We often talk about the “last mile” in delivery and logistics. But what about the last 100ft? It’s a problem that costs the delivery sector over $10bn each year in missing packages and refund fraud; a problem that Shashwat Murarka set out to solve. In 2023, Shashwat founded Doorstep.ai, an app that uses sensor fusion technology to track deliveries indoors as well as out – and can track a driver as they navigate a multi-storey apartment block with sub 5m accuracy.

In September last year the startup received $8m seed funding, but it’s been a rollercoaster ride to get there. In this episode of the Further, Faster Podcast, he joins Antler General Partner Jeff Becker to talk about what it takes to build a company from scratch, why you need to “keep digging and digging” to find the gold and how 14 months in “monk mode” got him the breakthrough he needed. 

One of the reasons Shashwat is such an inspiring founder is that he really started from the ground up. When Jeff first met him in Atlanta, he was sleeping on an air mattress at a friend’s place, working for a startup during the day and making extra cash doing deliveries at night. And after he’d come home he’d stay up until 2 or 3am writing code.  “It was amazing,” he says. “I would not give that up for anything.”

For Shashwat, who is Indian-born, this passion to succeed whatever the cost is rooted in his experience as an immigrant to the US. “There was always this mini chip on your shoulder, right?” he says. “You want to prove yourself, you want to put your country on the map, you want to do something for the people who are back home who are putting all their efforts to send you here.” 

Deliveries soon became something of an obsession for Shashwat. Doing the job gave him a flavour of the business, but so did ordering them himself and wondering why drivers – who were outside his address – would still be calling him asking how to reach him. Friends would flag the same problems. He started using a stopwatch to time drivers and make notes about any issues. 

Shashwat has some solid advice for anyone trying to build a solutions-based startup. “Go where the problem is”. In his case this meant hanging around outside apartment buildings, waiting for drivers to show up and following them in. “I’d try to see what they're doing in the app. see if they have information or not,” he says. “I was in the Reddit channels reading from like delivery drivers what's going on, like what are the problems… at that time, I was just like, what is the the shortest path to proving that something like this is a problem?”

Now Doorstep is a ten-strong company and building momentum fast thanks to its recent funding round. But it hasn’t changed Shashwat’s outlook. He still runs the company with the same attitude that drove him when he started. “Nothing's changed at Doorstep after any money that we raised,” he says. “The same was true when you [Antler] wrote a check as well. The only thing that's changed is I got an apartment and I got a place to live in.” 

To hear more about Shashat’s journey, how Doorstep is shaking up the delivery sector, and why prospective employees need to be good dinner party guests, listen to the full episode here.