Founders Interview Episode 2 Henson Wu, FeedbackWhiz Co founder

Welcome back to our Founders Interview Series at Threecolts! In our second episode, we're catching up with Henson Wu, the co-founder of FeedbackWhiz. From the humble beginnings of his venture to the milestone moment of acquisition, Henson guides us through his exciting entrepreneurial journey.

Henson shares candid insights about overcoming challenges, pivotal moments that shaped his journey, and invaluable lessons he's picked up along the way.

Sit back, get comfy, and let's jump right into Henson's incredible journey. You won't want to miss this - Happy reading!

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00:00:01:18 - 00:00:17:12

Elizabeth Redko

Hi, I'm Elizabeth I’m one of the product managers at Threecolts. Welcome to another episode of our Founders Interview series. In this series, we highlight the journeys of entrepreneurs and share insights about the eCommerce world. Today we welcome Henson Wu, who's one of the co-founders of FeedbackWhiz. Hi Henson

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00:00:17:12 - 00:00:18:09

Henson Wu

Hi, Elizabeth.

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00:00:18:09 - 00:00:22:12

Elizabeth Redko

Can you tell me a bit more about yourself and your background?

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00:00:22:12 - 00:00:46:15

Henson Wu

Sure. Yeah. I used to be an engineer, and I worked in the high tech industry for, like, 13 years, and then I decided to start my own business. But, um, during this time, before I was actually an engineer, I always had an interest in e-commerce, so I would sell products on eBay and also do like side hustles and eventually started selling on Amazon.

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Henson Wu

And that's kind of how I got into this Amazon business.

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00:00:50:19 - 00:00:54:06

Elizabeth Redko

And what was your motivation to actually start the e-commerce business?

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00:00:54:06 - 00:01:13:06

Henson Wu

I just always had an interest in e-commerce and selling products. I like the entrepreneur journey of just figuring out, you know, like what's what kind of products I'm interested in and like how I can make a profit on it. Um, so yeah, that's basically like how I got started.

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00:01:13:06 - 00:01:17:09

Elizabeth Redko

And how did you start helping other sellers do the same thing as you did through the tools?

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00:01:17:09 - 00:01:49:09

Henson Wu

Yeah. So when I first started, I was selling like, private label. I was doing retail arbitrage. I was in the clothing industry. I did some cosmetics and then I did some kitchen products. You, you know, partnered up with, you know, some family and some friends. And, you know, I think the biggest thing that I realized back then this was 2014 was that, you know, every seller needed to basically build their brand reputation and get product reviews.

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00:01:49:11 - 00:01:56:14

Henson Wu

And I wanted to figure out, like, what is the best way to get product reviews? So that's kind of how I transitioned into feedback these

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00:01:56:14 - 00:02:01:22

Elizabeth Redko

And can you tell me a bit more about like the early days? How did it all get started? Like, what are some of the first challenges you faced?

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00:02:01:22 - 00:02:22:18

Henson Wu

Yeah, the biggest challenge really is, you know, starting a brand or a business like from scratch, where you just really have no idea on, you know, the risks, like how well it's going to do, Is it going to fail? These are all questions that go through your head. I would say that in the beginning it was a lot of hard work.

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00:02:22:23 - 00:02:49:05

Henson Wu

You know, like endless nights staying up, researching competitors, researching just how, you know, a product itself would how are you going to market this to people that would actually pay for something, Right? And then the design of building it out, specking it. And, you know, it's a very it's a long and gross Yeah, it's it was hard, you know.

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00:02:49:13 - 00:02:55:13

Elizabeth Redko

So can you tell me a bit more about FeedbackWhiz and kind of what problems are trying to solve? Or originally, what was it built for?

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00:02:55:13 - 00:03:24:22

Henson Wu

Yeah, originally what we were trying to do is basically how to leverage your customers to leave you a feedback review and how we can kind of convince them to leave you review because reviews is literally the lifeline of your product. And without reviews, like no one's going to buy your products. So the concept was really that only Amazon really allowed you to communicate with your buyers and basically kind of solicit in different ways.

