Ep 30: How Do You Build a Scalable High-Growth B2B Business? With Sri Subramanian –ShoppinPal

Ep 30: How Do You Build a Scalable High-Growth B2B Business? With Sri Subramanian –ShoppinPal

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In this episode Sri (short for Sriram) Subramanian, CEO of ShoppinPal shares his journey from happy PayPal employee to startup founder. 

ShoppinPal today serves as the glue to stitch together web applications for the food, restaurant, and service industries. On the first pass, you might think ShoppinPal is just another Zappier or IFTTT –but Sri’s strategy is fundamentally different. They engage the application software manufacturer and become integrated within their software. This allows a company, say an inventory control software, to immediately be able to work with many different points of sale systems [POS], without needing to spend many hours matching API endpoints.

How did you come up with the idea? In 2016 when I was dabbling with some guys on some retail applications, I noticed that these stores had many applications and they spent hours in front of spreadsheets. From that, we started building back-end integration for POS systems.

How did COVID impact your startup? In late 2019 we launched. Then COVID happened and we started getting US companies increasingly asking for point-to-point integration (integration from one app to another app) With over 400 point-of-sale systems, it becomes mathematically crazy to do point-to-point integration. So we decided to move to a hub and spoke centralized approach.

How did you get the vendors on board? Initially, the vendors figured they could build the integrations themselves; but with the explosion of apps, they suddenly realized they couldn’t keep up building every combination of integration possible. At first, we worked with the developers of these software companies. They became our champions, and then we were able to partner and become their integration specialist and part of their product.

Listen to the complete show to hear more insights on:

• Surviving a near-death and the loss of a key account.
• Building a profitable white label software company.
• Building great products by creating room for experimentation
• Angels, venture capital and dealing with investors.
• Went to walk away from an investor.
• Product market fit.
• Customer discovery
• And much more.

About the Guest:

ShoppinPal’s CEO is a savvy, highly experienced UC Berkeley alum who goes by the name Sriram Subramanian (Sri for short). He demonstrates unbridled enthusiasm while talking about how his small but highly talented team at ShoppinPal is taking on the Goliaths in the Food & Beverage integration field, such as Omnivore and Deliverect. #Featured on Your Story: https://yourstory.com/smbstory/shoppinpal-smbs-apps-integration-cloud/amp

About the Host:

Philip Topham is The Savvy Founder. Philip has an inquisitive mind and a passion for ideas. He’s impatient to see tomorrow’s future today. He focuses on helping technical founders unlock their pragmatic dreamer and develop their business skills and social capital. With more than 25 years across start-ups and corporate roles, Philip has been everything from janitor to the Founder and Chief Everything Officer.

Words of Wisdom:

• Ideas are worthless; revenues are priceless; surround yourself with smart people.
• Life is a journey –mole hills or mountains? it’s your choice.

Connect with Philip at:

Linkedin –https://www.linkedin.com/in/philiptopham

Facebook –https://www.facebook.com/thesavvyfounder

Website –https://philiptopham.com

Free resources: 10 Most Fixable Pitch Deck Mistakes @ https://www.thesavvyfounder.com

Have a startup question? https://askthesavvyfounder.youcanbook.me

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