Hello. Welcome to another episode of the Hillary podcast, where we move backwards on the cycle and reflect on the earlier days of Founders journey to uncover learning that you can apply it to your business. Today I am Brendan Honda Co. And on this episode, I am very excited to be joined by Terence Tam, who is the founder at re flow Hub, a B two b market place for the whole cell volume of used mobile devices between vendors and buyers globally. Free Flow Hub was also recently named the second fastest growing startup in Australia by the Australian Financial Times, bringing in almost 40 million U. S. Dollars of revenue in 2019. Prior to Refloat have, though, Karen's was the founder at Rawson Zane, a startup that delivered lunch to Australian professionals before the uber eats door Dash and Postmates enabled World that we know today came about in this episode, parents and I discuss his impressive history as the youngest full time higher at JP Morgan in Australia,

Marketplaces at the Enterprise scale and what a conventional Australian lunch looks like for folks in corporate. Sit tight, get a notebook ready and thank you for listening. This podcast wouldn't be possible without the help of our friends. Over at Referral Hero. The all in one platform could design and run flexible referral programs that grow your bottom line. If you're tired of wasting money on Facebook ads or writing tons of content that never rank on Google but already have loyal customers, you should definitely try a referral program. The Dollar Flight Club grew its business by 13% and holiday pirates added 300,000 emails in less than a month after setting up their referral programs. The best thing about all of this is that you can get started in minutes with their no code widgets, and if you sign up today, you can get 20% off with the code fail ary 20 Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral hero dot com Once again, that's a referral hero dot com Hello and welcome to another episode of the Failure podcast, your one stop shop for failed ventures and failed projects. But more importantly, the lessons you can learn from them. I'm your host, Brenda Nando Co. And today I'm very, very excited to have Terrence time on the podcast,

fellow Terrence. Hey, Brandon.

Terrence, you were currently the founder at Refloat Hub, and you were previously at Rawson. Zane, But I love to, you know, scale it back to the beginning. Could you, you know, introduce yourself to our listeners and maybe like, give them some inside on your background before you got

into start ups? Yeah, definitely. So, you know, I graduated with a bachelor's in economics, but, you know, while start studying was actually full time that JP Morgan for two years. And this was around that juicy time around that time, I decided to leave. Then started business card. Marina, which was really a placeholder name, Just run different, you know, start up by disturb her. Been through a few different iterations. Yeah. I'm now at Refi

Hub. Yeah. Wow, that was good. Summary. I'm just, like, you know, surprised. Taken aback. You said you worked at JP Morgan when you were a sophomore.

Yeah, so I was in second uni, actually, when I got the confirmation, I had applied dream fst. You know that you nipple four number of jobs, actually. And without actually disclosing to hate char that I wasn't a graduate student actually made it through to the final round. And, yeah, basically, at the final stages, they decided to give me a shot because I said, Hey, I would not let my studies get in the way, and I think that really resonated with them. And the drive and commitment.

So working at the organization really, really sort of showed through. So, yeah, they gave me a chance, and I got a full time job, and I was the youngest employees in Asia Pacific at the time.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, that's very, very impressive. And then you said you're at burrito. What was Morita? So

when I had left J. P. Morgan, I had really just wanted to just, you know, give the whole started world ago. So I had going back to full time study after those two years at JP Morgan. And I initially started off with most of finances stuff, right, cause, you know, studying economics, working at JP Morgan, I thought Okay, well, maybe I could do some sort of learned facilitation, but through a number of iterations, I basically found a very nature business in inventory management. That basically helps in a small medium business liquidate inventory that is slow moving or his end of life that no longer is required in the market.

And then this is refloat help today

and through a number of discussions and just sort of, like, you know, in that ecosystem you have briefly held was essentially born because Marina was really focusing on the wider consumer electronics script off brand new products. So, you know, I was working with the equivalent of, like, War Martin and what? Not in Australia. And we had thought of to see that, Hey, there's some returns, you know, off mobile devices that we're basically in perfect condition but couldn't be resold is brand new. And as that business group, I decided to spit it out into refloat hub and, you know, focus on the fast side of things that that marketplace

Yeah. Cool, cool, cool. I love to just, you know, pull it back here and just like I guess, find this talk about more of this, you know, change. But that you made between, like, industry and start ups. You know, you have, like, an impressive background and working in,

you know, lots of finance stuff. And then when you add? Marina, you said you wanted to give the, you know, the start of stuff. A try, I guess. You know, coming from someone who had, like, huge experience in industry, like being the youngest employees at JP Morgan. You know, when you were,

like, in second year uni I'm just curious. Like, why did you make the change? You know, like what The about stars was so appealing for you to leave the full time job.

