YouSaid · the spoken record

Yakir Gola

lines on the record: 29
first: 2022-05-12
most recent: 2022-05-12
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Company or entrepreneur because the moment you think you made it is the moment you start failing. And that's the mentality that we have. That's what drives our leadership team and our company to keep working hard, keep out executing everybody else and continue to deliver for our customers.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Look, I tell our team all the time, you know, that you can't be satisfied. You have to keep increasing the bar of excellence. Steve Jobs, a perfect example, right? This mentality that you need to continue to increase your bar of excellence. You can't get comfortable. The moment you get comfortable or you stop innovating, you're going to end up like Blockbuster. That's who we tell our team. And I had a meeting with Apple executive, Eddie Q, and we were sitting and talking and I asked him, you know, Apple's such a massive company and breaking records in terms of market cap for any company. How do you keep everybody so motivated when Apple such a massive company and you just brought up this mentality that he had? And I think Steve Jobs really had it where you have to keep innovating or you're debt and having that mentality I think is so, so important for any.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Supplies to all community members or when there was the building collapse in Miami and Surfside, we said, we're going to leverage our GoPuff delivery arm and logistics to deliver food and drinks to the frontline workers that were working 24-7 to try to find bodies. We were the first company to deliver COVID tests. We partnered with many governors nationwide to figure out how can we get COVID tests to consumers in 20 minutes. I'm proud of the work we did there. And so it's how do we take our platform of GoPuff and help local businesses, small businesses, communities in need. And I'm proud of the work we're doing. I still think we have a lot more to do. I'm not happy with what we've done yet there. I still think there's a long way to go for us there, but I think it's important for us to step up.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We're buying it from them at wholesale. So we're giving them immediate access in distribution and advertising and eyeballs on our platform. And we're all about partnering with the community and businesses. In some markets, it's actually some of our biggest sellers on the app. And now we also see an opportunity to take the local popular item in Austin and bring it to Los Angeles or Phoenix, Arizona. There's a big opportunity to expand and accelerate these local entrepreneurs' businesses. And we want to be able to use our platform to actually help and give back. So when there was a tornado in Kentucky, we have a big presence in Kentucky. We owned the largest liquor chain over there called Liquor Barn. We leveraged our platform to help. We were the first ones in terms of delivery.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“During the pandemic, we saw a big opportunity to actually partner with small businesses, small business owners, entrepreneurs, because that's where we came from. And so it started off with partnering with a local donut shop in Philadelphia. They were shutting their doors and the pandemic. They couldn't afford the rent and the peril of employees. And we said, why don't we just try selling your local donuts and products on GoPuff? It's not something we've done before, but let's give it a try. Someone on our team led the initiative. We call it the local initiative. And it turned out to be a massive success where now if you go on our platform across all major markets, we have a local category where we partner with entrepreneurs, local small businesses, owners and entrepreneurs where we actually selling their products on our platform.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“First competitor we have is ourselves. That's the first competitor we have. We have other secondary competitors, which are some of the names that you mentioned. What I can tell you, it's on us in our execution. Anyone could be a future competitor for us. And there are people that are trying. I can't sit here and tell you, hey, we don't have competition or we're never going to have competition because that's not true. But I can tell you that we know instant better than anybody else. We wake up in the morning and that's all that we do. We are relentless. We are maniacally focused on winning in this category. This is where the world is going. And so we welcome competition. And I think competition is healthy. I just don't think there's anybody that is anywhere close to where we are in instant needs.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Tell you that, and the experience at level of growth that it doesn't happen, they're lying too, right? And so we're willing to make tough moves, even if it might seem contrary or controversial. We're not afraid to make tough calls. And so we were the first, I would say, you know, growth stage company that did a reorganization to right size the organization for the next chapter of growth. And now what are you seeing? Everybody else is doing it because it's smart. Again, just the way we think about our business is thinking about profitability first. We think in the long term and we focus on our customers. It's going to allow us to operate better, more streamlined.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Going to restaurants more. They're also using GoPuff more because it's a great experience. What we've done in the pandemic was we introduced our baby product category. We introduced a grocery category. We introduced a household essentials category where now we have a huge selection of laundry detergent, shampoos, right? We launched a private label assortment of batteries and water and paper towels, which has really taken off. I will comment on what you said around the reorganization that we had. I think it's very healthy. I think as we were looking at the next chapter of growth for the company, we had to take a step back. We went from about 200 corporate employees, roughly from early 2020 to 1,500 as of Q1 of this year in significant short period of time. What happens is you create inefficiency. It just happens. It happens. And if people...”