EP289 - ShipBob Co-Founder Dhruv Saxena  Dhruv Saxena is the co-founder and CEO of ShipBob, Inc. ShipBob is a tech-enabled third-party logistics provider (3PL) that fulfills e-commerce orders for direct-to-consumer brands. We discuss ShipBob's origin story, how the e-commerce fulfillment industry has evolved, as well as the challenges and implications of Amazon and Shopify's various fulfillment initiatives. Episode 289 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Friday March 18, 2022. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 289 being recorded on Friday March 18 20 22 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners Jason as you know we did a Amazon Fulfillment deep dive a couple weeks ago and that was quite a popular Topic in episode and we've been getting a lot of questions from listeners about what's going on in the world of and we are now living in a world where products used to be if you get it in a week that was amazing and now anything that's longer than 2 days feels like a lifetime so we thought it would be good to bring on one of the top startups in the Fulfillment area the shipbob and we have with us the CEO and co-founder of shipbob dhruv saxena dhruv welcome to the show. Dhruv: [1:20] Thank you so much Scott and Jason for having me excited for our conversation. Jason: [1:24] We are looking forward to it as well I'm getting tons of complaints on the feet already that people were expecting Bob to be on the show today so you'll have to tell us how it became dhruv started shipbob. Dhruv: [1:36] Yeah for sure I'll give you a quick back story on me if that's the opening question and tell you how did we come up with the name shipbob. Jason: [1:46] That would be perfect yes I asked it very awkward we Scott is laughing at me on the back Channel. Dhruv: [1:51] Yeah so. Quick back story on us you know I grew up in Delhi India came to the u.s. in 2007 to pursue engineering my co-founder on shabaab device is also from India we've known each other all our lives. And so we after we both did an engineering in the midwest here I went to Purdue we came back to Chicago and started. I'll booking in a full-time jobs at software programmers and on nights and weekends as most Engineers do. We were trying and experimenting with a bunch of thought of ideas and one of the start-up ideas was in e-commerce. And be Engineers we were able to automate effectively everything in that e-commerce business except the part around shipping and Logistics. And so every time you would have a bunch of folders we would have to run to the post office here in Willis Tower Chicago in the basement, they have a post office and we would have to stand in line and basically ship out those orders out and that became the most manual and painful part of our e-commerce business. And we wanted to find ways of automating that. [2:58] And we would call up a bunch of these existing companies 3pls who helped companies with the shipping and Logistics take all three pills third party Logistics providers. And none of them wanted our business because we were too small for them, and so that got us thinking as to hey how do others small to mid-sized e-commerce businesses figure out their shipping and Logistics we realize that there really isn't a good alternative for businesses like ours who are you know ramping up e-commerce businesses and that caught us into, thinking what should pop can be. And how did the name c