Podcast appearances and mentions of mark rubin

Plenty of new music including some powerful anti-fascist songs from Mark Rubin and Martin Kerr and all sorts of merriment from Africa, Aotearoa, Denmark, Sweden, Eire, Canada and the American resistance! Also music by some of the winners at last week's East Coast Music Awards in St. John's. Plus concert previews and R.I.P. to English guitar legend Wizz Jones - and a farewell song from / to NL's Mark Hiscock of Shanneyganock

Musik aus finnischen Wäldern und Tangobars, Kantelemagie, Klezmer Muskel Kater, Songs von Mark Rubin oder Stellmäcke über den Horror des Krieges entdeckt Grit Friedrich.

In this episode, e-commerce pioneer Mark Rubin, founder of Kasama and Salesforce aficionado, takes us on a digital odyssey through his illustrious career in e-commerce development. From foregoing law school to embarking on a journey that's seen coding breakthroughs and vibrant city living, Mark reveals how personal passions and a humorous life philosophy have shaped his professional triumphs. He shares insights into the thrill of launching an e-commerce platform for St. Jude's and discusses the power of AI in commerce, the importance of soft skills, and the innovative strategies for deploying sites on Commerce Cloud. Whether you're a developer, project manager, or simply curious about the future of commerce, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to navigate the ever-evolving world of e-commerce with success. Show Highlights: The role of personal interests and "superpowers" in Mark's professional success. Insights on rapid e-commerce development for St. Jude's and the thrill of launching innovative projects on Commerce Cloud. The importance of soft skills in tech, agency growth, and balancing technical expertise with leadership and communication. Approaches to deploying sites on Commerce Cloud, catering to B2C, B2B, and D2C business needs, and leveraging headless commerce. The transformative role of AI in commerce, enhancing capabilities for developers and project managers, and its application in real-world projects. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Supporting Resources: Join the Commerce Cloud Community: http://sforce.co/commercecrew *** Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com. Let them know I sent you.

In this episode, we're joined by Mark Rubin, Founder and President of Kasama. Mark is a veteran of eCommerce and B2B innovation. He discusses the importance of strong partnerships in B2B commerce, the value of speed and uptime, and how Kasama supports complex client needs. Mark shares his insights on managing B2B relationships and the role of technology in enabling efficient, customized customer experiences.Key Takeaways:(02:24) Commerce-focused partnerships with a skilled Filipino team.(04:53) B2B focus and strong features offer unique growth potential.(06:37) Platform choice hinges on understanding unique B2B needs.(09:29) Customizable flows and strong reporting simplify B2B management.(14:10) B2B integrations are catching up, driving efficiency and revenue.(16:39) Balancing user experience and function requires a phased approach.(18:27) A test-and-iterate approach allows B2B sites to scale and adapt.(20:39) AI and foundational improvements will drive future B2B efficiency.(23:23) Thriving in eCommerce by partnering with unique, complex B2B clients.(25:26) Choose partners who ask questions and focus on your business needs.(28:19) Choose tech wisely — focus on needs, team capacity and real value.(30:51) Hustle and transparency define a client-first, “fireable” approach.Resources Mentioned:Mark Rubin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjrubin/Kasama | LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/kasama-digital/Kasama | Website -https://www.kasamadigital.com/Thanks for listening to the B2B Commerce UnCut: A Journey Through Change, powered by Oro. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#eCommerce #B2BeCommerce #DigitalCommerce

In this episode, we're joined by Mark Rubin, Founder and President of Kasama. Mark is a veteran of eCommerce and B2B innovation. He discusses the importance of strong partnerships in B2B commerce, the value of speed and uptime, and how Kasama supports complex client needs. Mark shares his insights on managing B2B relationships and the role of technology in enabling efficient, customized customer experiences.Key Takeaways:(02:24) Commerce-focused partnerships with a skilled Filipino team.(04:53) B2B focus and strong features offer unique growth potential.(06:37) Platform choice hinges on understanding unique B2B needs.(09:29) Customizable flows and strong reporting simplify B2B management.(14:10) B2B integrations are catching up, driving efficiency and revenue.(16:39) Balancing user experience and function requires a phased approach.(18:27) A test-and-iterate approach allows B2B sites to scale and adapt.(20:39) AI and foundational improvements will drive future B2B efficiency.(23:23) Thriving in eCommerce by partnering with unique, complex B2B clients.(25:26) Choose partners who ask questions and focus on your business needs.(28:19) Choose tech wisely — focus on needs, team capacity and real value.(30:51) Hustle and transparency define a client-first, “fireable” approach.Resources Mentioned:Mark Rubin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/markjrubin/Kasama | LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/kasama-digital/Kasama | Website -https://www.kasamadigital.com/Thanks for listening to the B2B Commerce UnCut: A Journey Through Change, powered by Oro. If you enjoyed this episode, leave a review to help get the word out about the show. And be sure to subscribe so you never miss another insightful conversation.#eCommerce #B2BeCommerce #DigitalCommerce

On today's program: Brent Keilen, FRC Action's Vice President for Strategic Initiatives, reacts to the Vice-Presidential debate, highlights FRC Action's election resources, and previews the upcoming Pray Vote Stand Summit. Keith Self, U.S.

Moe calls out Mark Rubin's comments on a morning show; Keyon shares his dream wedding; What reasons did you skip class in grade school? Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In this episode, e-commerce pioneer Mark Rubin, founder of Kasama and Salesforce aficionado, takes us on a digital odyssey through his illustrious career in e-commerce development. From foregoing law school to embarking on a journey that's seen coding breakthroughs and vibrant city living, Mark reveals how personal passions and a humorous life philosophy have shaped his professional triumphs. He shares insights into the thrill of launching an e-commerce platform for St. Jude's and discusses the power of AI in commerce, the importance of soft skills, and the innovative strategies for deploying sites on Commerce Cloud. Whether you're a developer, project manager, or simply curious about the future of commerce, this episode offers a wealth of knowledge and inspiration to navigate the ever-evolving world of e-commerce with success. Show Highlights: The role of personal interests and "superpowers" in Mark's professional success. Insights on rapid e-commerce development for St. Jude's and the thrill of launching innovative projects on Commerce Cloud. The importance of soft skills in tech, agency growth, and balancing technical expertise with leadership and communication. Approaches to deploying sites on Commerce Cloud, catering to B2C, B2B, and D2C business needs, and leveraging headless commerce. The transformative role of AI in commerce, enhancing capabilities for developers and project managers, and its application in real-world projects. Follow and Review: We'd love for you to follow us if you haven't yet. Click that purple '+' in the top right corner of your Apple Podcasts app. We'd love it even more if you could drop a review or 5-star rating over on Apple Podcasts. Simply select “Ratings and Reviews” and “Write a Review” then a quick line with your favorite part of the episode. It only takes a second and it helps spread the word about the podcast. Supporting Resources: Join the Commerce Cloud Community: http://sforce.co/commercecrew *** Episode Credits If you like this podcast and are thinking of creating your own, consider talking to my producer, Emerald City Productions. They helped me grow and produce the podcast you are listening to right now. Find out more at https://emeraldcitypro.com. Let them know I sent you.

In this episode of the DUM Show, the conversation heats back up around Nikki Haley's potential VP candidacy, with Mark Rubin and Megyn Kelly adding their insights to a debate our host has been stoking for three years. We also tackle the contentious reactions to our host's comments on atheism, revealing the depth of division and dialogue it has sparked. Meanwhile, in the political arena, Clinton, Obama, and Biden successfully rally to raise $25 million, juxtaposed against Trump's visit to a fallen officer, highlighting the complex tapestry of American politics. Join us for these discussions and more, only on the DUM Show.Please consider donating to the show: linktapgo.com/thedumshow Thank you!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-don-t-unfriend-me-show--6012883/support.

I'm excited about today's episode because we will get a behind-the-scenes look into a franchisee. I've got Mark Rubin, who owns 1-800-GOT JUNK franchise units in 10 markets with his partners, and they do over $100M per year in sales. He was on my podcast last year, where he dives into the story. But today, we will focus more on operating and scaling a large service company.Check out Brian's newsletter Stay up to date with all things franchising by following Brian on Twitter & LinkedIn

This week Tim, Jonathan and Jaime are joined by guest host Mark Rubin to discuss the impact of the Vision Pro on technology and entertainment.#Privacy: Facebook, TikTok, and Other Apps Use Push Notifications to Send Data about Your iPhoneApple CEO Tim Cook Compares Vision Pro 'Moment' to iPhone and Mac - MacRumorsApple Vision Pro international release roadmap leaked, and it's good newsAmazon is bringing a whole lot of AI to Thursday Night Football this seasonApple Vision Pro: Here are the first apps you should download | TechCrunchLaunch Apps - Donovan's Vision BlogToday in Apple history: Devs get iPhone SDK, unlocking power of apps‎VisionTubeSupport this podcast at — https://redcircle.com/spockcast-a-star-trek-discovery-picard-and-lower-decks-podcast/donationsAdvertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brandsPrivacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy

