played out for Shippit
• 35:22 – Leveraging secondaries to attract more talent
• 36:55 – How Shippit found a specific focus within the broader industry they work within
• 39:56 – Balancing a specific focus with looking out for new opportunities
• 43:59 – Advice on how to surround yourself with the right people

Our partners

A big thank you to Daniel Gulati and Justin Lipman for their help with this interview. Also a big thank you to our partners for this episode.

Lawpath

Lawpath’s Legal Advice Plan gives you access to lawyers on demand for one low monthly fee. Create legal documents, sign online and have a lawyer on-call to help you through any legal need for a fraction of the cost.  Lawpath has helped Australian businesses save over $100 million in legal fees, and are offering Startup Playbook listeners up to 20% off their most popular legal plans. Visit lawpath.com/playbook for your exclusive discount and discover an easier way to get your legals sorted.

Scendar 

We’re Scendar, an accounting and advisory practice better described as Finance as a Service (FaaS). We’re focused on founders, funders and startups. Clients that are ever-changing and adapting. We like fast movers. And as you might have guessed, we’re not your basic accountancy. We can take care of tax and the books whilst building a syndicate fund and a multimillion dollar exit strategy.  At Scendar, we’re empowered by our client’s potential. Find out more at Scendar.com

Dovetail Studios 

Dovetail Studios operates a venture studio and VC to transform ambitious ideas into unstoppable businesses. On top of being a renowned product development partner for startups like Afterpay, they also operate a VC fund to invest in early-stage companies that go through their venture studio program. So if you’re a non-technical, early-stage founder looking for a talented team to help supercharge your success, check out dovetailstudios.com

Links Mentioned 

Will’s Links

• Twitter
• LinkedIn

People mentioned

• Rob Hango-Zada
• Daniel Gulati
• Steve Baxter
• Michael Cindric
• Lachlan Donald
• Justin Lipman
• Les Szekely
• Marcus Lim
• Howard Leibman
• Ian Beatty
• Leigh Jasper
• James Chin Moody

Companies mentioned

• Shippit
• Deloitte
• PwC
• Unilever 
• Shark Tank
• Sentia
• Buildkite
• Oneflare
• Second Quarter
• Sendle

Feedback/connect/say hello:

Rohit@startupplaybook.co
@RohitBhargava7 (Twitter)
/rohbhargava (LinkedIn)
@rohit_bhargava (Instagram)
My Youtube Channel

Credits:

Music: Paycheck

Other channels:

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