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00:03:24:22 - 00:03:46:00

Henson Wu

Like you can kind of manipulate your language or reach out. But really it was more of a way to offer a great customer support, like letting your buyers know that, like if there's anything wrong with the product, like you're there to fix the problem, but at the same time, you can also offer them like, you know, discount promo codes, like these were all things that Amazon allowed before.

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00:03:46:02 - 00:04:09:16

Henson Wu

So we're trying to figure out how can we automate this process? So every time someone buys your product, you can have these emails sent automatically. So that was our initial design of FeedbackWhiz list. But then from there were, you know, there was already existing products out there that did that functionality. But we wanted to make it better. So we, you know, try to be more creative and figure out like, how can we make this product better?

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00:04:09:16 - 00:04:38:10

Henson Wu

So can we add images, Can we add videos, Can we allow customers to reply based on like, you know, what kind of products they buy or when they when they purchased it or not send it to specific types of customer or, you know, people who returned the product. So really, it's just trying to think about all the different possibilities and all the different ways that we can help sellers maximize their conversions.

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00:04:38:10 - 00:04:46:14

Elizabeth Redko

Awesome. And how did it evolve after that? Because I know you added quite a few features afterwards. How did that come about? Like, how did you adapt to the market, I guess in that way?

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00:04:46:14 - 00:05:11:01

Henson Wu

Yeah. So it's the way we evolved was really not the best way we wanted to evolve. You know, we really started this as a brand reputation tool was to really help sellers, you know, improve their brand reputation. But back in 2020, Amazon came out with some new communication policies where they try to restrict on how sellers can communicate with buyers.

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00:05:11:03 - 00:05:40:19

Henson Wu

And at that point, you know, we kind of decided that, hey, you know, there might not be so much more we can really innovate on this part of email automation. So we decided to transition and start building other products that would complement the brand reputation site. And one of them was really the FeedbackWhiz Alerts Tool, which helps monitor your listings, gather your product reviews and make sure that your brand is, you know, no one's like messing up your reputation.

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00:05:40:22 - 00:05:41:11

Elizabeth Redko

Mm hmm.

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00:05:41:13 - 00:05:55:15

Henson Wu

And then the other part was the profits accounting tool. Or, you know, we can give sellers their insight of their entire business and see how, you know, your products are performing and keep track of their PMLs.

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00:05:55:15 - 00:05:59:23

Elizabeth Redko

So, were there any key milestones or any turning points in the business that you experienced?

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00:05:59:23 - 00:06:17:22

Henson Wu

I mean, as an entrepreneur, like building a product in a business, the first time, I think mentally it was just more like, um, like revenue milestones, like when you first hit your 10,000 or your first hit 100,000, right, or you hit I don't know a thousand subscribers like these are just mentally like you feel good about yourself.

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00:06:17:22 - 00:06:36:10

Henson Wu

But I think the biggest one was really like your first customer coming in, right? It's like, Hey, I launched a tool. I sent about a bunch of emails to as many people that I knew that were selling on Amazon. And then you get that first sign up and that's just a really exciting milestone, I have to say. That's like my most memorable one.

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00:06:36:10 - 00:06:46:22

Elizabeth Redko

And have you guys had to take any kind of like, pivots and kind of changing your ideas or any features or is it kind of like smooth sailing from the point that you were able to launch like the first two features?

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00:06:46:22 - 00:07:10:19

Henson Wu

Yeah, I think one of the. Well, in the beginning, before Amazon was regulating a lot of features. One of the I think the most my favorite features back then was we had we did we figured out how to connect the buyers to the review. Mm hmm. So we had this thing called buy review matching, which basically leveraged the product review monitoring with the email site.

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00:07:10:19 - 00:07:37:02

Henson Wu

So everyone that came in we knew, oh sorry, every product review that came in, we knew which order it came from. Mm hmm. So with that data, we can now send set up, like these email segments to reach out to someone who left your review, whether it's positive or negative, and, you know, say, hey, you know, I know you had a negative experience opening like here's a free like product or should a refund and things like that.

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00:07:37:02 - 00:08:01:02

Henson Wu

So but um, but the funny thing was Amazon took note of it and they caught on and saw that we were offering this service and nobody else had this technology because we figured out how to do it. Mm hmm. So they actually called us into Amazon headquarters to talk about it, which was kind of scary, but kind of fun at the same time because we got to meet the Amazon team and they're actually pretty friendly.

