There’s a lot of stories around how the pandemic has changed and shifted business, our guest today Shaunak Amin is one of the biggest success stories. His startup Stadium was able to quickly pivot and grow a new business SnackMagic entirely during the lockdown and now is at $20M ARR.
Shaunak’s Background:
Shaunak Amin is co-founder and CEO of STADIUM and SnackMagic. He is an experienced entrepreneur and operator, and has helped launch and scale businesses in different industries.
In addition to the entrepreneurial ventures, his career spans financial technology and investment management with senior roles at Novus - a fintech firm based in NYC, SAIL Advisors- a multi-billion dollar family office based out of Hong Kong, ING Investment Management and SEI Investments
Shaunak also holds a BS from University of Pennsylvania. He started his first business, Tikka Foods, during his Sophomore year at PENN that initially started as a food truck and ultimately evolved into a wholesale delivery service of ready-to-eat, contemporary Indian food.
For more on this story, check out this playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnuoDHNwT1mVI7wPP-kunbjLKgnSY5ZJP
In this episode we discuss:
01:31 Shaunak’s early entrepreneurial experiences
02:37 Lessons from those days that he’s applied to Stadium and SnackMagic
03:27 The business model of Stadium
05:23 How Covid pushed Stadium to pivot
07:32 Mindset of the company in the early days of the pandemic
10:04 The effect on the team size
11:05 The decision to fully launch SnackMagic
14:08 Research process to validate SnackMagic
15:41 Timeline of idea to first order
17:50 Why they didn;t choose to be subscription first
20:00 How SnackMagic manages SKUs and helps consumers discover new snacks
22:31 Getting access to brands
24:10 The data around the purchase decisions
25:00 How consumers use the platform to try and then buy in bulk
26:06 The best sales channel for SnackMagic
26:45 The biggest headache for scaling
27:26 Network effect of treating it forward
28:34 Customer experience tracking
29:20 How they weed out weak snacks
29:57 The hidden gem of data around what people want to eat
31:03 Why Shaunak decided to take a large Series A
32:17 The future of SnackMagic
33:30 Moving beyond snacks
Books Shaunak recommends:
The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt
Influence: The Psychology of Persuation by Robert B Cialdini PhD
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton M. Christensen
Blue Ocean Strategy, Expanded Edition: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan Kim
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SnackMagic’s Shaunak Amin on how to pivot and go from $0-20MM in ARR in 8 months