shipping-api
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Laura Behrens Wu and the business hiding in a shipping label
An online store sent Laura Behrens Wu to the post office. The problem she found there became Shippo - and taught her how to build a company without pretending to be somebody else.
Adam Fields
He left an art marketplace because nobody could figure out how to ship a painting. A decade later his software quietly runs the last mile for fine art, watches, and collectibles across 45 countries.
Jarrett Streebin
Jarrett Streebin is the founder and CEO of EasyPost, the shipping API company he started in 2012 after getting tired of wrestling with the SOAP and XML systems that FedEx, UPS, and USPS forced on developers. Pitched as 'a Stripe for shipping,' EasyPost gave online retailers a clean RESTful API for labels, tracking, address verification, and insurance across more than 100 carriers. The company went through Y Combinator's Summer 2013 batch on its second try, grew to hundreds of employees in Lehi, Utah, and reached a reported $1.5 billion valuation. Streebin, a UC Berkeley grad originally from Oklahoma, is a relentless reader who credits books, early mornings, and a 'it takes a village' approach for the company's climb.
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.