Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, lessons learned, challenges, and everything that goes into building a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and excited to have with us today Jimmy Kim, founder of Sendlane. Welcome to the show, Jimmy.
Jimmy Kim: Hey Jake, thanks for having me on.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well just a little background of Jimmy. Jimmy is from uh DC originally, living in San Diego now. He's the founder and CEO of Sendlane. Former retailer and owner, and 14 years of email marketing. Sendlane has raised a Series A and a Series B round of funding. They provide a unified platform for email and SMS marketing. Today they send over 40 million messages a day on behalf of their clients, with a vision to empower e-commerce brands everywhere through the deep data and behavioral-based marketing automation experience they have. Jimmy, if there's anything I missed in there feel free to dive in and just kind of give a, a synopsis. But we'll, we'll talk about your company more as we get into this.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah I mean it's really simple, we're building for the unified front. Uh anyone who know[s] the space a little bit on the e-commerce uh, the merchants have a lot of apps that they kind of, kind of build their tech stack. And our mission is eliminate it. So uh right now email and SMS. Uh soon in the next 30 days (depending on when this comes out) our reviews product comes out. So uh we attack now three billion dollar companies at once. So uh you know we're doing what all the great guys have done and they've built this thing and now we're just bringing it all together and giving them more tech, or more actual, more marketing tech, but less of a stack. And that's uh, that's what we're building here.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh I love it, yeah. There's so much technology out there and uh it's, it's, it's tricky to know which ones to use and who does it best. And, and we'll kind of dive into that a little bit. Um, you know let's talk a little bit about you before we talk about your company here. Um, proximity can influence where you live, what you do, the people you meet. You're influenced and who you're influenced by, what industries existed where you grew up?
Jimmy Kim: Oh that's a great one. So where I grew up I was actually in a very government space. I grew up in the Washington DC metro area. And uh yeah everybody thrives to work the 9 to 5 there. And uh so why I don't live there anymore, uh it's where my parents are from. And uh you know my, my driver would be twofold I guess, it's very simple. It's like I saw that as [the] industry, but then on my side my father uh being a first generation immigrant. We came here when I was, wasn't born here, I was born in uh Korea. And when we came here my father was entrepreneurial. He wanted, well I guess more "business owner" is I guess is more of the right word right. And so he went on and started [to] work. And you know I kind of learned my work ethic from watching him work six days a week running his own store. And uh you know kind of doing that all my life. So I would say my inspiration was like: overall this is what I saw as a world, but then I see my father figure giving me like a different look. And I, you know, obviously grow from your father, grow from parents, and you know it's probably why I'm a workaholic today.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I agree. I'm on the same path that you are on. Um you know it's interesting that if you look at famous stars or athletes or what, musicians, actors, they, they tend to follow the models that they have in their life which oftentimes are their parents. Uh yours being an entrepreneur sounds like you followed in that track which is great. What was your very first job? Not in high school or college, but your very first job in life you can recall?
Jimmy Kim: Alright, so are we talking official or unofficial? Because there's two different words there for me. So unofficially right, I was mowing lawns, selling lemonade stands, like snow shoveling services until I could actually get a job, right? So for the first uh when I was between the age 11, 12 every season just meant I had something different to do. Grass cutting, snow shoveling, uh it's hot, lemonade selling, whatever it might have been. So I was always kind of uh entrepreneurial in that. I've, well I guess the fact of love of money when I was young and wanting to buy things was my driver probably back then. But that's why I did it. But I understood that you had to work hard to get that money. So we did everything. I remember one summer I was covered in poison ivy because I was doing yard work, just what I wanted to do to make money, right? Uh my first official job actually uh that I got paid for on a W-2 would be I was a dishwasher at a pizza shop. Uh it was just the, the only thing that was available is the closest walking distance place that would hire me. That's basically how it started. It was about a half a mile walk to the pizza shop.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it, great. Yeah, I mean you could see in the DNA that you have is, it's all about you know providing, building, working. But the outcome, you wanted to make money, which is great. So uh let's talk then a little bit more professionally in your career.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: So walk me through the progression a bit of where you started and really what shaped your entrepreneurial um direction in, in the business world, starting with your career.
Jimmy Kim: I guess if I look at careers right, real things that I did... So I went to school. I went to uh Penn State actually uh, and uh actually didn't finish. And the reality of not finishing was the pure fact I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do in life. And it all started with one summer. One summer I went for my normal job, so I was washing cars as a lot attendant towards uh the time I was in college. And one summer I went back to get my job to be a lot attendant and uh they told me that there was no roles open. But they said "Hey Jimmy, you're 18 now, you know you can sell cars. You've been around these cars for the last two years like washing them, why don't you sell them?" And that's kind of how my life started.
