Chieh Huang is the co-founder and CEO of Boxed.com, an American online and mobile membership-free wholesale retailer that offers direct delivery of bulk-sized packages via the Boxed app or the website.
Early life and education
Chieh Huang was born in 1982, and the only son of a low-income Chinese immigrant family from Taiwan. Huang grew up in New Jersey and Ohio, Maryland. He worked and borrowed his way through college. Huang earned his J.D. from the Fordham Law School and has a Bachelor’s degree in Economics from The Johns Hopkins University.
Early career
Chieh Huang was a corporate attorney at Proskauer Rose LLP in Manhattan in 2007. After two years in corporate law, Huang and two friends from JP Stevens High School Chris Cheung and Will Fong quit their corporate jobs to jump into mobile gaming. In 2009, Huang and some of his friends developed Astro Ape, a social gaming studio that develops mobile games. Huang served as Chief Executive Officer at Astro Ape.
The three moved into his friend’s mom’s attic and developed Office Heroes, one of the first social games designed for the iPhone. No one played the game, but the app caught the attention of a Japanese company that wanted to invest. Within two weeks, the first-time developers received a wire transfer for $800,000. Eight months later, the partners sold their nascent company for an undisclosed amount to Zynga, a San Francisco-based video-game developer. After the acquisition, Huang became the Director. The three stayed on for two years and then cashed out.
Boxed
After the acquisition, Huang used the money to launch an e-commerce store, Boxed that concentrates in grocery and household goods for consumers who don’t have the time to drive to the nearest supermarket. Huang co-founded Boxed with grade school friends Christopher Cheung and William Fong, along with Jared Yama in August 2013. The founders came together to develop the first mobile app that allows customers to shop wholesale products on-the-go, without paying wholesale club membership fees.
The concept came up when Huang, living without a car in Manhattan, did not have the same means to shop at the wholesale clubs as he did while growing up in New Jersey. The team created an easy-to-use, intuitive app for iPhone and Android, with their background in mobile gaming, and launched a website at Boxed.com, several months later.
The company first started shipping out of Huang’s garage in Edison, New Jersey, before launching their first fulfillment center in December 2013, in Edison. In May 2014, Boxed launched Express, its on-demand grocery delivery service, available in most of New York City, parts of Boston and New Jersey. Customers can shop bulk sizes of frozen and fresh groceries, and arrange a delivery date and time.
The Today Show profiled Boxed in January 2017, as the wholesale shopping app for the millennials and recognized the company’s benefits. Boxed has three centers around the country in New Jersey, Texas, and Nevada, which provide customers to receive their orders within two days, and in San Mateo, California.
Funding rounds
In August 2013, Boxed raised $1.1 million in a seed round from investors Social Starts, Max Ventures, Eniac Ventures, Digital Entertainment Ventures, Bessemer Venture Partners, and Basset Investment Group. Former Zynga COO David Ko is also a Boxed investor and would lead the company’s board of advisors.
In May 2014, Boxed raised $6.5 million in a Series A round from its lead investor Greycroft, as well as new investors First Round Capital and Signia Venture Partners. ENIAC Ventures, Social Starts, Box Group, Max Ventures, FJ Labs, Nitesh Banta, Fabrice Grinda, former Facebook COO Owen Van Natta and former Zynga COO David Ko also participated in the round. This round of funding designed to help accelerate things even further.
In January 2015, Boxed raised $25 million in a Series B round, led by GGV Capital and Eniac Ventures, with the participation from Vaizra Investments, Founders Fund, AME Cloud Ventures, Social Starts, Signia Venture Partners, Max Ventures, Lead Edge Capital, Greyfort, GGV Capital, Owen Van Natta, Oliver Jung, and Jose Marin. The investment round used to build out its fulfillment capacity and increase its assortment of goods offered.
In January 2016, Boxed raised $100 million in a Series C round, from investors including GGV Capital, blisce, Vaizra Investments, Uncommon Denominator, Safa Partners, Light Street Capital, Jose Marin, Jorge Lim, HuangPu River Capital, Fabrice Grinda, and among others.
In August 2018, Boxed raised $111 million in a Series D round, led by AEON, one of the largest retail chains in Japan. With the participation from investors Nomura Securities, Gabriel Naouri, Daniel Schryer, CDIB Capital, and Alpha Square Group. The deal values Boxed at $600 million.
Boxed has raised a total of $243.6 million in five rounds of funding. Boxed has $100 million in an estimated revenue annually. Boxed competes with Instacart, Peapod, and FreshDirect.
Company benefits
In May 2015, Huang announced he would pay the college tuition of every full-time employee’s children personally. In May 2016, Boxed announced it would pay up to $20,000 towards any full-time employee’s wedding.
Achievements
In June 2016, Internet retailer awarded Boxed as Emerging E-tailer of The Year. In September 2016, Crain’s listed Boxed as one of the top 100 places to work in NYC. In October 2016, Forbes named Boxed as one of their next billion-dollar startups.