So I guess around this, the story is a little conventional. You know, I'm off Chinese heritage, and I was born and raised in Australia, but my parents are immigrants, and you have both sides of the family are quite entrepreneurial. But as with many immigrant families, they want their Children to be a lawyer. Be a doctor, you know. So I went down that route, and you essentially, you know, student tie and goingto corporate environment, which they were very happy with. But because also young and at 18 years old,

working at JP Morgan, you just don't really have a point of reference. So I was working really long. Alice, still trying to study, is still trying to maintain a social life. And I think just during those two years, like during the GFC was like an I've been I was like, Am I gonna be really doing this until retirement? You know, the entrepreneurial, you know, that's not of space was really sort of blowing up with Facebook and, you know, instagram, I mean,

which was nothing like what it is today was blowing up. And I thought, OK, like while I'm still setting why don't give it a go, right? I mean, it could be a little blip in my resume if I need to go back into the corporate world. And so, yeah, I mean, I started reader, just just as a vehicle to test out different ideas.

Yeah, absolutely. I can definitely, you know, resonate with the, you know, Asian phrase want you to be like a doctor, a lawyer, but yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much for, you know, being vulnerable and sharing. And I love to just, like, go into it. You know,

Rossen's and was like, your fresh start up, right? How did that, you know, fit into your whole journey into, you know, re selling consumer

electronics. So at Boston, Zane, I mean, it really came from just sort of watching the start in space. And, you know, just at the time, I think, you know, the Valley was really focusing on just sort of, by pouring their funds into a number of food start ups like Montreal's Sprigs Spoon Rocket. I mean, blue apron. And they're all very similar in their own way. But we had kind of a slightly different spin. And yeah,

we just wanted to really give it a go. And I think typically the food business, whether it be like a cafe or a traditional restaurant, is typically what a lot off consumers I sort of think of when starting a small business. But we thought, Hey, like, is there a play? He where we can sort of add a bit of innovation and, you know, quote unquote disruption to that space. So that's where, like Rosen Zane was really born from.

Yeah, absolutely. And I guess I'm just curious. Where did this, you know, fall into play? Was this one neuron Marino Or like, how long did Russians they live? You know, And when did you start

it? So Morita was again, like the first business vehicle. No company that I created to run different ideas from and the inventory management business released through different iterations really stuck. And it's been running for, like, 10 years since. And during that time was when I started to gain a little bit of traction, a little bit of success running my own business when that's when I sort of started to have a wandering eye, so to speak. You know, I had friends who were in my same cohort that was starting. Teoh, you know, also gets sick of that corporate life, and we would have conversations and yeah, it really came in between that time at murder.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I love to play this game with founders, but if you had to describe, you know, Rossen's into, like, a 10 year old or you say that Ross intended

Rosen. Zane is a forever changing menu that does lunch deliveries Monday to Friday on a subscription basis.

Knife pretty good. And I guess I'm just curious here, you know, this was out of I'm assuming Rossen's in was built out of, like, Sydney, Australia.

Yes. So I had an office in Sydney here for Morita. And we would just basically, you know, give a couple of tables

to the team. Sure, sure. And you know, I'm just about, you know, Rossen's and in particular, Like, what was the, you know, problem that you're trying to solve, Like, I don't you know, from a foreigner who has, like, been to Sydney, Australia.

Like one time in my life when I was, like, maybe 67 I guess, you know, like, I don't think about it like something of, like where start ups are built. So I'd love to, you know, just, like, get your thoughts on, like, the ecosystem. And, like, why you felt the need to build this food delivery start up in the ecosystem.

Yeah, I guess, to lay the background here. This is pre pre uber eats pre deliveroo and Postmates and all those other delivery services in Sydney in particular. I mean, we're a very small city in the way that we have formula people. I mean, like, as a population, we have 24 million people and we have a lot of land were quite spread out. And pre all this away, the delivery trends Now you're pretty much as office worker pretty much limited to restaurants and cafes that will place by two. And in Sydney, a lot of those cafes and restaurants actually use a small group off food like food wholesalers. So will the food, the wraps and sandwiches actually very, very similar,

which is, you know, really bad for the consumer, but really good for, like, the incumbents. So for us, like when I had worked up, you know, in the bank I was pretty much tied down to, like, a 30 45 minute lunch, and I would basically be going to the same four or five cafe restaurants and picking up a sandwich. So for us, like we really use that empathy and went Okay, Well,

how do we sort of solve this problem off number one, Getting more control of the time. Everyone is having lunch around the same time. So how do we give them more flexibility with eating earlier? Eating later with a lot of places, you know, basically close after two o'clock. You know, if you're stuck in a meeting, you basically go to get your food early or you don't need for the day. And the second was really just to get priority. I mean, in Sydney, like we have in English accent culture, and the food is by and large, quite homogeneous.

