Nick Hershey, 25
Co-founder and CEO, Rundoo
Location: Menlo Park
Education: B.S. in math and computer science from Stanford University
Resume: Hershey worked at Google as a product manager intern, then at Bridgewater Associates as an investment analyst before spending time at Citadel Securities and crypto-focused Enigma Technologies
Hobbies: Loves playing tennis and basketball, along with “outdoorsy stuff" like hiking. He also plays jazz piano. Among his favorite musicians? Oscar Peterson and Bill Evans.
With Rundoo, Nick Hershey is using technology to kick the archaic process used by suppliers and contractors to exchange building materials into the modern world.
“The large majority of materials purchases are still having, in very old-fashioned ways, these back and forths happening between contractors,” Hershey said. “This could be so much more efficient if you brought more modern communication and ordering, and payments that were all online.”
Hershey and co-founder Andrew Beckman launched Rundoo earlier this year to build a platform for residential contractors to exchange building supplies like paint, brushes, rollers, wood, fasteners and tools. The name for the company came via a brainstorming session with the two to find a moniker that was easy to pronounce and memorable.
“If you heard it, you could write it, and if you read it, you could say it,” Hershey said. “So we just made up a bunch of nonsense words, and we liked this one.”
Originally hailing from Cincinnati, Hershey first came to California to study at Stanford. While he was drawn in by the proximity to the Bay Area tech ecosystem, coming from a family of Big Ten fanatics he was also looking for a school with a well defined and historic sports culture.
Hershey said he and his co-founder share a lot of duties, though Hershey takes care of more of the sales, product management and fundraising.
“We both are doing a little bit of everything, we both try to be on the same page about everything,” he said. “We both are super in sync all the time, rather than neat clean lines (between) what we're doing.”
As the founder of a young startup — Rundoo currently has three employees — Hershey's job involves wearing different hats on a daily basis. It's a part of the job, but that's not to say it isn't a challenge.
“It’s a very hectic roller coaster between having to meet with all these customers, understand their needs, and then rapidly adapt a product based on their feedback,” Hershey said. “It’s simultaneously the hard part, but also the really fun part.”