Uh I went over and I said "Okay," being bright-eyed, bushy-tailed I had no idea man. I just talked to everybody and, while being non-picky and non-judgmental. And sales is actually a very big superpower apparently, and I didn't know I had that, I was just naive right. But I talked to everyone. I knew everything about every car, all the engines, all the switches, all the things because I played with them all right. So I was able to talk to a customer and they probably thought I was some young little kid and they thought it was exciting. So I did really well, my first month I was actually the Salesman of the Month. My first month in I made a $14,000 paycheck my first month selling cars. And well, I just never made it back to school. Uh what that, what ended up with doing that was I was ambitious. I sold cars for a couple years and then I got bored. I said, "I don't want to do this anymore, I want to do more." So uh they gave me an opportunity to do finance. And no idea that I was going to learn finance. I shipped off to Kansas City for a couple weeks, learned all these talk tracks, compliance and laws. Next thing I know I'm in finance. Uh then next thing happens I continue growing and I'm in charge of finance. I'm the Finance Director at this point. Again, no degree, no whatever, but I'm just good at selling and that helped got me there right. Uh and then I got a phone call and suddenly I'm running three Saturn stores.
So S-, it was kind of a cool progression at the age of 25 I was running three Saturn [stores]. I remember sitting at this big General Motors conference and I'm like the youngest kid, I look like a lot attendant that's supposed to be in there because I'm Asian so I look 10 years younger. I'm in my 40s now, and people always say I'm in like 30s probably right. So like yeah, you know, back in my 20s I looked like I was like 12. And so here I am at General Motors and stuff, but then they call the top 10 uh you know dealerships in that region and suddenly here we are right. So we're performing. So uh that's kind of where it learned. And then uh that's when my first industry kind of popped right. So in 2008 when the uh bankruptcy happened in the world right, uh the first big re-, that big recession uh, General Motors got popped and Saturn was no longer going to be in existence.
So I had a decision to make at that point. And uh the owner at that company offered me [an] equity stake in their new Kia dealerships they were opening up. But I knew this wasn't what I was g- wanted to do forever and I always wanted to go do something [for] myself. So uh at that time I had met this guy, a friend, his name was Anik. And uh basically what happened was he was doing this thing, he was selling online, he was doing affiliate marketing, he was teaching people how to do things online. And he had a business that was operating 80, 90 people. And he needed some operational help. So I made a kind of a unique barter. I said, "Look, I'm ready to make the career change. I'll come help you with operations because that's what I've learned, and I understood that stand-, that side. If you could teach me what you do from marketing, the copy and email and everything else." This is like 2007, 2008. And so uh I started learning. I took a huge pay cut, [down to] 25% of what I had. I sold my home, I went to an apartment. But I wanted to learn. So for the next two, three years I just grinded and learned and I just learned everything about the business and how to operate.
And then I jumped off to go start my first one. And we always had this understanding upfront, like I was going to do that, right. So that's when I jumped out to start my new uh business. It was uh, first was a self, solo entrepreneur. I would build email lists. Basically I'd run Facebook ads for targeted uh opt-in products, like uh an ebook or something, they would opt in. And then I'd promote them third-party affiliate products and then I'd earn a commission. That's how it started. Then I said I want to teach people how to do that. So then I went off and taught people how to do that by uh creating courses to do that right. And so I would use that, leverage my email marketing that I was learning and to be able to kind of drive revenue.
And then that led me into the weirdest way, that started to kind of take off at the same time, while an investment opportunity came up on my table. So a friend of mine at that time uh, he was running this retail boutique store in Las Vegas. And they had gotten a PO from PacSun for 50 grand and they couldn't afford it. And so they knew that I had money, and they came to me and said "Hey, do you want to you know let us borrow 50 grand?" I don't know, I said "Sure," and I let him borrow it. And uh over the next couple months I got to learn about his business. And I said, "Hey man, I really have a crazy idea for you. If you let me partner I'll take you and we can go on this fun journey, but only if you're ready to do it." And that's what we did. So I converted that money into it. And the first thing I did was made an online store, e-commerce store on Shopify right. And suddenly, and this is 2012, 2013, we start the store. Things start moving. And then next thing we know, we are no longer [a] retail storefront, we're completely D2C, we're [a] house brand and all that good stuff. So it was a really cool experience.
And at that same time while I was running that on the marketing side, I was, I was running my other business. And that one evolved from this education business into a software company next. Because suddenly I realized there was all these little things that I needed to do that were really annoying and tedious and I was tired of paying people. So I started building those tools in house and then eventually selling [them]. So like, I was doing a lot of things. And all that time I was using email. And this problem that we have, we couldn't find the tools that we wanted to, to do. And at that time I'm super entrepreneurial, so I'm like "Yeah guys let's just put some money together, this is easy, let's go build this little tool to do it for ourselves." That's actually the birth of Sendlane. Uh it was a terrible tool at first, but it did the one thing that mattered most, which was deliver email right. Everything else kind of junky, you had to click certain things, this corner, edge didn't work really well. But it was okay, that's all we wanted. It was just the three of us and we were just here to make it to run our own programs the way we wanted to run it. So that's how the, the start of Sendlane happened.