So we wanted to sort of bring some trade, if lesser, that it's eating lunch Monday to Friday, you know, at the office. So we wanted to bring just

that Verity. Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I guess I'm more curious about, like the, you know, the lay of the land, like you say. But, you know, the media today portrays a lot of Silicon Valley lots of Bay area startups, you know, they're talking about like, l a more that hung. But New York,

But they never talk about, like, anything, like, kind of outside the United States bubble, if you will. So I'm just curious, you know, like being like a repeat founder, like a first time founder. Like what was it like founding a company in

like Australia? Hot, totally hard. I mean, they're just isn't that ecosystem, right? I mean, you know, in the valley, even the New York these days, right? I mean, they have a very developed immature because system for startups, I mean, the energy from like all the Americans I meet who are who are sort of involved in this space. They're all optimistic. I mean,

they have their own thoughts about, like whether a startup will succeed or not that they're always very gung her. And I think it's a very different mentality to, you know, the Sydney Space. It's number one smaller, but also just they don't take those Moonshots If they go on to look, you know, the chances of success is like 2% that will see it as 2%. That won't say Oh, wow, that's like there is potential there, you know? So I guess in that sense, that a little more risk adverse.

Sure, sure, Yeah. Thank you so much for sharing. And, you know, I love to just like contextualized, like, just go into Rossen's in here. So from what I'm hearing, you probably had, like, a team of chefs to you didn't partner with, like, these big brands to just, like deliver their food. But rather you had, you know, people cooking the food and incorporate people. People who are like your users could pick them up from locations.

If I'm correct. So the chef team size or the size of one. We had one chef preparing all the mills, doing all the pledges buying. And he would have, like, a small team off undermanned staff here would come in on a part time basis to help prop up with some of the food. But essentially, it was a one man show on that teach in front, and we actually operated out off. You know, it wasn't called a cloud kitchen back in those days, but I mean, now it pretty much is quite developed. We worked out of a remote kitchen in the city, and we had delivered from that location from a central occasion into that central business district. So we want to live a straight to the customer.

Yeah, absolutely. Did you also have, like, a team of deliveries doing this? Like, did you put in like, a some central location, or would you like, you know, deliver, you know, to the last mile of the customers? Like wherever

they were? Yeah, we would do before end to end. So the last mile, it would be from the kitchen straight. Teoh. You know the building lobby FOIA.

Yeah, and then this was like, pre you breathe So, like, if anything you do, you laid the groundwork for them.

Totally. I mean, like, there's bags that they're using now. I mean, we had sources from China, like, way before.

Wow. Well, yeah. So, you know, I love to talk more so here about, like, you know, I'm very, very surprised here that, like, you know, the one man show because the one thing that struck me about Ross and Zane was the, like, really, really quality food. Like I was reading,

You know, some of the old feel like entries, and you have things like kimchi burger and sweet potato fries. You have garlic butter, prawn pasta. You have type beef salad with vermicelli noodles. You know, etcetera, I guess. Like what I'm getting at here is like like it was all the chef, but, like, how did you guys, you know, like source the menu and like, it seems like all very,

very Asian inspired. So I love to just like, you know, talk about that because I know you were talking about how lots of the food options, you know, around corporate people, like they were all kind of like wholesaler like, very resource from like one location. So I love you could talk about, you know, like developing the menu like what you guys thought about, like being out there first and like, what was the feedback on your feet?

So with the sort of cuisine? Yes, it is very Asian inspired. That was intentional just because on a number of levels, the first being, I think, with Asian food, it's such an eric, right? But there's so many different, you know, like there's, you know, Chinese, Korean, Filipina, Japanese.

It's just tie. And there's a lot of variety with Asian food, and it's very colorful, like we wanted all the food just look amazing, as opposed to, like, you know, like a sandwich. Or like a typical salad that comes out. We wanted something just like with lots of colors green, red, all sorts just to sort of brighten up the day off. Our customers like because lunch is near generally that small window where they have their own Elam time. Yeah, we wanted them to have good food.

Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I'm just curious, considering, like, you know, you wanted them to have good food. Like, did this affect like your margins. Ah, lot because I assume if your chef was, you know, buying like quality ingredients. Yeah, I'm

just furious with the margins. Not so much. Actually. Appears a lot of Asian dishes, douche, have a lot of overlap. So you're still, you know, you're buying this sort of very similar, you know, garlic, all the sort of, you know, herbs and spices. So not in that regard. It does require more prep work because you're using more herbs and spices. But it wasn't anything that was difficult at al scale.

