53. Franz Purucker, Co-Founder @ Hive - Reinventing how e-commerce & DTC brands run their operations.

Runway Series (Venture Capital, Startups, Crypto, web3), in partnership with Olive Capital.

In this 53rd episode of "Runway Series Originals", I am thrilled to welcome Franz Purucker, Co-Founder at Hive.

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Buying a product online these days is not only anymore about great online shop design. Customers expect an end-to-end experience, including a great online shop, stellar customer service and a unique unboxing experience. A study by Bain&Company found that 60-80% of customers, who are satisfied with a brand’s offering, do not return to do more business with the company that initially satisfied them. Thus, offering a unique experience is more important than ever. Your vision of your brand must be channeled not only in your packaging but throughout the whole customer experience, from on time delivery to easy return and seamless payment options, in order to increase brand loyalty.

No one could not agree more with these statements that Hive, a german based logistics platform for DTC brands. Founded in Berlin in 2020 by Oskar Ziegler, Franz Purucker and Leonard von Kleist, Hive eases the fulfillment process for e-commerce brands via a software solution that provides customised analytics, forecasts and suggestions, in addition to its own in-house logistics fulfillment centres.

And I can not be more excited to receive in this episode Franz Purucker one of the 3 co-founders of Hive because we initially met with Franz about 4 years ago when he participated as an aspiring VC to our 2nd Venture Capital Investment Challenge that we organized at Station F in Paris.

Franz is only in his mid-20s but has already an impressive background that has enabled him to develop unique analytical skills to run operations and strategy as well as unique insights about the challenges that DTC brands need to address to grow and scale processes while delivering a seamless experience on the customer side.
In this amazing episode, Franz explains

• his key takeaways and learning from his early career in consulting, banking and as a DTC entrepreneur in Indonesia
• the challenges that DTC brands meet
• the contrarian product vision that the founding team at Hive built right from the begining
• how Franz and the founders were able to fast-track their fundraising rounds
• how big you need to think when talking to later stage investors and why long timelines matter
• their ongoing international expansion with the particular example of what Franz & Hive start to build in France

And many other fascinating topics and insights

I am sure you will love this episode so enjoy it right now.

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The "Runway Series Originals", "AMA VC", "Human Factor", "No-Code VC / Fit" & "Venture Talks" podcasts are produced by UPCOMINGVC® (www.upcoming.vc), created and hosted by Raphael Grieco.