Promoting Your Customer’s Customer’s Customer
Your Company’s Role in the Industry Food Chain May Be Buried Deep & Unrecognized, but It Doesn’t Go Unnoticed
May 21, 2022 by Clint Chao, Moment Ventures
Years ago, when I worked in the semiconductor industry, most of my close friends & family had no idea what my company did. Even though we thought what we were building was pretty dang cool, most non-industry people viewed my company and industry as just “computer chips” and that was about it. But because I was in sales & marketing, I was building countless relationships with customers that really depended on our technology to power their products, and it was their products or services that people were most familiar with. So, I took great pride in the fact that we were helping make their efforts a reality as they were building some trailblazing stuff — my interactions with them were some of the best memories and experiences of my professional life. Some of those companies were brand new “startups” like DirecTV, DISH, and NeXT.
At This Moment
Fast forward to today, where at Moment Ventures we are investing in early stage startups building the Future of Work: the critical software and technology that helps transform how other large and established industries operate, and many of the companies that we invest in are also lesser known to the general public. These companies build technology to help to transform the operations of industries such as food, healthcare, logistics and music, but just like with my semiconductor experience, they aren’t necessarily the recognizable, household names in the public eye.
Flowspace: Right in the Middle of E-Commerce Infrastructure
I recently attended an all-employee get together of one of the companies that I work with, Flowspace.
Flowspace builds an all-software logistics platform to provide e-commerce shipping & fulfillment capabilities that are infinitely scalable to meet the elastic demands of its customer base — think of giving omnichannel e-commerce brands the ability to provide a Prime-like shipping experience without being beholden to the behemoth, or getting sucked into a lease commitment on warehouse space that you’re not in a position to commit to on an ongoing basis.
Earlier this month, Flowspace co-founder & CEO Ben Eachus wanted to bring his entire company together to help build team and company culture, as many of the over 100 employees had never met each other in person. The event was called FlowFest, and it was held at The Reef, a super cool warehouse and meeting center in downtown Los Angeles (and this facility is one of their warehouse partners that helps fulfill and ship products for many of their customers). I was grateful to be asked to attend, as well as sit on a panel to address the employees to give an investor’s perspective on things.
A Tour of the Sausage Factory
FlowFest included a walking tour of the warehouse that housed many of the products of their customer base, and it was really cool to see all of the action going on behind the scenes to get products shipped. What was also cool was that I while I was taking in the overall scene, the many Flowspace sales & customer success folks on the tour were more interested in the minute little details on the labels on the sides of pallets, whether or not their specific customer’s labels were printed correctly, or how the fulfillment station worked for their specific client. And anytime someone saw a pallet with one of their customer’s products, they’d smile and glow with pride that they were playing a role in helping that company find its way onto a store shelf or to a home of one of their customers. I heard some pretty awesome “in the trenches” stories about specific companies that I recognized by name. Super cool.
Let’s Get Reel
They had a display area of some of the products that they fulfilled. One of the products was a sustainable toilet paper brand called Reel, and everyone was psyched that Reel’s business had been surging due to recently securing orders from Target, among other places. I was asking some of the Flowspace team about Reel, and I was really impressed that they knew a lot about the company and products.
Reel paper is made from bamboo fibers, and 100% of its product and packaging is biodegradable. I learned more about co-founder Derin Oyekan’s inspiration to start Reel as part of an emerging movement of socially responsible brands redefining under-innovated categories of household staples: toilet paper and paper towels. Derin’s founding story is impressive, as he wanted to come up with a better solution than to have us continually flush 27,000 trees a year down the toilet. So go out and buy Reel and help play a role in saving our planet!
Give Your Customers Strong Shoulders to Stand On
Sometimes when you’re hunkered down in your own company’s day-to-day operating issues, it’s easy to forget that you are likely playing a big role in helping your customers run their business, and they depend on you in a big way. I know that back in the day, we had some gut-wrenching make or break experiences that impacted our customers, and it really helped me to know that millions of their customers were depending on us to do our part, even though we were largely behind the scenes.
So whether your company builds logistics infrastructure, communications platforms for musicians and artists, AI-based food science, or just boring computer chips, everyone in your company can and should take pride in what your company does to help your customers fulfill the needs of their customers. Give them strong shoulders to stand on and promote them as you would if it was your own company’s product! They’ll notice, because they depend on you!
Clint Chao is a General Partner at Moment Ventures, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Palo Alto, CA. You can reach/follow him on LinkedIn, Medium and Twitter.
