For ShipCompliant, ripening a startup is more than just wine and games

by Elyse Kent
February 24, 2014

[ibimage==26127==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-center] It’s quite an ambitious strategic vision for a startup to position itself as an industry thought leader from the get-go. But that is exactly what Jason Eckenroth, CEO and founder of ShipCompliant, had the foresight to do when founding the regulatory compliance and supply chain automation company in the alcohol industry.

“Our go-to market strategy was thought leadership,” Eckenroth said. “We positioned ourselves as industry experts and established partnerships with the reputable industry leaders to build trust.”  

In a highly regulated market centered on word-of-mouth and that is regionally-based on the West Coast, this was especially important to acquire ShipCompliant’s initial client base.  

Even after acquiring early customers, product iteration has been more of a rerouting pattern than a straight shot right out the gate. The product has changed three times since its conception (the initial idea originated from a customer who the team was developing a product for).

“We have launched three products as a company, and every time we launch a product we’ve never launched with the exact feature or benefit that truly creates product market fit,” Eckenroth said.

As Eckenroth quickly found out, there’s no specific formula to discovering those particular product nuances before it all comes to light after its implementation.

To supplement the product early-on, ShipCompliant offered its customers a plethora of knowledge by publishing an annual report analyzing the direct shipping market data.

Today the company also leads a sell-out annual conference (the industry’s largest event), and maintains an open API to enable the rest of the industry to collaborate to solve the compliance problem: “We’re a technology company that wants to service the industry,” Eckenroth said.

Since it was founded in 2000, ShipCompliant has gone from a bootstrapped startup to tripling its size in four years and is now recognized as the wine-to-consumer shipping authority. Instead of pinpointing the big hitters right off the bat, Eckenroth’s team took an alternate approach based on satisfying initial customers and let the work speak for itself: “If you’re always chasing the elephant, you’ll die of starvation,” Eckenroth said.

Eckenroth’s outlook on client acquisition is a logical stance that has proved advantageous and, despite going from three to thousands of users, Eckenroth’s underlying dogma has remained the same: “have a fanatical focus on their [core customer’s] success and the rest will follow.”

This mantra also resonates in the company culture, and can be immediately understood with one look at their “Wall of Tenacity” – a wall dedicated to showcase the employees that have been with the company 5 or more years. Tenure is unusual for the tech industry, which makes the 12 showcased employees a remarkable anomaly in itself. Eckenroth simply attributes this to the company’s core values: “We have a passion for possibilities and we’re always searching for the X factor.”

Jobs at ShipCompliant

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