Why I Joined Paperless Parts: Riley Eger (Customer Success Manager)

August 21st 2018, Riley Eger joined the team to start building out the customer success process at Paperless Parts. Read about his background and why he chose to come to Paperless!

Being 23, I feel that most of my generation lacks exposure to the rawness of the manufacturing industry and how crucial it is to our economy, beyond what textbooks taught us in school. I was fortunate enough to grow up in the background of my father as he built Five Lakes Manufacturing, into one of the largest commercial door manufacturers in the country.

Growing Up In Manufacturing

I spent my summers working on our shop floor absorbing every bit of conversation and information all while trying to offer, what I thought at the time, was better operational ways to do things. My father tended to ignore my ideas until I made it through a few years of college and actually understood the workflow of the factory. Pursuing a degree in Finance with a focus on portfolio management, I found myself building more models to help our family business track inventory than models I should have been building to track stock prices for class, oops.

I knew there was a way for me to help more shops like my families so in September 2017, I started a company called RN Products, LLC. I set out to help mom and pop shops by giving them digital packages consisting of websites and Excel templates to track inventory and establish an online presence. I wouldn’t charge them anything; I would just take a small % of sales that were driven through the websites. After 8 months of doing this and working with 3 to 5 shops I realized that I needed a way to price their products quicker online. I started working on a way to calculate the cost of standard size products from a lookup table I would build out with the manufacturers I was working with. After a long backyard discussion with a friend, I needed to help manufacturing as a whole through some type of software. Having a degree in Finance I decided the best way to find companies to learn from was through venture capital. This would give me exposure to hundreds of companies and the ability to pick the brains of CEO’s while coming up with the best way to start a software company.

How I Found Paperless

During a round of interviews, I was approached by an individual at the firm who was surprised by my knowledge of manufacturing at such a young age and asked if I would be interested in talking to the CEO of a manufacturing software startup called Paperless Parts (she was an advisor for them). I canceled my flight and sat in a coffee shop reading every single thing I could find about Paperless Parts and CEO Jason Ray. Instantly, I was captivated by the company and their mission to champion manufacturing. After talking with Jason for a few weeks, I was offered a position as the Customer Success Manager for Paperless Parts. I not only get to build software that will someday work for my father’s company, but I get to help thousands of people, just like him, grow their businesses and stay competitive in the industry. This is AWESOME and a dream come true!

Thanks for reading!

– Riley Eger

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