Nicolás Villegas, TUL | Building a B2B E-Commerce and Digitising the Hardware Industry [Ep. 93]

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

E-commerce has changed the way we buy a large share of the products and services of our day to day, and this includes sectors that are not so digitized.

In 2020, Tul was born, an app that lets hardware stores buy construction products such as cement and tools directly from your phone.

And we spoke with its cofounder and CTO, Nicolas Villegas.

We talked about the challenges of digitizing a sector as traditional as hardware, how to build a B2B e-commerce platform and its differences from B2C e-commerce, from the minimum viable product through to growth and the business model. Nicolás also shared with us some of the lessons he took from having started and bankrupted some companies before starting Tul.

To date, Tul has raised more than USD $200M from Tiger Global, Marathon, H20, Coatue, and SOFTBANK Latin America Ventures.

Youtube Timestamps*

[1:35] - Intro to the Hardware Industry

How did Nicolás arrive at the fascinating world of startups?
Who are the main players in the hardware industry, what problems did they encounter when they analyzed the industry for the first time, and how did these shape Tul’s initial idea?
What is so difficult about this sector, and why had the manufacturers or distributors not been able to make progress in digitizing their most important sales channel, which is hardware stores?
Nicolás had no experience in hardware stores, nor was it a problem he had lived through directly. How did he start to learn and understand the magnitude of the problem and the opportunity?

[13:19] - How to Build a B2B E-Commerce

What was Tul’s MVP, and how did they minimize the investment before validating the market need?
The hardware business has many products from different suppliers, with a lot of variability in the shape and weight of the objects. What are the technical challenges behind a B2B e-commerce like Tul’s? How do they ensure quality and availability at large scale?
What tools did they have to develop from scratch for an industry that is not digitized?
What adoption barriers from the hardware stores, the traditional distributors, or other players did they have to deal with? And how did they generate trust in that context?
What have been the key strategies for getting so many hardware stores onto their platform?
Does Nicolás feel that the market was ready for TUL, or was the investment in marketing and the fieldwork key to accelerating the “transformation” of the market?
Before Tul, Nicolás worked developing e-commerce for large companies focused on the consumer. What, for Nicolás, are the main keys to the success of a B2B E-Commerce, and how do they differ from B2C?
How does Nicolás think his business model is going to evolve in the future, compared with the traditional model of distributors?

[49:54] - Lessons from Losing Everything

Tul is one more of several ventures Nicolás has created, some successful and others with very hard bankruptcies, such as the “crocs” store, where he went from 15 stores to losing everything, ending up with lawsuits against him and selling personal properties. How has this experience of losing everything shaped Nicolás as an entrepreneur, and how is it reflected in his appetite for taking risks?
Martin Vasquéz of Tul told us that Nicolás is always inclined to act and is not a victim of analysis paralysis. How has his decision-making process evolved as Tul grows and the impact of an action brings both benefits and greater risks?

[57:29] - Rapid-Fire Round

If he had to start a company from scratch, what is the main piece of advice Nicolás would give himself?
Books recommended by Nicolás
Changes Nicolás would like to see in Latin America’s startup ecosystem

Episode Mentions

You can find Nicolás on LinkedIn

Recommended books: Powerfull by Patty McCord & What You Do is Who You Are by Ben Horowitz

Discover More from the Startupeable Podcast

Listen to every episode at startupeable.com/podcast.

Subscribe to the newsletter to hear when a new one comes out.

Follow Enzo Cavalie on X: @enzocavalie.