Shyp Nabs Foursquare’s Varun Shetty To Run Business Development

Shyp, an app that enables customers to summon a courier and ship an item, has hired Foursquare’s Varun Shetty to run the company’s business development operations.

Shetty’s primary focus for now will be building relationships with retailers with the company’s returns product. Customers can summon a Shyp courier to return a product through a dedicated interface in the app, a feature which launched in March earlier this year. Shyp users pay a $5 fee in order to return a product they ordered through an online retailer like Amazon.

The story starts with a direct message Shetty received from Shyp head of product Wes Donohoe on Twitter after he wrote a tweet about using the product. At Foursquare, Shetty handled the company’s partnerships and data licensing — such as its integrations with Uber and Twitter.

“I had a bunch of sweaters, I had to get rid of them — they were sitting in my living room for a long time and I needed to send them to my little brother,” Shetty said. “People were talking about Shyp, and it felt like the right way to ship something. They saw my tweet and they reached out.”

Shyp confirmed it raised $50 million in April at a valuation that was around $250 million, according to our earlier reports. Shyp was not the only sort of on-demand company that had raised large sums of money — Sprig and DoorDash did too — though Shyp CEO Kevin Gibbon re-iterated at TechCrunch Disrupt NY that he does not consider Shyp an on-demand company.

Shetty will be looking to work with “old school retailers,” he said, giving examples like Bloomingdale’s and Nordstrom. But the company’s goal is also to work with tech-augmented startups that are more like Bonobos and Trunk Club. Shyp is currently working with Rent The Runway, powering its returns experience in the markets where Shyp is currently available.

“All of that is important to the consumer, we want to build a way to make the customer experience [for returns] seamless,” he said. “It’s part of the product now, but I’m looking to come in and get a footing with retailers and build a use case out for our users.”

Shetty is in San Francisco for the next month or so, and then will be based in New York — which makes sense given that many of the companies that Shyp is looking to work with are based there.