EP309 - Instacart IPO Filing  Warning: Given the complexity and breadth of topics, this is a longer than usual episode with a runtime of 90 minutes (if we had more time, we'd produce a shorter podcast). Update: In this episode Jason mentioned that he didn't think Instacart accepted SNAP payments. It turns out that Instacart did start accepting SNAP earlier this month. On Friday, August 25th 2023 Instacart filled its S-1 IPO form with the SEC, in advance of its intention to make an initial public offering. The complete filing is almost 400 pages. In this episode we summarize all the key points, including a number of surprises, in the filing. If you want to follow along with the actual S-1, you can download it here. Scot suggests you focus on pages 101-124. Topics Covered: Cover Page and Entry Level Items Overall Growth Trends 25:50 Unit economics 42:90 Cohort Analysis 48:10 Instacart Ads 56:30 The Big Risk/Concern 1:00:11 Other observations (Instacart+, Carrot Services, Generative AI) 1:22:50 Other episodes mentioned: Episode 255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire and Episode 224 Customer Cohort Analysis and CLV with Dr. Daniel McCarthy. Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 309 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, August 29, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 309 being recorded on Tuesday August 29th I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:38] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. We are going to jump into the talk tonight because one of our most popular shows as you know Jason the format is a deep dive and we have got a great Deep dive for you guys this episode. Last Friday August 25th there was a very big event not only in our favorite world's grocery which is Jason's favorite world and my favorite world of e-commerce and then Jason's favorite world of. But also in my favorite world of startups so this is this is a pretty big event and we wanted to dedicate a complete episode to it. I mean it is the filing of the S14 instacart. [1:24] And just to set it up the you know in my world of start-up land it has been very hard to get an IPO done so there's been a couple post coated and like late 2020. And then summon 21 and then there's been a dry spell there's been something called a dese back so you have this spec which is this. [1:44] Special-purpose acquisition thing and you can kind of go public through this kind of complicated convoluted thing. Tends not to go very well so there's been some of that like in My World Mobility there is one called get around and there's been a couple others and those typically have not. Gone so well they're down like 95% bird the scooter company did this as well. So it's been a very dry IPO market for startups and thus of interior backed investors. So there has been a lot of anticipation around when is that a PO when they're going to open who's going to be brave enough to kind of stick their foot out there first. And you know a lot of people have been rooming that instacart would be out there there's a couple other companies in this kind of unicorn Stratosphere stripe is another one that we cover a lot on the show from the payments world. There's also the others you can think of Jason there's this one. There's a software one that is just doing really well in AI that's been mentioned a lot not not open AI it'll come to me in a minute. So you know so this is kind of the real. Bang the Big Bang of here's a company that is being brave enough they're gonna go first and we're going to see what happens so it's going to be really interesting and we thought because it hits this Venn diagram of all of our favorite things that we would spend a fair amount of time on. [3:10] So first of all this is a 400 page document so our value add to the listeners is we have distilled it down into what we think are the most interesting little tidbits and some of the things we've learned from instacart it is nice because there's been a lot of rumors about how instacart Economics work and Jason has been tracking their ad piece which is you know cpgs have really seen some really nice results from that so we know that's been active and the areas we picked apart we thought we would cover tonight is I wanted to kind of give you a quick and dirty Scott's guide to reading an s-1 and we'll start at the cover page that's there's actually a lot that happens on the cover page so I want to spend a little time there and kind of give you a little I haven't taken a company poet behind the scenes of what's going on on there and then we're going to talk about some of the overall growth things that just kind of help you understand. [4:07] How to think about instacart how they're growing and what they do and what role they play and then unit economics one of the things that is happening more and more in these s1's is they're doing a more comprehensive cohort analysis and this is basically showing hey if if I car to a customer in a certain period how are they doing now and what are those Trends so that this this had a lot going on there of course we want to talk about the ad business and then little bit of a catch-all for other observations, Jason anything I missed before we jump into the cover page. Jason: [4:42] No I think you mostly covered it just one slight correction it's four of our five favorite things for those listeners that tuned in to hear us talk about Ahsoka we're going to do that on an upcoming episode so that Star Wars would be our fifth. Scot: [4:56] Yes sadly there was no Star Wars in this one so it's that one little part of the over the Venn diagram was left is its own little circle out in space. Jason: [5:06] That's a we call that a teaser for a future episode. Scot: [5:09] Yeah yeah we're we're Pros were 300-plus episodes into this thing and this is the kind of you know Pro level that we deliver on the pod. So you guys missed it Jason forgot to plug in his microphone earlier so that's a yeah we're still still learning every day, so when you open an s-1 the first thing you see is the cover page and it you know a lot of people just Breeze by it because it's a cover page but it has a lot of really valuable information so first of all the first thing that I noticed is I was searching for this on Edgar and I kept typing in instacart and it wouldn't show up and I was like WTH I know this s1's out there why can I not find it and then I saw an article and it said oh the company's real name is maple bear so that's the first thing you see on the cover is the company we all refer to as instacart its actual Corporation name is maple bear and it does business as instacart so I thought I did not know that prior so that was the first thing I learned right there on the cover so that's interesting so if you do go to the will put a link to the s-1 in the show notes but if you do Brave the Edgar SEC database yourself throwing a little Maple bear there and not instacart. Jason: [6:22] Not to be confused with Amazon's house brand Mama Bear. Scot: [6:26] Yeah yeah and I'm sure there's a honey bear and brown bears there's a there's a lot of a lot of bear things going on. The other thing that I was like to see is what symbol are they using I think it's fun to kind of you know as an entrepreneur to kind of think about what symbol you're going to use that best personifies your brand Channel Bowser we had ecom's so that was an exciting one so we captured e-commerce Shopify go. Jason: [6:52] The best ticker symbol of all times by the way. Scot: [6:55] Thank you thanks thanks I appreciate it. Shopify head shop and that was a good one and instacart / Maple bear is going with cart so I think that's a that's a that's a pretty nice one you know it kind of there a multi grocer chart cart and we all think about instacart I'm sure they hate being called Instagram so this kind of like really punches on the cart so maybe they get away from everyone mistakenly calm Instagram. Jason: [7:19] I think it's solid. Scot: [7:20] Yeah A-Plus on the symbol and then in the you'll notice that a lot of the evaluations and how many shares they're selling are blank and that's you know in this draft of this one which is the first kind of public one that they're dropping out there they'll they'll iterate a couple more times they'll do their Roadshow and then write one that, it prices they'll update the S12 include all that information so they'll make kind of literally a game day decision the night before IPO of how much based on the order book how much they want to sell and at what price so that, that's going to be blank through probably several more iterations as we go on then this is did you want to do something in. Jason: [8:04] No I was just I was just thinking that they I assume they left it blank because the underwriters were out of practice. Scot: [8:10] Yeah no no they they are there waiting and that's a good point because when you go public the the companies that take you public in this context they're all investment banks on Wall Street. But they they filled this role of Underwriters and basically what they're doing is they're acting as market makers they're going to cover your stock when it's public and they're also going to be basically pounding the pavement to sell your stock to buy side by side analysts and firms on Wall Street. Which there's two buckets of there's mutual funds and hedge funds there's also retail that I guess there's three buckets, retail would be you log into Schwab or Robin Hood and the diet of the IPO you try to buy some chairs that's retail and they all allocate a little bit of that for the IPO so they like retail to come in and get a little taste. [9:04] A lot of folks that if you're an accredited investor at an institution and you have a wealth manager, sometimes you can get a little bit of access to an IPO before it prices you don't get a special price or anything but you can if you're really excited and you're a retail customer you and you're in this kind of wealthy bucket then you can you can get some allocated shares I think is what they call it these call this friends and family they don't call that, that anymore that's called a allocated shares but what's important about the underwriters is there's actually a signal there several signals here and I didn't know this time went through the process. First of all they have lined up a who's who of investors so even before you get to Underwriters they have this really interesting note right before right underneath before they get in the underwriters and they say oh by the way we have lined up these investors already that have committed to buying and they have committed Asterix and then they kind of like take away the committed but. [10:05] I think that's a legality I think I think it's a pretty hard commitment is my reading of them and they basically say these guys are already these guys have lined up to buy at least 400 million in this offering. Regardless of the price and there's some big names in there there what I would call. Public-private so they have invested in instacart already as a private entity and then they have another side of there. Firm that invest in public entities and they have said that side is going to support the private side and that's nor just Bank tcv. [10:38] Sequoia and a couple others this is very unusual but I think it's an interesting play because it basically says to the market. Hey you don't have to worry about this thing you know taking on the first day because we're going to were signaling to you we're going to place a chunk of this with these folks that are long-term holders and they're going to backstop this thing I think of it as a adding a floor to the IPO basically saying we know it's been a while we know there's risk out there we're going to have a floor on this so so there's built-in demand for this IPO so that's quite unusual and this is the first time I've ever seen anything like that sometimes you'll see tiro price is a big one a big mutual fund that likes to do this or they'll have a private-public and they'll say you know they'll kind of suggests that, they're interested in buying more and they'll come out and say they don't plan to sell or they've accepted a lock up for a year or something like that I've never seen such a strong message as this one so I thought that was interesting. Okay then we move to the bottom of the cover and that's where you have the list of the underwriters and what's really interesting is the way this works is the bigger your font the bigger a role you play in the IPO so on this one the biggest font is Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan and you know they have I don't know what would you say Jason like a 40 Point font. Your. Jason: [12:03] Yeah I had to read it with my my PDF zoomed way up so I feel like I yeah but it was a big font. Scot: [12:11] Yeah yeah so those guys get like a you know they're kind of really big and then what's also interesting is where you show up on the page is important so your importance starts at the left and goes down to the right so the most important what we would call the vernacular is the lead left which is the biggest font on the left side of the cover is the lead Investment Bank and as Goldman Sachs and they're they're The Bluest of Blue Chips everyone wants Goldman Sachs if they come out. [12:37] And then usually you want either JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley now JPMorgan has increased greatly and stature over the last three years because they have weathered coded and they have basically absorbed most of Silicon Valley Bank's deposits and a lot of these other riskier Banks and their CEO is pretty famous Jamie dimon so they've this is kind of you know two blue tips on the top of the book here which is pretty interesting and then, then you kind of go down a bit and you end up with 18 more Underwriters and there's like three levels of them there's like the font gets smaller so you go from 40 point to 20 point then you go to like kind of like 15 point and you go to seven point and you know what's interesting is I have never seen this many Underwriters either so they basically have said we want everyone on Wall Street lined to go and help us sell this we will turn no Rock no Rock will be unturned looking for buyers of instacart stock with the institutional investors. There's some International Players so they've basically if you kind of said if you if you. [13:53] Few War Room doubt what are some things a company could do 2D risk an IPO they have done things I've never seen before times like three and then the last thing that's interesting is the economics each of these Banks gets kind of depends on where they are on the page so you know if it all this gets him to like, there's all this Machinery but these guys do it because they make money so Goldman will make their kind of highest percentage and then JPMorgan and so on and so on based on how much they contribute to the book and all this kind of calculus that goes on behind the scenes so I thought that was kind of a really interesting just on the cover some things that were very unusual from other IPOs I've seen Jason anything that you found on the cover that was riveting. Jason: [14:43] We'll know I did. I have a question for you though I got I guess I when I saw all of those Underwriters I kind of and perhaps erroneously assumed that part of what was going on here is, it's been a while since there were in any IPOs that went through an underwriter and that all of the underwriters are out there. Desperate for four deals and that therefore. Instacart had more more leverage to get more Underwriters like is it. Is it literally instacart just agreed to pay more for these two more Underwriters 2D risk the IPO is that. Scot: [15:23] Yeah I think. So human nature is that the lead laughed and Lead right want to absorb a lot of the deal and don't want to share too much so so typically there's some friction there right so they'll be like yeah you could add a couple and they use this tearing language I don't you know this is just kind of how I don't know who how they know what who's what dear, but tier one is Goldman Morgan and JP Morgan Morgan Stanley and then tier 2 is you get kind of Stiefel, a couple others in there then you go tier 3 and then you kind of have like an international kind of tearing as well so usually you get like two from Tier 1 Maybe two or three from tier 2 and then that's kind of it and then if you've if the company feels strongly like another consideration is when you go public one of the things that helps you long term is to have analysts that follow your stock and we've had many of these analysts on our show Mark mahaney Collin Sebastian these are and then Scott Devitt he was at stifel and he's moved on to another shop these are these are famous people in the internet marketing world so you want take Mark sets, I wasn't even as Fern was he ever green but that's not it. [16:40] Ever Quorum so so you as the company can say the Goldman hey I know you guys want to keep a lot of Economics but I want mahaney on this and we got to get ever Cora so some of those on the bottom are probably International distribution retail or something the company wanted kind of specific to add them on and you know that was all pre-negotiated with Goldman getting lead left they had they kind of had to acquiesce to having a bit of a large number of Underwriters on there so I don't yeah I don't think I'm sure they all wanted to be to your point like there certainly wasn't even saying no to being invited to this and they probably you know you just bake off in this was I came to imagine if they ended up with 18 like, mr. started with 80 I don't know it's crazy that was probably like a. Six week bake off just to hear from all the bankers so yes I think there's more around the analyst going on with with the large number on some of those. Jason: [17:39] Got it and then I want to hear your speculation about where the price might come in but I'm trying to remember the details there's been a lot of interesting things going on with the private placements before we got to this point right so I think the some of the valuations of the private placements were at some point disclosed and then I want to say instacart reset there. Their valuation at a lower number while they were still private like presumably to make the equity appealing for employees. Scot: [18:17] Yeah the sequence of events and this is all you know they don't disclose all this in this one because it's kind of like. Jason: [18:25] Sure I'm just trying to get the the Run. Scot: [18:27] The Whispers And if you read some of these you know I subscribe to a lot of things that talk about some of this kind of rumors and so take it with a grain of salt but there was some sequins like they were chugging along and then Covent hit and it was like Off to the Races vertical and I think the wheels kind of came off the bus and they started to lose money because the unit economics weren't weren't ready for for like a surge like that and then right around 21 they replace the CEO and they had to kind of emergency raise some Capital which is kind of like one of the worst times to do it because even though their revenue was surging the rest of the market was in the toilet basically so I think they had to do a Down Round And what I've heard is their bed raised money as high as 39 billion and then they took this haircut at with this new CEO in this kind of re leaning down the company at about 13 billion so. [19:19] So I think that's kind of like the watermark is kind of where they've last raised money and if you look at their revenue that's actually not that's a very reasonable Place given where you know they've grown since then but now what's the revenue like four billion ish yeah so they're like 3 billion and 22 in revs so that's like a four times Revenue which is pretty reasonable for a company growing the way they are with with good profitability so I would be I would not be surprised we don't we won't know this per share price until we see the denominator and they didn't have the denominator which is market cap divided by number of shares equals share price we don't know the number of shares so I would I would suspect. I'll guess, four billion I'm gonna guess 20 billion would be a low like I think it will price they're on the low end and it could go as high as 25 30 depends on you know. Retail and how much momentum it gets with with buyers. Jason: [20:26] And part of the art here is you don't you don't want to price it too low because that means you you have money on the table when you sold your Equity but you also don't want to price too high and have the, the stock like go down from the offering price and get below water right away right so. Scot: [20:49] Yeah it's very common we kind of had this situation at Channel visor we went public right after you know cortical right after in a longer time window of 08 09 and you know they strongly we had golden lead left and they strongly encouraged us to think long-term and not get obsessed about that pricing and leave a little bit of money on the table and yeah and then over time you could do a secondary at a higher price and you really want to you don't want to tank especially in a tepid market so I'm sure this was all part of the um you know Goldman would counter negotiate this to be lead left and say look we we need your commitment that your yep