Yeah, sure, sure. Yeah, that's great. And, you know, I'd love to Just, like, you know, take this Karna logically. But, like, you know, you started Russian, Zane. And like,

it seems like house like adoption, you know, like at your peak, What would you say? Like, you know, how many, like uses that Russians and have how many people were ordering food and, like, I just want also curious about, Like, how your chef, like, ended up like cooking all these meals?

Yep. So I mean, we basically started for the pilot where we hadn't had the website or anything up yet, but we're just basically testing the packages. So we had basically these origami packages made out of China that would basically give us different configurations within the food delivery books. So typically, you know, like the typical one is like, you just get, like, a bucket, right? We had different compartments so we could have, like, a bento style. We could just have one large one. Or we could have,

you know, four smaller one, depending on obviously what the customer chose on the menu. And they're basically wanted to test that out. It was like a waterproof and what not? And there were events, too, let you know, hate and steam out so the food doesn't get stuck you. So we're really sort of testing number one that do the flavors. Cape number two would still be warm if we do live up within our radius. So because we already operating out of that centralize kitchen, we're just delivering to friends and family that were in the area just to see if you know, number one, the timing worked, like,

you know, from the user experience perspective, what went wrong and yeah, basically overall how the food kept because that's like number one, right? I mean, if the food looks good online, but the said look the same or taste what you expect, then you know that's a major problem.

And then, you know, So I assume, like after the pilot, how hard was it to attract customers to Russians

in so attracting hits was Well, it's a very easy but because we had some news coverage, we had a couple of like, kind of boutique places as well as some like, you know, like larger news outlets. That confidence, because this was, ah, pretty novel idea at the time. So we're seeing, you know, like we're seeing hits of, like, 10,000 on the page. In terms of the conversion, I have to have to say I was a little disappointed with the conversion rate.

I mean, like, they were very tiny. We had huge Turner's. Also, people would try it out, fold out, you know, one week or two weeks, But inevitably, once they canceled, they weren't really coming back. So it was tough from that point of view. So in terms of the traction in this thickness, yet that was probably the major challenge. Getting eyeballs and attention wasn't so much just given that sort of the lay of the land, the time where there was no real competitors. Tow us?

Yeah, absolutely. Yet, like you say is a very nation idea is very renew. I'm just curious. You know, you say you have, like at, like, 1 to 2 weeks turn. Did you ever, you know, get customer feedback on, like why they

were turning one major One was the price that we would send out weekly surveys at the end of the week. We used type form at the time, just with trying to get a gauge off. How was the food quality? How was, you know, the delivery time? How was the ordering? A lot of people actually changed the choices to the way, which we were pretty surprised, to be honest, because with the subscription, what'll we allowed the customer to essentially pick out all their lunches for the week and all the times I want to deliver it. We had expected them not to change just because people are creatures of habit. We thought there'd be eating at the very similar time, but yeah, well,

surprise that lots of changes, like with not just the food choice. Maybe they had a change of mind off what they wanted for the day, given the weather and also the time we delivered in 20 minute increments blocks men, Obviously meetings go over time. And that's what we found out that, you know, we had delivery people waiting for them and couldn't get in contact with them because

they were in a meeting. Yeah, yeah. And I assume, like, you know, the dealer of people just, like, ended up waiting. And, you know, that leads to like customers not being happy that their food is hot. But even though it was like their meeting, they want a report, etcetera, etcetera. Like I don't want to like probably here.

But, like, I'd love to just dig deep into, I guess, the problems that you saw with, like, Rossen's in And like, I guess you know, if you could tell a story like goes the instantaneous moment where you knew Oh, Ross and they are like, this was gonna be like, too tough to like, keep going And, like, maybe we have to shut

it down. Yes, sir. I distinctly remember the moment we had gained enough traction to really question do we kill this now? Or do we take it to the next level? And that moment was precisely where in my office we have a lobby and at the time we had converted it into basically a storage facility full of fridges, like I'm talking like five fridges and freezers and what not? And it was all full and we were thinking, Okay, we're servicing by 30 40 people here, right? This is not even at numbers that what I worked on a financial model. Those numbers were like tiny compared to what we needed to really get to scale, get to profitability and sustainability. I was like, This is no where near those numbers and just physically being in that space and seeing how much produced we had and then having to look at the reports of when we purchase the product and how long they would theoretically last four. I was like,

we need a much, much bigger space. And I think that just threw me off. Given the margins, given the turn rate and the storage that we would need outside. Look, there is potential he but no for guys like us. Not for like you know, small predators like this idea could be executed by large conglomerates. The incumbent to have the infrastructure who have the manpower, who can, you know, really trade off the large investment required for the very little margin at the end of the tunnel. So, frost, yet it just wasn't scalable.

