Ep168 – Will On (Co-founder & Co-CEO – Shippit) on fundraising, secondaries and the Co-CEO model
- July 28, 2022
- rohitbhargava
- Podcast
My guest for Ep168 of The Startup Playbook Podcast was the Co-founder & Co-CEO of Shippit, Will On.
Will and his co-founder Rob started Shippit in 2014. They raised $500K as their first funding round bringing in a number of strategic investors on board when it was just the two of them in the business.
Fast forward 8 years later and Shippit now has a 200+ strong team and recently raised a $62m Series B2 funding round led by Tiger Global and Tidal Ventures.
In this interview we covered a range of topics including:
- navigating the challenges of early stage startups
- lessons from Shippit’s Co-CEO model
- secondaries
- how fundraising changes from Seed to Series B
- & much more
Timestamps
- 03:16 – William’s backstory
- 05:20 – Feeling like a “misfit” during university
- 08:31 – The early days of building Shippit
- 12:36 – Advice for founders when evaluating potential external business partners
- 15:07 – How the co-CEO relationship has worked for William and Rob Hango-Zada
- 20:19 – Early challenges Shippit faced in gaining momentum
- 24:45 – How the approach to raising capital has changed during the last 7 years of Shippit
- 27:03 – Advice for founders currently raising capital
- 32:35 – Secondaries and how it’s played out for Shippit
- 35:22 – Leveraging secondaries to attract more talent
- 36:55 – How Shippit found a specific focus within the broader industry they work within
- 39:56 – Balancing a specific focus with looking out for new opportunities
- 43:59 – Advice on how to surround yourself with the right people
Our partners
A big thank you to Daniel Gulati and Justin Lipman for their help with this interview. Also a big thank you to our partners for this episode.
Lawpath
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Scendar
We’re Scendar, an accounting and advisory practice better described as Finance as a Service (FaaS). We’re focused on founders, funders and startups. Clients that are ever-changing and adapting. We like fast movers. And as you might have guessed, we’re not your basic accountancy. We can take care of tax and the books whilst building a syndicate fund and a multimillion dollar exit strategy. At Scendar, we’re empowered by our client’s potential. Find out more at Scendar.com
Dovetail Studios
Dovetail Studios operates a venture studio and VC to transform ambitious ideas into unstoppable businesses. On top of being a renowned product development partner for startups like Afterpay, they also operate a VC fund to invest in early-stage companies that go through their venture studio program. So if you’re a non-technical, early-stage founder looking for a talented team to help supercharge your success, check out dovetailstudios.com
Links Mentioned
Will’s Links
People mentioned
- Rob Hango-Zada
- Daniel Gulati
- Steve Baxter
- Michael Cindric
- Lachlan Donald
- Justin Lipman
- Les Szekely
- Marcus Lim
- Howard Leibman
- Ian Beatty
- Leigh Jasper
- James Chin Moody
Companies mentioned
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