Pit Karbe Email & Phone Number

New York, Ny, Us

New York City, New York, Us

Helping founders succeed.

Mountain View, Wy, Us

Invented a new cooking method and founded a stealth startup to developed a food e-commerce business based on the new method.

Seattle, Wa, Us

Part of a team of ex-founders and VCs working with high-potential startups. Mentored early-stage startup founders in US and Europe to help them grow and leverage AWS. Mentored hundreds of founders 1:1 on all aspects of company building including product-market fit, go-to-market, customer acquisition, lean and scalable operations, monetization and business model generation. Some of the founders subsequently built multi-billion-dollar businesses. Developed scalable programmatic startup support, including go-to-market support and an initiative for underrepresented founders.

New York, New York, Us

Recruited by the CEO & Founder when she was delivering frozen smoothie kits to 20 customers in her car in Manhattan, without gross margins, scalable operations, or a customer acquisition strategy. Within a year, achieved product-market fit, developed first customer acquisition channels, built lean and scalable operations, established margins, created a new fundraising pitch, recruited the first employee, and raised the first external capital. This put the company on a dramatic growth trajectory that culminated in a valuation of $1.2B, and many of the processes have become industry best practices that other frozen food startups have followed.PRODUCT-MARKET FIT: Found product-market fit with rapid iteration on form factor, formulation, price point, target demographic, go-to-market strategy. Achieved $500,000 revenue run rate after 6 months without paid acquisition channels due to budget constraints.INNOVATION: At the time, no startup had cracked the code of how to ship low-margin frozen food due to the high shipping and packaging costs. Researched packaging, coolant and shipping solutions, conducted testing and established optimal configuration. Negotiated discounts of up to 80% with vendors. This effort established a scalable shipping solution for frozen food that is used by a whole industry today and drove company valuation from $5M to $1.2B.LEAN MANUFACTURING: The company initially used a shared kitchen with limited floor space and cold storage. Frozen food startups struggle at this stage because volumes are too small for co-packers, and they often resort to building their own facility, which is expensive and risky. Convinced a large warehouse operator to let the company use its space and workers for production and fulfillment, all while only paying on a per-unit basis. These efforts established lean and scalable operations, which the company used for years and which enabled higher margins without capital investment.

Berlin, Berlin, De

Berlin, Berlin, De

Developed the meal kit concept which was rolled out in all HelloFresh markets and which created an entire industry. Launched HelloFresh UK as a solo founder, made first deliveries within two weeks, and expanded to US within 4 months. Built the foundations of a company that is now listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and valued at $5B.PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT: Iterated on the initial product by changing the form factor as well as by introducing photo recipe cards and pre-portioned ingredients.GO-TO-MARKET STRATEGY: In 2012, consumers were not buying food online in large numbers. Search volume for food-related keywords was low and traditional online customer acquisition channels ineffective. Led aggressive push to establish new channels, both online and offline. This included a PR campaign that resulted in 159 press mentions in 6 months. These efforts resulted in a $1M+ revenue run rate after 6 months.SUPPLY CHAIN: Upon entering the US market, it became clear that the UK model of using refrigerated trucks and expanding city by city wouldn’t scale. Perishable food supply chains are notoriously challenging and the failure of dotcom startups Webvan and HomeGrocer convinced many that this wasn’t a market e-commerce could penetrate. Led aggressive research and testing campaign and devised a groundbreaking solution using ground shipping. The solution made HelloFresh a scalable business model and was so successful that it was duplicated in all HelloFresh markets in by most grocery e-commerce businesses to this day.

Invented a greeting card that allows the recipient to choose a charity for a prepaid donation. Tested concept with minimum viable product in the Bay Area and launched nationwide. Pivoted from retail-based model during test market to web-based model.

London, England, Gb

New York, Ny, Us

New York, New York, Us

Munich, De

Armonk, New York, Ny, Us