And then that was like, when you, like, ended up making the, like, the fateful decision to

like, shut it down. Correct. Yeah. You know, we had talked about it and we just say, OK, like, where's that funding at, And how much would that we predict that we would need in order to take the business to the next level? We want thing enough traction when stickiness on the subscription side to really justify taking that chance, though, I mean, if we had very low churn, I think it would've been a different story. But just with all the metrics that we're saying we're like, hey, like, this is still a super risky venture to take on with a bigger

commitment. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Thanks for being vulnerable. And I guess I love to just get your more like status quo or like more meta thoughts about like the food space of the whole for someone you know who started venturing it like pretty pretty early. So, you know, I think like the movement today is like unlike last mile delivery, like people really need to still solve that. And then they're trying to, like, you know, pivot into like, pickups, like snack past. You know,

uber Eats also has, like, a new pickup service. And I would say like there's a lot of, like comparisons to Rossen's And today, like I know if you're feeling like for Kable but like, they also do like you no delivery services for, like, businesses. I guess. You know, what are your thoughts today? Like? I know a lot of people think that like putting money into food space is just like, you know, making negative 100 X returns, because, like all that doesn't like hemorrhage money. But I'm just curious. I like you know what you're thinking like as of now about

the food space with the food business. I mean, traditionally, it's always been tough, right? The margins are very tricky. You need to be a really good operator because you're dealing with perishables, your input, the perishables right, they go off. So you need to be able to manage your consumables. And how do you manage your consumables? You basically need to know your numbers you need in your regular customers that are coming through your baseline numbers. So the food business has always been really, really tough, as I mentioned, like earlier,

right? Like with some of the companies like Country and Sprig. They've gone out of business, and these were like they were backed by some of the best in the smartest in the valley. Right? Who could give them, you know, marketing advice. You could give them connections, you know, in the space. Then they ended up going down as well. And I think it's because it's fundamentally the technology slash innovation. The increment is just too small, right? I mean,

for consumers are consumers are very, very price sensitive in the food space because it is so saturated. So, yes, your delivery mechanism may be different, but essentially, you're still getting food. You're still getting something that you're going to eight, right? And for someone like who's gonna be having lunch is expecting a $10 mill, they're not gonna pay $15 unless it's for some reason 10 times better. That's just not gonna happen in the food space. So I think, like with those sort of economics than those realities, I think the food distance will continue to be really, really tough.

And just because, like, that physical component is still there. I mean, it's not like cess where you have very low, marginal cost, you know, because you have one code base and you can scale ship code. You're still working with that offline space. I mean, you still need to have people delivering food. You know, whether it rains or whether funny setting a lot of those physical parameters really do dictate your basically your cost and eventually your bottom

line. Yeah, absolutely. And I'm just curious, you know, as someone you know, you're working on Refloat hub right now and like someone who is kind of like distance themselves from the Swedes face, if you will. I'm just curious, you know, from, like 1/3 person, effective now, would you say you know, the problem that you guys were solving with Ross and Zane, you know, in either Australia or like anywhere, like in the food space, like would you say? Like it's been solved to a

certain degree? Yes. You know, with the advent off AIDS that just everywhere there ubiquitous, right, they're all on the road everywhere, whether they're on a scooter on a bicycle. And I've seen a guy who was delivering its, you know, walking. I would safely say that in terms of getting your meal. Yes, in terms off already? Yes, to a degree. But, you know, with the rise off, you know these. I think it's called, like shadow kitchens,

like ghost

virtual goes kitchens, you know, they're running, you know, 23 different restaurants. You know, basically from the one kitchen, right? I mean, so you stand like, within your insanity, you're getting Barias. Well, so I would say to a large degree like, Yeah, I think this market might have been

solved. Sure. Yeah. And, you know, like to the extent of like, I know goes kitchens is, like, kind of like it holds like, a special place in my heart because, like, it was founded in, like, my hometown in California. So, like we neither founder, but yeah,

I was like talking to him, like, recently about like the numbers. And, like, he would say, it could be like up to, like, 19 or 20 restaurants under one

location. Yes, that that scale fried. Yeah, that's incredible.