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Growing faster than any other delivery service right now. Now, obviously, during the pandemic, we had months where we were growing 300, 400, 500%. Now you're still seeing significant growth on the platform. It's because of what we're selling and the fact that we're improving people's lives. And people want experiences, right? People are traveling more.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Absolute best customer experience hands down. If you have a great customer experience, you're going to tell your friends. If you get what you ordered and you're impressed and you're happy and the order comes right and it comes on time and there's no misspacks and there's no out of stocks, right? And the driver is friendly, right? And so on and so forth, then you are going to come back. That's what we're seeing with all of our attention data. Someone tries Gopuv at least twice their customers really for life. You know, they're really sticking with us. And that's how the best company is one of the long term.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything we do is for the long term. Every investment we make is a long term investment and we think about building this company in the terms of decades. And so there has been volatility in the market. There's no doubt about it. We try not to focus too much on that and we try to really focus on our customers and delivering that.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, totally, totally. And we've had to adapt because if we wanted to hire the best talent in the world, we realized that we'd have to hire remote and also open up other central offices and hubs. And that's what we've done. That's essentially what we've done.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That we agreed to for anybody when the pandemic hit, we were the last one standing in the office. We had to shut down the office. And the company just really adapted into this flexible environment of working from home because we had to. And all of a sudden, we started recruiting in other cities and started recruiting remote talent. And now we have the central hubs across the US. It now has positioned us, I think, for a lot of success, the fact that we started in Philadelphia, but that's kind of been our journey. But I would say it's definitely helped us.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I would say Philadelphia has really been our first investor in many ways. They didn't contribute capital, but they've really helped us scale the business in a differentiated and scrappy way. What Philadelphia has given us is this underdog mentality. The fact that we've been away and sort of secluded in our own city, we haven't been in sort of the typical mentality of Silicon Valley founders and businesses. We didn't do it the Silicon Valley way. We did it the GoPuff way. Lean and scrappy has been part of the ethos of the company. The challenges that come with it is the recruiting talent in the earlier days when people weren't really familiar with GoPuff. Raff and I have always been these leaders that have only been in offices. You know, we're very much in-person operators and we didn't believe in work from home. It wasn't something.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think why we have been able to attract great long term investors, whether it is fidelity, Blackstone, Bally Gifford, SoftBank, D1, is because the fiscal responsibility that's rooted into the DNA of our company and into us as operators, being a company that is growth-minded and profitability minded at the same time.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“When we started the business, we didn't raise any capital. We built a business that is profitable from day one. We were cash flow positive for the first three years. And that was operating in six cities. So we took the profits from our most established markets, which was Philadelphia primarily at the time, and reinvested those into new markets. And all of a sudden, we started getting phone calls from the top venture capital firms, all their interns, you know, the interns at Penn and Arvor, right, were all using GoPuff and they were telling all the firms on which they were working at, like, we have to follow this company. They're blowing up on all these campuses. We actually didn't announce our first four fundraises. Didn't do any media around it. We never needed capital. Never. And still don't.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“This is a very, very hard business. This is not for everybody. You're managing inventory. You have a supply chain to manage. We have 15,000 employees. We have a whole driver network. We build technology to operate these microfulment centers. We have a team of 100 people that are just focused on liquor license applications. There is a lot that goes into this business model, which is why it's been so important for us to stay focused. You have to be very, very focused on delivering an amazing customer experience and doing that through vertical integration is hard. But once you get it and you build it and you're able to scale it, it wins in the long term, you know, every day of the week.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Is a major differentiation for the customer on the margin side, our margins don't come from service fees or monetizing the gig economy, right? Our margins come from our 45% product margin on the products that we buy directly from manufacturers and distributors at scale. And the margins continue to improve as you get more buyer power and more scale.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Vertical integration is really the way to have significant EBITDA and profit while also controlling the customer experience. We're not picking up from a local convenience store or grocery store. These are our fulfillment centers. So we're optimized to pack orders very, very quickly, very, very accurately. We're operating on a 99.9% inventory accuracy rate. So what you order is what you get. You're not getting phone calls from customer service representatives or in-store packers saying this item is out of stock or sorry for every item that you order you need to choose a replacement. I mean, that's an awful customer experience, right? And also the wide range of products that you can get from GoPuff, right? And it's your alcohol and your medicine and your pizza, right? Just the amount of products you can get on one platform in 20 minutes, right?”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Everything from scratch. 450 liquor licenses. We now happen to be one of the largest liquor license holders in the US. I can't even tell you the process to get these liquor licenses and what we've had to go through or just the logistics and operational excellence that we've had to build over the last nine years.