ImportYeti
👤 Dave Applegate (Ran WrestlingMart (wrestling gear); a decade in supply chains — he lived the overseas-supplier hunt he later solved.)🌐 site𝕏
Type a company and see which overseas factories supply it — pulled from 70M public customs records, free.
Will it work? · our read
Usable wins. He made locked-but-public data usable — free got 2M users and trust. Public data means low control, freemium revenue is weak.
01How the money moves
US Customs
70M public B/L
70M public B/L
→
Crawl & make
searchable + maps
searchable + maps
→
Free core →
paid tiers + PowerQuery
paid tiers + PowerQuery
02The numbers
2M+
users
official
70M
customs records
4.9★
G2 · 366 reviews
Built the first version in 27 days, posted to Reddit as "Free Bill of Lading Database," then ran 1,000+ Zoom calls with importers to fix it. Tool or Die
Revenue about $1M (prospeo.io est · unverified) · $0 raised official. ImportYeti doesn't publish revenue, so this stays an estimate.
03Weight class — CENTStap an axis
Control Low
Built on public customs data — anyone can access it. Control comes from the UX & trust layer, not exclusive data.
04The key move
Why him
10 years wrestling with supply chains (running WrestlingMart) — he felt the pain personally and knew the data existed. Founder-market fit, not a tourist.
fact
The counter-intuitive move
The data was already public — rivals locked it behind $125–899/mo. He gave it free, launched in 27 days on Reddit, ran 1,000+ user calls to make it usable.
free·calls=fact
05Where the moat is
Not the data (it's public). It's:
Process · 70M records made usableBranding · the free, trusted B/L tool (4.9★)
06How it diesmedium confidence
Public data = anyone can copy it. Stay free forever with no paid layer → no revenue to fund the upkeep 70M records demand. The moat is UX + trust, and both decay if you stop shipping. our read
Show evidence · counter
Evidence: Public data (fact) + freemium revenue is the weak CENTS axis (Time).
Counter: But 2M users & 4.9★ trust = a UX/brand moat that is hard to copy quickly — likely more durable than "public data = copyable" implies.
07Against rivals
Rivals sell to big enterprises at high prices. ImportYeti won the long tail (small importers, FBA sellers) that the others priced out. our read
08Who uses it
🛒 FBA / e-com sellers — find suppliers🔍 Sourcing teams🕵 Competitor analysis
★Would it work for you?
Do you know a dataset that's technically public but practically locked — in a domain you've actually lived in?
That was Dave's whole edge: 10 years in supply chains + public B/L nobody made usable. We don't score you — you answer.
🚀Use it as a launchpada prompt for your own AI
Copy → paste into your AI → then develop it freely in the conversation.
You are a sharp, honest startup strategist. Use the proven case below as a launchpad for MY idea — help me find my own angle, not copy it.
<my_profile>
Domain I know: [your domain]
My unfair advantage (access/audience): [your edge]
Interests: [your interests]
Resources & goal: [your resources] · [your goal]
</my_profile>
<case name="ImportYeti" model="data">
What it does: scraped 70M public customs records, made them searchable for free; rivals charged $125-899/mo → 2M users; solo-ish, $0 VC
Why it won (moat): not the data (it's public) — the UX + trust layer
Weakest axis (CENTS): Control low (public data, anyone can copy) + freemium revenue weak
How it could die: stay free forever → can't fund upkeep of 70M records
</case>
<task>
Be a skeptical operator, not a cheerleader. No generic startup platitudes. If my angle is weak, say so plainly.
First, a reality check: markets like this mostly fail. State the honest base rate (how crowded/hard is this?) and the ONE specific thing that would have to be true for ME to be the exception — grounded in my profile above.
Then a compact table:
- Fit — does this pattern suit my edge, or fight my gap?
- Angle — my sharpest differentiation vs ImportYeti (concrete, not "better UX")
- Distribution — exactly where my first 100 users come from (this is the hardest part — be specific, not "content marketing")
- Risk — its "how it dies" (above) in MY situation
Finish with one line: "The single thing to do next."
Use only the facts above; if data is thin, say so — never invent numbers.
Then stay with me and go deeper on whatever I ask — tech stack, rough cost & time, the smallest MVP to test, pricing, or timing.
</task>
✓ Copied — paste into your AI
👤Placeholders like [your domain] auto-fill from your profile — example values for now.Set up profile →
Sourcesupdated · daily
· Founder & story — importyeti.com/about, Tool or Die· Revenue est. — prospeo.io (3rd-party) · Rivals — ImportGenius· ★Reviews — G2 ★4.9 · 366
Revenue about $1M is a third-party estimate (ImportYeti doesn't publish it) — tagged unverified. Users (2M+), $0 funding, 27-day build & 1,000 calls are the founder's own account. CENTS & moat are our read. We never score you.