Now he’s making a better box. It could be worth billions. His name is Pete Warhurst and he’s the brains behind PODS. Those are the portable storage bins you see on driveways everywhere. Pete’s bringing relentless innovation to the most boring stuff you can imagine. Here’s how.
1/ Early days Rewind to the 1980’s. Pete starts a document management company and grows it fast. Not exciting, but mega lucrative. He sells it by the age of 40. After retiring for a hot minute, he buys a warehouse and starts a storage business. Things are ok. But Pete can’t sit still. He wants to keep growing. One problem — he can’t find any more warehouses to buy. Then he gets a wacky idea: What if I put a mini-warehouse on a truck and drop it at your front door? Brilliant. PODS is born.
2/ Fast growth Pete launches “Podzilla” in the late 90’s — soon to be given a less cringy name. It grows fast. Hitting $200M in sales by 2005. Before long, private equity jumps in. Pete sells the company and retires again. And then he gets restless.
3/ Doing it again PODS was cool, but it also kinda sucked. The product was full of warts. So Pete starts attacking each problem one by one. → PODS must be delivered and set up by a crew. Huge pain. Solution: what if we rent the entire truck with storage built onto it? → PODS only has 1 door in the back. Tough to load on cramped streets. Solution: why not put doors on all sides? → PODS are expensive because of all the labour for driving and deliveries. Solution: what if the whole thing was automated?
4/ Trying it again In 2020, Pete launches Red Rover to solve all these problems. He steals the best features of PODS and leaves the kinks. Fast forward to 2023. The company is growing fast with locations in 15 states.
5/ My take Pete made a fortune by innovating where no one else was looking. His ideas are totally out of the box. All because of non-linear thinking. Instead of trying to come up with a better warehouse, he brought the warehouse to your driveway. Then he put the warehouse on a truck.
Then he gave you the keys. Hard problems. Simple solutions. Game changing ideas come when you shake off the mental shackles. The limits melt away. You might not reinvent the wheel. But you could reinvent the box. #growth #entrepreneurship #marketing