And also with the other two businesses... so basically with those uh, I'll kind of go in the e-commerce one, that one first um. I, in 2017 we exited our partnership. Uh the easiest way I always say it, and he always laughs when I say [it] is: I'm a capitalist and he's not. And uh I wanted to keep pumping up pushing the gas, and he wanted to pump the brakes because it was making the brand uncool as we're you know scaling north of $10 million. And uh he felt that this is 2016, '17 so like, it was in earlier days. And you know he didn't like the fact that a brand was going out of course. We look at Supreme now, it was a men's streetwear clothing, so we look at Supreme now, we're like "we could have been that." Um, but we had all the right influence to do it. But anyways, we parted ways. He went off to go start this crazy podcast on Sirius Radio and stuff so it's pretty cool like you know, we all evolved other business. I was all supportive. I always kick myself but I had this great cash operating business. It was a big cash cow for me uh, had a lot of people in subscription, little micro subscriptions, I had product sales happening. And because I was bored and it wasn't challenging anymore I sold it. I sold the company, I sold all the assets. A couple of the products have sold and resold uh recently. Just one of my products got reacquired again. I was like, "well that's cool" uh...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, right, that's crazy.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, it was a product called Doodly. It was a whiteboard animation video uh tool. And I built it, and I sold it. And then they bu-, continued building on, they sold it again to a larger company now recently. So it's kind of moved up the chain in its own way, so wow.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, lots of innovation. That sounds like a really good track to get into the business you're in today. Um you know I look at business as marketing and innovation. Those are the two things you have to keep building upon. And you're kind of right in the middle of it with the marketing and the innovation side of it. Where do you see the product? There's a landscape of email marketing companies and technologies out there, but what is it you guys do differently or maybe do better than other companies in the space you're in?
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, um immediately: we're unified. So we're not just email, we're email and SMS. And that eliminates us to two companies really in the market, just us and another company right. Everybody else in this space doesn't do it. Well maybe three, four, there's some outliers. But if I look at it in like retrospective like real customer and stuff, probably a couple of us in the market right. A lot of the people in the market I think are not really thinking the same way we are, or they lack deficiencies in areas that are important. So to us like, I always say like our products' immediate differentiation starts there. Now there's a lot of things that we're different on on this product side, and I'm not going to get into [the] nitty-gritty with it. But like we just do the things that are real inherent problems that people are probably facing today on their current platform. So a lot of times when I'm out there talking about our platform I'm always like "here's like 11 things that people wish they could do on a product, we do those things." Because there are things that as a marketer I needed to do and I believed I needed to do, so I built it that way uh unlike others. So like a pure perfect example is the ability that we're the only one that does multistore. And what that means is, I've got two Shopify stores right. On my competitors, you've got to go open up two accounts. On Sendlane, you open up one account right. It's a big time savings, big cost savings. And also just makes more sense right. Especially if it's branded USA and Canada, why do you need two different accounts to mail them when you should be able to do it out of one? So there's things like that that kind of inherently happened. Wasn't on purpose, I didn't build the product for differentiators. I built the product and it just happened because these are the natural product thought processes that I had when I was building this product.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it, great. So what's the outcome, what's the biggest benefit a user would get from your product? Not getting [into] all the details, but high level they sign up, they're using your platform, like boom you're going to do these things for them and they're just going to love it.
Jimmy Kim: It saves time and makes you money. Those are the two things we do.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love it. Simple, easy. And for business owners totally makes sense.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah um.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: In fact, I wish I was an e-commerce company because I, I [would] utilize you guys, but we're, we're in a different business. But I'm sure we can talk after. Um, you've raised capital for the company. Uh Series A, Series B round, is that correct?
Jimmy Kim: Uh yes, correct. Seed, A, B.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. Seed, A... yep. Raising capital is a journey. What did you know about raising capital before you began?
Jimmy Kim: I knew nothing. Nothing at all.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow. Okay, well we have listeners right now on pins and needles listening to what you're about to say next. Okay.
Jimmy Kim: Alright. So I'm going to go back, I'm going to go back to 2017. Okay, we're going to zap back to the first time I said "I think we need to raise capital to build this, is actually really expensive right, it's SaaS, it's very expensive." And uh things didn't work. So I said, "Well what do I have to do?" Well first I did the typical things. I went online, I read things, I found some great resources. People like Jason [Lemkin] and SaaStr for example, and like uh you know, Brett Fox on Quora. Like there were all these different people that got to talking about different things that came into fundraising. I just learned. And what I learned at the core of it was one very simple thing when I first started, is that it basically is a numbers game. Right? And I'm used to that in my life. I've always been in sales. So I realized it must be a numbers game, and it must be a sales motion.
