Deepak Chhugani, Nuvocargo | Getting Into Y Combinator and Pivoting Your Startup [Ep. 69]

The audio and video are in Spanish. These notes are a translation.

Getting into one of the best startup accelerators, reinventing your company, and learning a market from scratch. These are three big challenges of starting a company, which today’s guest overcame by taking unconventional actions, different from the recommendations usually given in the world of entrepreneurship.

In this episode, we spoke with Deepak Chhugani, CEO and founder of Nuvocargo, a digital platform for cross-border trade between Mexico and the United States that offers freight transportation, customs brokerage, insurance, and financing.

Deepak told us how building relationships in a genuine and proactive way helped him get into Y Combinator. We also talked about why he decided to pivot even though his business was still growing, and the approach he used to identify and understand the logistics market without having any experience in it.

To date, Nuvocargo has raised almost 40 million dollars from investment funds such as Tiger Global Management, NFX, and ALLVP.

Thanks to Fernando Rivera of BuenTrip Ventures, Nathan Lustig of Magma Partners, and Gerry Giacoman of Clara for their question recommendations.

What You Can Learn Today

Overview of the logistics sector in Mexico and the US
Tips for getting into Y Combinator
How to reinvent your company

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Youtube Timestamps*

About Deepak and Nuvocargo

[1:13] - How did Deepak get into the world of startups?
- His family is from India, he was born in Kenya, and he grew up in Ecuador
- His dad started a logistics business
- He went to study in the United States and started his career in investment banking
- He founded The Lobby, and pivoted to what is now Nuvocargo
[2:13] - What is Nuvocargo?
- All the products we have pass through logistics chains
- Nuvocargo modernizes logistics chains with technology
- It works as a freight forwarder, and it moves goods between the US and Mexico

Overview of the Logistics Sector

[4:12] - The role of technology in cross-border logistics
- Transporting freight is a complex process
- Importing and exporting requires many stages
- To transport goods from one country to another, between 7 and 14 logistics companies are needed
- Nuvocargo centralizes all the data from the process
- Nuvocargo works as a comprehensive logistics platform for its customers
[9:48] - The global supply chain crisis
- It has been a favorable situation for Nuvocargo
- Mexico has become the main trading partner of the US

How to Get into Y Combinator

[12:05] - How did Deepak prepare to apply to Y Combinator?
- Deepak was part of the W18 batch
- He learned a lot about startups from Y Combinator content
- He spoke with 30 founders who went through Y Combinator
- He attended every event he could
- He entered the program as a non-technical founder
[16:39] - Networking with Y Combinator founders
- Deepak dedicated himself to growing his startup week after week
- He sought to talk with 2 Y Combinator founders each week
- He created a work plan 10 weeks before the application
- Many of the founders he spoke with ended up investing in Nuvocargo
[22:10] - Common mistakes founders make when networking
- Not putting yourself in the shoes of the founders you contact
- Trying to get help while taking up a lot of people’s time
- Taking it personally if a busy person does not reply to you
- Not adding value and helping the people you need
[25:40] - How to be self-confident without being arrogant?
- Communicating in ways that inspire confidence
- Nobody wants to partner with someone arrogant, but neither with someone who is not confident
- You have to look for a balance between the two

Pivot Toward Nuvocargo

[30:46] - The decision to pivot The Lobby
- The Lobby was a marketplace for buying business coaching calls
- Its business model was not scalable
- Investors had no interest in this market
- At the end of 2018, he decided to pivot to what is now Nuvocargo
[34:32] - Inefficiencies of The Lobby’s business model
- Users tended to prefer other alternatives
- The company was not growing at the expected speed
[37:25] - The process of starting with Nuvocargo
- Throughout his career, he always supported initiatives related to LatAm
- He decided to follow a hunch and start a company in logistics
- He identified the difficulties of cross-border logistics
- Thanks to his experience at Y Combinator, he learned what a startup with potential should look like
- Definition of an overall company metric
[43:46] - How to identify and validate a problem
- Validation with stakeholders, customers, and users
- Contacting employees of similar companies
- Constantly learning about the market
[48:04] - Lessons from Deepak as an angel investor
- He invests in initiatives he believes in
- He supports his colleagues who start startups
- He looks for passionate people who believe in themselves
- Founders need to focus more on product development

Tweet Round

[50:21] -
- Recommended book: Amp It Up by Frank Slootman
- Changes in the Latin American startup ecosystem: that startups have a greater focus on product development and engineering
- Founders to interview: Fabián Gómez and José Ignacio Díaz, of Frubana

Episode Mentions

You can find Deepak on Twitter and LinkedIn

Recommended book: Amp It Up by Frank Slootman

Founders to interview: Fabián Gómez and José Ignacio Díaz, of Frubana

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