Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Max, thanks so much for joining us.
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Thank you so much, Keith. Yeah, it's, it's been a pleasure to meet you. Thanks for having me.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
I'm excited to talk to you, Max, because we're going to talk about Paperless Parts, which the manufacturing industry is massive, yet, I think it's been largely underserved when it comes to technology. So that means there's an opportunity for disruption. And Paperless Parts is building software, which is focused on a core part of a manufacturing company's core business. So let's talk about the company and what you guys do.
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
So yeah, you know, we're helping manufacturers out there that make a lot of custom parts to easily quote those parts and increase their revenue, lower the amount of time that they're spent doing on kind of manual tasks, things like that. So yeah, it's an opportunity for us to enable a lot of these manufacturers that have been traditionally underserved, to do their jobs a lot quicker and service their customers better.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
So like the past, how would they go about, you know, quoting an actual project and how it was Paperless Parts automated that?
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Yeah, so the example I like to use is, you know, let's pretend you're Elon Musk get at SpaceX, because he doesn't like to wake up and pretend that they're Elon Musk, right. And, you know, he's out there building Falcon rockets are gonna go out to Mars and launch satellites and go and, you know, hopefully, eventually colonize Mars is like a big mission of theirs. But when it comes down to it, SpaceX doesn't create all of the components that go into that rocket, themselves, they subcontract that work to custom part manufacturers of which was about 30,000. Plus across the United States alone. And what SpaceX does is their buyer is going to send something called an RFQ, or request for quote, out to this network of contract manufacturers, and custom part manufacturers. And they're gonna say, I need, you know, this amount of, of these doohickeys made by this date. Well, it's Bob the estimator that receives that, that that package, and what he does is he opens up a CAD system, an old ERP, an Excel sheet, he prints off the information that he gets, and he starts to work in all these different systems using pen and paper to try and calculate what the price should be for SpaceX, to walk down the hallway to meet with the engineer, to meet with the sales team to figure out what to actually charge for it. And this process can take days or weeks to turn around. But in the meantime, you know, the competitor has already sent the quote back to SpaceX and there's likely won the job. But what we've done here at PayPal as parts is we take that technical package that you need to respond to for that estimate. And we're able to drop it into our cloud system, and do a bunch of geometric analysis and tell Bob the estimator exactly what he should be charging for this part, and minutes, versus, you know, days or weeks. So we're creating there, it makes their life a lot easier. You know, they look really good internally, because they're getting their job done faster, right. And it just reduces the risk associated with quoting parts, because if you miss something, it could cost you a lot of money. And so then the upstream value for the owner is an I'm making more money. My customers are, you know, much happier, right? And it allows us to just have a lot better profit margins on the work that we're doing.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
And I love use cases like this, because it's just a perfect example of how software can really have a powerful impact to a business. So what's the background story in the company? How did it all come to fruition?
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Yeah, so it all started back with one of our co-founders, his name is Jay Jacobs, he created one of the largest custom Park manufacturing facilities on the globe, rapid manufacturing, they're based up in New Hampshire. And it was during that time that he scaled it from, you know, kind of a guy in a garage with a machine to over 300 employees, you know, millions of dollars in revenue. And it was during that time that he realized that there was a huge opportunity to improve processes, you know, one of them of which was the estimation process. And so he developed some pretty formulaic ways to approach estimating because a lot of folks, it's a guesstimate or a finger in the air in order to get a quote turned around quickly, or the way that one person might quote a job, they say, you know, cost $1,000. And another might say, Well, I would actually charge them 1500. Why is that? You know, there's a Delta there, a lot of tribal knowledge associated in quoting. And so he developed a methodology in a formulaic approach to estimating he sold that facility and he met with a few local onshore entrepreneurs. errs, you know, one of which is Jason Ray, who's our CEO, Scott Sawyer, our CTO, and they developed a game plan to create a software that would enable manufacturers to quote parts much faster. And that's what brought us to where we are today. And experience in the correct type of growth that we are.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, the company raised or announced a series B round of funding towards the end of last year $30 million. So what's the current size of the company in terms of number of employees and growth plans ahead in terms of hiring?
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Yeah, so you know, when I, when I joined about a year and a half ago, we were around 30 people in a basement. And, you know, right around 100 customers, you know, today, we're over 100 employees, and over 350 customers to date. So we've seen the market respond very well to what we're doing. And we've seen the customer success metrics, you know, go through the roof. And now we're planning the support that type of growth by aggressively hiring across every single department, we have dozens of open positions out there right now. And we have the fortunate benefit to be one of those organizations that are trying to rapidly expand.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, once someone joins the team at Paperless Parts, what's it like to work there? What's the day to day culture like?
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Yeah, it's been super exciting to be a part of, because we've, we just got a brand new office here in Boston, we just opened up a brand new office in on the West Coast, in San Diego. And it's already grown, you know, so fast. So we have new team members joining every day, everybody wants to help one another when we want to succeed together. So what's been a big thing for me, it's just a crop cross collaboration, you know, between team members, you got a new person joining, everybody comes up introduces themself wants to get to know their background, the new role that they're going to be a part of an offer anything that they can to make them successful, because they know that, at the end of the day, if that individual is contributing in an impactful way, it's going to make everybody else's lives, you know, easier and better and translate to, you know, better experiences for our customers as well. So we got a great office, you know, that has everything from the, you know, the keg in the kitchen, and the in the snacks and the coffee and everything like that, with, you know, good meeting room space, and stuff like that, and a great place in Boston, right across from the garden. So really easy to get to. But the one thing that just I've noticed is kind of the electricity in the office, you know, we have conversations all the time with customers happening in one department and the other departments working on, you know, helping with an implementation and the others are, you know, building amazing products, and you just could feel the buzz. And when you walk into the office every day, you're charged up, it just energizes you. And so, you know, that's something that I think from a from a culture standpoint, only continues to grow up, because it seems like every week, we're adding new employees and in, you know, new blood to the company. And that that'll, you know, I think really charges everyone's batteries when we see folks that are joining in bringing kind of new ideas to the table.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Now, the job market is very competitive out there. There are lots of opportunities for people to explore. So why is now the ideal time to join Paperless Parts?
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
No, I would say it's because we're not seeing much headwinds when it comes to growth. We continue to quarter over quarter, you know, grow our revenue grow the customers that we are able to serve. So the market demand is absolutely there. And you know, for me personally, it always comes back to the why and the why for me again, is that the people that we serve, you know, now's a great time, because we're making a huge impact on these people's lives by providing them the ability to build and scale their companies much faster than they previously were.
Keith Cline, VentureFizz
Well, if you are incident exploring opportunities at Paperless Parts, you need to go to their company page on VentureFizz, which has all their job listings there. Go to venturefizz.com/paperlessparts and you'll see all their listings there. Thanks so much for taking the time to share all the details on the company, Max.
Max Tipton, Paperless Parts
Thank you, Keith. It was a pleasure meeting you and looking forward to meeting any of the future folks that are interested in joining the rocketship.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
