This Startup Sold to Amazon for $1B In 5 Years

TJ Parker is the Founder of PillPack, one of the first-ever DTC Pharmacy companies that sold to Amazon in 2018 for $1B. Prior to founding PillPack TJ worked odd jobs in retail, pharmacy, and real estate and has a deep background in design which informed much of what he built at PillPack.

In this episode, TJ shares stories from fighting off Big Pharma institutions that threatened to take his business, advice to founders for managing through a crisis, and why he's recently decided to become a VC at Matrix Partners.


(0:00) Intro
(1:18) Welcome TJ Parker
(7:22) Odd jobs growing up
(16:24) Pillpack almost going out of business
(20:30) Going to war publicly with Express Scripts
(28:09) Getting approval
(32:24) Why sell vs being independent?
(40:53) What makes Amazon great
(46:12) Keeping the executive team small
(52:08) Making decisions as CEO
(56:59) Advice if you were to start another company
(1:00:49) Transition into venture capital
(1:05:01) Requests from startups
(1:09:38) Insights on the venture industry

#founder #tech #founderadvice #entrepreneurship

Mixed and edited: Justin Hrabovsky
Director: Zack Auron
Produced: Rashad Assir
Executive Producer: Josh Machiz
Music: Griff Lawson

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About the Show
Logan Bartlett is a Software Investor at Redpoint Ventures - a Silicon Valley-based VC with $6B AUM and investments in Snowflake, DraftKings, Twilio, and Netflix. In each episode, Logan goes behind the scenes with world-class entrepreneurs and investors. If you're interested in the real inside baseball of tech, entrepreneurship, and start-up investing, tune in every Friday for new episodes.