Nathan Resnick (LinkedIn | Twitter) has built a business out of getting things done. He’s the Co-Founder and CEO of Sourcify – the fastest growing sourcing platform backed by YCombinator that helps hundreds of companies manufacture products around the world.
It wasn’t an overnight rise to the top – Nathan’s path to success was winding. He started an eCommerce business in China when he was in college. “It taught me about sales – it taught me about getting in front of people and how to build relationships. And if I think about sales – that’s what it’s about. It’s building relationships with people. That’s a key dynamic.”
He took those skills as he grew, eventually using both his time in sales and his time in China (he’s fluent in Mandarin) to form Sourcify. Nathan took the time to sit and talk to The Mission Daily about his journey to this moment and why it makes total sense to him: “If I look at my career so far, it’s just been a continuous step in the right direction.”
What is Sourcify? “Sourcify helps companies produce products around the world. Our goal is to help companies save money in their supply chain. We typically save anywhere from ten to forty percent of unit costs are lead times, just through quality improvement – that’s basically our whole goal. We typically work with mid-market companies doing one to fifty million dollars in revenue. We do work with some Fortune 500 companies, as as well as some high-growth startup eCommerce brands. It’s been a pretty incredible journey to go from a one person sourcing company to really a software driven sourcing platform. We’ve got over one thousand partner factories, pretty much in every country in Asia. Last year, we ran production in every country in Asia besides Japan and Korea. We’re also transitioning – or opening up – to South America as well. We’ve got some suppliers in Columbia that we’re starting to work with.
They’ve come a long way, and they’re not done, yet. “It’s been a matter of iteration from going to just a sourcing company, to now a software-driven sourcing company. And I’m not technology driven. I don’t know software really at all. I mean, now I know a bit, but I don’t know how to write any code. And so it’s been a huge, huge learning curve that I’ve loved to really understand. When you are asking for a new feature, you’re considering development time, and how long that’s going to take, and what the impact that’s going to have on your business. I think one thing that we do across all of our team members is align our north star. What is the one goal that we’re all shooting for? And having that one goal is so crucial for aligning everyone’s time. And really, just the way that we conduct our business.
It’s important to learn to love the process. Nathan calls it being ‘process-driven. “I spent a lot of my time kind of firefighting – in terms of solving problems and just things come up during the day. But in the earlier days, I used to list out ten or twenty tasks that I wanted to accomplish that day – and that’s where I’d focus my time. And that could be anything from reading a piece of content to sourcing a product. It could have been anything. So I think being process-driven is extremely important. Also – blocking your time and understanding what you’re going to be doing when every single day of the week. I mean, I even do that on the weekends, too. It’s just such a routine for me now where it’s like ‘hey, I’m going to go mountain biking on Saturday morning, or I’m going to go surfing on Saturday morning.’
He has advice for up-and-coming entrepreneurs. “I wouldn’t have known how to produce products if I hadn’t tried to do it myself, if I hadn’t lived in China. So I always find it very interesting when you have founders trying to start businesses in which they don’t have any industry experience. I think it’s just a much steeper learning curve rather than someone that has been in an industry for a while, someone who sees the pain points – someone wants to create a better solution. If you don’t have that industry experience, then go get it. I’m sure there’s tons of companies hiring in that industry that you want to be a part of or want to learn about. Get a job and work for a year or two before starting a business in the industry too.”
To hear more from Nathan, check out our podcast here.
