Trade data should make sense

March 19, 2020 — Day 0

California locked down. At the time, I was running WrestlingMart, the world’s largest specialty eCommerce store for collegiate wrestling gear. That is a real niche—and a terrible one to be in during a pandemic. The last industry coming back was always going to be the one where people roll around on each other sweating.

At the same time, I had spent ten years dealing with complex supply chain problems. Every container hitting a U.S. port leaves a paper trail. Large importers and operators knew this and used the data constantly—but for everyone else it was locked behind expensive subscriptions, clunky government databases, and software that felt built to repel normal people. The data was public; it just was not accessible. That felt wrong.

April 15, 2020 — Day 27

Twenty-seven days later, I shipped the first version of ImportYeti.

I posted it to Reddit's FBA community with the title: "Free Bill of Lading Database."

People tore the product apart—ugly UI, dirty data, brutal comments. But that was the signal: nobody writes angry feedback about a product they do not want to exist.

So I spent the next week DMing critics, thanking them, and fixing issues.

2020–2021

Then the strange part happened: people showed up. Because the world was stuck inside, users were unusually willing to talk—I ended up having over 1,000 Zoom calls with importers, operators, and eCommerce founders. They showed me exactly where the product broke, where the data was confusing, and what actually mattered, and that period shaped everything.

We proved people wanted this, that we could build it, and that there was a business here. Along the way we hired our first team members; Andrey joined early and still helps lead engineering today.

2021–2022

ImportYeti kept growing: we crossed 1,000,000 users, then 2,000,000; launched PowerQuery so people could work with the data the way professionals do; and reached cash flow positive.

No VC, no growth-at-all-costs—just a sustainable business built by listening closely and shipping aggressively.

Today

There was no single magic moment after that—we kept doing the work: listening to users, building what mattered, ignoring what did not, and trying to make global trade data easier to use for the people who actually need it.

That is still the job, and we are still doing it.