part of the pitch is they give you what they think it's worth and how it's going to price and they also discuss the strategy and that's part of the selection processes and you would think it would be. Okay whoever says they're gonna give me the highest price but you actually kind of they really stand out a lot because the Goldman people can talk about Dave, they've got like a lot of data to back up their strategy and you know there's like Watson there that that are. It would make your head spin and so they do a really good job of talking about why it makes sense to price the way they think and how how they see it over a longer Arc of time. Jason: [22:12] Gotcha so the guys with all the money have really good justification for why you shouldn't worry so much about the money. Scot: [22:18] And then the other thing to know though is what typically happens is you are not sharing you're not selling any one shares so the company so as part of this IPO the company will issue new shares so so you as the founder and the other investors you still have your shares you're not actually selling them at this moment so you know in a way now you get diluted right so the flip of that is your percent ownership goes down but you know it's kind of the would you take a little bit smaller. Of that and long term when you can sell your shares as the investor and the founder and the team and the people that bet on you now you know can you execute and deliver and then earn your way into a higher price and then that's when you can kind of like get some equipment sir. Jason: [23:08] Do you want a little bit of a grapefruit or all of a grape. Scot: [23:11] Yes exactly yep that is a good description. [23:17] Okay so here's here's the other part of the quick and dirty guide to reading the S1 you can take so that's cover is really good and then you take the literally the next let's see what is it. 100 pages and you can toss them so this is where the lawyers come in and they love to make sure you understand all the risk factors you know a meteor could hit the Earth people could stop needing groceries cybersecurity I could be no one wants to shop for them it could be they'll compete with a bunch of people Amazon is always a risk factor Google Microsoft. So all that really doesn't add value and then there's a little bit of financial stuff but it's it's pretty dry and it's kind of like from the Auditors almost so it's like super drive so it always do is you skip to the part of this one we're finally the lawyers have earned their large fees and they vomited forth 100 pages of risk you know stuff. And then you get to write your story and that's called the Management's discussion and Analysis in the industry it's called the md&a. [24:27] It's confusing I thought for a long time it was md&a because Aaron says mdna really fast and they're saying the word A and D and it sounds like an end to me and I kept saying what the heck does md&a stand for they're like what do you mean what's up what are you saying. It's like a who's I first got a thing but it's md&a so Management's discussion and Analysis and this is where you. Jason: [24:49] Because I read all 100 pages and and I'm super depressed and one of the risk factors is the way I could become sentient and take over the Earth. Scot: [25:00] Mmm yep that is a risk factor and then it will bring our groceries to us I guess as we are batteries for its consumption. Jason: [25:08] The computers won't eat. Scot: [25:10] So if you really want you know so what you can do is you can get the gist of 95% of this by printing out the s-1 pages 1012 124 that's it's only 23 pages and it's really dense but it is actually this is actually a very good read they did a very good job of making this so you know. It's very approachable and they go into a level of detail that's really handy into problem so we're going to give you some of the highlights from that but if you want to go deep on your own we will give you all you need to go to the next level just by looking at those 23 pages. Okay so what did you see and them DNA and that got your attention. Jason: [25:55] Well I mean a number of things so maybe just super high level what's exciting to me like obviously a lot of this information about the business was not, publicly available so in the process of going public in issuing S1 they suddenly reveal a lot of things and they reveal things about. Their own business but they also have to paint a pretty good picture of what they think is happening and could happen in the digital grocery business so it's kind of like getting a whole class of really smart people to sort of, write a thesis about the the digital grocery business that we get to read and interpret and you know we they reveal things that we didn't know like how valuable customers are over time and how much consumers spend on a given order at instacart and what percent share of wallet they think digital gets versus brick and mortar and all these sorts of things and we'll get into a bunch of them in the in the individual sessions but my my takeaway from the beginning of that management discussion was that it's a. [27:08] A pretty robust business that the aggregate amount of. GTV that they that they have is pretty significant its twenty eight point eight billion dollars in groceries that they sold in 2022. Scot: [27:27] Yeah and GTV is gross transaction volume so instacart it's basically a Marketplace like eBay or Amazon where parts of parts of Amazon all of you back where you have in the marketplace of product Marketplace use GMB a lot of payment systems like PayPal use tpv gross merchandising value total payment volume they have chosen to use this term for the gross figure of GTV and at first I thought it was going to be groceries to do but it's gross transaction value I thought for sure it was like grocery, I was trying to decode it without looking it up and I was like that can't be grocery because then I don't know what a TV is doing there and you know so then their revenue is a derivative of that meaning of some percentage then of that big number Falls to them as Revenue after they pay the grocer The Shopper and then instacart the business has the leftovers and which ends up, we'll go through the unique and I'll mix it ends up being being pretty small because the grocery business does not have huge merchants. Jason: [28:26] Yeah so kind of looking at those business fundamentals that you know in 2022 they sold 28.8, billion dollars worth of stuff which for them generated 2.5 billion dollars in revenue and they were profitable on that Revenue they they net 428. Million dollars which like back in the a couple years ago when there were more IPOs happening there were there were IPOs in the space they were happening with companies that still weren't profitable so so that was interesting that they they were meaningfully profitable and then the, you know you're super interested in what the growth trajectory is and. [29:13] 20:19 was a very small year so going from 2019 to 2020 you know and then the pandemic app in the middle 2020 and urban was ordering groceries from, from instacart so the growth in 2020 was astronomical like 300% or something like that. But then the growth in 2021 over 2020 was 24%. On revenue and the growth in 2022 over 2021 was 39% in Revenue so. The revenue growth is Meaningful and accelerating. Which would be exciting they were not profitable in 2020 or 2021 so 2022 is the First full year that they were profitable. The GTD is a little different though they had significant growth three hundred percent in 2020 20 percent in 20 21 and 16 percent in 2022 so, well they have a track record of growth it's the top on GTV growth is decelerating. And then of course we're halfway through 2023 so they have to disclose. [30:23] How the well they've done in the first six months of this year and they compared to that to last year and the revenue and GTV are both essentially flat in the first six months of this year. Versus last year so I don't know you'll have to tell me but I look at that and you go man there's some robust stuff here there's a great growth story. I should have mentioned that that's on an annual basis on a quarterly basis they have five consecutive quarters of profitability which also seems. Impressive him pretty favorable but it's probably a slight worry that the. A lot of that growth seems like it's it's leveling off in 2023 I don't know if. That the most recent performance gets gets over weighted or underweighted and sort of evaluating the the prospects for the company. Scot: [31:19] Yeah the buyers will you know what every everyone has a different way they value things and they they're going to build their own models and the company will give them some guidance that's some of the stuff we did it we're not going to go over and but you have to be careful because you don't want to make forward-looking statements so this is this weird dance you do of you. You try to get people excited by not saying anything about the future which is which is a little tricky so you know what I imagine instacart s' just reading the tea leaves again they talked a lot about how they don't really do much sales and marketing which I kind of read to say, look we really hunkered down on our unique economic sand we've got it dialed in right now and spoiler will get to adds a lot of a lot of that has come from this ad piece. And I think now. [32:07] Because investor and I was the bullish scenario is you know they're going to raise at least 400 million they'll probably raise a lot of money from this they could start doing some advertising and you pick up some new customers that again I'm going to kind of hope they look at the cohorts those cohorts look like with what this in the here and they have at least the same unique anomic so if not better and I'm going to look at this growth accelerating wow what Wall Street loves their favorite favorite favorite kind of the top quadrant is accelerating Revenue growth an accelerating profitability and you know I could see a scenario the light has to go their way but I could see a scenario where that works here you know if they could if they could start spending some really careful sales and marketing dollars building the brand where they've been kind of under the radar for the most part and then. That works those cohorts stick and then they can work on the economics because that's gonna bring more advertisers per order because the more average more orders and more. GTV is going to bring more cpgs in that want to advertise against that then you could argue accelerating Revenue growth accelerating profitable unit economics. So I think that's the bull case the bear case is they've hit saturation they've got all the stores. 4% is anemic and nowhere to go but down. So that's the end of it is it is going to be interesting to see there's a little bit of A Tale of Two Cities in those possible outcomes. Jason: [33:36] Yeah what else jumped out at you in the management discussion. Scot: [33:43] They made a big point of talking about they have 7.7 million monthly active users which is a good number but they point out that in the u.s. there's 330 million consumers or I guess population so they use that and this is kind of one of those hints I was talking about the basically said hey we're. We've done good to get here but these are like the early adopters we still have a long way to go there's a lot of people you know I don't think they'll get all of them and I'll talk about that in a second but there's a lot more people that you should be using our service that aren't is so they kind of paint that 7.7 million and say that's teeny tiny compared to where we should be. And then you know the other thing they talked about that I thought was interesting I wanted to get your opinion on is they talk about, per user per month they get three hundred and Seventeen dollars and I was wondering I know you probably know this off the top of your head. What is if you look at the average US consumer and you probably look at the. Population of the convenience store that's like a kind of probably like that 100K and up household you know what is their monthly and is this like half of it a quarter what is your spidey sense tells you on that. Jason: [35:00] Yeah so real rough numbers the average American family and you know people shop for groceries in households versus people so it's almost better to talk in household so there's like 131 million households in the US and sin they've got. Seven million of them as customers the average household shops for groceries 1.6 times a week and they spend a hundred dollars per visit so you kind of you know rough that up and you get. Get what is that I'll have the intern do in turn do the math one point six times. 100 times, 4.5 is 720 total grocery spin which I don't have the census numbers in front of me but but that passes the smell test that so. Households are spending six seven hundred bucks a month and instacart saying that they're getting less than half of that. Scot: [36:12] Yeah and I saw some people speculate on this that, what their inferring is Davin they have an average order of 110 so this is like 2.6 instacart some month instacart orders per user per month that's another kind of interesting metric and then people are speculating in the saying the pattern is probably people are doing a big shop once a month and they're kind of going and getting you know, a lot of like maybe canned goods and things like that and then they supplement it with two or three instacart has to bring maybe a refresh of the the replenishable is like the cheese the milk the veggies and the fruits kind of thing. Again this is everyone just kind of like taking data and kind of going out for data point so the cone of uncertainty is pretty big out there but it kind of passed my sniff test that's how we've used it before, at our house with exception of wizard a lot at work to fill our snack area at work and we're probably like we're probably like top one quartile of this whole thing that's the number of snacks we get from Instagram. There's a deep does that that analysis of the one big shop yourself and then supplement does that. Jason: [37:26] No exact yeah I mean I think the Grocer's talk and I hesitate to bring this up because I don't think I remember I'll for off the top my head but there's like four typical types of shopping missions right so there is that like Pantry stocking shop there's like a weekly shop there's a. Occasion Bay shop where your your it's date night or it's Christmas or whatever and you make a special shop and then there's those, top off shops and I think it's generally agreed like there's not a big cohort of consumers that have just said I'm never using a grocery store again then I'm exclusive we gonna, I have all of my my calories show up at my doorstep so digital grocery ends up being one of the tools in the family's tool kit for, procuring their their calories and so it makes. Total sense that they would have a share that one of the ways they could grow is to increase that share presumably by. Being the best choice for more of those different kinds of missions. Scot: [38:34] Yeah and then the md&a they talk a lot about how they have these new offerings where you can get a weekly Monday thing and they're definitely poking around at this experimenting on how to grow the sand again they're kind of signaling we think we've got some room to go on this we can get that. [38:51] Bridge order up and we can get the ma use way up the second thing I noticed was you know they use this they use this phrase, several times you can tell it's kind of like must be tied to company values and they talk about we believe people want selection quality value and convenience if that sounds familiar to you the this is infamously brought up in the Amazon Jeff Bezos first shareholder letter in 1997 where he talks about the mark you know what Amazon believes and they believe that a multi-decade trend is people will not get tired of selection quality value and when value he uses kind of free shipping like versus product value is pretty specific on it and then convenience and then what got me thinking about this is. [39:38] Value inconvenience her you know they're often in conflict and this is the whole point of we've had, Casey on the show from the Lloyd there bifurcation kind of model which shows this was this I think a lot about this because this is the whole one of the whole reasons I started spiffy and we decided early on if we're going to be convenient we can't be the cheapest and I don't think people look at instacart as the cheapest you know whenever we use it it's kind of like, holy cow this is this is a pretty expensive treat in you know I really kind of need to be able to justify this to myself that I can't just pop over the grocery store and do this myself it needs to be yeah some some reason I'm going to miss a kid event or something that I'm getting a really good bang for the buck here so I thought that was interesting that at some point I wonder do they value part kind of struggle with you know how. Jason: [40:31] I think they have to have a. A more liberal definition of value because I think you're exactly right right and obviously you know value means different things to different people like they disclosed later in the S1 that they not surprisingly that they skew disproportionately to households that make over 100,000 a year compared to a traditional retail and particularly a traditional grocer like give I've no idea what it looked like when they actually did it but when Kroger went public or certainly when Walmart went public they would have talked about the top of their tree that we think the consumer really values price and and Walmart probably said price not value and you know they built a business around very aggressively maintaining those low prices because they thought that was the beginning of their flywheel and and you know Amazon talked about value but they when they said value a lot of what they meant was and we're going to you know have the very competitive or the lowest price on a lot of these goods and, the the business model of instacart makes it unlikely that that can be their positioning so they have to kind of, find a a valid but alternative definition of value to hang their hat on. Scot: [41:50] Yeah and I thought was interesting they put convenience a lot you know last you may say oh you're reading too much into it but you know I've been in rooms you spend so much time on every word there's a purpose to this order of selection quality value and convenience and and they mentioned this exact phrase like several times so this is a this seems to be an yeah a pretty important phrase in their their world to I just thought that was I want to get your take on you know at some point they may cross this road where they have to pick a lane and it'll be if it ain't going to be the value late you know I don't see a path there but you know maybe they think they can and you know they also talked about selling to the grocer some software so maybe that's kind of like how they're squeaking that in I don't know. Jason: [42:36] Yeah yeah and there's I think we'll talk about this and in our final conclusion but the there's multiple ways you could see this going over time and depending on which path it took like value could mean something different. So what will come back to that. I heard you like dissected all of the the disclose data and put together unit economic model for for instacart. Scot: [43:07] Yeah so it starts at the top so the GTV per order so every order that comes in they get the GTV as $110 and then there here's how they slice the onion so the biggest chunk goes to the grocer for the groceries and they get 83 percent which is $91 so right off the top we're left with $19 but now the grocer they have to go make all their money so instacart is that's what you would basically get I think if you and I went to the grocery store you know maybe they're getting a little bit of a discount but they're they're taking that $91 and they're adding $19 on top of it and this is all X tip there's a there's there is a delivery fee and what not so then the Shopper gets 8.2% or nine dollars in order and that's in that delivery fee and then they get the tips. Jason: [43:58] Clarification on shopper because like in most contact Shopper would mean the consumer that's buying the goods The Shopper in this case is is a instacart gig worker that goes to the store and gets Aggregates the order for the customer. Scot: [44:14] Exactly the gig worker is the Shopper so they get nine dollars and they get 100% of the tip so whenever you you know whenever you what what they don't say some of these gay places in this bothers me because we fell out on this they say the gig worker gets 100% but then they take a transaction fee of 3%, now I can't find they say 100% I can't see any little asterisks that says there's going to skim 3% or something so. [44:44] So to the hopefully they're being super up front and they the gig worker does get 100% of the tips but the tips aren't in the economic the kind of sit over on the side to go to kind of bypass instacart all together and they go straight to the shopper. Who also gets nine dollars from instacart so if you gave a 20 dollar tip the the Shoppers going to get 20 plus 9 or 22, then at this point we are finally at instacart Revenue which is ten dollars and that's