Fatima Dicko
Fatima Dicko is Founder and CEO of Jetpack, the coolest way to get the things you need delivered in minutes.
I love that you are a ‘yes’ person. You and I were first introduced three years ago by a mutual friend. Why did you say ‘yes’ to that interview back then, and why are you excited about this project now?
Aside from the fact that I immediately thought you were a complete bad*ss, I was inspired by the fact that someone felt so strongly about sharing diverse stories. If we keep hearing and telling the same stories, we will continue to limit our ability to change the harsh realities and effects of pattern matching and implicit bias.
Take me back in time…what’s your earliest entrepreneurial memory?
It’s so hard to pinpoint the earliest memory because so much of my middle and high school experiences consisted of a series of random entrepreneurial projects. I remember walking home from middle school and passing several corner stores near my house. At the time, Spice Girls Lollipops were all the rage. Each Spice Girl had her own lollipop with a sticker inside, and the goal was to collect all five lollipops and stickers. It was hard to find all of them at the stores near my school, but the stores near my house tended to have all five. Sensing an arbitrage opportunity, I would buy all of them and sell them for almost three times as much at school.
Going into high school, my mind was always thinking about ways I could add more value to people’s lives. Whether I was using Limewire or Kazaa to burn and sell custom CDs, or selling SAT vocabulary index study cards to other students, my mind would always automatically go into problem solving mode after seeing frustrations in real-time.
What values did your parents ingrain in you that you find most helpful as an entrepreneur?
As an immigrant in a new country, I had so many questions about my surroundings. Early in life, my parents stressed the importance of asking questions — specifically asking the question “why?” I took that guidance really seriously and asked questions about everything from how CPUs were assembled to why roller coasters worked the way they did. Having the room to be inquisitive was one of the most transformative parts of my childhood. I’m pretty sure that my curiosity paved the way to gaining the confidence needed to create new things.
One of my Stanford Business School Professors, Justin Berg, describes the fact that great ideas come from two old ideas coming together for the first time. When you think of innovation in this way, you realize that you don’t have to be the first person to think of a new solution. You just have to be able to notice an inefficiency in one place and a potential solution being implemented somewhere else. That level of perception starts with asking questions — all the time. My life experiences have taught me that asking questions helps us connect to our surroundings and gain a better understanding of the world.
Tell me about Jetpack.
Jetpack is a peer-to-peer convenience network that allows college students to get the last minute products they need in minutes. We’re most excited about the potential to bring the proven sharing economy model to consumer goods. Each day, about 1 in 6 students broadcast a request for an item via text or email; however, there’s still no way to ask people in your area. By using GPS and a notification algorithm, we make it easier to share with people in your area by finding the closest person with your requested product. The more we capture data on the most requested products on the marketplace, the more we know what to prestock in Jetpackers’ backpacks. We recently got accepted into Stanford’s StartX accelerator program and are backed by firms such as Precursor Ventures, Dorm Room Fund and Rough Draft Ventures.
What lessons have you learned about scaling a consumer marketplace?
At the end of 2017, we made a very intentional decision to make some core changes to our product. Our biggest challenge was an inability to predict demand and properly stock backpacks with the right products. This led to taking an alternative approach to solving our problem. We’ve now moved to a model where any user can fulfill orders on the platform using their own things. This new version has led us to building what is now becoming an “immediate delivery marketplace” for college campuses.
Since we’ve made these changed, we’ve seen some of the most exciting requests and transactions on the platform. We’ve seen people request and receive half-used shaving cream, a few sprays of dry shampoo, batteries, Hulu account passwords, Tide pods and hundreds of additional items.
One of the biggest benefits of moving to an “immediate need marketplace” is the ability to launch on campuses even faster. Before, we needed to onboard several official “Jetpackers” before the product could work on a campus. Now, we can launch on a campus via email listservs alone. Our plan has been to improve the product over the summer and then expand to multiple additional campuses this fall.
Who’s a founder you yourself admire?
Two of my Stanford Business School classmates Madeline Dangerfield-Cha and Joy Zhang are building a company called Mon Ami, which makes it easy for families caring for loved ones with dementia and other conditions to find and book activity companions. My grandmother suffered from dementia before her passing. Finding different ways to cope and be supportive to her was a life-changing experience. I’m inspired by the passion and purpose Madeline and Joy have combined to approach such an important problem with such enthusiasm.
I’m also incredibly inspired by Strive Masiyiwa. Strive is one of the most influential leaders in the world, with one small proof being that Facebook recognized him as having the most engaged following of any Business Leader in the world. Strive fought a 5-year battle against Mugabe’s government in order to obtain the necessary license to build a telephone company. At the time he had the idea to build Econet, over 75% of African people had never heard a telephone ringing. He went on to turn Econet into a Billion dollar company from the ground up. On top of his success as an entrepreneur, he has funded the education of over 100,000 young children all around Africa.
