"Selling your eCommerce business is broken. We're disrupting this space with AI-informed ML that doesn't suck. We're building Uber for SaaS companies, where we're Uber and the owners are drivers."

There, now it's YC compatible.

Not sure i ever want to be the uber of anything, but you are spot on that there is a ton of data, that we can use machine learning to both better identify acquisitions and grow brands. And yes for many founders the process is broken

First, they have "Private Equity" job openings, so that's definitely part of it.

More specifically it will be about scaling the brands they buy and cross-selling when possible. A lot of e-commerce brands/founders hit a ceiling around $1-5M in revenue. At that point, you need more experienced operators to get to $10M or $100M. People who know how to optimize marketing, conversions, fulfillment, and who can move into new channels (eg get on shelves at Target or Costco). A lot of online store founders don't want to deal with that.

Once they hit a certain number of brands under their umbrella, there will be cross-selling/marketing opportunities (assuming they're not just buying Amazon FBA drop ship brands). They can combine email lists and will eventually have good data to power product recommendations.

I'm guessing here, but the long-term play is eventually put all brands under a single online store–in other words, a new amazon.

Great insights especially the last one, some of the smartest investors we spoke to saw the end game being we can offer special perks for customers like an amazon prime like program. It’s interesting and I wonder why the traditional conglomerates like P&G don’t do it; probably because they don’t have a direct relationship with the customers? On the PE job post yes for MBA interns were were looking for folks who have the skills to find and evaluate potential acquisitions

> Y Combinator shouldn't be backing a tiny PE fund, so this can't be that.

Why not? YC backs a lot of things that don't necessarily look like a classic "software company".

Not saying you're wrong, but where do you see that they are backed by YC? This reminds me of Thrasio and all the similar companies that have had success with buying Amazon businesses. I assume they have quantities of scale with in-house devs, operators, etc., which gives them a built in advantage.

Edit: nevermind, I see now that they are in fact YC-backed. Don't think I've ever seen YC back another "fund"

Participating in YC was hugely valuable for our team, we had great mentorship, access to an amazing network of founders who have provided advice as we launched Moonshot, and of course investors. I don't know what their criteria is for accepting us, but I think the fact we were multiple time founders that had built operational and technology company and that there is a big opportunity to apply technology to every step of acquire, operate and grow in our model. We also love the idea of building something like Startup School for ecommerce entrepreneurs. One day we hope that ecommerce entrepreneurs want to be a part of Moonshot the same way we wanted to be part of YC. Finally as we build tools for ourselves we could potentially make those available to the millions of ecom sellers out there.

Did you raise $160m prior to joining YC? If so, that 7% must have been worth quite a bit.

This shouldn't be surprising; YC is no longer a tight group of like-minded nerds sitting around a table, despite what image they still try to market. It is a giant machine that is growing in both scale and breadth. Where the signaling value used to be very valuable to a particular segment of the population, it's now the same as getting an investment from a prominent traditional VC. Still has value but in a much more general sense.