Transcript
Introduction
Patrick
This week's guest is Zack Kanter, the founder and CEO of Stedi. Zack and I decided not to talk much about his business on this podcast, and opted instead to explore business more generally. A bit of an introduction to what they do may be helpful here for some extra context. Stedi is a platform for exchanging and automating 300 types of business-to-business transactions, things like purchase orders and invoices. It's a modern take on an archaic protocol called EDI, Electronic Data Interchange, something I'd never even heard of until a few months ago.
Learning about EDI is a bit like finding out about the matrix. Every physical object you come across, from the food you ate for breakfast to the clothes you're wearing and the electronics you use, basically anything with a barcode on it was likely touched by EDI, often dozens of times before making it into your hands. Stedi is the first update to this messaging layer in decades. Our conversation in this podcast is about business in general, starting with Zack's fascination with Walmart and Amazon. I should also note that my family is a recent investor in Stedi, and I'm thankful to have learned a great deal from Zack over the last few months, please enjoy our conversation.