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StartOps is a growing collection of resources for supply chain, logistics, finance and CX leaders at top ecommerce brands.
COMMUNITY — We run a private, vendor-free Slack group for senior operators with backgrounds at companies like Allbirds, Glossier and T&N. Apply here: https://3b2wmtt3m7r.typeform.com/to/ZaAKuh7Q
NEWSLETTER — In 5 minutes/week, see the new tools, tech, and people you should know about in the ecommerce ops world: https://newsletters.startops.network/
JOB BOARD — Search ops jobs at a curated collection of 1,500+ top digitally native brands: https://jobs.startops.network/
DIRECTORY — We're building a directory of every operations service + product you'd ever need to procure as an ops leader:
https://app.startops.network/companies
MEDIA — Read case studies, top tips, and hard lessons learned from other operators: https://startops.network/media
The StartOps Directory started out as an internal tool for StartOps members.
Now, we're excited to open it up to supply chain, CX and finance operators everywhere.
One of the most common questions asked by the leaders in StartOps:
🤔 “What vendor should I use to solve this [supply chain / finance / CX] problem?”
For a modern COO or VP Ops, picking the right vendor stack is a huge responsibility. But with thousands of vendors out there, it's impossible to keep track of them all.
So a few months ago, we quietly launched the 𝐒𝐭𝐚𝐫𝐭𝐎𝐩𝐬 𝐃𝐢𝐫𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐨𝐫𝐲.
🔍 First, we aggregated every vendor encountered or mentioned by StartOps members — already 2,000+ of them.
👌 Then we hand-curated them all into ~100 lists of vendors that are frequently RFP'd together: https://lnkd.in/eyHeiJ3a
🕸️ Finally, we started gathering public data about each vendor's customers, investors, and partners to create a graph of the ecosystem.
This is just a first step towards our long-term goal: to create a single source of truth for the consumer/brand ops ecosystem.
If that sounds useful — check it out 👉 https://startops.network 👈
****
Want to come along for this journey? Follow StartOps to see what’s next — including our next major update in January 🚀
🎙️New Blue Ocean podcast just dropped!
Today we're joined by Mohnish Chakravarti: an ex-Stord data scientist who's attacking the massive problem of 3PL invoicing.
We hope you enjoy the episode :)
I don’t get to use the word “Byzantine” every day. But I'm breaking it out, because today we’re talking about 3PL invoicing.
This year, US 3PLs will issue $350B+ in invoices to their customers. Most of those invoices will be generated with the same 4 ingredients:
💁♀️ A human
🔣 A Byzantine, natural-language 3PL contract
📑 A big pile of CSV exports
🧮 … And an Excel model to tie them all together
Wasted person-hours isn't even the biggest problem here. In the clip below, Mohnish Chakravarti rattles off 6 ways manual invoicing hurts both 3PLs AND their customers.
Mohnish and his team at Rails are out to solve this under-appreciated — but truly enormous — problem. In this week's episode of Blue Ocean by StartOps we cover topics like:
⚫ The hidden benefits of complex 3PL contracts
⚫ The invoice lifecycle (and where it always breaks down)
⚫ Why invoice automation isn’t actually about efficiency
⚫ The products you can unlock once you've solved 3PL invoicing
If you’ve ever been frustrated with a 3PL invoice, then this episode is for you. You can listen here:
— Youtube: https://lnkd.in/enkUnUrK
— Spotify: https://lnkd.in/ejk5mtMs
— Apple: https://lnkd.in/eN5m5izg
In this week's StartOps newsletter:
🌊 New podcast ep with Keith Frymark
💰 $74M gets dropped into supply chain tech
📖 4 top operator looking for their next roles
🎱 New roles from Short Story, WHOOP and more
Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/eFWecYj2
Today, for the first time, we share the founding story of the StartOps community.
This episode is dedicated to all of the operators who were there at the beginning, and who've helped us build this group into what it is today 🙏
As promised yesterday, we’ve got a special edition of the Blue Ocean podcast this week — our guest is Keith Frymark, and the topic is StartOps itself!
For 7 years, senior ops leaders from the world’s best consumer brands have made StartOps their home — for new connections, camaraderie, and the questions they can’t ask anywhere else.
But how did it start? And where are we going next?
If you’ve ever seen StartOps on your LinkedIn feed and wondered “What even IS this?” — we made this episode especially for you ;)
Listen on your player of choice:
Youtube — https://lnkd.in/dGNU8e26
Spotify — https://lnkd.in/dKkXFxZB
Apple — https://lnkd.in/djx-Cm5y
And follow StartOps to catch some exciting updates soon :)
NEWS: This is big. I'm so excited to launch the next era of Shipium. Watch below for the full story, but here are the details:
Mac Brown and I started Shipium with a vision around how supply chains drive strategic value for modern companies. We saw it happen first hand at Amazon.
But that's an expansive idea that is hard for most to get their arms around. It took me 19 years! Over time, we've been refining and thinking and tweaking and building the right way to share this vision.
It's clear that Shipium's platform is a relatively novel idea disrupting the legacy landscape of shipping tech, which is why we fit like a glove with strategic partners leading the transformation of the shipping space like Green Mountain.
On top of that, it as become a perfect technical partner to WMS / OMS platforms like Manhattan Associates, Blue Yonder, and Körber Supply Chain, and the market has noticed. Enterprise after enterprise has turned to Shipium lately to completely rethink their cost structures and customer experience, and how those are linked.
The big idea that has proven true is that supply chain modernization is as much about an approach or methodology as it is swapping out some tech.
It's that journey that we give customers, and they love it. We want to take you on that journey too.
To summarize:
→ Companies want their supply chains to be strategic, not just a cost center hurting customer sentiment.
