Laura Behrens Wu

Laura Behrens Wu is the founder and CEO of Shippo, a San Francisco-based shipping platform that she built after getting frustrated trying to ship handbags from her own e-commerce store. What started as a personal pain point in 2013 became a unicorn company valued at over $1 billion, serving 100,000+ merchants with a multi-carrier shipping API. Born in Germany and raised across four continents - China, Ecuador, Egypt, and Germany - Laura dropped out of her master's program at University of St. Gallen to move to San Francisco, interned at a Y Combinator startup, and co-founded Shippo at 28. She tracked 125 investor conversations, absorbed 115+ rejections, and raised $154.3M in total funding from Bessemer Venture Partners, Union Square Ventures, and D1 Capital Partners, including a $50M Series E in 2021.