into pieces seven dollars is the transaction revenue and three is ads. So almost half their margin you know so 30% I guess yeah. I say half because the line is going so fast it will become half probably by 2024 you know half the. Profit the margin the revenue that they get and probably disproportionate part of margin is from the ad piece which we're going to talk about in detail so that is. That's pretty important to this whole enchilada and until they figure that out this didn't really work I do. [45:48] So they get so 110 dollar order $91 goes the grocer that leaves us with 19 Shopper gets nine we're left with 10 7 of that, is the transaction Revenue three is ADS then their costs come out they have three dollars of cost per order. And this is this is things like you know their entire some allocation of all their website hosting the engineering team developed the app. I don't know if they would put sales and marketing in there and they weren't very specific about what they do and don't put in cogs so that was a question mark. And they're left with seven dollars of gross profit for that order. My bet is marketing is not in there and they kind of take that up later but again the didn't really. Disclose that I saw what all was and not in Cox so basically that 110 boils down to seven dollars a profit from them and if we looked at it you know. I bet that three of that seven is basically from the ads and you know because there's almost no cost to serve an ad and so so I thought that was pretty interesting that like you know around half of the Prophet basically is from the ad system. Jason: [47:00] Yeah I think I think it's for sure interesting and like you know two possibilities there there there, average value of an order is 110 bucks traditional brick-and-mortar grocer is a hundred bucks and so one question like did instacart wasn't totally clear I mean they tried to take credit for having a higher order value but it wasn't clear like do we think. There's something unique about our experience that causes people to spend more or. Is our service just more expensive and so therefore you know if I got the same 60 items from from Walmart it would cost me $100 but if I got it from instacart Cassandra and ten dollars. But if it's the latter and I'm sure the real answer somewhere in between but but if it's the latter then you go you know all of the, The Profit that instacart is potentially taking is kind of from the. The convenient spread where they're you know getting consumers to pay more for the extra convenience of this grocery delivery. Scot: [48:08] So that was the unique nanak's what did you discover from the cohorts. Jason: [48:12] Yeah well I think we both we both noticed that they had a pretty detailed cohort analysis in the s-1 and by cohort analysis what we mean is they. They break down all the revenue they get from every. Group of customers on the first year they acquire those customers and then they track the spending for that group of customers in each, subsequent year and so you have a cohort that you acquired in 2017 you have a cohort you acquired in 2018, so on and so forth through this 20:22 cohort and there's. Other dimensions you could do Court analysis on but this this tenure cohort is most common and loyal listeners of the show will know we've certainly talked about it before no most notably with a guest Professor Dan McCarthy. From Emory University who spends a lot of time. [49:13] Talking about and thinking about cohort analysis so I my first thought when I saw this cohort analysis is I'll bet you Dan McCarthy's really happy right now and is probably. Deep deep into these numbers and he has a phrase that he calls a super annuities which is for the circumstances. The older cohorts get more valuable over time and keep contributing more Revenue to your business which is, you know that if you think about it that's that's the ideal state right you want those kind of six-year-old cohorts to be. [49:51] Growing and be your most valuable and if they're you know significantly tailing off over time then like you know you start to question the core value proposition of the business like maybe customers get fatigued with your business or decide it's not a good value in the long run or something else so um the the big takeaway for me of the cohort analysis is the cohorts grow over time the if you look at like the year one value of this cohort it averages $226 and then it goes up 33 percent in year two to three hundred dollars and then up 16%, to 350 dollars in year three and then another up another 16% to 4:00 in your for and then up 10% $445 in year 5 and up another 8% to 480 dollars in year 6 and so like fundamentally. That is a very good picture of. The value of the cohorts and I'm certain why they chose to include the cohort analysis in there as one because I don't believe there's any. Any filing requirement to do that and certainly lots of companies don't include any cohort cohort analysis but then my kind of secondary take is. [51:12] You know not every year is the same and so some of those cohorts like started before Cove it and then they're their behavior, was slightly impacted by their maturity but also impacted by covet and some of these cohorts started after Cove ID and so one of the things you would look for in that cohort analysis is did these guys just get a big spike from Cova da, when people are afraid to go to grocery stores and you know has that worn off right and that's kind of a comment common narrative out there like I argue. [51:45] It's mostly misunderstood when people give that narrative about digital but it's. It's even more likely that is misunderstood if you have that narrative and grocery because grocery appears like on the surface to be the one category where hey we're at three percent e-commerce penetration before covet and now we're 12% e-commerce penetration and so this, these cohort analysis if if there was a spike that dip back down you would expect to see some of the later cohorts underperforming versus the the precoded cohorts and we don't see that right that like all the cohorts grow and they grow over time the rate of growth slows down over time which is like I think pretty pretty typical and not surprising um so all that was super favorable the one thing and one will have to have Dan on the show but the one thing that I think wasn't in here that you'd really want to understand how valuable the customer bases and and again guys like Dan kind of pioneered this idea of how you value a company based on their customer base. [52:53] And kind of set the price based on on this type of data but I think they would also want to see some churn data and understand. How many people are each in each of these cohorts and whether there's the same people or lots of defectors and new people coming and all those sorts of things and none of that was was disclosed and assess. Scot: [53:22] Yeah you're right the I think they're making the argument that the swamps turn but because they don't disclose it you kind of. You have to trust him and he would he would want that data because you know the whole Begin Again the the bull case here is all right if you got super annuities than spending ad dollars to bring super annuities in this smart right because everyone you bring in the door is going to follow this cohort and start of it you know you and I looking at a table that the says you're one they start at 2:26 and then by year 60 at 500 bucks so they they double over their life cycle in their GTV so over six years so if you know if you can go buy them for a hundred bucks a pop then you would just go and, and spend all that money in it should be we have a super annuity on one side you can spend a lot of money acquiring customers on the other. Jason: [54:15] For sure true what. Scot: [54:17] You turn there's something that they could hide in there. Jason: [54:19] Yeah so you have to worry about that you also side note like a thing that drives CFOs crazy about marketers is you also have to have this argument about correlation and causation right that like if I went out and bought a bunch of customers would they maintain this the same level of performance or with those those. Purchase customers through higher advertising and through greater sales and marketing a activities be less oil less valuable customers by. The answer varies depending on the business. Scot: [54:53] Yeah that's where I this kind of come back to that bifurcation thinks I think would you say 120 million households. Jason: [54:59] Yeah 131. Scot: [55:00] Yeah so there's probably I think it's probably a pretty evenly split between convenience and value so call it 60 and they've got 7.7 so there's actually good I think they've got a 10% share of, what does the actual dress for Market because I don't think they're going to get any of the value or in a consumers because yeah the valuing consumer does not pay for convenience they'll just go to grocery store. Jason: [55:23] Yeah and again in the bottom quartile a lot of people are shopping for for groceries with government assistance and I don't actually think instacart should double-check this but I don't believe instacart has a way to accept Snap payments. Scot: [55:36] Yeah I don't think the government is going to subsidize the food delivered. Jason: [55:39] Well they just you know they do in other great white white guy like you can order groceries online from Walmart and pay with SNAP but I don't think you can with instacart. Scot: [55:49] Yes that's another factor and then at some point yeah I'm sure you'll bring this up but the. The if you're if you're a grocer you know a lot of ours opt out of the sand to themselves and they like we have a Harris Teeter that they don't accept instacart yeah they're not on there and they want to do their own they want to own the customer themselves. Jason: [56:12] Yeah I save that discussion for other but I think that's a super important one. Scot: [56:16] Forget I said that that's a teaser that's it's a teaser was what we call a tease. Jason: [56:19] Excellent teaser yeah because I feel like we've gone to the add segment of the breakdown of is there anything else you wanted to cover before that Scott. Scot: [56:28] No I'm on the edge of my seat to hear what you thought about that specific. Jason: [56:31] Yeah so it turns out instacart sanad Essence and probably shouldn't surprise anyone you know Scott you alluded to the change in CEO the the current CEO for this IPO is fidge Asuma Seema who formerly was VP of advertising at Facebook so they brought in a Facebook. Exact to run this business and shoot I should have looked up what episode he was on but Seth Dallaire was a past guest on this show when he was the chief Revenue officer. For instacart which was right around the time that that fidget joined. [57:19] Instacart so we actually had a discussion about their aspirations to become an advertising business and spoiler alert, it worked at instacart which we're going to break into and that guess set the layer subsequently was hired as the chief Revenue officer at Walmart where he's. Building Walmart connect which is also working so turns out ads are becoming an increasingly important part of the ecosystem for retailers but the basic ad math at instacart is that in 2022 the last full year of data instacart generated 470 million dollars in ads so 470 million on 28 billion in GTV, means that that's about 2.6 percent of the spin. That went to ads it's thirty percent of their revenue today and. [58:20] It's growing at 29 percent so it went up 29% from 2022 to from 21 to 20 22. Um it's grown another twenty four percent in the first months of six months of 2023 so, a lot of the unit economics of their transactions have kind of stabilized and are flat the one thing that's still growing at a very fast double-digit pace, is the ad business and at seven and twenty million dollars it's already reasonably robust and they don't. Ads are not a line item on the income statement that they included like you know and presumably like it's not. You could argue it's not Material against the three billion in in Revenue. But the so we don't we don't really know exactly how profitable, Those ads are but in general we would call these ads or retail media Network and the you know people argue about how profitable these retail media networks are people particularly argue about Amazon's but kind of the middle of the range when people estimate how what how profitable these things are is that they're about 75 percent gross right so in theory they should be near 99% gross margin because like you don't have to make anything to sell an ad. [59:46] You know you do need some technology you need an ad server you need Administration and salespeople you need brand safety people you know there is. Some infrastructure some of which has to scale with the ad business and so the the kind of. Most common estimate that that I see out there is like 75% of that revenue from ad business is profit. So that implies that the ad business contributed seven 555 million to the. To the income statement for 2022. Um and they were only profitable 428 million in 2022 so that the ad business contribute like by that sort of slice the ad business contributed. [1:00:33] You know covered all of their losses and and was essentially all of their their profit. In in 2022 and it's growing faster than anything else so it's very clear that the ad business is a key. Tenant of this instacart model and they in the management can section they it was kind of funny working for a big, advertising agency because they had to spend a fair amount of time like justifying that ads are valuable good thing and that people are spending money on ads so they kind of you know paint paint this picture that consumer packaged Goods companies which are you know most of the goods that instacart cells that. [1:01:20] Cpgs in the u.s. spend about 200 billion dollars a year on advertising and currently about a quarter of that is digital. And so the. The you know a typical cpg spends like about thirty percent of their gross sales on advertising and you know at the moment instacart is collecting about less than three percent of its sales in advertising so I think they're saying like hey. Advertising is super effective it's an important part of our economic model and there's a ton of. Of potential growth for us in this market and that cpgs need us and they amongst their claims about the size of their business, there are 50 500 brands that are advertising on instacart today and those are. At the moment all brands that sell. [1:02:18] Whose Goods get sold on instacart so we call that endemic advertisers right so it's it's Mondelez selling cookies and folks like that a lot of advertising companies. Sell ads to people that aren't necessarily selling through the. The the platform we call those non-endemic advertisers and we I don't think there are any non-endemic advertisers on instacart as of yet. But so at the Top Line like these are these are solid fundamentals for an ad business you like. [1:02:54] From my perspective retail media networks are super important evolution in the space they are very important I actually think for a lot of smaller retailers they get overhyped and that there's a problem with scale with a lot of these but instacart appears to be one of the companies. That has enough scale to build a real. A real business around this there is a unique problem that instacart has with ads that you know I think they've only been partially able to remediate so far who's paying for the ads. [1:03:25] Right so they talked about the brands paying for the ad right it's Procter & Gamble about the ad but there's a lot of stakeholders with budgets at Procter & Gamble, there's Mark Pritchard that buys Super Bowl ads and tries to build the brand and make people love tied but there are also account teams, that are trying to Goose the sales at their account so there's a Walmart account team and a Kroger account team and an Albertsons account team and all of those guys have an ad budget, that they want to use to sell more stuff at Walmart Kroger and Albertsons respectively. And so the big problem you have with instacart is you spend that ad dollar with instacart and you don't actually know. Which retailer it's going to impact. Right and so it's kind of like it has to come out of the top of funnel ad budget but it's bottom of the funnel Performance Marketing, type ads mostly search ads and so not saying that model can't work but it's. [1:04:33] The the guys with budgets that are used to buying ads are used to a slightly different structure so I will say that at the moment instacart causes a lot of consternation because it's a it's an unusual Beast that people don't exactly know how to budget for or how to spend their money on and you know I would assume if instacart wants to grow a lot they have to make that, easier for for the brands to do. Scot: [1:05:00] Yeah so what do you think. They're so this is a relatively good chunk of Revenue where do you think they're getting it from is it online going offline I mean offline going online are they taking it from Google are they taking it from couponing or. Two Brands even do like newspaper inserts are still a thing like I know that back in the day. Jason: [1:05:22] So I know I yeah I think. Brands are pretty pretty rapidly shifting their their dollars to digital vehicles and so two things like there's you know traditional kind of, newspaper magazine advertising that's atrophying and and the brands are replacing that with digital there's a slight misnomer the whole privacy thing and Facebook is a real thing but you know who wasn't buying a huge amounts of Facebook ads are like National cpgs with huge brand recall so so you know those tended to be smaller Brands and longer tail things so it's less like oh. [1:06:05] The these guys are shifting from Facebook it's more they're shifting from old-school marketing and over are television to to these digital vehicles but a big chunk of it is still coming out of these trade budgets right and so there may have been a pool of money that was allocated to spend at Kroger and it used to get spend on newspaper circulars that were like Kroger ads that fell out of the newspaper and that's an increasingly ineffective vehicle or maybe they even got spent on floor decals in the aisle at Kroger right you know like Shopper marketing tactics or trade tactics and so increasingly the retail media networks are getting a chunk of those trade dollars and I do think instacart is getting some of those even though it's trickier to do because you know it's not allocated exactly 21 specific retailer at the moment. Scot: [1:07:07] Yeah the so what did the ad formats I've seen is I always get this one that's like you through some Quaker Oats granola bars in there if you add these six things will give you a five bucks or something I've seen a coupon and I've seen a you know an upsell hey you've previously bought this or you may like this are there those are the three main add units or am I missing something. Jason: [1:07:33] Yeah so I am not going to speak specifically about the variation in ad units but as a general rule like probably I'm assuming the most predominant ads on the platform are search ads right so people search for products like always and you know above all the organic results are a bunch of sponsored ads right and so off very often those don't have a special offer in them they're just premium. [1:08:00] And so a big chunk is probably those those search ads you know then they're there are like Banner type ads that that land either on like the homepage of a particular retailer or on a category page or subcategory page and more often those are likely to have some call-to-action offer in them so they might have a promotion or a discount of some kind and then in the digital space um there's a lot of what we call like top off and impulse ads which are what you were just talking about right and you know one of the big problems we have with digital grocery is when you go shopping at the grocery store your wife sends you to the store with a list of 10 items and you buy all those 10 items but then you walk by the ice cream aisle on your way to the cash wrap and you add ice cream even though you didn't plan to buy ice cream and then when you're standing in the cash wrap, you're sneering at that Snickers bar or that Wrigley gum and you add that to the car and maybe a cold Coke to drink on the way home from the grocery store so a big chunk of a traditional grocer sales are all these unplanned impulse purchases and that. [1:09:16] By default happens a lot less in digital Grocery and so a lot of these ad formats are kind of are, our Industries early efforts to try to reinvent digital impulse and I would I would call it pretty imperfect at the moment. Scot: [1:09:35] Don't you get a nursing inside about gum or something like because self-checkout smelled the gum that serendipity. Jason: [1:09:42] Yeah the the that that cash wrap used to be the most valuable real estate in a grocery store like the most Revenue per square foot was that what we call the cash wrap which is the. The conveyor belt that you stand in line and actually the first thing that killed the cash wrap was not any of this digital shopping or any of these things it was. Facebook and the mobile phone and simply because you now had something else to do when you are standing

