2023 LA First Look — Entrepreneurship: When Soles Hit the Road “Tenacity in Entrepreneurship”

Fika hosted its 8th annual LA First Look Retreat on May 4th after a sad three-year hiatus. It was incredible to be back in-person at the historic Ebell for what turned out to be perhaps the best First Look yet, as many proclaimed this to be one of the top tech events in Los Angeles.

The day began with main stage keynote discussions with esteemed industry leaders touching on a wide range of hot-button topics.

Eddy Lu, Co-Founder & CEO of GOAT, headlined the final panel of the day where he discussed with Fika General Partner, TX Zhuo, the journey of GOAT and the various pivots and challenges faced by the company before finding product-market fit. GOAT’s journey demonstrates that pivoting multiple times can eventually lead to success. The founders tried countless ideas, from group dining apps to dating apps, before finally landing on the concept for GOAT. Despite the challenges, the founders’ persistence eventually led them to creating the incredibly successful sneaker marketplace, and their story has become synonymous with perseverance and adaptability in the startup world. Even after finding product-market fit and experiencing growth, Eddy stressed that it is essential for startups to control costs and maintain efficiency and financial discipline.

“You have to preserve cash like crazy. That’s the only way to have optionality” — Eddy Lu

Eddy pointed out that GOAT overcame early setbacks, which included dealing with credit card fraud and struggling sales, which led to valuable lessons and growth for the company. He even shared a story about a time where the company had not made any sales one day, which led to the team secretly buying a pair of sneakers on their own site to boost morale.

“For me, it was just funny because we always thought we had product-market fit with [our previous ideas]…but for me now, the barometer is you only have product-market fit if you’re just trying to tread above water, doing anything you can to just keep your head above water because there’s so many sales, so many users, so many orders.”

GOAT’s breakthrough moment came during a Black Friday promotion in 2015, which led to a massive increase in users and sales. Since then, in spite of its continued mega success, GOAT still maintains a scrappy and tenacious mindset.