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00:08:01:02 - 00:08:19:05

Henson Wu

And, you know, they just basically told us like, hey, we like your software, we want to invite you to like or this is before the App Store came out. But they gave us kind of an ultimatum and say, Hey, you guys got to stop offering this functionality because, you know, we were trying to protect, you know, their product reviewers identities.

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00:08:19:07 - 00:08:25:09

Henson Wu

So we kind of had a pivot and eventually removed that feature from ours.

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00:08:25:09 - 00:08:30:04

Elizabeth Redko

Are there any other, like success stories that you can share from the journey or any like memorable moments?

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00:08:30:04 - 00:09:06:03

Henson Wu

Yeah, I mean, there's lots of memorable moments, you know, being able to bring on like a very big customer, enterprise customer or like brands that we use on a day-to-day basis. And you know, just saying, oh, well, you know, today this friend signed up or bringing on our first agency and being able to acquire some of the biggest agencies out in this Amazon over the years, this is it's very exciting because suddenly you bring all their clients and you go from, you know, one account to 100 accounts.

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00:09:06:03 - 00:09:08:07

Henson Wu

And it's just it's an awesome experience.

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00:09:08:07 - 00:09:12:05

Elizabeth Redko

Well, how did you guys end up being acquired by Threecolts? What was the story there?

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00:09:12:05 - 00:09:42:21

Henson Wu

The story there was Yoda, I think, randomly sent me an email and he kind of introduced himself and said, Hey, we're kind of in this business and we really like your business, we want to acquire you. And funny thing was, when I first started this email, I mean, we never had really interest in selling the business because of course as entrepreneurs you want to, you know, just write it as far as you can is as much as you can and take it to the highest revenue or growth you can do.

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00:09:42:23 - 00:10:06:20

Henson Wu

So I kind of dismissed his email. But you know, obviously, you like to communicate and have conversations in this space like it's a small community. So you want to try and network with everyone you can. So first I had a conversation with him. You know, I liked him. He's I feel like he's, you know, he had these lofty goals because back then I don't I think maybe there was one one product or something.

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00:10:06:20 - 00:10:10:06

Henson Wu

Yeah, Threecolts. So I was kind of like, Oh, yeah, good luck. You know, trying to get to

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00:10:10:06 - 00:10:10:21

Henson Wu

where you're

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00:10:10:21 - 00:10:11:18

Henson Wu

Tying to get. It's

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00:10:11:18 - 00:10:28:08

Henson Wu

not an easy journey, but later on I think this was Prosper of 2021 where we ran into each other again and then we kind of noticed that the landscape of Amazon SAS tools has kind of shifted a little bit.

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00:10:28:13 - 00:11:00:03

Henson Wu

And in terms of now there's all this money coming in for SAS aggregators. The year before, it was more brand aggregators. Mm hmm. They came in and started acquiring companies. So we're like, Oh, this is interesting. But as internally we kind of try to picture a longer term outlook saying, well, if we don't sell our company or, you know, some Threecolts or whatever aggregators, buyers are competitors, will we be able to grow as fast as they can?

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00:11:00:05 - 00:11:11:07

Henson Wu

Because the advantage of multiple tools, multiple products, bunch of money. Right. So so that's kind of how we started. Yeah.

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00:11:11:12 - 00:11:14:17

Elizabeth Redko

So how has the transition been since joining Threecolts?

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00:11:14:17 - 00:11:39:21

Henson Wu

Transition has been great, I would say. You know, we we didn't really know what to expect when we came on because, you know, you really don't know, right? Like, never contract. You sign when you sign over the company, it's like it's not really under your control, but I would say everything that, you know, we spoke about with Threecolts before the deal, like, you know, have it.

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00:11:39:23 - 00:11:58:09

Henson Wu

I'm happy with where we are today. Everything was very smooth. And, you know, we were still able to kind of have oversight with with FeedbackWhiz and try to do everything we can to, you know, accelerate the growth. So it's been it's been good transition and see, you know.