Yeah, and, you know, it's like they end up getting, like, bigger and bigger locations, like, you know, the number of restaurants that you can, like, fit in over there with, like, the overlap of, like, ingredients and stuff I can't even imagine, You know, like you could just around like, 200 locations of new breeds under one

roof. Yeah, some in in that situation, right? I mean, if they're able to solve the physical limitations right, then it's really about focusing on the other metrics like reviews and, you know, food, further quality. And because it's just your order in virtually right. I mean, you know, going to the restaurant. You're not driving by the restaurant lives purely in that veteran

space. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. You know, and then I'd love to just like, you know, take it chronologically again. But how did you go from Ross and Zane into? I'm assuming refloat up into your next

project. So Marina n'dri for Hub are linked in the sense that briefly Hubble's really born from Marina at Morita refocus on liquidating consume electron ICS that a brand new again on the wholesale level. So with the large distributors and retailers, we essentially provide that service that helps them liquidate models that are redundant or just slow moving right. And that's just their capital locked up into inventory That's not moving at all. So we'll help them liquidate at a discount rate. And again, I sort of touched on it briefly. But we would typically see a lot off vendors approaching us and saying, Hey, we've got, like, all these returns after black Friday sales or after Christmas. You know, these were change of mind or the gifts that were unwanted. They've been opened, but essentially they're virtually new,

you know, could you take these? And we started to sort of, like, look at it and assess the market because virtually brand new. But the packaging was maybe open or was not even existed. We saw that they were still appetite typically in, you know, like the developing markets, right or within a very press sensitive market. So Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, just because approximately like, because we're in Asia Pacific, we found that there was a market for these sort of,

you know, high end brands. And as that division grew larger and larger, just the operation started to get a little bit more messy and required a bit more work because there's a lot of different spreadsheets, a lot of different skew Kurds and what not, we thought, OK, like if we have the premise locked down, let's try to connect AL vendors directly without buys through a month of place. And that's when reform help was really born. So you wanted inventory to flow through internationally. But we added the re just because we wanted to add that reuse, recycle live to it. So we had spun out the business into a new entity, and we wanted to really sort of focus on providing that marketplace, that software layer.

But, you know, typically with a lot of marketplaces, there's a lot of challenges, things like trust. So who did the vendors know and who did the buyers know and trust? It was us, the broker, the middle person who do they want to cut out the middle person, so we need to add a lot of value right and we're, ah, manage marketplace. That's the way we would like to sort of frame ourselves and essentially just to sort of touch on that real quick. It's like Reba, right? I mean,

if you lose your sunglasses in a ride, you don't reach out directly to the driver. You reach out to you, bow you bow will facilitate that when you make a payment using your credit card movements, facilitating that payment. All right, maybe there's the time difference. Maybe there isn't. But that's what we essentially the sort of role we're playing is we're really facilitating that transaction. Between the benders and the buyers. We handle the shipments. We handle the payments. We handle the anti money laundering, you know, know your customer compliance.

Yeah, I'm assuming, like with, like, some low in time. This was like after Ross and Zane. I guess I'm curious, like moving to, like from food delivery until I Consumer electronics straight. Are there any, you know, like tangible lessons that you brought over from Rossen's and into, like, you know, your next company

had refloat? I think there was some similarities in the sense that there was still in operational component because it was offline. So I think the industry lingo here is, like, you know, like, online offline. I mean, it's like uber right, the transaction text sites online where you order the ride or in this case, you strike a deal to offload inventory. But the execution takes place off line right where we need to ship the product, and that comes with a whole bunch of things, right. Like with export compliance, trade documentation and facilitating payment insurance on the shipment were typically dealing with pallets. So what we kind of learned from Rossen's aim was really okay.

There is still a operational component. He we need to be, you know, on it in terms off, just managing a really tight ship with process driven procedures.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And like, that's a good second hand to my next question. But this is like sort of like a meta thing. But like we got you on the podcasts because you are talking with rich about you know, your challenges about like Creflo Hub and, like, related to like balancing product development and collect commercial agreement, you know? So I love to just, like, talk about like how you guys are going now, you know, like what challenges you guys they're facing And yeah, like anything like you can share about refloat hub a toe like contextualized,

More like, even though, you know, you guys, like, did huge merchandise volume. And I seem like you're of the business of that size you're making, like, some sort of return. But I love to just, you know, contextualized. Like any challenges that refloat hub is facing

right now. Yep. So again, right, as you mentioned, like last financial year, we did see a sizable gross merchandise value counted into the actual bottom line. But we are profitable. So that's something that's, you know, just put a smile on all our faces, right, because we have no burn rate. But here in lies, the problem is because we don't have it. Burn rakers were profitable. Balancing park development is tricky.

Our commercial agreements that we work on the bender side and on the buy side that typically really, really long cycles, no matter how excited. You know, our champion is on the vendor side because they're multinational. Typically, there's a lot of regular red tape. Internally, you need to lie in a lot of your stakeholders at the vendor side to get agreements done. Legal reviews and compliance are two words that they've been etched into my brain, right? They do beddings after beddings, and it's just the super long cycle. So I think balancing how quickly we need to develop the product and how pretty we need to make it, you know, to kind of make sure that the vendors,

you know they're okay with it. Because even though it's a B two B, software vendors still want to see some professionalism, right? It's not just purely product market fit. So heads a bit tricky trying to balance you know, those Teoh elements.