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The boys are back after a few weeks off due to Craig being in America. They speak on Threads vs Twitter, Elon Musk vs Mark Zuckberg, Mark Rubin's all white party and Billionaire's being around rappers, are you a loser in life if you're not getting money plus more...

In this episode our host Elena Melchert asks Mark Rubin about this time at SPE, how he got started, trends he's seeing, and the transferability of the petroleum engineering skillset to other energy sectors. https://oggn.com/ https://www.otcnet.org/ https://www.fifthring.com https://www.spe.org This episode is made possible by Oliva Gibbs LLP Click here to take it one question survey and receive OGGN hardhat/laptop stickers Brought to you on Oil and Gas Global Network, the largest and most listened-to podcast network for the oil and energy industry. More from OGGN ... Podcasts LinkedIn Group LinkedIn Company Page Get notified about industry events

Mark Rubin has been in franchising for more than 20 years. He is currently part of an ownership group of 1-800 Got Junk franchises that do over $100M/year in revenue.  In this episode, we delve into franchising with a seasoned expert who has spent over two decades in the industry. From selecting the right franchise opportunity to developing a solid support system for franchisees, we'll cover all the key topics that can make or break a franchise business.Links:Website: https://www.markianrubin.life/Email: mark@projecthoneylight.lifeGuest Social Links:LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/markianrubin/ Website: https://www.markianrubin.life/ Instagram (Personal): https://www.instagram.com/markianrubin/Twitter: https://twitter.com/markianrubin Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@markianrubinConnect with Brian Twitter, LinkedIn, & Instagram Join Brian's franchise group coaching program

