From Startup to Super Scaleup: Hypergrowth Lessons with Henry Shi, Super.com

Leverage community led growth to skyrocket your business. Hey Traction fam, it's your host Lloyd Lobo. I've just released a book that I've been working on for some time. It's called from grassroots to greatness Master 13 Game changing rules from some of the world's most iconic brands like Apple, Atlassian, Crossfit, Harley Davidson, HubSpot, Red Bull and a lot more. So you can attract super fans of your own that will propel you to new heights. Your support would mean the world to me. Please grab your copy at from grassroots to greatness.com I found that hiring folks.

With large operating range has been a really great trait and a really strong predictor of success. So folks who can get their hands dirty, get stuff done but also be strategic, see things from the higher level who can operate on both levels, be strategic but also get stuff done and understand the details. And also hiring for adaptability and ability to learn has been important because things are always changing in a startup. You're constantly evolving, testing, iterating. So people who are adaptable, who can learn, I think that's also great traits and predictors of success.

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Super, formerly known as Snap Commerce, is at the intersection of fintech and commerce, empowering users to spend less, save more and build credit. With more than 100 million USD in funding, super has helped more than 7 million customers save nearly 150 million and 100,000 hours in shopping time through a billion in total sales. Henry Shi is the co founder and CEO of Super, Leading product, technology and innovation of the business. And under Henry's leadership, this company has enabled consumers to experience more of what life has to offer. Henry brings extensive experience in engineering, machine learning and product and prior to starting the company he has held various engineering positions including Google, Bloomberg and he also co founded you mentioned. Henry's entrepreneurial accomplishments have been recognized by Forbes 30 under 30 and he was also Eny's entrepreneur of the Year. Henry, welcome to Attraction. Thanks for joining us.

Yeah, thanks for having me. Yeah, I really appreciate it. I'm really looking forward to this conversation.

Today, very interesting background. You also have a master's degree in machine learning from Georgia Institute of Technology and you graduated top 1% in your class at University of Waterloo. From having this engineering background to being a high growth founder. Water journey. Let's kick this off though with your backstory. How did you come up with the idea for Super? How did you find your co founders?

I've been doing startups for a while. This is my third or fourth company. Previously I was working at Google, kind of like a sabbatical, learning being around smart people, being in the valley. But I quickly learned a big company wasn't quite for me. I mean a lot of great people, a lot of smart, but just I wanted to move faster, get stuff done, test, learn, iterate. So I knew I wanted to get back into the startup world. I met Hussein, my current co founder through mutual friends. We were both Waterloo alumni, but we just really got along in terms of common values, beliefs, ideas, goals. And we're testing ideas iterating for about half a year and then we thought you know what, let's do this full time. So I quit my job and he joined me in SF and we just hit the ground running, starting to test, learn iterate. In terms of the idea, it was of a really test learning iteration process. We actually started with no idea vertical industry but a really strong team and we knew we would figure something out. So we tested a variety of ideas, industry, vertical, ended up in the space and we'll kind of get into that, but that's kind of how we met initially.

What was the first idea you tested?

Yeah, the first idea was totally different. It was in the back office data management cleaning space. It's like a SaaS tool to help you automate your data cleaning. It was a little behind four hours time. Now it's really taken off with all the AI and autonomous vehicles and things like that. But back then we were focused on content moderation, realized that it was okay, we had a little bit of revenue, but it really wasn't scalable, it was a lot of custom work and it wasn't the biggest pain point with organizations. But what we did learn is that travel e commerce companies actually had a lot of content work because they had catalogs and things they needed to clean. So we through that process learned more about the travel e commerce space and decided to to build some prototypes in the direct to consumer side. On the travel e commerce side that's kind of how we got started. And back then in 2016, chatbots were all the praise so we built sort of a chat concierge tool to help you find travel and things like that. And that's kind of how we got started. In the first days, it was just me on imessage, actually, so people would message me directly and I would imessage them back. And that's how we got our first customers and how we knew there was something there.

Amazing.

So you put up a website for travel savings. I think it was called Snap Travel back in the day.

Yeah, it was even earlier. It was actually called Text Emma, because you would do it over text.

So that's how you validated. People were looking for discounts on their travel or cheap flight tickets. What were people looking for? How did they find you?

Even back then, it wasn't even so much about discounts. It was just sort of a concierge. We could help you, but through that process, because we could talk to our customers, we learned that they really care about saving money. It wasn't intentional at first, but we realized that's what people really wanted and needed. When the antim defining us, initially it was we put up some ads and we were testing different channels. We also did a launch, so we got some PR and pressed through that great stuff.