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Where things are going. Next day is already too slow for some people. We're delivering to you in 20 to 30 minutes for an affordable price. And the way to do that, we believe, is through vertical integration. If you think about what we've been able to build overnine years is this network of 650 fulfillment centers across the US and Europe, which we now cover close to 30% of the US population, we now have all that technology to operate all these fulfillment centers, pack orders in 90 seconds. We just recently rolled out this technology we've been working on for the last year through one of our acquisitions where we're now automating the entire routing and dispatch processes in our fulfillment centers. The inventory management software that we built is all built in-house from us. There was no model like GoPuff, right? No one has done this before. So we had to build.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Was always about vertical integration. We saw what it is when our parents started a business was controlling the customer experience from end to end and making margins off products is really the way to win long term. You mentioned Amazon, we have a lot of respect for what they've done. If you look at when Amazon went public versus eBay, a lot of people were asking the question to Amazon, why don't you just go the marketplace route? It's much easier to scale, get a lot more customers faster. You're all of a sudden available everywhere. And it was very much not obvious that vertical integration wins long term. But fast forward, Amazon invests $60 billion in infrastructure for their prime and e-commerce business. And we all know how it plays out. Consumers want things now. And that's”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's still not even 10% of grocery convenience items are sold online. And then if you look at the percentage that are being delivered in an instant way, which is where the world is going and what the consumers want, we see the trends in our business. Our service is doing is we're giving people time back in their day. And really that is the most valuable asset that people have. And when you're delivering medicine to someone when they're sick or diapers for newborn where it's complicated or tough to leave the house or you just want to watch a movie, you need some popcorn, we're going to save you time. And once you experience instant, you realize how it's actually making your life better and easier. We're in the early innings of people wanting to use Instant. I still think we're very much in the early days. That's the mentality that”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first target customer for us was college students. We were sitting me, Roff, and three other friends in our house at Drexel, and we had a whiteboard, came up with five names. And immediately everyone just went to GoPuff. Our marketing in the early days was edgy. It's a name that rolls off your tongue. And going from a college focused company to now over a thousand cities and millions of college.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The first warehouse employees. We were the first customer service representatives. So we had to build a business the hard way and the scrappy way, a business that is first and foremost profitable.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We had a bigger vision for GoPuff. We definitely didn't think it was just gonna stay a small business. Otherwise, I think I would have just took over the family business as my dad wanted me to do. We saw a big potential in it. We just saw the excitement and the magic that the customers experienced when we just had 100 products and just focusing on college students nine years ago. But in no sense that I think we were going to get this big. I remember when we were starting up GoPuff, I would come home family dinner and on Shabbat sometimes on Friday night and my urns or my family would ask me, do you guys just want to be delivery drivers for the rest of your life? And not exactly understanding, you know, what is the vision here? What is the path to what you guys are building? We were the first delivery drivers. I've done alongside ROF almost 8,000 deliveries ourselves. We were.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“How much profit you make when we were in college and I was driving everyone to the convenience store, I realized there has to be a better way to get convenience products delivered. The only way to make a business model like this work was by controlling the customer experience and having significant margins. We built a business from day one that was cash flow positive. It was important for us to build a business and nail it before scaling it. That is because we saw our parents hard at work. They set a good example for us.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We definitely did our research and homework before starting GoPuff. I think what separates us or what allowed us to even start GoPuff was how we were raised in our backgrounds. Rough and I met just over 10 years ago in college at Drexel University. And both of us hit it off because both of us grew up working with our parents in their small businesses. So my family moved from Israel into the US. Roth's family moved from Russia into the US. My dad had a small jewelry shop and I worked with him since I was maybe 12 years old. Ralph's family had a banquet hall in a restaurant in Brooklyn. He was a bus boy working with his parents. And we saw our parents work really, really hard. They were so customer focused. And obviously when you're a small business owner, you have to make profit, right? That's your salary.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Come home family dinner, and my parents would ask me, Do you guys just want to be delivery drivers for the rest of your life? And not exactly understanding, you know, what is the vision here? You know, we were the first delivery drivers. We were the first warehouse employees. We were the first customer service representatives. We've been able to build over nine years is this network of 650 fulfillment centers across the US and Europe. We now cover close to 30% of the U.S. population. We didn't do it the Silicon Valley way. We did it the GoPuff way, lean and scrappy has been part of the ethos of the company.”
2022-05-12 · Masters of Scale · Rapid Response: Stay scrappy, deliver fast, w/Gopuff’s Yakir Gola · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT