Logistics Built from Scratch inside a Startup that’s raised $275mm
Today I had a call with Yuri Beloni, the logistics manager at Loft. Below you’ll find a summary of our conversation with him.
Loft is reinventing the process of buying and selling real estate and have had huge success since their launch in 2018. They have raised over US$275 million in investments from top US investors such as Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital and Vulcan Capital.
Florian Hagenbuch, Co-Founder & Co-CEO of Loft, is an angel investor in Liftit and one of the smartest entrepreneurs I’ve had the pleasure to work with in my career.
When we first started Liftit, I remember spending many hours working 1–1 with Florian having him teach me how to manage cohorts for marketplace startups since I had no previous experience on this matter.
Later on when we were fundraising for our Series A & B rounds, Florian was one of my go-to investors for advice on which venture capital firms to raise from in the U.S. and strategy on how to close the round.
Whether it’s number crunching on cohorts or closing multi-million dollar financing rounds, Florian can scale up or down on almost any startup topic out there.
My conversation with Yuri was super interesting. He previously was the supply chain manager at Leroy Merlin, one of the largest home improvement retailers in Brazil and then came to Loft about a year ago.
When Yuri arrived to Loft he pretty much had to build the logistics strategy from scratch with the rest of the newly hired logistics team. As we dove into the conversation he describes how this has been his biggest accomplishments of his career.
Here’s a summary of our conversation:
- You worked at a traditional shipper (Leroy Merlin) and now at a fast growing tech company (Loft). What are some differences you see between both companies as it relates to managing logistics?
At Loft, we don’t want to let customers wait one more second to get the apartment. We will spend more money on logistics to make the customer happy. At a traditional retailer, they are a lot more cost sensitive around the cost of supply chain and delivery.
2) What was the most frustrating thing you had to deal with in your career?
Working at a retailer, selling is such a priority that sometimes the retailer over-purchase on inventory, which makes managing the supply chain very challenging, because the warehouse is full for 300 days, which causes a lot of unnecessary stress on the logistics team.
3) What is your biggest accomplishment in your logistics career?
To me, the biggest accomplishment in my career is the fact that I was part of building everything [in logistics] here at Loft from scratch. I think I will leave a good legacy here. I know this will be an area that I created from scratch and will stay here forever. Loft will never close this area — it’s a new area and I had to build everything from the beginning. This has been my toughest challenge in my career, but also my biggest accomplishment now that the foundation is built.
4) Brazil has a lot of last mile logistics startups delivering food, transporting people, and delivering e-commerce on motorcycles and trucks. What is one company that stands out to you and why?
To me, I’m most impressed with Loggi. They have the largest amount of motorcyclists in the country and they delivery so fast, dealing with our terrible traffic in São Paulo, they execute the best and always keep with their time delivery promises.
The call with Yuri lasted about one hour and he spent half the time showing me a presentation about all the logistics he has built inside of Loft. From setting up the warehouse, to bulk buying of real estate construction material, to the execution of the truck delivery, Yuri helped build the logistics department from nothing inside of the startup and it was clear to me that this was indeed the accomplishment he is most proud of in his career.
