Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: When does the acquisition happen?

Jonathan Foltz: After that, I was thinking that e-commerce is the way. We did $5 million in a month. Then I decided to raise money. We send the pitch deck out. We got a lot of interest. We came across a family office. The family office loved what we had. We gave them the story.

They said, “We love your company, but we only invest in public companies.” I never really thought about being a public company. I was always okay being private. I can do it, but do I want to do it.

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What was the new idea?

Kashyap Deorah: On-demand commerce was called hyperlocal. I was fascinated with the Stripe and Twilio API businesses. In retail and e-commerce, what shovels can I build? What became clear was on-demand commerce is about the ability to fulfill things right here right now. The proposition is ingrained in logistics.

The logistics model relies on some heavy location and mapping infrastructure that only a few companies have. Backed with a theme of democratizing disaggregated markets, how about democratizing this location and mapping infrastructure for all the e-commerce players in the world. It became the logistics API for on-demand commerce.

Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you have the same marketing strategy?

Jonathan Foltz: Yes. Our expertise was definitely Facebook and Instagram. You can do this with influencer marketing. We can go from $10,000 a day to over $300,000 in less than a week. The scalability is unparalleled with Facebook and Instagram.

Sramana Mitra: I guess there are two questions that come from that. Did you have to do buy-one-get-two-free with this new product?

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What was the name of this project?

Kashyap Deorah: Chalo.

Sramana Mitra: How long was that?

Kashyap Deorah: We sold the company in less than a year. After the acquisition, some of us stayed at OpenTable. I left after two years. One important moment there was that OpenTable was a public company. That’s what made it attractive for us to sell that soon.

Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What product were you selling?

Jonathan Foltz: We were selling LED shoes. We could have kept on going. Then we had a problem in China. They didn’t do the proper paper work and they had batteries. They had to recall them and send them back. It was a huge problem. We could have probably made a million to $1.5 million if we didn’t have any of those problems.

Sramana Mitra: How were you getting the customers?

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How long into your independent journey did the acquisition happen?

Kashyap Deorah: Three years.

Sramana Mitra: Then you stayed at Future group for two more years?

Kashyap Deorah: Correct.

Sramana Mitra: In those later two years, did the business change? India was coming online at a very fast pace.

Dealing with Major Market Shifts: Aphrodite’s CEO Jonathan Foltz (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: For the digital agency, how were you acquiring your clients?

Jonathan Foltz: No one believes me when I say this. It started off with friends and people I knew. I never marketed, ever.

Sramana Mitra: What year was this?

Jonathan Foltz: We started in 2009. 2010 and further was when things started to accelerate.

4X Serial Entrepreneur from India: Kashyap Deorah, CEO of HyperTrack (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Talk a little bit about that project – the one where we met.

Kashyap Deorah: I was always inspired by the power of the internet to democratize disaggregated markets. One of the problems I saw was that not all the market participants get the same opportunity. Internet was not mainstream at that time. The idea was to create an eBay over the phone where buyers and sellers could call a number and talk to a person who would have an assisted commerce layer.