FOUNDER
Who is Richard He?

Richard He is the founder and CEO of Openmart, a Y Combinator-backed company that helps you find and qualify millions of business leads in seconds using multi-modal AI.

He grew up in China and came to the US to attend Rice University. After graduating in 2019, Richard then worked as a software engineer at Amazon, Pinterest and a couple of other tech startups. Richard was a founding engineer at a seed-stage startup, Graft, and then decided to start his own.

Richard explained to me that he ultimately decided to pursue entrepreneurship to follow in the footsteps of his parents.

• “My parents are actually entrepreneurs. My mom started a pharmaceutical company, so yeah, following her journey, I really wanted to own and ship end-to-end products. I also wrote a lot of open source projects growing up. That's when I thought ‘maybe I should make money off of some of the ideas I have’”

Richard met his co-founder, Kathryn Wu, when they were both interns at Pinterest.

Kathryn had started her own CPG tea brand and had initial success selling direct-to-consumer on Shopify. However, Kathryn struggled to penetrate the retail sector.

This challenge that Kathryn faced with her own business led them to collaborate and come up with the idea for Openmart, which they ended up co-founding together.

Richard and Kathryn’s success with Openmart has not gone unnoticed, catching attention from both the media and investors. They have been featured on Forbes and TechCrunch, and they just raised a $2.75 million seed round. Their captivating personalities and innovative solutions have allowed them to raise capital from numerous investors including Y Combinator, Rebel Fund, Afore Capital and a handful of other VC firms.

In addition to being the CEO of Openmart, Richard is heavily involved in the venture capital space as well. He is a venture partner at Orange Collective, a YC alumni community fund backing next-gen YC founders. He is also a scout for UpHonest Capital, an early stage focused venture capital group based in Silicon Valley.

Company
What is Openmart?

Openmart’s thesis, according to Richard:

• “More and more companies are starting to do vertical SaaS. They are starting to sell CRMs to carwashes or ERPs to hair salons and pizza restaurants, for example. However, their sales process is very different from traditional enterprise sales.”

• “Their process requires more cold calling, a lot of text and even inside/outside sales reps. There's not a very good solution out there to tackle this problem. You see like Apollo or ZoomInfo- they are targeting SMB tech companies who want to sell their SaaS to enterprises, whereas we focus on local businesses. We sell to SMB tech companies who want to sell to local businesses.”

Definition: a SMB tech company is a software company that creates solutions for small and medium-sized businesses

The idea for Openmart originated from Richard's co-founder, Kathryn, who had her own CPG (consumer packaged goods) tea brand and faced challenges getting into retail channels like higher-end Asian grocery stores.

Kathryn’s product was at a higher price point with better packaging, so she needed to target these higher-end grocery stores and gift shops. However, she could not find a list of high-end grocery stores with only one or two locations in the US. There were no directories out there with this information. Additionally, in the rare chance that she did find this information, she did not know how to contact the owner, the decision maker, or the category buyer.

• “So that’s how we started. We were like ‘OK, let’s just scrape all the grocery stores in the United States and see if we can sell that data’”

• “Initially we were selling to brands only. We helped multiple brands get into these medium-sized retailers”

Richard and Kathryn were accepted into Y-Combinator with the idea of helping brands get their product into retail. Over time, Openmart has transitioned into selling data to vertical SaaS companies such as DoorDash, Square, or other delivery apps. They help these companies sell their software to local businesses.

• “You can think of us as the Google Maps for sales”

Richard describes Openmart as an "AI sales researcher that automates small SMB accounts research", essentially providing a platform with data to help these tech companies more efficiently reach and sell to their end markets.

Today, Kathryn is focused on the sales and marketing for Openmart, while Richard is in charge of the engineering, product and development.

THE PROBLEM

There is a lack of directories or databases that provide information on local, medium-sized retail businesses, including contact details for the owners or decision-makers.

THE SOLUTION

Openmart started by solving the problem of CPG brands unable to access medium-sized local retail channels, however it has evolved to now focus on enabling SMB tech companies to sell their vertical SaaS tools to local businesses more effectively.

OUTREACH STRATEGIES

Richard explained to me that most of their customers are inbound, as a result of consistent posting on LinkedIn and X. This is how they are currently generating their go-to-market motion.

Openmart's outreach is primarily marketing-led, with a heavy focus on organic content. Their social media posts, especially on X, have been very effective in driving high-quality demo requests, with some posts generating over 200 demos.

Richard and Kathryn’s personal brand content, (sharing their entrepreneurial journey), has been a key component to their outreach strategy.

Richard mentioned that this marketing-led approach has allowed them to attract qualified customers who are eager to sign up after seeing their product demos on social media.

Additionally, the two plan to start a podcast soon, which will feature very early stage founders. The approach for this podcast will be highlighting how these YC founders are doing “go-to-market” before hiring any sales employees. More specifically, “How are these founders generating early sales on their own?”

• “I think this will be a very cool approach because, right now, a lot of go-to-market podcasts are focused on how you scale from 10 to 100. However, a lot of founders are stuck at 0 to 1 - right?”

Keep an eye out for this podcast dropping soon!

IDEAL CUSTOMER PROFILE (ICP)

Openmart's ideal customers are SMB tech companies selling vertical SaaS solutions to local businesses.

The end-markets these companies are targeting include restaurants, home services, medical clinics, and retail.

These SMB tech companies could be providers of POS (point of sale) systems, marketing tools, delivery apps, or any other vertical SaaS solutions geared towards local businesses.

WHERE DO YOU SEE OPENMART IN ONE YEAR?

Richard's vision is for Openmart to become the leading go-to-market platform for SMB tech companies to effectively reach local businesses.

He believes there is a significant difference in selling to these smaller, local business accounts compared to traditional enterprise sales.

The goal is for Openmart's AI-powered platform and data to essentially "own the entire process" of helping SMB tech companies efficiently reach and sell to their customers.

Richard envisions Openmart evolving into more of an account-based marketing tool specifically tailored for these smaller business accounts, rather than the traditional enterprise sales approach.

TL;DR

Richard is building Openmart, a startup that began by helping CPG brands access local retail channels. It has now pivoted to enabling SMB tech companies to more effectively sell to small and medium-sized local businesses across various sectors.

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