41–50 of 78 posts
Does anyone know how to get around that Excel CSV issue, where Excel will "helpfully" convert a number-like value into a meaningless value in scientific notation, even if the number was quoted like "1234"? That was a huge pain point in a previous work that I did.
Cool story bro, but it give me hives just reading it. "We didn't know anything about physical order fulfilment so we hacked our way into a local optimum, rather than asking anyone who knew". Or, as we say hereabouts, a month in the lab solves a day in the library. But it only cost $500! Well, I'm sure that'll come as a lovely surprise come payday when John discovers he's working pro bono. Also, that product looks dis…
I love math where $500 in hardware plus 6 months of engineer salary equals $500. I am a grad student making about $30k/yr and my advisor still says to figure labor as costing $1,000/day.
For example, without that kludge, they wouldn't have been fulfilling orders. So, even if they "wasted" half a man-year, they still made their sales and avoided the cost of, you know, going out of business.
You can't really apply operational reasoning to startups the same way you can to larger businesses--you've got to factor in other things.
(And yes, that is used frequently as a way of deflecting legitimate operational complaints.)
This was really interesting, but it just seems like they chose the wrong fulfilment partner for their warehousing and logistics. I work for a third party warehousing and logistics company in AU, but we specialise in receiving orders from external parties in electronic formats and providing tracking information back to the orderer. People think that warehousing/distribution companies are all the same, but there are a…
I've got warehouses that send me things in EDI. I've got warehouses that have me pull something down over sftp in csv or xml. I've got warehouses with bizarre SOAP apis. I've got warehouses with bloody custom REST APIs [that probably cost them $10,000+] sitting on a mac mini that sits in their office.
Your comment really should be at the top since this blog post is little more than a warning of "Pick the right fulfillment house or it'll eat 6 months of your life"
Cool story bro, but it give me hives just reading it. "We didn't know anything about physical order fulfilment so we hacked our way into a local optimum, rather than asking anyone who knew". Or, as we say hereabouts, a month in the lab solves a day in the library. But it only cost $500! Well, I'm sure that'll come as a lovely surprise come payday when John discovers he's working pro bono. Also, that product looks dis…
Does anyone know why an off-the-shelf solution like Magento or Shopify paired with a label printer wouldn't have worked? It's interesting to see the the mechanics of an early-stage startup, but this feels like a largely solved problem? Also, how did the mess of labels get matched with the specific orders, someone was just matching invoices and stickers?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Then why do they say there's soy in it? https://faq.soylent.com/hc/en-us/articles/201274745-Vegan-Or... I can see that there might be soy from the processing plant, but I can't find that information easily on their site.
Here's the ingredients label: http://files.soylent.com/pdf/soylent-nutrition-facts.pdf Soy or soybeans are not an ingredient in Soylent. It has the "Contains: Soy" allergen label because it contains a small amount of soy lecithin, which is derived from soybean oil. Soylent contains lots of oils/fats, and you mix it with water to drink it. Oil and water don't normally mix well. Soy lecithin is an emulsifier that lets…
My wife is into clean eating. So we limit soy as part of this trend. However, I'm really lazy about eating (1 meal a day when left alone). So Soylent looked promising in that regard.
"a $500 system that successfully managed the first four months of Soylent shipments." Successfully is rather overstating it. The shipment of Soylent was delayed by over a year and went at a snail's pace. My shipment was delayed at a rate of roughly one month per month, with it eventually arriving something like six months after the first shipment had gone out, despite being one of the first backers. I can't think of…
This is a really good example of why you need a 'hacker' in your startup, in the traditional 'one who is good at building ad hoc systems' sense. Having awesome technologists who can write brilliant, well-tested and robust code is certainly useful, but a lot of the time in the early stages of a company you just don't have time. You have a problem and it needs to be solved fast . Most things can be fixed later when the…
... Or just should a fulfillment provider that is halfway competent. Perhaps one that isn't doing you a favor and actually does similar stuff for other people.
Does anyone know why an off-the-shelf solution like Magento or Shopify paired with a label printer wouldn't have worked? It's interesting to see the the mechanics of an early-stage startup, but this feels like a largely solved problem? Also, how did the mess of labels get matched with the specific orders, someone was just matching invoices and stickers?
Before reading the article, I was thinking 'have these dudes not heard of ShipStation?!?' But yea, to answer your question, yes, shipstation + shopify works brilliantly. One person can process and ship 60 orders in 30 minutes. 60 orders via a 3rd party warehouse with all their fees, would run you ~$150 - $200.
Cool story bro, but it give me hives just reading it. "We didn't know anything about physical order fulfilment so we hacked our way into a local optimum, rather than asking anyone who knew". Or, as we say hereabouts, a month in the lab solves a day in the library. But it only cost $500! Well, I'm sure that'll come as a lovely surprise come payday when John discovers he's working pro bono. Also, that product looks dis…