And the pivot from there, though, from being this travel concierge on text message to being a chatbot travel concierge. Tell us what the product is today and how it has evolved.

Yeah, so now it's pretty much a super app, if you will, that covers across travel, e commerce, and a wallet. And it's really evolved from our core customer base and needs, because what we learned is that people, they like the concierge, but that wasn't the most important thing. They like to save money. They need to, but they actually needed to save money. Most of our customers, tens of millions of users, were people who really needed to save money. And it wasn't because they wanted to, it's because they needed to. They were lower income, lower credit, didn't always have access, and for them, $5 is a big difference between whether they could go on a trip, want to afford a product. So we realized our customers were willing to save money. They were being underserved. We had a great product that saved them money at one place, but we could save them money in a lot more ways and increase that frequency and help them in more ways. That's how we expanded from one vertical to multiple verticals. And if you think about the world of travel, miles point reward status. Right. It's a massive, massive industry. Over half of Marriott sales of points. But the polarity is if you don't have access to credit or high income, you can't get access to some of these benefits and rewards and points. And that's kind of why we wanted to take that model and then make it available to everybody. The closest analogy I have to say is like American Express, but for everybody else. Amex, you got travel amex point status rewards. But it's very expensive, very niche product and you can have really high income, high credit and high ends, fees. What we're building with Super Travel Super Cash is that amexperience. You can spend saving at discounts, but it's free. There's no income requirement, there's no credit check and it's completely free. So it's really to help customers get access and save.

I was just going to say that and you said it is. It's like amex Platinum Reward points, but for everyone else who can't afford it. What a great way to put it. And doing a fantastic service for everyone out there that deserves to have the discounts and the points and consumers being treated with the love they need without spending the money. What is the fintech component here?

So it's like amex, right? So we have a card, a wallet, it's free, it helps you get rich, cash back and rewards and helps you build your credit. So 2% everywhere, 5% off shop and 10% off travel. So really the platinum level rewards, but for everybody else for free. And the whole irony is anybody who has amex doesn't really need one. People who need one can get one. So we're taking that and making it accessible to everybody.

Has your customer base changed in this time though? Like you went from people who couldn't qualify, didn't have credits to now other people are taking note that, hey, why do I pay $600 for Amex? Maybe I should use Super. Yeah.

We're still very focused on our audience because our North Star is customer savings and we spend a lot of effort focusing on that audience. The products we build, the experiences, the workflow. And for imax, there's a bunch of legacy brand value and sort of intangibles around why people use it. It's not just for the savings for the other intangibles. That's why we're still pretty focused on our segment. We haven't touched the super prime and that's not necessarily in our purview.

Let's dive into some of the early days and how did you get your first customers?

Yeah, so first early days it was putting up some testing, landing page ads, getting people and then did a launch and we got some traffic there. But really to have sustainable scale, you gotta find the growth loops. That compounding and you can continue to build and funnel more users. VR is great, but people come and then it kind of wanes off. So really finding those scalable growth loops.

I love the concept of growth loops, right? There's the loops and there's the funnel and the loop is everlasting here. Tell us maybe about a successful growth loop that you guys have implemented in the business and how does that work?

You know, I'm a big fan of sort of growth loops and Brian, about foreign reforge. Right. And there's only a certain number of types of growth loops. And one of the things I always like to remind my team is that products are built to fit channels, right? Not the other way around. So if your product isn't inherently social, you can't force it to be a viral loop as an example. So for us, because it was transactional, E commerce, shopping, things like that, we could easily monetize off the purchase. And because of that it allows us to invest more into paid channels and paid loops. Those are the loops in terms of performance marketing that we're able to really be data driven, have strong tracking metrics and leverage that monetization engine to drive that loop.

Now over time, have you seen the cost of paid keeps going up to generate the same roi? And how do you deal with that?

That's a question. So we've been pretty fortunate because we continue to expand different channels and mediums within paid, but also supplementing that with our own channels. Right. So app regainable, SMS notifications and things like that. So overall I think we've done a good job balancing that as we scale. So actually our cacs actually gone down. As we scaled, as we got more efficient, as we got better inventory, better offers, we've been pretty fortunate in driving that balance.

Were there any experiments in the early days when it relate to customer acquisition that you tried that didn't work? You'd mentioned you tried PR and that didn't work?

We tried a bunch of things. I think with most startups you're gonna have to try a bunch to see what works. I mean you can have hypotheses, but until you really test the channels, it's gonna be hard to predict. So I always recommend my team to prioritize but also try and see what sticks for us. Definitely there's channels. You know, I think for example, Leo Forums were something we thought, hey, maybe there's something people really wanted. But we realized it was a little different because one is there's actually not that much traffic. It was, we thought, what is a deal form? Like Reddit or things?

