Josh Kaplan: Raising $100M to solve Fashion's $500B problem 🦄

🚨 The B2B marketplace you’ve never heard of — solving fashion’s $500B problem.

Josh Kaplan went from fashion founder to reinventing how brands offload excess inventory.

Today, he’s co-CEO of Ghost, one of LA’s fastest-growing startups — and the secret backend for how brands like Levi’s, Vans, and Express manage their surplus stock. 🛍️📦

🎙️ We sat down with Josh to break down how he’s digitizing one of the last analog industries — and why tech adoption in fashion is way harder than it looks.

🔍 What you’ll learn in this episode:

🧵 How COVID exposed critical cracks in the global supply chain — and led to Ghost

🦄 Why you should always pitch for Partners and not for Funds

📉 Why excess inventory is fashion’s most ignored profit leak

🗽 The playbook Josh used to get a student startup on a Times Square billboard

📬 How to cold email as a student and get Fortune 500 execs to respond

🔁 Lessons from building both sides of a two-sided marketplace — twice

🚀 What most founders get wrong about B2B marketplaces

💡 Plus:

The founder mindset of "always building" — and why Josh plans to launch again even after a big exit.

🔁 Repost if it made you think. This one’s for the builders.

Josh Kaplan Matteo Jonathan Gary Rouch