So the initial thing, thought process was, "Okay, no problem. I need to make a pitch deck, and then I need [to] build a list." So what I did was I built a list and I just attacked. I actually have... I don't have it handy. Let me see if I have it. This would be awesome. Let me pull it up real quick because live I can pull up a really cool uh, I was... I can't, I don't know if you can see that but right there that's like an infographic. I can send it to you if you want to post it up. But I made this infographic back in uh, back in 2018 after I did my first raise. Because first I didn't know what I was doing, secondly I was so proud of what I did that I wanted to make [an] infographic. But here I'm going to tell you about the numbers. I, I, I created a list of 2,728 venture capitals firms right. And from that I booked 135 first meetings. Okay. I had 74 virtual phone meetings, and 61 in-person meetings. Okay. Of those 95, 21% of those went into a second call with me. From there, 30% went to a third call with me, and 9% went to uh, 9% went to a fourth call with me. Okay. That ended up landing me three term sheets. Okay.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's wild.
Jimmy Kim: So why I say that is, it took a heck of a lot of time, energy and a lot of freaking "no"s, and a lot of time wasted. And so that was my first raise. And let me tell you, like I'll kind of progress you through what I learned now, right. So uh a lot of things that I learned in the initial days was A) I did anything that the person asked me to do, which was dumb. Uh they would ask me for this data, that data, just... and I would just give anything that to get the person to like talk to me right. The second thing I did was I transformed out of who I was. And you know what, what I think of I mean by that is like you know, I, I'm a guy who you know, I'm wearing a hat. I get on calls, this is me. I'm at meetings, I speak on stage with a hat on. I like hats. Uh I like shirts, I like you know, like t-shirts right? And I tried to be someone different. I, I remember when I started my journey when I was in person I would wear the button-up shirt, nice stuff. By the end of the event, what was funny was my la-, my term sheets all came from places where I was either wearing shorts, a hat, or both, a combination of it right. And what I mean by that it was I was real, I was me at that. You know, I mean I started changing to me because I was kind of tired of getting "no"s and realizing I don't fit the bucket right. I don't have the background, I don't have the educational background, I don't have anything. I just have the pure business background.
So that leads me to my A right. So uh, through the seed, right, here's what I did. I took the seed, and then I took in debt along the way. I did revenue-based financing along the way because I needed to get myself to a certain point. And I was very thoughtful that I understood exactly what the dollars were needed to be used for and how to get to my next point right. When it came...
Jake Aaron Villarreal: For the listeners, for the listeners that know what that is, explain that type of debt financing.
Jimmy Kim: So if your company is profitable or you have good cash flow, you can go out and get people to give you an advance essentially, and you pay back based around how much revenue you're generating, a percentage of that goes back until it's paid off, of course with interest. So it's uh, it's a good stage of financing if you are in a good stage with the company. Don't do it if you're burning money, if you're on a negative growth trajectory. We were moving up and to the right, things were going positive. We're basically like I would say ramen profitable at that, that point, because we were staying, we were bootstrapped essentially until that point. So we uh, we just always kept that mantra as much as we could right. Uh and we raised some debt along the way and eventually went to my Series A.
And my Series A, after that learning experience, this is what I did this second time and it was very different. First, I didn't do all the sourcing myself. I took a list that I downloaded off Crunchbase and different places and I sent it off on Upwork and I hired some people to go get me the information. Who is their person, where's their LinkedIn, give me all that stuff. Then I took it and uploaded [it] to my free HubSpot account and I put it into a cycle. Basically I created deal kanbans and I basically made a flow of exactly what needs to happen: first touch, second touch, third touch. Automate those making tasks for myself. So that every day I got on in, I knew exactly I need to email these six people, I need to call those two people and try to follow up with these people. And I made it a complete sales process. And in fact I even put a hard date on my raise which is crazy, but I did it. And I even put, I said I, I'm closing this round on 3/31. If you're in, you're in on 3/31. That's where all my term sheets came in, of course on that day, right. But I still had to do that right, because it was important. I ended up getting like four or five term sheets at that point right, so like it works. And uh you know, I got that down.
Secondly, I got my pitch down. You know we like, as founders we like to talk about everything and anything and all the minuscule details about our business and all the things. Let me tell you something, I'm gonna be honest, they don't give a crap. They give a crap about two things. One, what problem are you solving? And two, how much money can they make? The rest of it is just things that are details that they care about right.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah.
