#228 He Created The ‘Tinder for 3PLs’ And It’s Changing E-Commerce

I think people are probably still laughing at me, but I've developed some thicker skin over the years. I have a very full kind of vision of what this business can become. But ultimately, given the experience that I had, I had pretty high conviction that this would work. Anytime you start a new business, there's a tremendous amount of risk. There's a lot of unknown things that are worth doing are inherently difficult or hard.

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Well, you're not in country, are you?

No, I'm like 2 miles from downtown.

So what's keeping you busy out there in Tennessee, out in Nashville?

You know, just work and I'm pretty involved in the, in the community here, both the neighborhood as well as the city. I'm actually on a city commission. It's called BPAC, which is the Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Commission.

Cool.

Are you biking?

So I spend a lot of time Yeah. I mean, I do mostly like, like stationary biking. I don't do a whole lot of mountain biking, although I'm eager to get back into it. But yeah, I'm like a very, not anti-car, but like I'm very supportive, especially where we live, where there's a lot of young kids and strollers. And, you know, from myself and others, there's tons of bars and stuff. The number of like traffic accidents is just ridiculous when—

Yeah. Give way to the bikes. We appreciate that. We've rode a lot of bikes in the area.

Yeah, absolutely.

Country roads out here, but when we lived in the city in Tulsa area, we loved the roads out there until they got into the single lane roads and there really wasn't anywhere to go between you and the cars. There were no bike lanes. Yeah.

That's so dangerous.

Yeah. It can be extremely dangerous and people get hit all the time doing that. So that's a good initiative, especially for getting out on the roads and getting some exercise. And, you know, we're, we're, we're bikers of a different kind.

Yeah, absolutely.

When they say that, yeah, we're not the wild hogs. What else keeps you busy out there in the world of life and family, obviously?

Well, married with our dog, they call us DINKWADs, dual income, no kids with a dog. That's a term I learned from Neil.

I've heard the DINKs, but I haven't actually heard the DINKWADs.

Yeah. Yeah.

You gotta add the WAD as the suffix. But yeah, so we are, yeah, we're kind of these obsessive dog parents here. We live pretty close to one of the big parks here called Shelby Park, which is actually bigger from a square footage perspective, bigger than Central Park. And for about a mile and a half as the crow flies. So yeah, we're there all the time, you know, with our dog.

We were there last year with my daughter and stood on it. It was pretty cool.

Yeah. So that's kind of over, over by Vanderbilt. So yeah, that's probably 3 to 4 miles from where I am. So, you know, 15-minute drive. So yeah, not too far. Maybe a 30-minute ride, you know, bicycle ride, right?

Yeah.

But yeah, no, we love, I mean, it is, you know, as, as kind of urban as and dense as Nashville has become over the last decade, there's still a lot of green space. Obviously we have the Smoky Mountains, which are, you know, about 2 hours east of here, kind of closer to Knoxville. You know, Nashville's kind of right in the middle of the state. There's a, you know, we're kind of in a nice little pocket over here.

Yeah. So are you a big dog fan? Little dog fan?

I'm a big dog fan and our dog is a mid-sized dog. His name is Henry. He's a Wheaten Terrier. He's about 10 pounds too heavy, but you know, we don't body shame here. You know, he's about 58 pounds. That's, he should be closer to 50, but he's having good luck.

That's all I'm gonna give you a product. We have a product called PetRider that's coming out, which is a pet stroller for dogs and cats, predominantly for dogs, smaller dogs. I don't think smaller dogs. Yeah. Yeah. 58 pounds is probably not gonna fly.

A little too big. He needs the XL version. Yeah.

Yeah. We actually have more like 8 to 15, 20-pound dogs. Um, so what keeps you busy work-wise? Like what are you doing there to keep your life going? What are you into?

