Laura Behrens Wu’s Shipping Woes Led to the Birth of Shippo
“Every day I’m running the largest company that I have ever worked at,” says Laura Behrens Wu, co-founder and CEO of Shippo in an interview with Inc.. She’s referring to the dizzying exponential growth of Shippo’s head count, which doubled several times over the last few years.
Shippo calls itself “multi-carrier shipping software for e-commerce businesses.” The company gives e-commerce businesses, especially small and medium businesses, the power to conveniently choose the right shipping for them, create shipping and return labels, track shipments, and more. Shippo works with over 100,000 e-commerce merchants and operates in countries around the globe.
“If [online stores] get [shipping] right, they’re going to do better than other merchants,” said Behrens Wu, who was recognized as one of Inc.’s 2019 and 2021 Female Founders 100. “If they get it wrong, consumers are not going to come back. Even if the carrier messes up, consumers associate that experience with the store.”
Behrens Wu’s father did not want her to be an entrepreneur.
Behrens Wu grew up in Germany, raised by her Taiwanese mother and her German father.
According to Forbes, as a child, Behrens Wu’s German father was upset by the fact that his entrepreneur father spent so much time working and traveling and not as much time at home. Behrens Wu’s father set an example for her by working a nine-to-five and always making it home for dinner, so the idea of being an entrepreneur never crossed her mind.
Given the wild success that Behrens Wu would go on to find on her journey as an entrepreneur, one could be safe in assuming that her father has changed his mind about the profession.
Behrens Wu started out selling handbags.
Things began to change for Behrens Wu when she relocated from Germany to San Francisco to intern at LendUp, a startup that focuses on online personal loans. The internship planted what her father would likely have called a dangerous seed in Behrens Wu’s mind. She began to think about starting her own business.
Behrens Wu and another intern, Simon Kreutz, started racking their brains for a business idea, but, as Behrens Wu later said to Forbes, they “couldn’t really come up with anything world-changing or groundbreaking.” So they decided to put aside changing the world and go with something a little more down-to-earth: a simple online handbag store.
Shipping became a thorn in the side of Behrens Wu and Keutz’s business.
It wasn’t long before Behrens Wu and Kreutz found out that running an online store wasn’t a walk in the park. The biggest thorn in their side turned out to be shipping.
Behrens Wu later commiserated in Forbes that “shipping required us to go on this journey to USPS, standing in line. It’s not the most fun place to get advice from people working there either.” Unable to find a shipping solution that suited them, Behrens Wu took to heart a piece of advice given to her by a mentor figure: “Build something that’s a painkiller, not a vitamin.”
In 2014, Shippo was born as a “painkiller” for the agony of shipping as a small business.
Thus, in 2014, Shippo was born: a metaphorical ibuprofen for the headache that is shipping. Shippo raised $2 million in its seed round, according to Crunchbase. Entrepreneur describes Shippo’s beginnings as essentially “an Expedia for shipping labels,” in that “it compared prices across carriers.”
Soon, Shippo became much more than that. Customers can use Shippo to track parcels, make labels, and create international customs documents. Shippo integrated into Shopify and similar platforms, tracked carrier certification, and negotiated with carriers. Such negotiations included encouraging the carriers with whom it partners to pay more attention to the needs of small and medium businesses.
Behrens Wu told Inc. that Shippo is an “API-first” company and claims that Shippo’s emphasis on technology sets it apart from its competitors.
For Behrens Wu, rising from a small business founder to a successful CEO was a wild learning experience.
Behrens Wu found that the transition from being a business founder who wears all the hats to a CEO who delegates hundreds of people around the world to wear those hats was sometimes a rocky one.
“Managing people is not a natural skill, it has to be learned,” she said to Forbes. “And they don’t teach that to you in school or college.”
Though she has since learned a lot about employee management, Behrens Wu has no illusions that she knows all there is to know about running a business. “…I now have a team of executives around me who are incredible to work with and from whom I learn so much from every day,” she said.
Shippo’s success shows no signs of slowing.
Shippo is growing to this day. In May of 2023, website-builder Wix became another in the long line of companies to partner with Shippo. Other companies Shippo has partnered with recently include Better Trucks and continued collaboration with FedEx.
What can be learned from Shippo’s success?
The words of Behren Wu’s mentor, “Build something that’s a painkiller, not a vitamin” sum up the key to Shippo’s success. Laura Behrens Wu and Simon Kreutz changed the basis of their business from something people want — handbags — to something people need — convenient shipping. They pivoted from attempting to break into a saturated market to trailblazing new territory to solve an issue that every e-commerce business faces.
The story of Shippo is an inspiration to look upon inconveniences not just as frustrations, but as sources of inspiration. Instead of throwing your hands into the air in despair when faced with a roadblock, put your hands to work on solving the issue, and the solution might just be more successful than you — or your parents — ever expect.
Sources:
https://goshippo.com/
https://www.crunchbase.com/fun...
https://www.zippia.com/shippo-careers-1419995/revenue/
https://www.inc.com/profile/laura-behrens-wu
https://www.entrepreneur.com/l...
https://www.eseller365.com/wix-partners-with-shippo-launch-wix-shipping/#
https://www.linkedin.com/in/la...
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