Jimmy Kim: So you need to pitch that. What problem you're solving... actually three things. How big is the market, and how much money can they make off this, off this, and can we do this together right? And so that's what they care about. And I focused the pitch out, it'd be a 10 page deck, no more than 10 pages. I always tell people don't go ever more than 10 pages. If you are, you just [are] doing yourself a disservice. Go 10. I know you have a lot to say, but find 10, um, get right to it. Problem, solution, here's what we're doing, here's why we're awesome, here's what we're cool, here's why I'm going to win. And ultimately this is what we need directly right. And so I, I figured that kind of formula out as well. Obviously thankfully to all the other resources on the web kind of helped me kind of guide that along, and it works absolutely right.
And then the second piece of thing that I learned from that first raise is don't spin wheels. And what I mean by that is very simple, if an investor is interested they're interested. And what I mean is, this is much like sales, like the first call it's everything. If that first call or first meet, if you can't get the person to click, it hit, it's done dude, you're, you're just fighting against [a] battle that you're not going to get a good deal on and they might just still drop anyways. But the ones... every time I look back at my seed investment, every one that I did it, I got [a] deal that same day or the next day on paper. They jump, they move fast. Same thing happened with this one. They move fast when they're ready right, because they get it. And I think that's where I say don't waste time. So I understood that and said I'm not going to waste time.
And then the third thing is just uh it's uh, just staying on top of it and staying in front of it the whole time and making sure that you're just following your process. If you laid a foundation down which is following a sales process and putting uh things like you know the first meeting, second meeting, third meeting, like demos and all that stuff. Basically just the same thing like you would do in a normal sales process. You literally follow that path and you take people down a process and you de-, when they tell you no you put them in your decline, closed lost. You lost that one. And remember it's a numbers game, so you have to lose a bunch. So uh the second one was much easier of a raise for me. Obviously the business was in a better place so it helped a lot, uh but it was just easier because I came experienced. I, I did that raise in less than 60 days on the Series A, so uh that was cool. And then our Series B was easy, the business was moving and uh the, our investors pulled out another check and wrote another check, so.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. So when you're doing this as a first time uh founder and there's a lot of listeners out there that are thinking about building [a] business, they're entrepreneurial minded, thinking about starting something, how do you know how much equity to give up when you're striking a deal with investors?
Jimmy Kim: Man, what a great question. So I don't have a good answer for that. I think it's all about what your goal and intentions are within your business, and how fast you want to move on it and how confident you are with it. Um, under raising is a problem and over raising is a problem, just as much as getting it right on target. And the problem with a startup is that often whatever you tell me your budget is, you're probably going to miss it, or you're going to over exceed it. One of the two things are going to happen. Because it's really hard to predict at that early stage when you're raising money. Obviously when it gets more repeatable into growth stage it's not as big of a deal, but it's really hard. So what I tell people is very simple: work it backwards. Very simple, work it backwards. How much money do you think you need, right? Then add like 20% on top of that because you're wrong and you probably need 20% more, uh some a little bit more on that. And then you go, "Well, where am I in my company and what am I willing to give up?" It's very simple. What am I willing to personally accept? Don't let the market set the rate, accept what you want to feel that you want to give up and then go to market with it. And hopefully you're right about it and see how you're validated.
Even if you get high-, crappier offers, keep going. Too many people I think take the first offer they get, or they start attaching that first offer as the meaningful number. I can tell you in my last round my valuations were very, very long, very, double in size right. Doesn't mean that you should take your top one or your bottom one. There's so many other details that come into place with, with a raise outside of simply the fact that you have that. But yeah, it's, it's... this is what I tell people. If I'm a seed stage or pre-seed stage and I have nothing really to do except the concept and someone's willing to give me a million dollars [for] 20%, take it! Why? Yeah, you have nothing. If you walk away, you have zero right. Now you have an opportunity. Now if you have a $10 million company and someone's giving you something and it's a terrible deal, of course you should walk away. But it all depends on the situational, right? And that money is going to help you go. And I know people get so strung up on the cost and valuation, but I'd like to remind everybody always that none of it matters if no one buys you or you don't IPO.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's it.
Jimmy Kim: And most companies die. We know this, 90% of startups die. 21% of start-, is it 1 percent of companies get venture backed, and like half a percentage of get to a Series A. Like it's an insane number. So it's yeah, why pick over the thing that doesn't matter today?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah. Now that's great advice, um, it's really a good advice. And, and, and your company now, if you look at the, you raise your Series A and Series B, what's the growth been like? How big are you, are you, are you national, are you international? Give us a little background of, of Send-, Sendlane.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah so our growth has been uh great. Uh you know one of the biggest things that we had to refind out... so going back to that story I didn't go through all of it. But we started Sendlane as one thing and then we pivoted in 2020 into another thing. So we pivoted into e-commerce in 2020, so we had to basically flip our revenue and then take off on our revenue. It was kind of an interesting little move that we had to do. Basically we had to, we were, been declining, and we still are declining a legacy business in the company and we've been skyrocketing our new business of our new platform. So it's been a little bit [of a] juggle trick but we're, we're growing over 100% year over year so like things are moving right. Things are hustling, bustling. We're uh, we're [a] lean team I would say of about 80 people total. Uh I always say lean because we're spread thin, but I believe in lean [to] run uh it's, it's not good to be bloated. So we run lean and run mean. And uh what else? Uh what, what else, what was the last part of the question, y-?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, just in terms are you local, are you global?
