Happy New Year.

TL;DR — The Theme of 2023

As CEO, I'm framing 2023 as the year 10X pursues Stailer's second PMF. Everything we do this year flows from that.

PMF is an abstract concept, but here I define it as: a state where the market — the collection of customers and users — feels an intense sense of value from Stailer. Another way to put it is "the market is pulling the product." I think that's an accurate framing.

And as we've experienced before at 10X, PMF simultaneously generates pressure to transform how we think about our organization, business development, and financial management. It will require a multi-front response.

Stailer's First Two-and-a-Half Years

Stailer's initial launch in 2020 was a basic consumer-facing application and the web store management layer behind it. Even so, partnerships with Ito Yokado, Fresta, and Life gave us our entry point into online grocery — a market positioned for significant growth ahead.

2021 was the year we expanded Stailer's value proposition to "Whole Product for online grocery." We dramatically extended the product line:

  • A WMS (warehouse management system) to digitize store operations
  • A TMS (transport management system) to digitize delivery operations
  • A management console for multi-store oversight
  • A new website for the consumer experience

This "rapidly expanding the feature set" challenge opened up business development with ambitious retailers looking to launch new online grocery operations.

2022 was the year the Stailer "Whole Product" skeleton took form and we actually scaled to many partners, with GMV growing sharply:

  • Yakuodo's P!ck and delivery launch
  • Alvis (Hokuriku) onboarded
  • MZC's Costco shopping proxy service onboarded
  • Create (drugstore) onboarded
  • Sugi Yakkyoku (drugstore) onboarded
  • Delicia (Nagano) onboarded
  • Heiwado (Shiga) onboarded

But if scaling was the front stage in 2022, the back stage was an ongoing reckoning with the tradeoffs from prioritizing rapid feature expansion. The top company focus throughout the year was:

Quality

Organization

Technical Foundation

All three, all year, simultaneously.

Stailer's Third Year

The customer problems we're facing today look like this:

  • Want to add features specific to certain retail formats or local markets
  • Want easier integration with existing systems and vendors
  • Want smoother integration with our store's existing customer base
  • Want to replace just a specific part of our operations with something better
  • Want to reduce the fixed costs required to operate the business

The product configuration that addresses these needs is what a second PMF looks like to us.

I believe it means a module-first product, organization, and business — exactly the Stailer transformation into an enterprise platform described in earlier posts.

Getting there is not a leap. It requires:

  • Refactoring source code into appropriate cohesion by module design
  • Redesigning data models so each module can operate independently
  • Building an organization where each module can simultaneously pursue business ROI and development ROI
  • Enabling integrated, end-to-end ownership from key decisions to execution within each module
  • Clarifying the interface between each module and the business (partners)

This year's challenge is creating company-wide alignment around that with full executive commitment.

One More Thing…

Alongside the module-first initiative, we're also dealing with another challenge right now: expanding Stailer outside Japan.

This brings a new layer of uncertainty along with a real rationale — generating returns from markets outside a stagnant domestic one and reinvesting them into the business.

Personally, I'm approaching this opportunity with the mindset of a day-one founder. Can it become a new growth engine for the company? The prospect genuinely excites me.

That's the Stailer year ahead.

We're actively hiring for people who want to take part in these challenges.

Looking forward to this year with you.