Founders Everywhere: Ben Wunderman
Ben Wunderman is the co-founder & CEO of Packsmith, the AI-driven e-commerce fulfillment and distribution platform for brands and retailers.
Welcome to Founders Everywhere, where we highlight the incredible people behind the companies we’ve backed at Everywhere Ventures, a global pre-seed fund supported by a community of 500 founders and operators.
Packsmith was born out of a simple but urgent reality: e-commerce growth has exploded, yet distribution and logistics remain broken. In the past decade, the cost of shipping a standard package has risen more than 80%, and even experienced founders struggle with returns, fulfillment, and scaling globally. Most existing tools are built for supply chain experts, leaving everyday sellers and even large brand teams frustrated. Packsmith’s platform makes distribution simple, affordable, and accessible to everyone. Whether it’s a retail associate fulfilling an order, a Shopify seller just getting started, or a global brand like Nike, Packsmith democratizes logistics so that anyone, anywhere, can scale with ease.
Co-founders Ben Wunderman and Simon Robb bring complementary expertise to Packsmith’s mission of making e-commerce distribution simple and accessible. Ben is a seasoned leader in competitive intelligence, strategy, operations, and marketing, with a track record of driving rapid growth at innovative companies including Lyft, Cruise, and General Motors. He has advised Fortune 100 companies, startups, and global investors on scaling strategies, market expansion, and customer-centric growth. Simon is an accomplished engineering leader who ran engineering at Uber New York during the company’s hypergrowth years, building large-scale systems that transformed how people and goods move. Together, they combine deep strategic and operational expertise with technical excellence to reimagine how brands of all sizes can scale through a unified, democratized distribution platform.
Why did you create Packsmith?
I grew up in Tasmania, Australia far from everything, which gave me an early appreciation for the challenges of access and distribution. That experience shaped my career in tech, where I focused on solving real-world problems through digital tools. Later, at Lyft, I helped change how people moved around cities, while my co-founder, Simon, was doing the same at Uber. During the pandemic, I saw the next big shift — the explosion of e-commerce — and realized no one had truly solved the distribution challenges brands face. Friends starting brands would call me for help, highlighting how broken and expensive the system had become. With shipping costs rising more than 80% in the past decade and challenges like returns piling up, I saw a huge opportunity. Simon and I started building Packsmith to give brands a better way to scale and grow by reducing costs, improving logistics, and ultimately making e-commerce work better for both businesses and consumers.
What’s Packsmith’s North Star?
Our North Star is to make distribution for e-commerce and retail as easy as possible, for everyone from a small seller in the middle of nowhere to a multinational brand.
Why is Packsmith going to win?
We’re not just building a feature or a product, we’re building a platform that unifies the tools both brands and retailers need, and we’re making it accessible to every person in the organization. We’re not building for someone with a PhD in supply chain; we’re building for the retail associate, the brand founder, and everyone in between. By democratizing access to distribution, we’re giving brands the ability to win, because we believe that’s where the future of retail is headed.
What’s on the horizon for Packsmith?
International expansion is key—Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, and beyond. The global app launch will put our product into the hands of brands in every country, tapping into the $7.2T global e-commerce opportunity. Alongside that, we’re focused on scaling the platform and adding more brand users.
How has your background influenced you as a founder?
I dropped out of a PhD program in philosophy, so I don’t come from a classic tech or business background. Growing up in Australia and later moving to the U.S. has given me unique perspectives and life experiences that continue to shape how I approach building and leading Packsmith.
Any favorite books?
Some of my favorites are: Crossing The Chasm by Geoffrey Moore, How Brands Grow by Byron Sharp, and The Challenger Sale by Brent Adamson and Matthew Dixon.
Fun Fact:
I was on track to become a Zen Buddhist priest before I went into startups. If I wasn’t building companies, that’s what I’d probably be doing.
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