As the CEO of, um, and founder of Third Person, that keeps me pretty busy. Although I, you know, as I often joke, I, you know, wouldn't be a millennial if I wasn't dabbling in a few other things on the side, but I'd say about 95% of my professional energy goes towards building Third Person, which in a couple months from now, we'll be coming up on our 2-year launch anniversary. Happy to kind of dig more into, you know, that business. But in addition to that, I've done a handful of angel investing opportunities over the last, you know, 7 or 8 years. I think I've invested in about 12 businesses, mostly in supply chain technology, a little bit of e-commerce, but I like investing in businesses where I can actually help the founders and not just cut a check because my check sizes are not that big. So I like to kind of juice up my impact by being an advisor and, you know, helping the founders or the executive team with intros and sort of navigate. So do a little bit of angel investing, a little bit of advising. Sometimes they go hand in hand, but, you know, I'm on the board of a couple businesses in the logistics space for similar reasons. So Yeah, I think just kind of dabbling in a few other things, it sort of keeps things fresh, gives me a different perspective of what others are doing and what works for them. And often there's principles and ideology that I can kind of bring back to my business to help improve what we're doing or help me kind of think about things differently. Because as you know, Neil, when you're kind of working for the company that you're working for, you sometimes, it's sometimes hard to kind of step to the side or step outside of the box that you're in to understand what other people are doing or what good might look like. So it's always been helpful for me to have a fresh perspective and talking to other leaders and folks going through similar trials and tribulations that I am running this business.

Yeah. Well, tell me more about the business itself. What does it serve? Who does it serve?

Sure. Yeah. So as I said, the business is called Third Person. It's a bit of a play on words, a bit of a double entendre. My previous business, a consulting business, was called Second Marathon. Okay, so I like the transition from second to third, but also given that we're in logistics and supporting fulfillment companies known as 3PLs, third-party logistics, the name was a play on that third person, third party. The website's thirdperson.co. As I joke, we weren't wealthy enough to purchase the .com. We didn't have enough cash in the bank, so we had to settle for the .co. And, you know, really the business is a marketplace that helps connect e-commerce brands or really retail brands generally, but typically these are brands rooted in e-commerce, help them discover and connect with 3PLs. So I think the simplest way of thinking about the model is it's sort of like a dating app, right? Like a Bumble or a Tinder or Match.com, whatever the hot new dating app is out there. It's really a tool to help brands discover and connect with qualified 3PLs. So at the core of our product is some AI-powered technology that we've built that essentially will score the brand's profile and their needs. So Neil's hot sauce company or Neil's candle company, we absorb some information, we score that against each of the several hundred 3PLs who are on the platform, and we present the top 10 matches ranked by score, kind of this proprietary match score that we've created. And then we allow Neil, you know, the brand, the user, and only Neil, sort of one-sided, we allow you to determine who you want to connect with. So you can see that Matt's Warehouse in Nashville, Tennessee has a 94% match score. You say to yourself, yep, that's great. 94 is a good score. You can connect with me directly by sending a message directly through the platform. And then obviously at that point, Matt's Warehouse knows that Neil exists because you chose to connect with me. And then we kind of start a dialogue and, you know, kind of go through your sales process. So it's really a tool to help distill this universe of literally over 10,000 3PLs or fulfillment warehouses in the United States alone. help distill to just a small handful that we believe are qualified to support your specific needs.

I like that. So it's almost like an Uber of 3PLs. It's a—

Yeah. Yep, exactly.

Yeah.

Kind of a marketplace. And, you know, I think the, you know, probably the core difference is that, you know, with Uber, besides maybe a rating, there's really no logic to say that Matt really likes Honda Civics and I really want a driver who's under 30 and I only want a male, you know, so there's not a whole lot of intelligence in the matching, right? It uses kind of location as the key variable, I believe.

I suspect. Yeah.

But with our product, it's a lot more curated, right? So it's probably closer to a dating app where, you know, back when I was a single guy and on some dating apps, you know, there's certain variables that I use to try to draw, you know, women, you know, dates my way. So, you know, age and location and, You know, other variables that were important to me at the time.

Try to like match a little bit, a little bit, maybe a little like Tinder.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. A little bit more robust in the variables, I suppose.

Well, no, it's cool.