Yeah, deal forums. Okay, cool.

People like sharing stuff like it was okay. But a lot of users there aren't, weren't necessarily our target audience. There were people who kind of just like to save money, but they didn't need to save money and their traffic wasn't that much. And it also wasn't really a loop because you would maybe get a deal posted and then the deal would fall off the forum ranking because people post new stuff. So to really make that a loop, you're going to have to figure out how you get people to come in, get some deals, reshare more deals back to the form, and build that loop. So that's something that, as an example, we thought maybe would have worked, but wasn't as scalable as a loop. It was okay for initially some traffic, but to scale it and make it a loop is a lot harder.

How did you make it a loop outside of the forums?

With a typical traditional paid loop, you have some ads in F formats and then you have your CAC or whatever. And as long as your revenue LTV is bigger than the cac, you're monetizing right away. And then you can take that and invest it back into more channels. Right. So that kind of fuels that, that loop because every user generates revenue that you can use to acquire more users.

What is the big aha moment? When somebody signs up that keeps people coming back and drives that word of mouth to get people back into the loop for us.

Yeah, we definitely also have organic referral loops. Right. So people are sharing, getting additional discounts. The big aha moment is when somebody sees we actually offer really great exclusive deals and pricing, and pricing that they couldn't maybe get us out anywhere else. Best of web pricing. And really that's when people buy, wow, this is great. But to really form the habit, they're going to have to make a transaction because the first time they see the price, it's okay, that's great, this is great value. But to really build a habit, they have to go through with the purchase, you know, get it, experience it, check out, complete, stay, whatever. And that's kind of how you build that habit over time.

It's really hard to build habits, but if people get in the habit of saving, then they want to save more and it's addictive. Now you went at it for a while, you pivoted a bunch, and then you found your mojo. At what point do you think you had product market fit? Like, okay, you know what, this is a big business, let's keep going.

Yeah, I would say product market fit has different degrees. It's a distribution curve of like how much to fit there is. I would say, I think initially we probably found great fit in the very, very early days when people were willing to give us their credit cards over text. So you can argue that, okay, somebody's willing to give you their credit card number over imessage to buy something, there's some fit. So we took that and that's how when we started and we wanted to double down on that, but then we realized that that fit was okay, but it wasn't like the strongest fit or not the most scalable fit. So then that's when we're like, hey, let's continue to explore. But realizing that the concierge was great, but the deals and savings is much more stronger of a need and a fit. So focusing on that and even then we're still constantly evolving that fit. Right. So from one vertical to multiple verticals. So I would say it's a constantly evolving piece.

Did you have some milestones in the early days? What do you recommend? Founders, when they're starting out right and route to product market fit and getting your early customers and pre scale, what milestones do you recommend setting in those early days? What are the key things to focus on for us?

We had a certain revenue milestone way back in the early days. So that way we knew we would get to some level of revenue. And looking back, it felt like a lot, but now it's like nothing. It's like peanuts. But the fact that you could get to some revenue, somebody was willing to pay you something for it. I think it was important to know that you're solving a problem, you're creating value for the customer. So I think that's important one, having some KPIs like a purchase or retention or things like that, depending on your type of product, I think was also very important.

Moving from those early days and post product market fit, now you've got millions of customers using your product. What are some principles that help you acquire more and more customers post emf?

It's creating real and immediate value to our customer. There's a lot of apps out there that try to promise savings or this or that, but they're really meant for people who like to shop around. Maybe they like to clip coupons or whatever, but they don't need to save money. So really offering immediate real value upfront discounts, exclusive pricing and a really simple experience on mobile, helping them make that process as easy as possible. And then on top of that, adding a card so you can save anywhere, no matter where you're shopping with us or elsewhere. And you can also build credit. So really creating real immediate value for the customer that's in the product side. But I'd say really to achieve scale, I like to think about this framework of the pmmc, fit the product model, market channel fit. So it has to go beyond just the product market fit, but also the channels. That's how you get scale and escape velocity, right? So you have a great product but nobody knows about it. You don't have a channel that's still not going to be the $100 million billion dollars company. Really figuring out the channels that make sense for your products and leveraging those.

Channels, how did you map those out?

At super, there's a great framework, I highly recommend everyone check it out. From reforged, it talks about the various loops and channels you can have. There's like organic SEO, gender content, there's paid, there's sales, all types of channels. And you can map it kind of based on your type of model around your product, right? So if you have enterprise sales product, you have high LTV that affords you more certain channels, like direct enterprise sales. If you have a Freeman product that's low LTV but mass user base, you probably want to rely on more viral organic channels as opposed to say enterprise sales. There's a whole framework where you can do the mapping between your model, your product and the channels and what makes sense and then test a bunch of channels. The thing about channels is that if you can find one channel that works well, that could be 80, 90% of your success, right? And actually a lot of companies only have. Most companies have one really strong channel, so we supplement it with repeat organic retention, things like that. So from a percentage of revenue basis, we have channels that work really well, but overall it becomes blended. Because once you have a channel going that drives the growth and then your retention and other pieces drive the sustainability of that.

In the early days as founders, you have a lot of latitude, right, when you scale, maybe not as much when your team grows. So sometimes you get to invest in things that are the right thing to do, but may not provide immediate monetary value. Once you have a bigger team, then you gotta convince people that, hey, you know what, there's this long term play Here. So what are some of those things you guys invested in and how did it propel the company in the long run?

I'll give two examples. One that didn't work well. One that worked well. Back when we were doing a lot of the chat stuff, we also invested a bunch of time in voice like Alexa, Google assistant voice, and that turned out to be a fad. People may be okay buying toilet paper on their voice assistants, but to plan a sophisticated trip or something is just a little too far. Also, the platforms never invested the discoverability as much into those channels, so it was very hard to get discovered and product was maybe ahead of its time a bit. Plus the channels themselves didn't allow for that growth and discoverability, so that turned out to be a fad and we stopped doing that. Something else that was more of long term investment is on the wallet and fintech piece. So that's a great way for us to drive more savings for our customers, drive more engagement. Because if you think about the usage frequency, travel, shopping, e commerce, they're great, but it's not something you do every day, every week necessarily. And adding a higher frequency product really allows to capture that engagement, that retention, and help our customers in more ways.

Walk us through this use case of the wallet and the higher frequency. How does it work?

It's just like a normal wallet, right? You have some money on it, you can spend, get discounts, get cash back. And that spending also goes towards building your credit. So spending money every single day, whether it's a coffee or a gas station or whatever. So really is to help customers transform that everyday spend into savings and credibility.

They use the wallet to spend, but then also you probably promote certain offers to them to bring them back to the wallet. So that's another loop on its own.

Yes.

Let's dive into building teams. When your early days, you're a few founders, you're making everything yourselves, but then eventually you gotta hire people. How did super hire the right talent to keep up with this growth? Walk us through your team. From early days to product market fit to growth and scale today, the early.

Days it was just my co founder and I, I was building stuff and we were working together, iterating, testing and then we hired some engineers, folks in the network, folks I've worked with before. When we got to maybe around 10 people, we hired our first recruiter. So someone who was overseeing talent and both people and talent and that really helped us a lot in terms of hiring and really diversifying our types of people we hire like business marketing, and things like that. In terms of the leaders we look for, I found that hiring folks with large operating range has been a really great trait and a really strong predictor of success. So folks who can get their hands dirty, get stuff done but also be strategic, see things from the higher level who can operate on both levels, be strategic but also get stuff done and understand the details. And also hiring for adaptability and ability to learn has been important because things are always changing in a startup. You're constantly evolving, testing, iterating so people who are adaptable, who can learn, I think that's also great traits and predictors.

Of success Leverage community led growth to skyrocket your business. Hey Traction fam, it's your host Lloyd Lobo. I've just released a book that I've been working on for some time. It's called from grassroots to greatness Master 13 Game changing rules from some of the world's most iconic brands like Apple, Atlassian CrossFit, Harley Davidson, HubSpot, Red Bull and a lot more. So you can attract super fans of your own that will propel you to new heights. Your support would mean the world to me. Please grab your copy at from grassroots to greatness.com in what order did you hire?

Because you brought in engineers, you brought in a product, you brought in marketers. In what order do you recommend hiring from product market fit to post product market fit?

Probably focusing on product engineering for initially getting the product to a spot that has product market fit is important. That is for consumer products, having strong marketing, especially performance marketing folks has been really helpful to find that product channel fit. So I'd say the combination two is super important. And you know, I had a great product and tech background. My co founder had a great marketing performance background. So that was kind of the initial.

Seed in terms of learnings on hiring talent in the early days, especially at startups. I like hiring Swiss army knives. People who are jack of all that can flex different ways. But then a lot of people recommend bringing on very specialized talent as well. What's your take on that?

Inevitably at some point every startup's like, oh, if I only had a person XYZ specialist, that can solve my problems. One of the things I found is specialized talent can be great, but don't expect them to be the silver bullet. Doing something at big company X doesn't mean they're going to do it again at your startup. And things have changed, times have changed, competitive environments have changed. So specialized talents can be helpful, but it's often not discoverable. There's still a lot of iteration, still a lot of learning, still a lot of adaptability and oftentimes specialized talents may not be as adaptable because they come with a certain experience and range and expectations versus other leaders who are adaptable. So it's just a trade off and I'd say still can be very helpful, especially for building legitimacy and credibility. But don't expect them to be the silver bullet.

I think what you outlined previously is adaptability and ability to learn and having that operating range where they can get their hands dirty. What I found is hiring specialists from large companies. They often struggle at startups because sometimes their teams are bigger than your entire startup. Right. And they can't roll up their sleeves. Decision making slows velocity, which is moving in the right direction at high speed is crucial in an early stage startup.

Yes, speed of learning is the most important thing and I think we'll talk about that later on.

Did you make some hiring mistakes and what'd you learn from them?

Yeah, it definitely gotten way better over time. I think one of the biggest learning was this book called who the A Method for Hiring. I'm a huge fan of that book and it has a very rigorous process that basically lines up your goals and milestones with what you want and need and what competencies you need for a person to hit those goals and then asking them directly about each competencies. So it takes out a lot of the voodoo touchy feely part of it to make it really is this person going to help you hit those goals with the confidence you need and that's been super helpful. So having that written down align on all the hiring managers, the expectations I think has really helped us improve our hiring dramatically.

What are the key elements of a great process for hiring?

I think it's just a really rigorous, structured process that there's a template for goals and competencies, interview format that asks about each competencies and you're digging very deep into the prior experiences to see if those competencies were demonstrated. It's just a very structured process that removes biases, that helps you be consistent across candidates, across interviewers and it helps you cover all the bases so you don't miss some things or you over index on others.

You guys have a great brand, you guys have raised lots of money, you've been in the press, so you attract talent quite easily. What are some recommendations though for attracting talent that you found to work when you didn't have that brand?

I think we're still working on our brand, so I wouldn't say we're quite there yet. But certainly having fast growth, having a strong mission impact help a lot. But unfortunately, or unfortunately, the reality is that hype still matters. When I say hype, things like rankings, awards, having strong investors, things like that, things that maybe don't necessarily aren't directly your business or related to your business. But that validation and signaling does matter, unfortunately, because from an employee perspective, a lot of them are betting their time or human capital and they want to know that they're betting on a winner. And how is somebody supposed to know that from the outside? And some of those hype factors are a proxy for that. So unfortunately that does still matter. But overall, like having great growth, having strong mission impact, great word of mouth, being competitive has been helpful.

Be the company that people want to work for and you got to drive the hype, man. That's unfortunate, but it's true. Hype always works. When Boast had raised money and we made two separate, separate announcements, lots of press, it not only drove customers, but it drove a lot of applicants. Because press is a social proof item. When like you know Forbes or TechCrunch or Venture Beat, all these guys are covering you and then the awards having great investors. So you guys check all the boxes. That is great. But in times where you know you don't have a funding announcement or you don't have great investors, just being active on LinkedIn and being a thought leader in the space where people can constantly hear about the space and you and your company and also awards you can just apply for and putting those awards and generating press as a result of getting those awards. Awards are created for every category and you can easily apply top 10 list for this and top 100 for that and you can say hey, we're listed in the top hundred Forbes AI companies. This is why it's exciting to work here. How do you know when a candidate is the one? Sometimes people are great at selling you versus doing the job.

I don't know if you ever know it's truly the one until you work with someone for a long time. But I'm a big fan of the process in the book who they method. I think a good proxy is that some of who you're really excited about. Like some of you like wow, this is a person I can learn from. I'd be excited to work with them. I think that's something maybe a proxy to know that you come in with that level of excitement, energy and that you can learn from them. We also to help identify folks who can actually do stuff versus just Say stuff. We do have sort of a asynchronous case for a lot of the more senior roles which really talks about like the tactics of okay, here's some ambiguous problem related to the role. How do you go about solving it and present your solutions. And that way we actually know people who can actually do stuff versus just maybe be a good interviewer.

Almost like try before you buy.

Right.

You have great product background, engineering background. How have you created a product focused culture throughout the organization? So it's just not sitting with product and engineering.

No, that's something that I think we're always constantly working on as well. I think a lot of it starts with thinking about the customer like what we're doing, how is it creating value is aligned to our north stars and really being that alignment and then also dogfooding the product across the company. Right. So using your own product, finding bugs. We have a shared open channel where people can file issues or bugs so that way people can see it. It's all public and we try to make it better together. Both my co founder and I come from a tech and CS background. So that just helps culturally as leaders as we think about these things. And then we also have data driven as a core value. So we run a lot of experiments let kind of data aside. And these are product experiments, you know, copy whatever experiments. I think that also helped drive that meritocracy of letting the customer and product decide and tell us what people want. So I think overall those are some of the, some of the things. But we still are constantly wanting to get better here.

Success leads to complacency and complacency leads to failures. You got to keep getting better and improve in terms of prioritization. The sales comes and tells you stuff, customer comes and tells you stuff. Everyone wants features, everyone wants their idea of what needs to be in the product. Prioritize. How do you prioritize at Super I.

Have this framework, it's called maximizing learnings while minimizing effort framework. And basically I always try to push the team of like how do you learn the most in the least amount of effort? Because a lot of times you don't know what's going to work. You don't know if this features people really want it or do they just say they want it but they don't actually want it or over the next thing underneath some stuff. So really this framework is like how do you maximize learning with the least amount of effort? And there's all these methods you can do like smoke tests, surveys Interviews, product launches or big door tests. But really that's kind of how we think about prioritization is how do I maximize learnings with the least amount of effort and based on that I continue to iterate.

Right.

If this is working, we learned a lot. Okay, what's the next set of learnings? It's also kind of similar to the RAP method, which is the riskiest assumptions test. So you're trying to figure out what's the riskiest assumption and how do you prove or disprove that. So that way you can focus your efforts on the riskiest thing first and then if that's proved, then you can kind of de risk it from there. So I like to really think about.

Maximizing learning in terms of the customer or how does it impact revenue? How does that play into this framework? Perhaps you can share an example of how you've utilized it it here's an example.

Suppose you want to launch a new feature which is like, okay, for customers who buy X, you want them to maybe try to buy Y. And then you do this feature and you're like, oh, hm, the cross sell rate isn't as high as I thought. And then you're like, oh, maybe it's because Y products we're selling are the deals aren't good enough. So then you're like, okay, well how do we test that? Do we go up all the way to the supply chain team and say, hey, get me better deals and negotiate or do you just cut your prices by half and see what happens? And then you can see, are people engaging more? Is a higher click through, is a higher conversion? Or is it just people don't really want white products, it's the wrong type of products. So that's a much easier way to test that hypothesis. Like is it intent or is it the price? Instead of like going all the way to resourcing, refining these deals, negotiating better plate allotments versus maybe we just put the price and see what happens. We'll take a loss a little bit, but we'll learn much more, much quicker.

We're all in crazy times here, right? 2021 was all about free for all, raising money at the highest possible valuations. Then the rates went up, stocks fell down, markets are tight, LPs are pulling out, VCs are not investing as much. Everything has a trickle down effect. What kind of advice you're sharing with people and your company in these tight economic conditions?

Yeah, I think having strong unit economics in the core business is important. And then for us we've Been pretty fortunate because we've always had a strong as a company. So we're very disciplined in how we approach our goals, metrics, targets, et cetera. For us specifically because we're focused on savings and creating real value. And actually recession may be better in some ways because people need to save money.

It's almost like a recession proof business.

Yeah, a little bit. And also but overall I think having just strong economics and creating real value for the consumer in general is tried and true approach, especially in a recessionary environment.

How do you organize and scale teams as you deal with uncertainty, tough economic times, et cetera?

Yeah, I think it covers a bunch of the themes I've talked about earlier, which is thinking about people who are adaptable, having people who can learn quickly, who can adapt to change, being agile, testing your riskiest assumptions, maximizing your learnings and then also on the company side, like thinking about product market, model, channel fit. So how does your product fit into the channel? With the right model and the right market that way can achieve scale. So taking a lot of things together and combining that to enable you to, in a good or bad environment, learn, adapt and get and find scale.

What is the culture like at super and how do you set that and make sure it scales when you're not in the room?

So we have some pretty strong culture and core values and we celebrate them every week. WBR we have a tool that allows peers to recognize each other with small gifts and bonuses, is based on demonstrating values and then we also highlight certain values and it's part of our interview and also performance process. So really embedding values into how we operate, how we behave, how we celebrate wins is a big part of it. We're also super open and transparent so everyone can be aligned, knows what's going on. You can see every dollar penny being made or lost. You can see the strategy, the roadmaps, the OKRs, the planning, every team top down, bottom up. So really having an open, transparent culture and celebrating the values, the hardest thing.

