Mark Ang, Founder of GoBolt | How to Pivot to Product Market Fit

GoBolt followed its customers from student storage to logistics

GoBolt began as Second Closet, a student storage side hustle, and became a logistics company by following what customers actually did. Cheap marketing proved demand fast, and founders doing every job heard what customers wanted, including businesses using the consumer service for their own logistics. Real demand set the direction at each step, so the path never followed a formal plan.

Takeaways

• $500 of campus marketing produced instant demand. Ang and co-founder Heindrik spent $500 on guerrilla marketing around the University of Toronto, using Facebook ads, dorm flyers, business cards under doors and cheeky promo codes. It produced $20,000 of monthly recurring revenue within two weeks.
• Doing every job built a customer feedback loop. Ang handled support, sales and operations himself, a feedback loop he says large companies lack because their marketing and operations leaders meet once a year at best. A partner walkout on April 28 forced founders to work until 4:00 AM.
• Pricing was tested live until it held. Moving started free, then went to a dollar per minute per mover. A $2 test met pushback and the price settled at $1.50. Storage sold by the piece and co-mingled in the warehouse produced very good margins.
• The strategy looks planned only in hindsight. Ang says each decision was made one at a time. The business was meant to be asset-light yet became very asset-heavy, with tens of millions invested in physical infrastructure. He would now spend more time planning for the future.
• Hire generalists and delay specialisation. Ang favours generalists for as long as possible before specialising, and says he would have hired them sooner. He and Srugo frame this as the balance between staying adaptable and staying focused.
• Culture extends the founder's vision at scale. GoBolt grew from six people in 2017 to over a thousand. Its values include customer obsession and sweating the small stuff, and sustainability goals such as an EV fleet motivate staff. It has about 7,000 five-star Google reviews.

How Second Closet became GoBolt

1. Business users at Chanel and BMW used the consumer storage service for company logistics, which pushed the founders toward commercial work.
2. Business customers booked online at any hour and managed items with photos, QR codes and online requests.
3. In 2019 the company won its first e-commerce pick-and-pack business and began building fulfilment software.
4. IKEA became a customer in late 2019. Its volume skyrocketed during COVID, and the Toronto fleet became a last-mile delivery team.