EP300 - GoodwillFinds CEO Matt Kaness In this interview, we cover the sale of ModCloth to Walmart, Matts's subsequent work at Lucky Brand and Afterpay, and his new role as CEO at Goodwillfinds. Goodwillfinds.com is an e-commerce site, which sells previously owned merchandise, which has been donated to Goodwill. We cover many of the tactical challenges (onboarding SKUs, product content, fulfillment, and curation), as well as the opportunities of this new "CircularCommerce" space. We also get some of Matt's predictions about what's coming next in digital commerce. Episode 300 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 2023. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Episode 300 is an interview with Matt Kaness, CEO of Goodwillfinds.com. Matt was formerly on episode 79, when he was CEO of Modcloth, which later sold to Walmart. Transcript Jason: [0:23] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is the much-anticipated episode number 300 being recorded on Wednesday January 4th, 20:23 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:41] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners Jason not only is this the first show of 20:23 it's a big milestone for us with episode what better way to celebrate than having one of our oldest friends for both you and I personally but also to the show back for an update Matt kaness he was last on the show back in episode 79 I think many listeners will remember that one and certainly your mom who's one of our biggest fans and back then he was CEO of ModCloth, a lot has changed since then so we're looking forward to getting an update some of the highlights Matt help sell ModCloth to Walmart he was exact chair and interim CEO at Lucky Brand he's on several boards yeah I've been advisory to several companies and since September of 2022 he has been CEO of goodwillfinds.com Matt welcome back to the show. Matt: [1:35] Great to be here guys thanks for having me. Jason: [1:38] Oh my gosh Matt we are really excited to catch up it seems like if you factor in the pandemic your last episode was about 15 years ago if I'm and so happy I'm happy to report we've added a bunch of listeners since then so before we jump into it can you kind of remind the listeners about your background and how you got in e-commerce. Matt: [2:02] Yeah have you too I like to think about my career or having two careers to date the first one was, very foundational for what I'm doing now but very quantitative, process-oriented mechanical engineering patent law Manufacturing, Ops Consulting things that had nothing to do with retail or fashion or e-commerce and then I. [2:32] Fell into the category when I was a full-time consultant at Burton Snowboards about 16 17 years ago, and fell in love with lifestyle Brands and have, try to stay in that lane for the majority of that time period since, from Burton Snowboards I went onto Urban Outfitters was there for close to eight years up sensibly and I had a growth roll my last title there was Chief strategy officer and then from there I went to ModCloth, where I was the CEO for three years and was running the company when we sold it to Walmart I will say that, I've been in hindsight found myself attracted to these amazing consumer lifestyle brands, that are experiencing inflection points either in their business or in the industry when I was at Burton snowboarding was really for the first time finding a mass audience crossing over into, the Olympics the next games and, when I was at Urban it was the rise of Web 2.0 and I got to ride that wave my entire time there and really, I'll be on the Forefront of pioneering you know what everybody know of calls omni-channel. [3:59] ModCloth the founder of their Susan Koger was one of the pioneers of inclusive fashion and so I felt personally accountable to try to scale that and I think we, if once the industry specifically plus size women's fashion and you know today you look around and it's become pretty normative, for Brands to design into extra extra small to 4X and I'm really proud of the work we did at ModCloth being on the front end of that and then. I do some Consulting work at after pay where buy now pay later was really just becoming a thing, we're younger consumers were focused more on debit versus credit products so with really fortunate to get connected with that team and enjoyed, partnering with them and being an advisor and then you know what I'm doing now at Goodwill where secondhand is really having a moment, in the culture and getting a chance to come in and lead a ground-up startup for the Goodwill Network and helping them to. It's a digitized so to speak and you bring this new Marketplace into the world, it's just for me it's like the next chapter in that really fortunate career second career that I've had. Jason: [5:23] Very cool and I know some of those roles were Bay Area based but you are a Philly guy correct. Matt: [5:29] Philly guy born and raised I'm probably on the short list of people who have moved back to Philly twice. I was in Boston the first time when my wife became. Preggers with our oldest and we wanted to be closer to family and then the second time was when we were in the Bay Area after I left Walmart, we had a break in the action and our oldest was about to start high school and we decide we want to be back here. For the high school years but we've lived all around and I'd obviously travel a lot for work so I have an affinity for the bay area as well as some other places around the country but but Phillies the hometown. Jason: [6:14] Yeah but I'm assuming it's Philly sports teams most importantly. Matt: [6:18] I have been an eagle season ticket holders 2000 yes. Jason: [6:23] Awesome and for people that don't know Philadelphia and Pennsylvania as a whole is a is is a weird e-commerce concentration Point like there's a lot of e-commerce kind of was born or gravitated in the area so I think of like Mark Rubin and Dick's Sporting Good and in Pittsburgh and urban obviously was a huge player there was Urban your first like hardcore e-commerce experience or were you doing a lot of e-commerce at Burton. Matt: [6:56] I was not at Burton Urban is really where I started to cut my teeth on e-commerce. Direct to Consumer more than e-commerce it was really about this when I got there this billion dollar Consolidated Enterprise across there are three main brands, Urban Outfitters anthropology and Free People and the business had started as a catalog, division of what was you know let's call it 95 percent of the sales came through their store Channel. For retail versus direct to Consumer and so when I got there or there was a there was a. [7:43] 100 million Consolidated direct-to-consumer business which was split between catalog and e-commerce, but it was nascent it was not a strategic focus and then you know the founder of their dick ain't really had. This put a natural understanding of consumer behavior and where the industry was going and he had a vision for how to scale the business multi-channel and so we were all, trying to make that that future reality every day for the eight years I was there and we had a lot of success going back to your point about Pennsylvania and Philly first round capital, one of their there I believe their original headquarters and then one of their major offices, is in Philly and so I think I think a lot of it stems from their presence as well not just decaying and Reuben and some others, but also Philly from a talent perspective is kind of like a six suburb or borough of New York, where you get a lot of folks in New York and then they realize that. It's just the standard of living the cost of living is so much better in Philadelphia and so you get a lot of transplants to come down to Philly as well working in e-commerce. Jason: [9:11] Yeah and I want to say I met you I think we all met on the shop dot-org board when you were at Urban later in your your tenure Urban and some of my Fondest Memories another good friend of the show Billy met who at the time was at Abercrombie is the two of you like heckling each other about like your two brands. Matt: [9:34] Yeah like that was that was really fun for me because you know Urban. Um was pretty insular you meaning that we were so obsessively focused on the customer, and on the fashion trends and on what we were doing internally, that we never really thought about competition so we didn't spend a ton of time looking around the industry, so for me that was that was kind of a an introduction to what else was happening across the industry and then Billy occasionally would call me and say. Hey you guys make me look bad because you just had another great quarter ecomp rowing and you know your your results are now The Benchmark that I have to deliver against. But you know what I what I found in that shop or Community which is now part of NRF, is that it was not very competitive it was very collaborative I couldn't believe. [10:46] How much everybody support each other and wanted to share strategies and ideas and Etc and I think that's one of the things that really drew me into this career path on the digital Commerce side, versus pursuing merchandising or. We're kind of the brick-and-mortar offline space is it's just how, how great that the digital Community has been in the US that I've experienced so that's one of the one of the things that I try to do now is to make sure that. Making myself available I'm kind of giving back and spending time with folks and helping them along and sharing ideas because I know that you guys and others certainly do that for me way back in the day. Jason: [11:32] Yeah I feel like we all have done that for each other and I feel like we've all obviously benefited greatly from that community, and so then you leave the Eagles behind and you go join what at the time was a Founder led a venture back pure-d to see is that, a fair characterization for Vermont cough if when you. Matt: [11:58] Yes my father my father is a pure pointy Taylor yeah. Like 10,000 uniques on the site all third party. The company was vertically integrated so homegrown Ruby on Rails codebase e-commerce. Order management system warehouse management system all the way down to the call center and the warehouse it was, um pretty pioneering on the web services side as far as. [12:35] Look it was an early social commerce player as far as leveraging Pinterest and things that you could do with. Facebook and some of the other platforms Tumblr to engage customers and get them to participate in the shopping experience we were one of the first to integrate, ugc from customers into the shopping experience into the carousels on the website, um we had personalization that was driven by customer reviews that were captured in the website versus outsourced to a bizarre Voice or the like so it was the technology is pretty pioneering, the business was was very underdeveloped and the brand I felt was. Had a lot of opportunity to broaden its appeal when I got there so it was a little bit of a turnaround, financially what I'm joined which having now done this a few times there's always a reason they bring in an outside CEO. Jason: [13:44] It's not because things are just going awesome and they just want to share the awesomeness. Matt: [13:47] Yeah I can't I can't think of a single time that CEO in a business that's humming and doing great he says you know what let's bring in somebody else to do this so I. Jason: [13:57] I think Andy jassy is saying that about Amazon right now by the way. Matt: [14:02] Yeah yeah yeah what I mean there's there's a there's a lot of chatter about looking at. It was on the Facebook and Tesla and what those Founders were doing the last couple years selling stock so I think they kind of all knew what was about to happen. But you know just quickly on ModCloth I'll say that you know we were able to quickly come in. [14:32] Turn around the business financially but more importantly we pivoted it to what then was called a DM BB model, a digitally native vertical brand model which was just meant that the vertical piece that you were procuring designing selling your own product or exclusive product versus, third party which you know in the world of Amazon it's really hard to scale a business that you know what you're selling you can find on Amazon or other larger marketplaces, so we build out a design studio and sourcing operation weary platform the entire Tech stack we developed, a showroom concept similar to what we're being bonobos had developed and tested that and rolled that out and had a really aggressive growth plan against that we went out to raise money and her wound up, getting an offer from the team at jet.com that 6-month previous had, I've been sold to Walmart and they came in and made an offer and the board accepted it and so we sold it. And and I stayed on at Walmart for a year and oversaw our integration into that that ecosystem. Scot: [15:51] Cool the that was kind of a chain reaction right where you guys several companies they Acquired and did you play a role in kind of that roll up. Matt: [16:01] We were like the third or fourth of six or seven Acquisitions and they did within a year and a half two year period. And then as part of my year there I did get involved in some of their business development MMA, conversations and and I did spend a little bit of time helping them, on one of the further Acquisitions but you know they what I learned about Walmart when I was there is. They have such a strong culture they have a real clear view of who their customer is and why they're serving them and you know I would tell you that. The Acquisitions that spray that they went on those two years was really a catalyst for. Something that W Mellon said at a meeting that I attended where he talked about convenience. [17:03] Being valued as much as low-cost in the kind of the online or multi-channel retail environment versus pre-internet, and so they had to find a catalyst under Mark Lori to accelerate their the cultural change, to understand how customers writ large were valuing convenience as much as low-cost when their Heritage had been, Yoda Point technology to make improvements in supply chain and sourcing and Merchandising so that they could always win on price now they had a win on price and convenience, and so though the individual Acquisitions You could argue whether there was an Roi on them or not against the purchase price. I would say that. Internally it was a massive success in creating that kind of cultural change that Doug. Mandated from. Mark and and then you know I was only there a year and I left but just watching what progressed and if you look at the moldable on Walmart stock I think it's hard to argue that it wasn't a success. Scot: [18:18] Yes tricky with Acquisitions you can't just look at the you know the interior ModCloth business you have to look at the whole halo effect and the stock price yeah there's a multi-faceted way to look at these things that's kind of complicated. Matt: [18:32] Yeah I think any business that they could grow if you could grow organically in definitely I think most businesses would do that there's a reason why companies you know use MMA to your point. Scot: [18:46] Did some point I think I saw a ModCloth working to the stores where you there for that. Matt: [18:53] No no that I left before any of those kind of process integration initiatives occurred. Scot: [19:03] Yeah and then didn't they do they sell it back out do they spin it. Matt: [19:08] Yeah they sold it back out there were some after I left there were some further leadership changes that occurred and and they wound up the best thing it and selling it to I want to say it was a fermented New York. Scot: [19:23] Like a private Equity Firm or another. Matt: [19:24] Yeah I think so yeah. Scot: [19:28] Did you didn't want to jump in there and take it over again usually they call the previous CEO I bet there's an 80% chance you got a call. Matt: [19:37] No comment. Scot: [19:41] All right we found something you don't want to talk about good it's part of my goal on this show is to see if we can we can find that you have any family safe