Jimmy Kim: We're remote. We're global. Uh we are USA based and I, and most my team are in San Diego uh, meaning like my leadership and, and my uh some of my immediate team. But a lot of the team is all over the United States, some international, some Canada, all that good stuff. So uh we've gotten into a good place. It's funny, we started as a remote company. So we went remote, went to a company uh into person, and then when we went remote what was fun, we went into something I already had called Friday Protocol. Friday Protocol was our uh work from home days anyways that I had already set up in the company. And on those Friday Protocols was basically you check in uh you know do a scrum, "Here's what I'm working on today, here's what I worked on yesterday" in a chat, and we move off and get to work right. So we just instituted that, that stuck, and now we just run Friday Protocol every day in life.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. You know, pivots are part of companies, they do it to innovate, they do it to protect themselves, to survive. When you did it, was it a growth move or was it just a reassessment of where the real opportunity was in the future?
Jimmy Kim: It was a niche down move actually. Uh we were trying to do everything for everybody. We were trying to be everything for everybody, and all-in-one for anybody. We could do anybody, and realized when you try to be for everybody, you're a jack of none. It was really hard to be able to service everybody because you couldn't. You would hear so many different user stories that you wouldn't know what to [do]. And I looked at myself and I said, "Well let's look back at my personal experience. Where is it that I believe that the tech is the most lacking? Where is it the place that I believe that I could really help support?" And naturally it was e-commerce, and so I built that and we, we pivoted. So it took two years to pivot. It was like 2019 to 2021. We had to rebuild, we basically rebuilt the entire platform from the ground up, uh and uh well we basically sold on another platform, our old platform for two years while we were building at the same time. So we would sell to not anybody, but most anybody who had, had a legitimate business that needed email marketing needs right. Uh we were, just did what we had to do to keep the funds going right. Uh and then uh, and then with that new launch of product we started going to market. And then uh it's been uh kind of a heck of a ride finding PMF [Product-Market Fit] of course. And I would say that we truly found PMF... well I, I take it back, we believe we found PMF around uh six to eight months ago probably at this point. Not even that long ago. Before then it was just ground and pound sales. Now it's inbound leads and uh much better uh much better looks, and being brought up by competitors and so forth. So it's a, it's a unique little thing that I would say that happened in the business and I still don't know how to kind of give the right words for it, but the answer is PMF is very simple: you can say yes to everything. That's the way I say [it]. Your mark-, your audience, they ask you a question, your answer is yes. That means you have PMF.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah I got it. That's great. You know, you know every company that we've talked to has done a pivot. In fact during COVID there was companies that went out of business if they didn't make a change or didn't adapt. We as a company, we helped um founders and startups hire, scale um. And that's when, when COVID hit, it made it easier for us because companies could hire anywhere.
Jimmy Kim: Yep.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And it was mainly US. And then we started to get a ton of requests for companies asking if they could hire, you know people in Mexico or Canada or South America, Eastern Europe, wherever it was, and we didn't have a structure to set up to do that [and] support them. So we had to make a pivot, and our pivot was, "Well, okay, they need compliance, they need HR, they need understanding of like what the talent pools look like, and also uh how to hire and onboard and offboard." And we didn't have that and we weren't going to build it.
Jimmy Kim: Yep.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: So we ended up doing is we partnered with a, a company came out of MIT, and we said, "Look, um you guys provide HR, you, you provide payroll, we actually go out and find people anywhere." And so we formed this partnership, uh now in 50 countries, we're in five conti- [continents], where we can serve you know candidates within 48 hours to people that are looking to hire, and it's a free HR support platform and everything's very streamlined, smooth. But because of COVID, if we didn't pivot we'd probably be in a different stage. And it just, it's great to know that even in down times or times that you're not sure you can create a solution or a product, uh you can innovate if you think deeply and figure out really what's the frustration you're trying to deliver and support and provide a solution for, and be able to do it in a way that makes sense for, for your, for your customer. So pivots are I think by far the most interesting part of a company, because it's always a journey, you're going to go up and down and figuring out where you go next is always the question, so it's great that you're able to do that.
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, they say that just so you know, pivoting absolutely sucks. It's not fun, but necessary evil. And you're right, like I, I've seen plenty of companies die without the pivot, they just fiddle, fizzle away. They can't handle it. You've got to pivot, you got to innovate. Those are the two things I've learned in this market.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. You know some of the best uh coaches and strategists out there in business say that 80% of business is psychology, 20% is strategy. When it comes to psychology, you as the leader, what sort of methodologies or tools do you use to stay positive in good and bad times?