For a startup as it grows and scales, is continuing to maintain that startup mindset.

Right.

The more people you add, the less nimble you become, more meetings, the longer things take and so on. So how do you continue to scale without losing that startup mindset?

This is one of the most important things the startup can and should do and a founder should do to continuously drive that mentality to, to kind of understand what it's like to build from 0 to 1, 1 to 10 and 10 to 100 and then do it all over again. So staying nimble, staying lean, moving fast, having a bias for action. Super, super important as part of our interviewing process. And one of our core values is move fast with intention. And I think a big part of it is having folks with no ego, no politics, doing what's right for the customer, not for your own goal or desire or ambition, no empire building. So really driving people who are aligned on the mission, the customer. Another part is empowering bottoms up thinking and ideation. So everyone's got an idea. How do you make it such that people are able to express them, to test them, iterate on them. So that way it's not just the loudest voice in the room, but you have a framework and a process that enables rapid experimentation and testing. Right. So you can unleash the entrepreneur in everyone. Part of also our organization structure, allowing to mission align teams is so that teams can work cross functionally with more autonomy and can control their own destiny. So there's a lot of things that we've done to try to maintain that, that startup mentality. And I always try to lead by example, being with a team, iterating quickly, many mistakes and pivoting and learning and really just trying to maximize learnings.

I love that statement, unleash the entrepreneur in everyone. Give me an example of that empowering bottoms up thinking and ideation. How have you done that?

There's something we want to do even more of with our new mission aligned team structure. But essentially we have a certain goal. We align with the goals, whether it's a company level, team level, vertical level, and aligning the team to figure out what's the best way to hit that goal. So for example, for a very long time there was a problem that some of our prices would be sold out and that would affect our accuracy and customers wouldn't like that. And it was a pretty hard, intricate problem that was very nuanced. I actually thought for a long time maybe it was hard to solve or impossible to solve or would be very, a lot more effort. But because we set the goal and we empowered the team to, you know, unleash their entrepreneurship inner entrepreneur, we let them figure out how to solve a problem and they actually came up with a solution that was way easier and solved the problem five times better than I would have expected it to solve. So it ended up being great because they had a chance to work on their own, control their own destiny, work cross functionally with the supply team, the technical account management team, the engineering team, the product team, working together to implement a solution that they came up with from the bottoms up. That was way better than any top down solution and it was solved problem way better because they're the ones who are closest to the problem so they should understand the problem better than anyone else outside. And if you give them the ability and the autonomy to control their own destiny, then they can actually act on it as long as you have the right goals.

People love autonomy, right? Nobody wants to be micromanaged and they want to feel like they are one of the co authors of the future and if you give them that opportunity, they will move mountains. Right? If you make them feel that way. Most people don't want to be cogs in a wheel. So this is a great example you shared here. Now one crucial but really hard skill as a founder is learning how to figure stuff out. Doing hard things that haven't been done before, basically figuring out how to figure stuff out. There's so much uncertainty as a founder, what are your learnings here?

Yeah, I think we like to stand on the shoulder of giants. So one sort of framework I hear about is it doesn't matter how you get there, it's more about where you got to at the end. And everyone likes an underdog story. It may be good for Hollywood, but nobody's going to give you extra money or credit just because you did it the hard way. Nobody cares you did it the hard way or the easy way, as long as you got the furthest. So there's a lot of opportunities to leverage other people's learnings and insights. One thing I think is constantly underweighted by startups is using expert forums like JLG or tigus. I know a lot of consulting companies do it, but you can find some really great people who led, say acquisition for your competitor who now work somewhere else and they can share their experiences and whatnot. So there's a lot of great people and resources you can leverage. Also you can do M and A partnerships, right? You can join forces. You don't have to necessarily compete. You can work together. And I'm a big fan and promoter of SaaS like different tools that have solved this problem. And you know, a lot of times people feel like especially technical founders feel like they can build better. They probably could. But the question is why, right? Is this thing the most important thing for your business? Is this the riskiest assumption? Are you learning much more, if anything, by building yourself? And oftentimes it's not. So by leveraging tools out there, you can essentially offload all the customer service, all the product roadmap all that stuff out because you don't need to be thinking about that and it's not helping you learn more.