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00:11:58:09 - 00:12:02:01

Elizabeth Redko

and have a lot of things like change or stay the same at least day to day.

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00:12:02:01 - 00:12:29:14

Henson Wu

Yeah, I think everything's pretty much the same. You know, the team is still there, everyone's still doing their jobs. But I would say we definitely have a lot more resources now because, you know, with other parts of the Threecolts team, we can tap into, you know, a lot of other founders and people who've worked in this industry, maybe in different products, but share different experiences and, you know, tap into their knowledge and ask questions.

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00:12:29:14 - 00:12:35:08

Henson Wu

So obviously, on the support level, we definitely have, you know, a lot more support there.

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00:12:35:08 - 00:12:47:03

Elizabeth Redko

And more of a general question, but what recommendations would you have for any other entrepreneurs who are looking to maybe scale the next level or get acquired, like old word of advice? Would you have.

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00:12:47:03 - 00:13:22:01

Henson Wu

yeah, just believe in your product. I'd say, you know, if you have a good product, just, you know, continue to try to grow as much as you can. And you know, if you feel like it's the right time for if you want to join a team like Threecolts, I would say the the biggest support is, yeah, you have you have all these people that are in the same industry and, you know, complimenting products that can actually help grow the existing the product you're trying to sell even more.

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00:13:22:02 - 00:13:52:00

Henson Wu

And you know, I think the support is really the biggest thing, right? Sometimes like you're running your own business, you might run into some roadblocks, you may reach a level and you just can't grow anymore for whatever reason either, you know, I mean, it's funding, you know, having that right team for product, um, so yeah, I would say my biggest advice really is to, you know, think about like what's, you know, what's most important?

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00:13:52:02 - 00:14:08:07

Henson Wu

Uh, is it like, do you want to grow your business? Do you want to is it are you selling because you just want to get out of it or you want to keep going? If you really want to keep growing, it's either way. I think, you know, it's it's a good decision, you know?

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00:14:08:07 - 00:14:14:14

Elizabeth Redko

And are there any projects that you're currently working on that you could tell us a bit more about or any ones any projects you want to work in the future?

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00:14:14:14 - 00:14:45:13

Henson Wu

Yeah. So after joining Threecolts, I decided to kind of, um, join more and focus more on the product side. So working with the product team and one of the things with FeedbackWhiz is, you know, we now we have more resources to help develop further develop some of the products that we have, some of the tools that were we were trying to build before and, you know, integrate into some of these other marketplaces like Walmart, right.

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00:14:45:13 - 00:15:19:10

Henson Wu

And offer the same services for multiple marketplaces, which I think really is the future of ecommerce, that most of these big brands eventually will probably take over the majority of ecommerce space and they're going to expand worldwide. They're going to expand to every marketplace they can. So having the opportunity to, you know, scale or, you know scale, transition to another marketplace, I think really is key because, you know, was so with our team and, you know, we have limited resources.

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00:15:19:10 - 00:15:33:17

Henson Wu

We can only focus on specific projects like Accelerate, but now we have, you know, more of a overall group of, you know, resources that we can use. We can, you know, make better decisions on where to scale,

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00:15:33:17 - 00:15:39:15

Elizabeth Redko

so what would you say is the future of FeedbackWhiz was like, what's the next step in the vision in the future? Within Threecolts?

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00:15:39:15 - 00:16:11:00

Henson Wu

Yeah, I think the future really the future really is to continue building on top of the features that we have with our existing  FeedbackWhiz  tools. So whatever we can to make, um, to help sellers, you know, build their brand, right? So for example, a profits tool, if you could take it to the next level. Start integrating with accounting tools, right, and make it seamless transition where maybe the sellers could just pull all their data, send it to their CPA and everything's done right.

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00:16:11:00 - 00:16:11:07

Elizabeth Redko

Right.

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00:16:11:11 - 00:16:33:14

Henson Wu

Everything's accurate. So little things like that. And even with alerts like we've done, there's still a lot of features where, you know, they have customization over, you know, manually inputting thresholds for specific alerts. Um, you know, we can offer those same alerts on different marketplaces or different, you know, this could be a lot of different things that we could help them monitor.