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, that's a great question. So I, I, we, we exercise ex-, pretty extreme transparency with this company. We celebrate our wins, we talk about our losses, and we do a lot of retrospective on it. To me it's uh, to me it's not just about only the wins and the positive, but always looking at problems and understanding them, and then sp-, and then being able to come to a decision together to what's the best way, you know what to do next time it happens or be aware to solve that problem. So like I always say like, our culture and our company, we always say like, you know, "don't, don't bring the problem, bring the solution," right? It's the same way we think about with everything.
So I do a lot of transparency. So let me tell you about some of the things I do which are cool. Uh every two weeks I run this thing called an Open Letter. I have over 100 of them now I think at this point. And every two weeks I run this letter and it's basically "where are we on revenue? How are we doing? What people are still here, some are not? What people, what people are no longer here?" And then uh any announcements, uh any sharing, any holidays, any hiring. And then of course kind of like my outlook into the next two weeks, right? So I do that. We do an all-hands on Monday in which we c- have all the leaders come up and talk about their high-level datas and KPIs and how we are tracking to uh the success of the company and so forth. So we do a lot of that to basically keep people aware. Because I think what I've learned at least, in personally, and, and it's been a long time since I've had a job, job, but like for me like, as long as you know what's going on, you feel better about things, right? So to me positivity is: "Hey, we know, knew that customer was going to churn. We talked about it openly with everybody. [We] say this large customer is going to churn, guys, just know that, it's up front." So when it happens it's actually not so shocking and glaring. I think a lot of times the problem with that is most people try to spin only positive light and don't talk about the negative. But by talking about the negative, you actually bring positivity into the company at the same time. So that's how I look at it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great, yeah that's great. And I believe transparency also breeds more transparency, people are more open to wanting to share their thoughts if you are, so yeah that's really great. What inspires and motivates you today, and what keeps you inspired and motivated for your team?
Jimmy Kim: Well, I guess what motivates me today... are you talking about at a personal level or at a company level?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: At a personal level as a leader for your company.
Jimmy Kim: Got it. What motivates me today, you know, you know it's interesting, I, I was just telling someone this. As an entrepreneur, what, what, what I always have is like when I take people and we hire people, we trust them obviously to do their job, but then they start elevating doing cool things, and then they leave our company right? And this is going to sound weird, but I, I'm always proud when I see someone go leave my company and go do something even bigger, better, get a salary raise, kind [of]. So in my weird drive for people and, and being a leader is I want to empower them, I want to get them in front of anything they could try, and I want them to also fail at it too, because failing is important, and being able to talk about it and working on making it better. So for me, if I'm as a leader, my empowerment at the people level is very simple. I just want to see good people do good things, and get the best out of their career to move on to the next part of their life. Like I understand that everyone's going to move on from my, me at one time or another, including myself from Sendlane one day right? And I think if you can create the best experience, I hope that some of these guys one day 10 years from now goes, "Man, that Sendlane, or that Jimmy or that Sendlane was great on my career, it helped me get to where I am today." And that to me is like the most empowering thing that I do right on, on a business level that I think about. And I give a lot of people chances. I, we hire within quite often. Uh some of my leaders today are people that started four to six years ago that have scaled with me and been able to grow into their roles too as well, so... wow.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that's, that's really cool. Kind of stole the thunder. I was going to ask you about you know, what makes your company great and what makes it great to work for you, but it sounds like you kind of already answered that, which is you serve first and you support others, whether they're going to stay with you or move on. You want to have them be successful, and, and also be able to support them in their journey in their careers which...
Jimmy Kim: It's my job too, right? As a boss, entrepreneur, employee, it's my job to be, make that person successful. It is. It's not their job, it's a mutual thing. And if I hire someone, I don't hire them just because they're going to carry all the weight on their shoulders. It's because I need to help them be better at what they're doing to help them make the company move forward right. So yeah, I think about it as both ways. It's not one way, it's not one-sided, a job is both ways when I think about it.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great, really cool. Um as the company evolves, you said something's coming out in 30 days. What's on the roadmap of innovation and where, where do you go from here?
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, the roadmap is clear for us. Uh the next two years, the next 18 to 24 months is really built around that unification story I was telling you about. Uh the product, reviews product is another product that we're building. There's a, a billion dollar behemoth in this market as well too that kind of leads this space and we're coming out with it at a parity level. So that we can go out there and attack their clients and say, "Hey like we've got it all now under one roof again," right. So uh we're excited about that and then we start to continue to cycle that and attack the next one and the next one. So for us it's all about what I call the "marketer stack." It's what the sh-, what the typical Shopify or e-commerce stack owner has is their stack we're looking to eliminate and become a single stack unit. So in future by 2025, my goal is very simple. If you're a Shopify, BigCommerce owner, you should have one marketing tool, it's Sendlane. Attaches and does everything you need for your retention market.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love it. Wow, you presented a lot. I can tell you've got it down and also it's very authentic because you're solving a problem that there's a lot of Shopify accounts and owners out there I'm sure going to be thinking about um Sendlane. Where do we find them again? Yeah, so that's great. You've got an amazing journey and lots of growth ahead it sounds like. Uh if companies want to reach out and touch base with you you where would they find you? Where would they find Sendlane?
