 We were delighted to welcome Shruti Shah, Entrepreneur in Residence at Silicon Valley Bank and ex-Cofounder & COO of Move Loot. In this talk, Shruti shares the story of Move Loot, the YC-backed full-service marketplace for buying and selling furniture. ⚡️ In only 3 years, they raised $22M and expanded across the US, with the vision to reinvent how people sell their (big) stuff. Startups tend to pursue growth at all costs.  But how do you grow at startup-speed when you're a customer-facing business, with physical bulgy items that need to move from point A to point B?  The challenge was enormous, and eventually Move Loot had to shut down.  In this talk, Shruti shares some of the learnings of: - Going from a crazy idea to a live business - Building a fully-integrated logistics platform - Raising a lot of money FAST, and growing a team - Pivoting, and what it’s like to shut down a company ** Shruti Shah is an Entrepreneur in Residence at Silicon Valley Bank where she is currently working with the early stage practice team on strategic partnerships. She was previously the co-founder and COO of Y Combinator backed Move Loot where she led national expansion and general business operations. Shruti was honored by Forbes as a 2016 30 Under 30 recipient in Retail and E-Commerce and the Aspen Institute as an Aspen Ideas Festival Scholar in reimagining capitalism. Prior to co-founding Move Loot, Shruti worked for the New Schools Venture Seed Fund, a seed fund that invests in early-stage education technology companies, and she was also a public school teacher in Baltimore, Maryland through Teach for America, where she taught elementary school.

1. Shruti Shah
Scaling a Marketplace with a Physical
Product: The Story of Move Loot

2. 2
A little bit about me….
• EIR at Silicon Valley Bank
• Co-Founder and COO at
Move Loot
• Worked briefly for an
education technology seed
venture fund
• Started my career as a
public school teacher

3. On to….

4. Getting Rid of Furniture
Buying Furniture

5. BENEFIT CUSTOMERS & PROMOTE SUSTAINABILITY
A Better Way to Buy and Sell
PHOTOGRAPH
+ SUBMIT
$400
LISTED
FOR SALE
SELL THE OLD$200PAID!SELLER
BUYER
FREE
DELIVERY*
WITHIN DAYS!
SHOP
PICKUP

6. 6
•Launched in fall of 2013
•Raised initial capital on Indiegogo
•$15K got allowed us to rent 1400 sq
feet in a shared warehouse space
•We did all of the pickup and delivery
ourselves
The Beginning….

7. 7
• Applied and were accepted to Y
Combinator - $120K in funding
• YC Investment helped us grow
• Eventually we were in 9 storage units in
the shared warehouse space
• We were doing pickups and deliveries
all over the SF Bay Area (Napa to San
Jose) with an external moving
company
Initial Traction

8. 8
• Needed a bigger warehouse
space
• No cash to afford a bigger
space
• Started raising money from
investors
• Closed a $2.8 Million Dollar
Seed Round
Then, things started to get interesting….

9. 9
Growth

10. 10
Growth
Atlanta New York City
Los Angeles Raleigh
Charlotte

11. 11
Los Angeles
San Francisco
Hub and Spoke
Fresno

12. Continued Expansion
12

13. 13
Costs and Funding
• Raised $9 Million Series A and $11.7
Million Series A1
• ~200 employees + 6 markets
• Costs spiraling out of control
• Began focusing on profitability
instead of growth

14. 14
The Pivot
• Even after focusing on profitablity, we
still needed to grow
• We didn’t have the cash to launch
new markets with physical operations
• We started building a peer to peer
marketplace
• Launched nationally in March 2016

15. CASH IN THEBANK
Pre-Launch Revenue
$600K Monthly
Post Peer to Peer Launch Revenue
$150K Monthly
Jan 16’ Feb 16’ March 16’
April 16’
Jun 16’
Post Pivot Financials
Projected Post Launch Revenue
$750K - $1 million

16. 16
The Shutdown
• Talked with board and investors and
tried to raise more money to keep the
business alive but didn’t raise enough
• Made the decision to try to sell
• When the business didn’t sell, we
fulfilled all of the remaining orders
and in July of 2016, we shut it down

17. 17
Takeaways
• Be thoughtful about costs - physical
products = more cost
• Tech driven businesses with physical
products often can not scale as
quickly as tech driven services BUT a
common assumption is that they can
• Bring in experts who have worked in
the industry before to help you build
systems and processes that can help
you grow sustainably
• Trust your instincts when it comes to
growth

18. 18
Questions?