From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: What are the metrics? How many buy side and how many sell side do you have?

Mike Rosenbaum: We have over 50,000 locations across Australia and over 200,000 members on our platform. In the US, we have over 10,000 locations now. It’s growing rapidly. The key thing for us is to keep balancing supply and demand at that hyperlocal level. That’s something we’re optimizing. 

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What worked?

Mike Rosenbaum: It’s hard to say when we started getting product-market fit. Over time, we just got better and better at targeting the right customers whether that was through Google or Facebook or offline channels. Eventually, it was word of mouth. Now, most of our new supply is people telling other people about the positive experience that they’ve had.

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Did you launch with your own money?

Mike Rosenbaum: We made a lot of mistakes as well. We did okay. I put in some of my money. I had a new co-founder, Roland. He came from private equity background and had a very complementary skillset. He was more of a finance and strategy guy. We had met over the previous 12 months or so. We kept in touch. We put in some money. We raised some money from our network. 

Sramana Mitra: Give me more specifics. What did you raise money with? Did you do an MVP?

Validating B-to-C Business Ideas and Building to $40M Run Rate: Shaunak Amin, CEO of SnackMagic (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What happened in 2020 when the pandemic hit?

Shaunak Amin: At that time, we had two hubs. We had plans to open up five more. Then in March, nobody was in office. That business went to zero overnight. It was unfortunate. I remember it was the second week of March. We said we are going to take a pause. We all went home. We were thinking we’ll come back in a few weeks. By the second week, we realized that this is going to be longer.

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What about customer acquisition? When you’re selling on eBay, eBay provides the foot traffic.

Mike Rosenbaum: It was the early days of e-commerce. There was a much smaller number of people shopping online. We had built this large database off eBay which we used to sell direct. We would send emails to them. Initially it was one email a week. Then it was two. Eventually it became one a day.

Validating B-to-C Business Ideas and Building to $40M Run Rate: Shaunak Amin, CEO of SnackMagic (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Customer acquisition was all Facebook ads?

Shaunak Amin: Initially it was. We built the waitlist using Facebook ads. Then when we launched, the whole idea of group ordering means that there’s some virality in the product itself. We had this concept where one person could share a link. Those other people could become customers. Just to remind you, it was still centered around dinner at that time. There was no lunch. We launched, but the business wasn’t growing the way I’d like. It didn’t make sense for me.

From Teen Student Entrepreneur in Australia to a Mature Global E-commerce Entrepreneur: Mike Rosenbaum, CEO of Spacer (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What was your business model? They gave you inventory on consignment and you sold it on eBay. What percentage did you take?

Mike Rosenbaum: I think it was about 15%. We’re talking about high-value goods. Our average item was a couple of thousand dollars. 

Sramana Mitra: It was a substantial transaction size. You said you grew that to about $20 million in four years.

Validating B-to-C Business Ideas and Building to $40M Run Rate: Shaunak Amin, CEO of SnackMagic (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: How did you pick amongst those ideas?

Shaunak Amin: It’s not so much about the idea. The idea is going to give me the starting point. I wasn’t married to one idea or the other. We created three or four landing pages with different messaging. One was around healthy food coming to your door every day. The other was ordering from different restaurants and coming to you at the same time. The third one was very quick delivery.