Jimmy Kim: Sure. Obviously Sendlane is at sendlane.com. But to find me, I'm, I'm very active in two places. I'm active on Twitter, uh my Twitter is @yojimmykim, so "yo Jimmy Kim," so yo Jimmy Kim. And then on LinkedIn, just Jimmy Kim. You can find me on uh social, I'm very active on both of them. I do respond to DMs, I do respond to people's messages. I'm uh I'm a big believer of that. It's just, it's my inner sales guy mentality that wants to tell people "no" uh as well too, being, being clear answers, right? When people cold, cold message me I tell them "Hey, sounds cool, but not for me man." So they le-, stop messaging me. And I, and you know how people complain about that often? I'm like "just tell them no and they'll stop messaging you dude." And so I just tell them no, it's very easy. So I will always respond. But that's where I'm at. I like to drop a lot of uh strategical things. I don't talk about business as much as more strategy around what I teach around email and SMS and retention marketing. So my social marketing is very much around the practitioner side because that's what I really know best and that's what I love talking about.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it, that's great. Leave us with a message to entrepreneurs that are thinking about taking that step and building their dream. What advice would you give them to, to kind of nudge them forward?
Jimmy Kim: You know, it's not, it's not as much of a nudge, uh nudge thing, but as more of a uh, more of an advice piece. And the advice piece is very much simple: if you're going to do it, go all in or don't do it at all. And what I mean is focus. One of the things that I always kick myself as I look back into the world is I tried to do everything. I tried to be a little bit of everything. I was building uh my, my e-commerce company retail store while I was doing my software company while I was kind of building Sendlane at the same time. It was a bad idea. If I would have put all that energy into just one thing and just hyper focus it, I would have done it three times faster, probably 10 times faster. And so my, my advice is if you're gonna do it, go all in or don't do it at all. Please don't half-ass it. I understand that like building a night and all that stuff, but like get to a place where you can do it all at once because you will do much faster if you put all your mind to it and not get spread th-.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: So they focus on the one company you're building versus three or four at a time?
Jimmy Kim: Correct, it's too hard, it really is. And I know some people... we're not all Elon Musk. We can't look at Elon and be like, "we'll just build [a] billion dollar company." We're humans, Elon's an alien, I don't know what he is. But all I know is he's great and amazing and we can't follow his footsteps because he is just special. So yeah, stop trying to do it. Just focus, get one successful, and then you can worry about expanding and doing other things, hiring a uh you know president or CEO to run your thing and go build the next one right. I'm going to do that eventually right. Eventually I'm gonna, when the company gets large thousand, I'm not going to be interested in running this company. That's not me. I want to go build, I'm a builder right. So I'll probably go build again and I'll probably start my next one and go start from zero again, but yeah that's fun.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah that's great. You know lastly, AI's had so many breakthroughs recently and seems like the whole world's opened their eyes to what it really is, what it can be. In your platform, does AI exist? Do you see a fit for it in the future, where is it, where is it set there?
Jimmy Kim: Yeah, AI, I love AI. Um I think it's the greatest timesaver ever created so far in life. And it's going to be continuously there. It was never going to replace the humans, it's just going to evolve the way the humans need to change things. No different [than] when Photoshop came out for designers right. It's no different, it's just helping them get better at it. Uh in our platform we don't really do anything really with it because it's really content and AI... like the machine learning automation we do a lot of that already, we just don't call it AI. So like it's the same thing, it's making decisions based around uh behind input that's coming in from a behavioral action point and it's automating. How do I see in the future? Well without getting into too much, part of our mission of unification allows us to get into a place of optimization. And the goal behind, I hope to see with what happens with AI, machine learning over the next two, three years with all the intelligence is that we can actually have optimization occur automatically. So it's not static. It's you send, you, you're, you're doing your everyday work and it's auto-optimizing in the background based around what you want to do. So that's how I look in the future. But I think uh, I think AI is the greatest timesaver. I think there's a lot of things, and we're way too early to even know what we're about to walk into right now. So it's exciting man, exciting times.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah really cool, that's great. Yeah, well before we wrap up I just want to give a huge shout out to you Jimmy for joining us today, and all of our listeners that are listening, it means the world to me that you choose to spend time with us. And just want to share that my name is Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now, but can't wait to connect with you all again soon on our next episode. Take care.
Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host Jake Aaron Villarreal signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market and they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
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