Mark Lori stories I've spent a fair amount of time with him he's a he's a pretty wacky dude. Matt: [19:56] I mean I didn't spend that much time working for him but I mean man like talk about somebody who just has total belief in himself and the team and what's possible, and so much energy for. For Commerce for startups for Innovation so I mean it's it was contagious working for him, um working for his team's I wanted to takeaways I had for my time at Walmart and my time working with. [20:32] With Mark and his jet team is I just didn't have that kind of passion for the mass-market the way that, you had to have to be successful working at a Walmart or working at a jet before the acquisition, yeah I love the specialty space I love you know the Branded premium space I love, Yoda kind of the Middle Market where it's not based on price and it's not luxury it's somewhere in between. I just find that that it's super creative there's lots of opportunities for differentiation. There's always new things that you get to learn but you know Walmart I got there was a camera don't quote me on the exact number but. [21:27] Like there was a conversation about like how many millions of American flags are they going to sell between Memorial Day and and. And Fourth of July. [21:38] On one of their promos and I was just like I couldn't even fathom the scale of having to move that many units and so, yep so for me it was kind of a validation of the lane that I've been in and and enjoyed being in and so when I left. Eventually wind up going to Lucky that was kind of part of the calculus on my part was to get back into the into that that category that Wayne of specialty. Scot: [22:07] My one of my first Mark Laurie experiences I was at Jet and he was telling us how the Company motto was billions or body bags and I was like that's kind of a weird way to motivate, and then I talked to several employees I was like how do you like it here and there like billions of body bags that like they were just like it was a mantra like you know that they were just so focused on it was either going to be 0 or this huge outcome and sure enough it was billions. Matt: [22:31] Yeah there's there's definitely I mean I think think he was a successful High School athlete so there's definitely a lot of rah-rah with with him in the team it's that's not my personality I. ModCloth one of the investors accused me of being two column in the boardroom. They said you know Matt if you had slammed on the table a little bit more you know and I'm sitting there like like. That's the that never crossed my mind trying to make an argument to do something required me slamming my hand on the table. Scot: [23:14] A tantrum yeah. Matt: [23:15] My voice yeah but maybe that's Versa tween you know a founder and yeah an operator. Jason: [23:23] Scot was definitely a table Slammer. Matt: [23:25] I don't believe you. Scot: [23:26] Like man I have an engineering background and they drummed that out of us in those four years. Matt: [23:33] Totally yeah I think you're right I think the scientific method does not allow for that that level of emotion that come into into the argument. Jason: [23:44] Yeah but I will say a lot of mechanical things can be fixed by hitting them with a hammer I will, the so I'm super grateful that you guys didn't throw Mark Glory under the table because I at the moment have to totally pandor to him because his new business he has Starbucks trucks that will drive to your house and deliver coffee to your house, so I like I feel like I need to stay in his good graces, but so so the sale happens you transition out of ModCloth you've you've got kids in college and or in school and no source of free clothing so I'm guessing that's what drove the, you're interesting lucky brands. Matt: [24:28] Yeah well I got to say. When I worked at Urban my wife definitely took advantage of the anthropology discount. [24:43] And I act funny funny and true story, when I was considering the opportunity at ModCloth I was having a couple other conversations in the in the fashion space. And I showed my daughter who at the time was probably about seven or eight I showed her the apps for the shopping apps for, the three businesses that I was talking to and I won't say who but there was one in particular based in La that she was like Dad no way she was like you cannot work selling that fashion. But she approved of ModCloth and so so I got her endorsement so yeah when I went to Lucky it's really I wasn't necessarily looking. You're back into fashion as much as I really thought that there was this route there's a unique opportunity with lucky they were. Over a billion in gmv which is to say the direct to Consumer wholesale and the value of their licensing business in the market was over a billion dollars. So brand revenues and net revenue is like call it 650 million and it was independent. [26:08] And there were not a lot of businesses at that scale. In the u.s. that still were independent versus part of a conglomerate. [26:21] And we're had already gone public and so I had been friendly with one of the partners at Wintergreen. Who called me about the opportunity and after spending some time with them talking about it I said. You really need somebody in LA full time in the arts district where they were headquartered and I'm not moving to LA and moving actually back east and they said. Hey would you come in and manage the company to get us through holiday while we won for somebody. And also give us a strategy like a like a financial model a business case three-year strategy. And so that's how I initially got involved there was more as like a board advisor interim manager and then. By January of twenty I'd really seen this amazing Lane. For an older Millennial younger Gen-X. That we could reposition Lucky Brand to be a cause marketer the company did a tremendous amount of good work in Downtown LA taking. Old Denim and. [27:50] Giving it. Nonprofits that work with the homeless population there for clothing to for installation. And then other other efforts to help that population, and so I felt like we could reposition lucky to not mean like going to the casino getting lucky but meaning gratitude. Like I feel lucky I made it I have the ability to spend a hundred dollars in a pair of jeans and I want to support. [28:27] This this amazing company that does all this good work and so. That I had this vision for how you could reposition the brand the business was running like it was 2005 as far as. Go to market so there was a lot of heavy lifting that had to be done around digital transformation around merchandising around. Rationalizing the stores there was way too much discount so there's a lot of work to do, but I got really excited about the opportunity and wound up agreeing to stay on as exact chair in January 2020. And part of my remit would have been to hire a CEO and partner with that individual and I had to kill people in my network that I thought would be great for it who be willing to move to LA. But two months later the covid walk down start. And then it turned into something you know completely different than we were just trying to survive we lost ninety percent of our revenue and that April. And we wound up. [29:43] Making it through to July August that summer but at that point yeah the damage had been done and the private Equity Firm decided to. Sell it to a party that had been interested in the business for a number of years which was authentic Brands group out of New York so I stayed on to oversee that process and then once the deal is done I. Said that was a lot of work I'm exhausted and wound up turning down the opportunity to stay on with a b g and left but, I got to say I'm really grateful thankful for the team that I had there because they were amazing, to work with during such a difficult period that that Q2. And early summer of 2020 it was it was really really challenging to be in the market and I learned a lot about myself as a leader from it. Jason: [30:46] Oh my gosh I I am sure you did I'm laughing though because you think about all the work involved there and so you decided to do something easier in your next gig like oh I don't know like starting from scratch business in the middle of a really old non-profit. Matt: [31:08] Well I gotta say you know after after the lucky experience. Um I really felt drained I didn't have. The passion for retail for e-commerce digital for. Brands for fashion like I had for the previous you know well 15 years and. I was fortunate that I have the ability to do this but I basically gave myself 2021 off. I've been sitting on a few boards I did some Consulting work I had been Angel Investing for a few years so I had a number of startup Founders and CEOs that I was mentoring and Advising, and I just said to myself I really need to get re-inspired I need to like, get back out in the market broadly see what's happening see where the Innovation is occurring and and, get excited but also get lucky because a lot of these things from a career perspective is based on timing I was really fortunate that. [32:27] I went to Urban when I did I was really fortunate to be part of, ModCloth the journey during the years that was there the year that I was at Walmart was a really critical year in the Amazon the Walmart Battle. Um amazing timing too. Be available to do Consulting work with the after pay the exact summer that the founder moved from Australia to San Francisco. So you know I'm acutely aware that you can't control timing and, and yet the kind of put yourself out there so that was my plan last year and in doing so what I realized was I'm like I get the most energy and I do my best work when, back in the phase of a company where it's. [33:22] Focused on growth and Innovation and so no more turnarounds the end of Lucky business was a turnaround. ModCloth was a pseudo turn around, so I just said you know I want to get back to you know that stage where it's really about solving for customer needs and Market positioning and Prague service Innovation and deploying technology, and then a couple that with also wanted to get in a part of retail where I can learn. And you know secondhand what's happening right now the this whole cultural phenomenon around thrifting, and you're the pioneering work of a thread up and a real real Poshmark deep op-ed see ya the last decade, that was the that was the heavy lifting you know those Founders you know basically creating the category, but now there's a critical mass now there's a consumer acceptance so I don't see it as it as a, as hard as maybe it looks like from the outside it's I think it's the timing is great for the Goodwill Network to Rally around this new platform for us. As a separate entity to stand up this new company to launch this new Marketplace. [34:48] There's definitely engineering challenges to figuring out how do you successfully profitably scale. Um second-hand and vintage when you know every item is unique and we have a distributed model where our sellers are. Various. Goodwill members across the u.s. so we're not centralized so there's definitely some some challenges but to me that's part of the fun that's part of the learning. Jason: [35:18] I can imagine I want to take just half a step backwards to make sure the listeners are tracking with exactly what you're doing now because I think it's super interesting so, formal title is CEO of goodwillfinds and goodwillfinds is a new offering from Goodwill that is selling Goodwill Merchant previously owned Goodwill merchandise via a website is that the in my clothes. Matt: [35:44] Yeah yeah so I think it's worth kind of spelling out the context a little bit because it took me a little bit honestly to fully understand it and grasp it. Goodwill has been around for over 100 Years everybody knows Goodwill it's an amazing nonprofit franchise. There is a I call it a holding company I don't know that that's the right. Firm but there is a parent company that owns the Goodwill Master license in Metro DC and they have. License out the brand to I believe the numbers 155, individual territories across the u.s. and each of those territories have, Goodwill organization with their own leadership team their own operations around treasury their own board of directors obviously they vary in. Size and location and specification and you know mix the revenue and all those things but they all share the same Mission and the mission a Goodwill is. [36:57] To enhance lives for the Dignity of work, and it's my older brother was born with a disability and I've watched him go on and off disability a few times in his life and I tell you, that he's his best self when he's working. So when I first got connected with the folks at Goodwill earlier last year it really touched my heart like I really. I wanted this to be successful for them because I know how important their mission is but as I got to learn more about the network. [37:37] Of 155 Goodwill's and more about the opportunity and there are six founding. Good we'll see EOS that came together to organize this new separate entity called goodwillfinds where a virtual Delaware company. And those six are the ones that are the board that I report to and they've been working on this for years they were, ready to watch this last year and decided that they needed to hire a CEO, to come in build a team set up the company oversee the launch so I joined pre-revenue and we're now in our fourth month of selling, the consumer response has been. Unbelievable sales are more than doubling month-over-month it's it's really. A unique opportunity to build something that is not only. [38:39] In a part of retail that is innovating and growing and scaling rapidly but it's also doing it for this amazing Mission and you know really trying to redefine what does. Nonprofit in the circular economy look like to deliver social impact at scale so I feel like that's the Mandate that I signed up for and the team that I'm building. And the business model that we're designing right now to go with the marketplace are the is the execution of that but the bigger Vision here is to create this platform that not only. [39:24] Overtime all 155 Goodwill members will have access to be on as sellers but that. For the first time we'll have decentralized marketing funnel brands. Strategy content messaging 1p data and then. [39:48] But technical roadmap that were able to deploy that will integrate with the store operations and the back of house operations that will allow for scared investments in technology that all the good wolf can take advantage of. On the consumer side I think all the players and secondhand have the same goal which is to make the. [40:10] The option to buy second-hand versus new so compelling and so convenient and so exciting and cool. That more and more consumption dollars go towards second hand and move away from New and by, doing that, it has this incredibly measurable impact on the environment in creating sustainable. Impact and then in our case you add to it. The fact that every net dollar that we collect from our sales go back to the location where the Goodwill was the item was donated to fund the Goodwill programs I mean it's I feel like we're pioneering, this new this new kind of business model for circularity and so all that to me is like super compelling super interesting, and I'm really fortunate that this opportunity found me. Scot: [41:19] Cool hearing you talk about it I can tell you like to build stuff the channel visor we had a lot of customers that were kind of in this General space the challenge with this use Consignment World Is You Gotta you know I'm sure these Goodwills are getting, they're only going to sell online a fraction of what comes in so you got to figure out what what things do you want to sell in the store versus online you gotta create digital assets which are the descriptions and the pictures and then you gotta you know imagine you're not going to send them to a central location so then you've got to create a shipping method that works down at the store level how are you guys solving all those problems at scale. Matt: [42:00] Yeah well I'll tell you a couple