And it's a great idea. Where did it come from? Like, how did, you know, did you start as an e-com seller who had a problem with finding the right connection? Or was it a problem solving that came out of your business? Was it something you just identified or did an apple fall on your head or something like that? Yeah. You know what?

It was a little bit of all that, to be honest. So, uh, earlier in my career, I actually started on the brand side. So back when I was living in New York City out of college, After a couple years in finance, I joined, I joined an early stage startup a couple weeks in, a company called Rent the Runway, which is now a publicly traded company, a women's dress rental business. Joined them at, you know, early on as the head of ops there. Joined another company after that called Birchbox in the subscription commerce space.

Yep.

As their head of operations for a number of years. So I was able to kind of understand or gain an appreciation for some of the challenges that brands face in kind of building and scaling their supply chain. So I knew, you know, from, you know, 15 years ago, 18 years ago almost, that some of these decisions are really important decisions and really hard decisions to make. And unfortunately over the last, well, fortunate for me, but unfortunately for brands over the last couple decades, that decision has not become easier to make. It's actually probably become harder because there's just a lot more noise out there.

Yeah.

So when I started my consulting business back in 2017 as kind of like a fractional supply chain consultant, We were helping brands with all sorts of things, negotiating shipping rates, outsourcing fulfillment, procurement, packaging, kind of all that good stuff. And then when COVID came around, we decided to really focus on the one service that brands are most commonly seeking our support with, which was helping them find the right fulfillment provider. So we kind of sunsetted a lot of the other work we were doing to really kind of become the best at leading 3PL or warehouse searches or RFPs, you know, as it's known. So that was kind of all we did for a few years. And my business partner and I, we kind of looked at each other and we're like, hey, we can, we can probably build technology around this, build software around this. In fact, software is probably better at making these connections than humans and spreadsheets are. So long story short, that was kind of like the origin or the genesis of transitioning or productizing the key service that we were offering in our consultancy into building kind of a standalone software business, which we launched, as I mentioned, back in March of 2024. Ready to escape your grind? We help entrepreneurs build real wealth with private label brands. Visit voltage dm dot com to start now.

Yeah, that's a great path. So you have an evolution in history. You found a niche, you know, in an area you already understood that you were working in. You asked the question, what if? And then you actually went and did something about it, which is awesome because a lot of people have those questions and then don't really do anything. They just think, Somebody laugh at me. It's not a great idea. What if it fails? You know, they just stop. Right. And you kept going. What was the instigator? Like, is it just a vision? Is it just that?

Yeah.

No, I think people are probably still laughing at me, but I've developed some thicker skin over the years. You know, we certainly still have a long road ahead and I have a, a very, very full kind of vision of what this business can become. So I truly feel like we're at the earliest point in sort of playing out, you know, the vision and the goals of this business. But Ultimately, given the experience that I had, which I, you know, just mentioned, I had pretty high conviction that this would work, right? Yes, it was a bet. Anytime you start a new business, there's a tremendous amount of risk. There's a lot of unknown. If this was so obvious, someone else probably would've done it already, right? So things that are worth doing are inherently difficult or hard, and you get people being like, why the heck would you do that? I mean, heck, There have been moments in the last couple years since launching Third Person where I've looked at my own personal, you know, income and sort of P&L. I'm like, man, why did we stop that consulting business? We were making some good money and not working very hard. Right.

Right.

And with, you know, we didn't have a payroll, right? It was just the two of us.

Right.

And, you know, we looked at our piggy bank at the end of every month and we split it two ways. Every month we had a, you know, a credit card bill of about $100, right? Google and Zoom and Calendly and a couple other software. Today, I've got a team of 6 of us and, you know, we raised a little bit of outside capital and, you know, we're building software, which is very different than running a consulting business.

Yeah.

There's, it's, there's technology, things break, you know, bugs arise, right? It's a very different business, but core to my confidence as we scaled this business, this product is that I know that we are truly creating value in the market, right? Like, I understand the problem very well that we're solving. So, to use that old cliché, I'm very confident that I'm not creating a solution to a problem that does not exist.