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00:16:33:14 - 00:16:39:04

Henson Wu

But just to continuously grow the existing tools, we have, um, features, functionalities.

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00:16:39:04 - 00:16:46:17

Elizabeth Redko

And what do you think makes FeedbackWhiz unique in the market today compared to any other tools that are kind of in similar type?

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00:16:46:17 - 00:17:06:16

Henson Wu

Yeah, I would say like on the email side, you know, one of the things we've done from day one is we tried to aggregate as much data as we can on the order site. Mm hmm. And the reason we do that really is to get more insight on the customer and you know how the order you know what different metrics or events happen to order.

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00:17:06:17 - 00:17:29:00

Henson Wu

So that way when we set up the email campaigns, we can accurately target the right order and send it to the right center at the right time. Right. And because right now Amazon only gives you pretty much one opportunity, one review request per orders and one shot. So you want to get as much data as you can and you want to send the email at the right time to the right customer to get that review.

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00:17:29:00 - 00:17:50:20

Henson Wu

And you can use another software. Some of the softwares don't have these type of functionalities and you're just blindings and you know, you made this opportunity, right? And with the alerts, like I mentioned earlier, you know, some of the more innovative things we're building is like allowing users to input thresholds or not just monitoring project listing alerts with the profits tool.

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00:17:50:20 - 00:18:15:00

Henson Wu

We have product profits metrics, so now they can monitor things like revenue margins, you know, fees, things like that, which I think makes it really powerful because, you know, as every seller, you really thirsty for that data For sure. That's really going to be that advantage to help you, I guess, become better than your competitor.

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00:18:15:00 - 00:18:28:07

Elizabeth Redko

And you've mentioned that you've been in the Amazon e-commerce phase for quite a while. You know the community very well, so you've seen it evolve over the years, but how would you say it's going to kind of evolve next the next couple of years? Like what do you what are you seeing happening?

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00:18:28:07 - 00:18:57:05

Henson Wu

What I’m forseeing. I think the space is going to continue to grow because technology is part of our lives right now. Everyone's like, everyone orders stuff through their phone. And I think Amazon is expanding globally and in a lot of these other countries that are maybe years behind the U.S. and really adapted to Amazon. Yeah, it will eventually kind of have the same customer experience and get to the shipping, right?

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00:18:57:05 - 00:19:10:15

Henson Wu

You get a product on the porch and these brands are just going to, you know, kind of establish ground in these other countries. So these are going to keep expanding. And I think this space is just going to continue to grow.

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00:19:10:19 - 00:19:11:20

Elizabeth Redko

Yeah.

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00:19:11:22 - 00:19:31:04

Henson Wu

Whether it's Amazon, whether it's Walmart or whichever e-commerce solution there is, there's always going to be a platform where, you know, buyers can buy something online and get it delivered. So I don't think this e-commerce phase is, you know, going to go anywhere.

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00:19:31:06 - 00:19:31:22

Elizabeth Redko

Right?

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00:19:31:22 - 00:19:42:09

Elizabeth Redko

Yeah, I guess that's very exciting. Part of kind of Threecolts in the journey there because there's endless possibilities almost. Exactly. Oh, well, as we wrap up, is there anything else you want to share with the audience?

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00:19:42:09 - 00:20:08:21

Henson Wu

Yeah, just, you know, so far I'm really enjoyed my journey. Um, starting from, you know, starting a company from scratch and then being able to exit successfully and then join Threecolts family. It's been awesome. Um, I think that everyone on this team has been great and everyone's smart. They, you know, have a lot of experience, and I'm really happy where I am right now.

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00:20:09:01 - 00:20:20:07

Elizabeth Redko

I also know for sure we do have a great team. Well, thank you for the interview today. I personally really enjoyed learning about your journey and yeah, I guess that's a wrap. Thanks so much.

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00:20:20:09 - 00:20:21:19

Henson Wu

Thanks for your time.

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If you enjoyed this interview, feel free to head over to our YouTube Founders Interview Playlist for more videos or our Spotify Podcast. Whatever your favorite way of consuming content may be, text, audio, or video, Threecolts has you covered on all fronts.