Managing Supply Chain Changes Amid Trade Uncertainty

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00:00Boy, Pietro must have had an interesting few months.

00:03Absolutely. Pietro's building kind of the AI brain for e-commerce companies. And

00:08part of that is supply chain. You know, they have over 30,000, you know, non-China suppliers on

00:16their platform, about 6,000 of those in the US. And they have definitely been busy. They've seen

00:22about a 5x increase in people wanting to reshore. And reshore at an extremely higher cost? Like

00:29how are they helping startups, wannabe D2C companies, navigate the fact that making a

00:35product in the US is likely to be a lot more expensive than if they had sourced from China?

00:40Yeah, I think, you know, it used to take a few months to reshore. Now using AI, you can literally

00:45upload a photo of your product you were previously making in China. And within about two days,

00:50you can find kind of the most, the best factories, the vetted factories in the US. You can compare

00:56costs. But this is where the power of AI can just take something that literally took months and now

01:00do it in days. So you couldn't do it in days. But have we seen slight elastic nature in the desire

01:07for companies to reshore and they will swallow either margin hit or they will pass on that increased

01:13cost to their user base? You know, I think right now there's just a lot of uncertainty. And with

01:19today's news, it obviously gives people reprieve. But I think the one thing that every kind of brand or

01:24company realizes you have to have multiple options in your supply chain. So I think to be decided on,

01:31you know, the cost structure and whether they pass it along. But I think everyone right now is just

01:36panicked and trying to figure out how to make sure they have alternative sources. And there's a lot of

01:41great sources and factories in the US and also other places outside of China. So let's talk about

01:46the underlying technology of how by just taking a photo, you're suddenly able to ensure that you can

01:52source, make, manufacture closer to home. How does it work? Yeah, I mean, I think, you know,

01:58they have about over 30,000 vetted factories. Then you can use a Gentic AI, reach out to those

02:04factories while you're sleeping. You can have them, you know, negotiate. You can have them do samples.

02:10But there are a ton of great factories all over the world. And you can see what other brands are,

02:15you know, produced at those, made at those factories and things like that.

02:18Yeah. Let's just talk about the rest of your portfolio at the moment, Carter, because you've

02:22clearly got Pietra seeing the upside. Have the rest managed to, well, ultimately try and steer in

02:29this moment of uncertainty? Yes, we see tariff reprieve for 90 days, but maybe it's just 90 days.

02:35Yeah, I mean, thankfully at N13, we don't invest in hardware companies. We don't invest in a ton of

02:40companies that have been impacted directly by the tariffs. Obviously, a lot of companies are

02:45affected indirectly. You know, right now, obviously, so many companies are just obsessing about

02:50AI, how to supercharge their current business models or create new business models. So

02:56we've been fortunate that, you know, we haven't been impacted like a lot of others.

03:01And is the resilience there to commit to investing in generative AI, to reorientating the business,

03:09when many are just trying to make ends meet, when trying to understand the latest headline impact,

03:13Carter? Are you willing to invest in some of the latest startups in this environment?

03:18Yeah, I think as a venture capitalist, you take a very long-term time horizon. We're looking,

03:23you know, eight or 10 years out. Obviously, it's an exciting time. AI is disrupting so much.

03:30I think right now, you know, everyone's talking about the technology, but, you know, we obsess about

03:34what are the implications of that technology? What's not possible? What's the next billion-dollar

03:39company that will be run by three people? So I think it's an exciting time. There's a lot of change

03:44and that will not let up, but there's a lot of opportunity.