That doesn't exist. Yeah, that's important. I think that's where you've, you bridge the understanding between what you created and the need in the market and what others theorize is a need without the market research or the experience to tell them that's probably not a good idea.

Exactly. So, you know, there's sort of that concept of like founder product fit, right? Not product market fit. That's different as we know, but founder product fit. And I don't mean this to sound overly arrogant, but I know it's the truth is that when it comes to founder product fit for what we're building at Third Person, I certainly have a lot of checkmarks there. You know, what we're working on now is this product market fit, right? Like, Are we building something that is scalable? And, you know, is it just a fun little side gig for Matt? You know, is this worth pursuing in 2 years from now? Are we at that point where it's really scaling and, you know, revenue is, you know, pouring in or, you know, it's a real business, millions and millions of dollars in revenue or, you know, whatever my true goals are for the business, or is it just like a, you know, a nice little thing that kind of runs itself, produces some cash flow, but, you know, isn't that sustainable business. So clearly I think it's the former. I think it's something that will become a meaningful, profitable business, but we're still early on. So, you know, every day we're kind of working to make the product better and create a really good experience for all stakeholders.

Yeah, that's great, man. And I appreciate you sharing that. So guys, I would encourage you to go check that out. You wanna give a shout out to your website real quick?

Sure, it is Third Person. So T-H-I-R-D, thirdperson.co. Good.

Yeah, guys, check it out. thirdperson.co. It'll be in the show, in the notes. And of course, if you're listening to this on Spotify or anywhere else, give it a check out at the YouTube channel or anywhere else you want to connect with Matt and understand a little bit more about the connectivity of e-commerce to 3PL and what it means for your business in a connected world. There's a multichannel opportunity to move your business in multiple locations and anywhere from retail to other locations. And if you don't want to build a warehouse, hire people, And you're probably gonna wanna use a third-party logistics service. It's always got math in the math, so make sure you do your numbers correctly as always. But if it's a good opportunity to understand how to expand quickly, um, through a distributed model, then check out what Matt's doing. It may be a good fit for your guys' business. Matt, is there anything we didn't cover? Anything we didn't say? Anything that you wanna bring up that we didn't cover?

You know, I always enjoy kind of sharing the story and helping other stakeholders who are looking for e-commerce and fulfillment support. So always I'm never trying to sell anyone anything. You know, I also should have mentioned, Neil, that the product is absolutely free for brands to use. So if you are a brand in need of fulfillment support, it costs zero, you know, no strings attached. Our model is generally we get paid a referral fee, an affiliate fee from 3PL. So we're kind of viewed as an extension of a warehouse's sales team. Also happy to connect with anyone directly. I realize third person is technology and software, but I'm a human. For those who can see me here, although I guess AI can also make me Look, you know, make something not human look human, but yeah, believe that I am, but, uh, always happy to be, uh, you know, support for anyone.

Yeah.

So guys, just to be clear, you don't pay for the service Matt has, but you pay for the 3PL at whatever location or situation makes sense. Those are the numbers you will want to run as to what inventory and locations you want to be shipping in and out of. So that's a very smart model, Matt. Uh, referrals and becoming an outsourced sales team. I'm sure the 3PLs love you and give you a referral.

We're giving them what they want, which is qualified leads.

That's amazing. Well, it's a great setup. It's a great experience for you, I'm sure. And for the people that get involved in what you're building, that's why I consider it a high voltage business builder. And guys, if you check out what he's doing, of course, you know, see what the numbers look like and make sure that it's a great fit for your business. As always, guys, like, share, comment, and engage. If you've got any questions about this episode or any questions about even what a 3PL is or anything related, please just ask us. Always like and subscribe and comment so we can send more great information to people. And if someone needs some support in that area, please share this episode with him as well. As always, we'll be back with another episode. Matt, thanks for joining me, man. I appreciate you coming on.

Thanks, Neil.

Take care, guys. Have a great day, and we'll see you on the next episode. And remember, your opportunity always begins at the end of your excuses.

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