The $800B Problem Hiding in Plain Sight: The SecondShop Story

Adam Froese has had one of the more unusual journeys in Canadian tech. He was a former Olympic field hockey player, ex-Deloitte investment banker, Venture Capitalist at Harvest Ventures, and co-founder of SecondShop, a company that provides the strategic operating layer for retailers like Costco and HomeDepot. In 24 months, the company has sold over $100M worth of retail goods, through it's integrated logistics and recommerce marketplace. The business started with a Wayfair couch that came in the wrong colour. What followed that thread revealed an $800B gap in the global retail supply chain that nobody was seriously solving.In this conversation we get into why the real moat isn't the marketplace, it's the truck. Why Canadian VC is broken and what the incentive misalignment actually looks like from the inside. Why government R&D grants are distorting the companies that receive them. And why Adam says he is not building this company to make money.One of the more honest conversations we've had on the show.