Yeah, sure. And, you know, that's like, I love to touch on that a little bit. You said, like how pretty You have to make the product right. I'm just curious, you know, like these air, like returned phones are like people that, like they change that they have the change of mind, like they don't want to buy it. How are you, you know, reselling these phones like,

what do you checking for and like, how do you market? These is like something that's like, close toe, you know, a new product even though

it isn't. Yeah, yeah. So one of the trends that we've been able to ride is the increase in the average selling price of these mobile devices. I mean, you look an iPhone. It's like like 1000 500 like us d right in the latest dancing friends expensive, you know? Oh, yeah. Yeah. So when we're working with life, the vendors and they're basically at the moment there are on a tear to retain customers, right? Like I think the last 20 years it's been on acquisition. But now that everyone has a mobile phone, it's about keeping their customer base right like you got,

you know, 18 t t Mobile Sprint. All these guys are trying to keep their customer base not necessarily grow it. So in terms of, like retention, they need value add. They need to be like, OK, like, how do we get Brandon into a team of about store and get him to re sign up on a contract for the latest iPhone of the Lord, the latest Samsung for right? Because at those prices, it's pretty hard to fork out that sort of money. So we need to give him, um, you know,

some sort of payment plan for? So how can we can offset that? Hey, Brandon, do you have an existing devices, which you probably do? We're gonna give you great value and trade that in, and we'll price it based on the condition. And why that matters is because on the buy side, right, that we work with people I work with, repair centers, refurbishes and if they're in pretty good condition, will work with, like, wholesalers who simply re market a great devices into their retail channels.

Typically, like Europe, North America. You know, there's a quite a healthy, you know, secondary market for mobile phones,

huh? Yeah, Absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, I'm just curious. Like it seems like you guys were, like, doing well. You're profitable. There's like returns. That's like, put a smile on your face. And you have, like, this great customer acquisition strategy.

You know, I don't mean to have, like, the Hillary podcast be something that, like you look back on and be like, Oh, what did I say for that answer? But like, what is your 10 x future here for refloat hub like part of me if I'm, like, you know, a little undereducated here, but it seems a little bit stagnant in the all you seem to do, you know, your on your in. You know you're selling the new model of,

like, device or you're selling like this other new model A device, I guess. You know what air things you can do to, like, innovate their like. I'm just like, lingering on that question. You know, like, what's the Panic Street you're here for? Refloat

up. So it's answer that question. I never give you a little bit of background. Yeah, sure. The interaction that we have with the vindaloo it's for them a back office activity in the sense that the primary objective is to retain their customer base on the retail side. Right, you as a consumer music consumer. So when they aggregate large volumes off mobile devices off different spec off different grade in their warehouse, they need to close off that loop because essentially they're giving you money to purchase your use device. They need to now liquidate that and because they have your buildup of such large volume typically 1000 and 4 to 10,000 they need to liquidate that periodically. Now they go to market strategy is a spread shape, and with that many attributes excuse. It's very difficult to accurately and competitively priced. So what we do is we take that spreadsheet and we basically have that go through a mapping feature on the platform and not just aggregates. All the numbers for different skews for different grades. This allows the buy side to essentially price it up on a street level basis.

That just takes the pain away. I think you need to remember for the vendors, they just need this done. It's the cost centre for them, right? It's not revenue generating. So because it takes away so much of their pain, they're very happy to just like, Okay, how do we use this? How do we get on board? But they need to do their bidding checks on us. So I guess the kind of 10 x feature he is adding simplicity into their back end operations.

Yeah, and you know, I hope this isn't like, you know, like sounds the same. But, like, what's the tax future like, what are your goals here for re flow?

So we want to expand not just the actual transactional nature, like a marketplace like eBay Amazon, but we want to get, like, deeper. We want to get like, further into the supply chain. So we want to get closer to the cleanse consumers we want to run like the financing. So when you walk into a Sprint T mobile store rather than t mobile financing, and we want to be able to do that because we have the data, we have the market prices with how a particular iPhone model is tracking on a price basis. How much fluctuation there is, how much supply there is in the market at what particular Great. We want to basically give the consumer real time value on how much their devices were. As you know, um, L A phone is going to price degradation over time,

right? As time goes on your prices, this is kind of dropping. So we wanna basically you have a court action for the consumer is they can say that that prices dropping on a weekly basis or whatever and try to encourage them to get into the store and traded in. And in exchange for that, we want the vendors to utilize our software on that real time basis. And that's what we're really sort of envisioning, right? Essentially, we want to run an ecosystem for the reuse and recirculation on mobile devices on the global level.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I love you know, if I went into, like, a t mobile store and they were talking about Oh, yeah, like there's, like, a picture of, like, you guys on refloat Hopper, like your picture on like a TV show, Mr like Oh, yeah, I know this guy.