→ We support that by providing an end-to-end platform that coordinates key decisions across existing systems, data, and teams. On top of the platform are a collection of solutions that use workflows, data, AI + ML models, and rules that reduces shipping costs and improves customer experiences.
→ Everything is built off of 3 pillars
(1) Customer Focus - the best supply chains are built from the ground up to serve customers.
(2) Optimization - but they need the backend machinery to ensure costs are controlled and decisions are matched based on customer sentiment. Tame the Leviathan.
(3) Automation - in order to achieve true end-to-end coordination and scale, automation must be in place. Without it, there is no path to profitable growth.
→ When done properly, this kicks off a flywheel that pushes new growth, which powers investments into optimization/automation to lower costs, which powers more investment into customer experience for more growth.
This is what customers are getting with Shipium, and I'm excited to better articulate and share the journey with you on the road ahead.
Let me know what you think!
🎂 Exactly 1 year ago, I launched a weekly dispatch for ecommerce supply chain, finance and CX professionals: the StartOps Weekly.
At the time, the only thing we featured was 𝐉𝐨𝐛𝐬 — scraping 1,500+ consumer brand job boards each week for the best open roles.
But it didn't stop there.
Each week, I asked myself: "What would make this a must-read for a busy ops leader?"
I realized that the industry didn't need another NEWSletter, where the goal is passive consumption. It needed a USEletter — one where every link contains an immediately actionable opportunity.
Readers started sending me these opportunities, and I started sharing those back to our subscribers. So today, we feature weekly sections like:
❓ 𝐂𝐨𝐦𝐦𝐮𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐐&𝐀 (opportunities to share your knowledge)
📅 𝐄𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐭𝐬 (opportunities to meet more operators)
💸 𝐅𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐫𝐚𝐢𝐬𝐞𝐬 (opportunities to connect with new products)
💼 𝐂𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐝𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐬 (opportunities to hire great operators — just launched this week! 🚀)
While there's much to improve, I'm proud of the results so far: thousands of opportunities shared, and a consistent 70%+ open rate.
While I write primarily for ecommerce ops leaders, I've seen more and more supply chain tech founders, VCs and recruiters subscribing, too.
If you're one of these folks + this sounds useful, you can subscribe here: https://lnkd.in/eu3vJ8x7
For my part, I'm looking forward to the next year of writing for you!
We just dropped our next episode of the Blue Ocean podcast!
John Adams Morgan is on a quest to build an ops agency that functions with the reliability of a SpaceX rocket. We had a great time talking with him.
Almost every consumer brand outsources their accounting. Some outsource marketing. So why is it SO hard to outsource supply chain ops?
This question is at at the heart of this week’s episode of Blue Ocean, as we sit down with John Adams Morgan at Pelagic. Check out the clip below for his answer.
John cut his teeth in procurement at early SpaceX — a role where one tiny mistake could cause a rocket to explode. 🚀💥
He then ascended to VP Operations at Seed Health through a period of insane growth. But apparently that wasn’t hard enough. 😂 He couldn’t stop thinking about a meta-problem:
If you can scale ops for ONE company, why can’t you scale ops for ALL companies?
Enter his newest venture, Pelagic: A true, full-stack supply chain agency for mid-market consumer brands.
In this episode, we talk about questions like:
— Why there are millions of marketing agencies but only ~5 full-stack ops agencies?
— What has he learned from running ops across 50+ different consumer brands?
— What kind of supply chain SaaS is really worth the investment?
… and we also touch on John’s future vision for an Operator University.
You can watch or listen here:
— Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eDg_qmJ8
— Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eZ7Uds7K
— Apple: https://lnkd.in/eid2yGZH
In this week's StartOps newsletter:
🗨️ What top ops leaders are talking about this week
🔍 We go deep on quality control
🍫 Feastables needs a Director of Packaging Design (+ 4 other top jobs)
🗓️ A can't-miss source for daily supply chain news
Check it out here: https://lnkd.in/e-tsA4-2
Ever wonder what happens when a truck driver steals a Pepsi delivery and goes into hiding?
Ask Alessandra Szul — and this isn't even the craziest ops challenge she's had to deal with.
Alessandra a veteran ecommerce COO who is customer-obsessed and chaos-immune. Some of her many experiences include:
📦 Helping her family's CPG business from a young age
👩💻 Studying Applied CompSci
🚚 Boostrapping her own trucking company
🐺 Running a product team for Coyote Logistics
🥤Starting her own beverage brand
... and today, acting as a full-time and fractional COO for great CPG brands like Jeng - alcohol-free cocktails.
Meet Alessandra and learn about her incredible ops background in our latest installment of Meet an Operator: https://lnkd.in/dfkqedsr
(And if you want to meet more great operators in the future — follow StartOps)
Today, Factored Quality is a household name in the ecommerce world, trusted by brands like Brooklinen and Misen to keep their customers safe.
So it’s crazy to think that 4 years ago, it didn’t even exist.
FQ's CEO Prince Ghosh is someone I consider a friend and look up to as a leader. So it was a blast having him on as a guest for our latest episode of Blue Ocean.
Our conversation took us deep into the world of quality, covering questions like:
🌡️ How much quality control is ‘enough’?
🙅♂️ What are the biggest QC mistakes that brands make?
👀 How do you assess the quality of your own QC? (”Who watches the Watchmen?”)
🛒 Has running FQ changed how Prince shops?
One of my favorite parts of our chat was this clip: how brands can reposition their quality team as an LTV booster vs. a cost center.
Check out the full episode on your player of choice:
Youtube - https://lnkd.in/eMggwQe7
Spotify - https://lnkd.in/eMTREX42
Apple Podcasts -https://lnkd.in/eVj4sRpU
And follow StartOps for more supply chain interviews and insights.
