Summary
Welcome to episode 267 of the Startup Junkie’s Podcast!
Caleb Talley and Jeff Amerine are joined by TJ Sangam, CEO and co-founder of SupplyPike. This company seeks to help suppliers focus on growing their business while they do the other work of building and informing collaborative products through machine learning and artificial intelligence. From topics circling the disruptions within supply-chain in 2020, to the wild wild west of NFT’s and cryptocurrency, to a future of deep fake and AI, buckle up and get ready for this episode!
Thanks for tuning in!
Shownotes
(1:22) Introducing SupplyPike
(3:13) Entrepreneur Journey of TJ Sangam
(5:20) SupplyPike’s Response to Disruptions in Global Supply Chain
(8:44) Surprising Data in 2020-2021
(9:27) Supply Community
(11:20) Anticipated Supply Acquisitions in the Future
(13:36) A Dip into Cryptoworld & AI
(22:40) What’s Next for SupplyPike?
(26:50) New Product Launch: Data Lab
(41:17) Advice To Younger Self
(43:32) Wrap Up
Links
Quotes
“A lot of times suppliers don’t even know that they’re hemorrhaging tons of money So we help identify that.”
(2:28) – TJ Sangam
“[Small CPG’s] expertise is in making the product, not necessarily supplying them.”
(6:19) – TJ Sangam
“We want to use this data to model supply chain behavior.”
(23:42) – TJ Sangam
“We want to automate replenishment, which is the bulk of what happens in supply-chain.”
(24:36) – TJ Sangam
Data on Deck with TJ Sangam of SupplyPike
“That’s like the bulk of why people can’t handle supply-chain, it’s because of whiplash.” (25:26) – TJ Sangam
Our latest guest who is afflicted with creating the next great product and service to change lives worldwide was none other than TJ Sangam. He is the CEO and co-founder of SupplyPike, a software company focusing on building B2B SAAS products that target suppliers.
Their customers range from anyone who sells to places such as Target, Walmart, or Amazon. The problem they are solving? Well, when retailers buy the products wholesale from suppliers, and then they go to sell it back to the customers, they must make constraints to make sure the suppliers will meet their needs. These are to make sure that the supply in the warehouse meets the demand, which is fair, but these constraints often become very strict and severe, making suppliers unable to meet their restrictions. Then, in turn, the suppliers will get it with fines up to 20% of their revenue.
SupplyPike will come in and help the suppliers understand where they are losing money and also offer tools and understanding to them on the fines they are receiving.
SupplyPike’s Response to Disruptions in Global Supply Chain
Over the past year, due to the pandemic, the demand for items has increased exponentially faster than what can be supplied. This is not surprising to any of us who have seen shortages of items ranging from food to toilet paper to any and everything in between. Even when the product is readily available, the competition when it comes to freight and warehousing has created a space that is quite difficult for many companies to navigate all at once.
On top of the myriad of hurdles already placed on suppliers, plus the pandemic’s repercussions, most small CPG’s have their expertise in creating the product, not supplying it. SupplyPike wants to step in and take on the heavy lifting that comes with those hurdles so that these mom-and-pop small businesses can put their time, money, and efforts into creating and innovating their products.
The Stand Out Software
TJ explains that the software in SupplyPike is action-oriented as well. This means that when CPG’s use their software, it not only visualizes the data for them but that it communicates thresholds, where their company needs to be, and then gives them a button to take action.
“[SupplyPike Software ] tells them where they need to be, and it gives them a button to take an action. [For example,] you are losing money because there was some miscommunication on how much product was shipped and you’re owed this much money, well here’s a button to go get that money.” (6:58) – TJ Sangam
The future of SupplyPike does not stop there. If you were to zoom out to see the big picture of SupplyPike, you would see the integration of carriers, warehouses, retailers, 3PL’s and suppliers. By bringing in all their data to centralize it, they can see everything happening in the supply chain.
At its foundation, Supplypike is a data fabric. They can stitch, correlate and predict what is happening in the supply-chain in real-time, but they want to expand beyond that in the future. In other words, if they know where everything needs to be, plus harnessing their action-oriented software, they can automate the entire process end-to-end.
“We want to automate replenishment, which is the bulk of what happens in supply-chain.” (24:36) – TJ Sangam
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