Yes. So, you know, juxtaposing, you know, to start ups like our two companies here, I guess. You know, I'm just curious, like moving from a low conversion low engagement company with, like, high China, like Rossen's in to, like, you know, tapping into,

like, the potential market of, like, hundreds of millions people who, like purchase a phone every year in, like, Creflo Hub, I guess. What are your thoughts here as, like a you know, founder, or like, yeah, playing like a high level position and like going from a company who, like, had low engagement towards like going to a country where, like, you know, hundreds of millions of engagement.

I think for me the real contrast is banned with right. We're a small team. So the ability for us to focus on what does Al usar what does our customer look like is probably the biggest defining factor address insane. I mean, yes, we had the typical consumer that we would envision office work. Our works in the city once varied in their food, but essentially there's still individual people. It's very hard to cater to all the different taste and nuances that they might have, whereas wannabe to be level. It's a lot simpler in that way, because you're essentially dealing with concentration. Like each use on each business that gets on board onto the platform will bring in in a customer like a LTV right, the lifetime value off much greater proportions than, ah single customer who will want to try different options in a saturated market. So I think that's probably like the biggest is being able to just naturally balanced your band within your energy in terms of who you're focusing on and who you're building a product for, is probably the biggest take away for us between

the two. Yeah, and like I love the Utah shot a little bit like the small compares. And you made between, like, consumer products where that be food and like, phones. You know, I don't think people like have, like, too much preference of, like, what? Phone that they're getting, like that day versus food. Exactly. Right.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you so much. There is, like, I love your answers. I just want to move into, you know, this is, like, kind of like a tradition now on the podcast. But, you know, if turns right now, right? Had to talk to,

like parents, you know, circa Rossen's and, you know, shutting down like you remember that moment. And like, if you had the pop to him, right? And you know whether this be like, you know, like you talking to, like, any founder out there who's, like in the trenches right now, and, you know,

whether it be going well are going, you know, poorly. What do you say to like parents? You know, circle like Rossen's and

shutting down everything's gonna be okay. Look after yourself. That's the best thing you can do. I mean, you know, whenever you fly, it says, Hey, look, after yourself before you look after anyone, that is ah, 100 center as a founder. I mean, it's super lonely, right? I mean, it's tough cause,

like, the chances and the odds are really against you, and that's fine. I mean, those are risk that you're willing to take, so just keep in mind that everyone is gonna doubt you. Everyone's gonna, you know, poke holes at it, and you gotta take it with a grain of salt. But you also gotta listen to the sometimes right, cause then preemptively telling you those things. They're really helping you go through training exercise. But yeah, my key point would be keep yourself healthy, like,

mentally, physically, spiritually, right? Like, look up. You know, mindfulness take breaks, like people just wanna work with work. But that's gonna give them negative yield on that. We're not machines. Unfortunately, you know, we need to take a break and just re balance and physical health really translate to, you know, your mental health as well and your ability to focus on what you're doing and not be so wide and anxious all the time, you know? So you look after yourself.

Yeah, well, a lot of those very, very personal to me. So, like, I kind of had a moment there. Thistles like your moment. If you want to plug anything working, our listeners find you, you know, on the Internet, on, like, Twitter on lengthen in a quick plug refloat hub. Is

it a dot com? It is

that dot com, yeah. Refloat

dot com. I believe we're on all those tax forms, but just because I, you know, we have such a small, tame and like we're so focused on your serving our uses, who are, like, you know, on that enterprise business front, we are really slacking off on the content on the social media side of things, but yeah, I mean, I'm on Twitter. Your Super Open said, you know, you know, supporting and talking to founders and what not So my handles like Terrence time a u on Twitter?

Yeah. You know, if any of our listeners air, you know, thinking about turning your office lobby and feel like a hub for refrigerators. Please, Please don't you know, like, reach out the Terrence like, absolutely.

I give you insights on that.

Absolutely. Parents. Thank you so much for taking the time to be on the failure podcast. I had a great, great time.

I hope you did too. That's been all something to send, my friend. And I appreciate it.

Absolutely. And that was another episode of the failure podcast. You know, we have a bunch of these coming out soon, so please stick around and thank you for listening. Thank you for tuning into this episode of the Fail Ary podcast. I've been Brendan Hindalco, and once more, I'd like to thank our friends over at referral Hero for making this podcast episode possible. If you're looking to grow your business organically through word of mouth, make sure to check out their tool that allow you to create and grow a referral program within minutes. More than 7000 companies are using it, already generating over 30 million leads. And now you can get it to for 20% off with decode fail ary 20 Try it now for 14 days without any cost at referral.