Rocket Internet

The story of Convidio is very closely linked to what I did before Convidio.

I used to be at Rocket Internet in Berlin, and that's where I met my co-founder, Clément.

We became very, very close friends over the years.

And, you know, we got along so well that at some point we have to do something together.

Resolution reuse is how companies become brands.

The word we use internally, and even a lot of companies in India use it, is playbook, okay? And for a very long time, for example, there's a company, I don't remember their name, I think it was Rocket Internet, where they've just cloned businesses and they had a playbook on how to clone software businesses and everyone's so afraid of them because like anything I build, those guys are just gonna copy it because they have the playbook.

They have a specific way they do sales, they have a specific way they do marketing, and they're very good at cloning things.

So, uh, that's the playbook.

Uh, landed into India, joined up TCS.

But luckily, you know, during one of my, uh, when I was doing my, uh, MBA program, I interned at a company that ended up becoming Rocket Internet.

I just copied-

Wow

So like-

Mm

... we, I started at Tarifas24, which was Rocket Internet, and then they became Citidius.

They cha- changed to the daily deal site.

You felt like you could get more from them.

Yeah, and also, like, there was a bit of a reputation around, uh, Rocket Internet at the time-

Mm

... and, uh, not being very friendly towards founders and stuff.

Obviously, the success is all in the execution, you know, whether that's marketing or whether that's supply chain or whatever it is that you bring to the market.

So Rocket Internet, which is, um, based over in, in Germany and Austria, that was, like, their whole business.

And so, like, their most famous example is they built the, the Groupon of Europe back when Groupon was all the rage, and they sold that to Groupon within less than two years for, like, an extremely large amount of money, and they managed to replicate that over and over as, as they, they were an extremely intelligent, hardworking team over in Europe, and they actually expanded over into, uh, Asia and elsewhere, and they'd say, "Okay, there's this proven software concept in the US.

Let's go replicate that at the speed of light and get adoption in these markets where they are not yet, and then we can get acquired." Uh, and again, they did that over and over again.

I, I love that, and I think that a big point of doing this, this episode on this company is to open people's eyes that there are real consumers in Mexico, and you can build meaningful businesses there.

You have to do it differently.

Again, the e-commerce is, is a different animal than what you're used to in the US, but it's a, a ripe market, and a lot of these things that are working in the US will work in Mexico, same thing that you mentioned with the whole Rocket Internet playbook, and so it's just... it's very interesting that way.

Casey, thank you so much for, for coming on and, uh, just sharing a little bit about what you've learned with ShipBob and, and kind of digging in and telling the story with me.

I'm co-founder and CEO of Athena Studio, Belgium.

And so my background is In tech, I actually started my career at different tech startups and scale-ups, including VP in Belgium and Rocket Internet in Southeast Asia.

Then started my career at McKinsey & Company as a consultant, but in their fashion practice.

So I've done over six years working with global fashion brands, advising them on digital and technology topics.

So the idea came down specifically from your experience at McKinsey, that you saw this was an actual problem that you had to solve over and over again? Or when was the moment you thought, let's create our own company, let's solve this issue? Yeah, so

I think when was the moment I wanted to create my own company was when I was already before McKinsey.

I actually, with my work at VP and Rocket Internet, I loved that so much.

I always said one day I'll build my own company, a tech company.