I like that. Nobody's going to give you extra points because you did it the hardest. All that matters in business is moving the farthest, right? And leverage expert networks, advisors, different tools and services out there. Because sometimes as founders, we tend to be pennywise and pound foolish, Right. And I like the other framework of Rice, right, Which is reach, impact, confidence and ease, which is like, is it going to move the business forward and how easy or hard it is? Why do something that others have figured it out? Like, sometimes what we'll say is like, you know what, I'm going to just go and book my own tickets or I'm going to just go and plan this whole thing. What else could I do? As a founder, your time should be spent on highest leverage items and doing things. Just because you can doesn't mean you should it. That's a great way you put it. Some of the biggest outcomes on the planet, from like Airbnb to Shopify and so on, are founder led. So it's really important as a founder to be in great mental shape, especially to weather the storm, right. If you don't put the oxygen mask on yourself first, then the team sees it. If you're not strong, right. And then if the founder is shaky, everyone else starts to fall apart. What are some things you do to stay at the top of your game, mentally?

Yeah, I think, you know, having a strong network is really important. So people who have been there, done that, people who are maybe one or two steps ahead of you, learning from them, learning about their mistakes and their challenges and their ways of working, that's been really helpful. I think having a curious mind, so constantly learning, improving or different ways of doing things, I love learning and I think that's really helped me stay on top of my game. Exercise, physical, mental, enjoying time with friends and family and things like that. And also recently started founder coaching, which has been helpful. Not just individual coaching, but peer coaching with my co founder together so we can elevate our working relationship even further.

Every time you're learning and improving, it's a sense of progress and maybe some other things are not progressing in your life. But if you have this feeling of progress and even exercise is one of those things, right? Every time you go to the gym or you walk or you run and you do a little better, you feel the sense of progress and it increases the feel good hormones in your brain and you just feel happier after spending 40 years on this planet, chasing success, trying to find happiness. I finally realized that success finds you if you're in a happy state of mind. And so this is some really good advice you've shared here. As you look back at your journey, what was the toughest, lowest point and how did you navigate it?

Navigating through Covid was quite tough because nobody knew what was going to happen. And then we also decided to think much bigger and do more. So raising a large 85 million round when we've only raised 50 million total before that. So it was a big jump before the vaccine was released. So that was quite the challenge. We're also transitioning from in person to a fully remote company. Getting over 140 no's, but pulling through, having the heart of a champion and getting it done all through Covid. And the transition to fully remote was probably tough. We got through it in the end, but it was probably one of the hardest things I've done in my life.

Facing 140 VC nodes and then raising 85 million is a hard one. How did you navigate that? What were the key elements that finally made you guys pull through that race?

Big kudos. Shout out to my co founder Hussein. He probably faced the majority of it, I think truly having the heart of a champion, never giving up and all it takes is one and just continuing to push through. I mean there's a lot to be said. We definitely want to work and continue to improve our narrative, our brand and positioning and whatnot, but overall we have strong business metrics and our investors believed in us, so we got it done. But yeah, it was definitely quite the process and certainly timing is not great given Covid pre vaccine.

Is there anything you would have done differently in your journey so far?

We started a company in SF and then we were removed away for a bit and then I moved back to SF earlier this year. Certainly it's changed a lot in the city after Covid, but I think I probably would have spent more time in San Francisco, honestly. There's just still a great network of people, especially in consumer tech and talking about talent, ways of thinking, investors and whatnot. So definitely spending time here and elevating my game and learning from the best.

What's one piece of unconventional advice founders typically ignore in the sea of millions of pieces of advice, but they shouldn't.

One unconventional advice that a lot of people don't tell you or don't mention, I certainly didn't know this, is that your industry matters and unfortunately defines who your comp sets are and how people see and value and it's not something I realized earlier and it's something that people mostly don't mention because it doesn't really matter at the C or series A stage, right? Every company's a tech company, whatever, that's fine. But that doesn't quite work when you're at scale or ipo. At some point they're going to be like, no, you're a X company, you're a logistics company, you're whatever company. That sort of industry starts to creep up on you and then your peers and your comp sets and how people look at you start to matter more. It's unfortunate, but it also a little bit sometimes defines who your investors are, the profile investors. Now of course you want to disrupt certain industries, but at the same time there is a gravity of that industry that you can't escape forever.

This has been a great session, super.com folks. If you want savings on your travel and E commerce, spend online spend S u p e r.com Henry, where can we continue to follow your wisdom? Where are you active?

LinkedIn as my primary. I also have Twitter but not super active. So probably LinkedIn but having to reach out. Happy to help. I love helping founders. You know I also angel invest. So overall I'm a huge fan of the startup community and other founders and Entrepreneurs.

That's Henry. She h e n r y s h I on LinkedIn. Henry, wishing you great success. Wishing you a fantastic 2023 fit, healthy, lots more zeros in your valuation. Thank you so much. Thanks for joining us.

Thanks Lauren. I really appreciate it. Great conversation.

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