Our Mission, Word for Word

To empower independent supply stores with the best technology.

That's our mission. We have refined each word over the last few years, and in this post, I want to outline the reasoning behind each word. My hope is that you leave knowing what we're about so you can make the best decision for your business.

Empower

To empower is to leave someone feeling like they can do more. When an owner uses Rundoo AI to get insight into their business they previously couldn't, that's empowerment. When a contractor pays their bill at 11pm through the app because it was easy and convenient, that's empowerment. The goal is always the same: you should feel more capable because of us.

We also recognize that software shapes action, and we view it as our responsibility to understand best practices and to set up defaults that nudge toward those best practices. Importantly, though we view it as our responsilibility to nudge to best practices, we want to offer flexibility to customize away from our defaults if it's a better fit for your business. As an example, we think building hundreds of pricing tiers and custom prices is generally a bad practice because it becomes unwieldy to manage; however, we have some clients that have built phenomenal systems to win deals by doing exactly that.

Anyway, you get the point: Rundoo should make you feel like you can do more.

Independent

Independent means able to decide how your business operates. You decide what to stock, how to price, whom to hire, and what technology to use.

Notably, we have no desire to sell software to Home Depot, Sherwin-Williams, Tractor Supply, or any other big box because they have a fundamentally different business model that requires different technology. They compete primarily on economies of scale and decisions are made in a central corporate office, rather than at each node. Their north star is standard processes rather than decentralized flexibilty.

The independent model is substantively different, so it requires a different tech stack. Though both models work, independents compete by being

• nimble: independents adapt quickly to their local community in ways that a centralized chain simply can't.
• durable: independents build teams that have years of relevant knowledge and care deeply about the industry, versus the temporary and often inexperienced labor that big boxes hire. (Which again, makes sense for their model! They prioritize cheaper labor that will operate with less autonomy.)
• relationship-driven: independents invest in sales team and customer relationships. Staff know the names of people when they walk in, which builds loyalty. This is very hard to do at the scale the big boxes operate.

What does independent look like? Variety. Above is a photo of our Redwood City office. When a client goes live, we put a signed t-shirt of theirs up on the wall. In this photo, there's an extreme variety of colors, and if you look closely, the logos, designs, and even the fabrics vary. This is independence in a photo: each client runs their own business, their own brand. This is who we serve.

Supply Store

A supply store is a retail business that serves both individual customers and organizations. Unlike a grocer or a souvenir store, you serve contractors, governments, farmers, and other businesses with the goods they need to do their work. These large buyers may need charge accounts, custom pricing, and other special attention.

Best

We want to be the best. Full stop. Our mission does not act in isolation; rather, it is in comparison with the other partners you could choose. To be blunt, we want to empower you better than anyone else can.

We are under no illusions: competition drives progress. We encourage competition. In the same way that you need to serve your customers better than your competition, we need to serve you better than any other technology provider out there. That's the standard we hold ourselves to, and it's why we obsess over the product, the support, the onboarding, and every other part of the experience. If we aren't the best option for you, we haven't done our job.

Technology

Technology is intentionally broad: everything digital you do. Many prospects and clients call us a POS because it is how many of our competitors have historically branded themselves. As such, we are happy to call ourselves a POS to rapidly place Rundoo in your mental map. However, we think of ourselves as much, much broader: we want to be your full technology partner. We already offer ERP functionality for financial planning, CRM functionality that lets you track interactions, and general ledger capabilities for accounting. In the strict sense, this is much more than the software that lives only at the "point of sale"! We're launching e-commerce this year, and we plan to eventually offer payroll, time tracking, marketing tools, and anything else digital that can empower you.

Why the broad approach? Because we have a deeply held belief that technology works best when everything is in concert. When your point of sale, accounting, customer management, and ordering all natively communicate, you gain insights and efficiency that you simply can't get from stitching different systems together. Our goal is to be your full technology partner. Because of how rapidly technology changes, we imagine this job will never be done: we'll get there iteratively by staying abreast of advancements in technology and spending a lot of time with you :)

Thank you

To every store owner who has put their trust in us: thank you. We wake up every day thinking about how to make your businesses better, and we don't take that responsibility lightly. We aren't going anywhere.

Alright, back to work. Let's go empower independent supply stores with the best technology.