of things and you're exactly right there's a ton of operational challenges we have a couple things going for us one. These Goodwills already have the physical infrastructure they already have, donation centers they already have Micro warehouses that are already selling online as a three-piece seller through Amazon and eBay and some other Regional marketplaces, so they have a lot of these physical operations setup, so we're leveraging that and we're not having to deploy Capital to do it. That's 12 there's a there's a maturity in the technology vendor Market you'd be surprised at how many. Providers are in the space to automate. We have a partner that we work with that leverages Google Lens technology and Leverage is the Einstein a I was Salesforce that allows us to, take a lot of the heavy lifting out of item creation we have vendors that we work with that. [43:15] Take images of items three-dimensional scans that send it to and Outsource in India where descriptions are being written for these items you know so there's, and I'm learning this right but you'd be shocked at how much software deployment automation deployment already exists. [43:38] So we're managing that to deploy in a way that integrates into these existing operations at and. The other thing that we have an advantage of is because we are nonprofit. [43:53] We're selling primarily me exclusively right now but overtime will be primarily selling donated items which have. Is this not a zero cost of goods but it's a near zero cost of goods. So we have room in the margin line to play with value-added services on each item, if we feel like there's a lift that we can justify with that you know with respect to photography with respect to. Metadata on each of the items with respect to Howard thinking about tagging, there's a lot there's a lot of players out there that we're evaluating right now and we watched with. [44:42] Over 100,000 unique items back in the first week of October. Mid-December we were at nearly 200,000 items. And our roadmap is to have a million unique items in our active. Catalog by October of this year so this entire endeavor. Has been from the start designed for scale. So we feel like that's giving us an advantage because we're able to do some things that, other startups that are venture-backed that are having to start from scratch with a lot of that infrastructure that have a cost of sourcing and and Supply acquisition that we don't, it would be financially prohibitive for them to make some of the Investments that we're making right now. Scot: [45:43] Yeah it's interesting to hear you say you're using some of the AI Jason's not a believer in AI but I'm a big proponent. Jason: [45:50] Haha I haven't said a word on this whole podcast I've just been using my AI Avatar. Scot: [45:57] Ugh. Matt: [45:58] For the record this isn't Matt talking this is Matt's chat TPT talking. Jason: [46:04] Yeah we tested both in the shed she'd Beatty was much more Salient so we went with that. [46:17] Yeah so it's interesting to me mad because, you mentioned a lot of the early Pioneers in our e-commerce and by the way just from buzzword Bingo like are you re Commerce person or you like do you have a favorite label for what you're doing now. Matt: [46:34] Yeah I'm. I'm back in the the interview circuit right now trying to get the word out about what we're doing and promoting the Goodwill Mission so I'm still trying some phrases on I mean yeah RI Commerce is definitely. [46:50] What. The buzzword but I think what we're doing at goodwillfinds and and in partnership with the Goodwill network is really about circularity you know in my mind's eye. Getting a Marketplace standing up a new Marketplace from the zero. You know it's the old Beezus flywheel the back of the napkin that I think about every day and in my version of it their supply demand admission and without the mission we don't get supply. And the better job we do partnering with our members sellers in acquiring the right Supply and and listing it. In a high-quality way, you know then that allows us to be able to meet demand in the market which the proceeds from those sales go right back to the Goodwill where we got the donation and there's the kind of the flywheels complete, and one of the stories around that and this is what we have to do a better job. [47:52] This year versus last year's to get these stories these amazing stories about the Goodwill Network out into the world, the more successful we are Google finds meaning the more that we're able to sell and scale demand. The more people each of the Goodwill sellers have to hire in their e-commerce operations. Because they're doing the listings they're doing the pick pack and ship on the on the outbound but those jobs are higher skill and they and they pay better. And so it actually accelerates the local mission. [48:27] The more successful we are because they have to hire more people and bring more people and train them into these higher value jobs that then they go get placed somewhere else they can go work within. The digital economy you know the digital retail industry and so we really I really think about what we're doing as pioneering circularity. We also are talking to some retailers and Brands you want to partner with us on they're both on the demand and supply side and part of it is because we're a nonprofit that there's a tax, right up Advantage for them but it's there's also this, PSG component to the large corporates that they have to think about especially in, in apparel where they had to think about you know what is their end to end environmental impact and. [49:27] It's it's really I can't believe the timing of this but it's really a moment right now not just with consumers but in the industry and so that's another aspect of circularity where you have. Yeah it's not Nike so but I'll just use them as an example to speak of Austria of Lee imagine Nike telling their full price customers. That they can buy second-hand Nike at goodwillfinds.com. Or imagine a Chanel it's not Chanel so I'll just use them electrically but imagine them. [50:04] Wanting to use us as their authentication partner so that when you find second-hand should now at goodwillfinds.com versus a real real or somewhere else, you can you can you know that you have this objective third-party authenticator that you can partner with to control, the the brand experience in the second hand market so it's, I'm really excited about the possibilities and and we have a really big vision for what we're doing I don't I think we Commerce to me feels, like a term that soap a little bit Limited. Jason: [50:41] Totally fair so maybe circular Commerce its, it's interesting to me though like so we've had a bunch of those Founders from the circular Commerce. Brands on and like their fundamental problem is not your fundamental like their biggest problem is sourcing, the goods by getting people to send them stuff and then when they curate it they're mostly interested in, luxury designer so they end up with a relatively poor yield and they don't have. [51:13] Any monetization or you know frankly like a ecologically redeeming way to deal with, all the goods they get that aren't they don't meet their criteria so it's like you you seem like they're like through the Goodwill Network you've got all these stores to put Goods in you've got a bunch of you do have luxury consumers that are searching for vintage and value but you also have more pure value consumers you it just seems like it's a really interesting fit because you saw some of the, problems that are endemic to the re Commerce guys you've got the first gen, Val you guys like the you know the fast fashion guys who are you know of course making stuff cheap but it's a psychological disaster and they only sell like half of it and the other half ends up in a landfill and all that and then you've got the, discount guys who I think is the funniest of all I don't know if you follow this but Burlington Coat Factory, right before the pandemic shut down their e-commerce and they shut it down because they fundamentally couldn't solve what you're doing like they couldn't figure out how to cost effectively make, product detail pages for all the super thin inventory that they had and so it just interesting like, because you built this business on top of the Google Network it feels like you got a nice sort of Head Start in the in all three corners of that problem if you will. Matt: [52:36] Yeah Jason so first off I know a lot of the players the founders execs at those other places and, again I want them all to be successful because the more successful the category is it's a tide that will lift all boats and I think we're all being led by the consumer who is voting yes yes yes, I also think that the consumer, um is not just the the deal Seeker the value Seeker but it really is a trend ribbon, style driven younger consumer who if you think about you know the. [53:19] Tick Tock and Instagram and this this viral social world that we live in where you nobody wants to look the same, wearing the same things that shopping vintage and second-hand is actually a way to differentiate yourself and show your, your individual style so it's there's a really interesting marriage there between second hand and kind of social morality, and what's happening there and then there's also a tell you a more affluent customer or aspirational customer who could Shop full price and does Shop full price but they really care about, about the impact in the narrative and they want to talk about the story, where they bought it not just what they bought and so there's it feels like there's this really. [54:15] Great timing of all three customer segments and then the last thing I tell you is compared to the Discounters. Do I have read about some of them struggling, with figuring out e-commerce and I think I've read the rational rationalization was that it's hard to do Discovery online versus in the store. What I would tell you is that what we're doing augments the in-store thrifting experience at goodwillfinds, now if you're shopping Goodwill at your local store. The assortment is very limited it's what just showed up that week or that month as far as donations go but, you can do that because there are certain categories of people like to touch and feel or try on because fit matters or Texture and finish and, and material matter you know how home goods and furniture and the like one of those big bulky items that you know are easier to buy and store but to be able to couple that with. [55:29] Now shopping you know I don't want to say the best but the that e-commerce. Assortment of other Goodwills across the country. We're now you're getting access to donations from New York to LA Seattle to Miami, Chicago to Austin and I mean wow like what a treasure Trove to be able to shop your Goodwill store and go online and get access to all these thrift stores in one place, in our case I think it's a massive value add and. Given the fact that the Goodwill brand has been around for 100 years and already has tens of millions of customers shopping their stores you know our primary focus to start is how do we, how do we complement the in-store shopping experience to those tens of millions of customers to convert them to be multi-channel customers with the brand, and at the same time how do we compete in the market too. [56:38] Solicit this this these other two audiences that I mentioned the style and Trend driven younger consumer that's looking for vintage that's looking for. For differentiated as well as this this aspirational and more affluent customer who loves the loves the purpose loves the mission loves the story of circularity and wants to participate. Scot: [57:03] Cool sounds like your you're fired up and it's going to be exciting to watch the progress we're running up against time but while we have you you've been that this over 15 years the whole e-commerce retail thing what are some of the other Trends you're watching other than this circular kind of recycling element anything anything interesting on your radar for example do you think the digitally native vertical brand thing has played out or is that still got legs any other trends that are interesting to you. Matt: [57:36] Yeah well on DM BB which just a an iteration of DTC. Did you see to me was always a go to market strategy was never a business model. Scot: [57:47] Yeah. Matt: [57:49] The the early players the first movers in that space who did the, you know go to the source and sell an item at the wholesale price versus the retail price because you're cutting out the middleman Zappos is kind of one of the one of the pioneers of that, um That was a momentum thing I've always viewed and again kind of sticking to my knitting here in this specialty premium you know Market space. I've always viewed, yeah the brand equity which is what we're all striving to create and grow and maintain. It gets generated by picking an attractive customer, that you want to obsess about and I don't and attractive I mean somebody that you think is a viable there's enough of them and they're viable to have a long-term relationship with. [58:56] And obsessing about them to the point where you understand their needs better than they and you can create differentiated product and service, where, they fall in love with your Solutions with your customer experience and they want to tell their friends and then you couple that with the right distribution, so that you can find more people like them which allows you to scale in an efficient manner and direct-to-consumer now going back 15 years, was just the new go to market to find more like-minded customers to ones that you already had so urban urban already had amazingly strong brands with a lot of brand equity, so what we did writing the Web 2.0 wave was really just figuring out you know how do we, how do we reach the same or similar customers and give them a better experience a different experience online than what they experience in store, and then Mark what was the opposite I got there and we had no physical experience and so the exercise was how do we take this brand love that exists. [1:00:07] At this website and and translate it into a three-dimensional experience that, the existing customers would love but would allow us to expand our market and introduce the brand and more people so I yeah so I don't I never saw DM BB by itself as a sustainable business model. [1:00:27] As far as other Trends in the market today I when I left Walmart I did a talk. [1:00:37] Where I said I felt like it was an amazing time, to start a brand and I really meant it and I really believe that the market was was so like there's so much sameness in the market that. That there's a huge opportunity for four new brands coming to the market Leverage The technologies that have matured and and really differentiate against the incumbents I tell you sitting here right now after. I feel like consumers. [1:01:12] Have now accepted the fact that their multi-line store is where they shop for everything. The whole idea of this retailers essential and that one's not and those shutdowns for a year plus I think really changed consumer. Perception of where's viable to shop the where it's not and I and so I think the bigger players, have a massive advantage in this market especially this year with inflation continuing going into a recession I think it's I think this year is going to be really hard, for smaller players to differentiate and survive so that's more from a consumer lens. From a technology lens I'm sorry to say Jason but I'm a big believer in AI, and I think it's early days and what I counseled a lot of folks who are earlier in their career is find a mega technology trend, in the market that you can get passionate about learning that you think is early Innings and ride it. [1:02:17] I certainly did that with e-commerce I was. They're early with the that whole Social Mobile Local, moment you know that was existing after the iPhone and Facebook launched, I'm I feel like marketplaces are like halfway up the s-curve I feel like there's still a lot more room to grow and so I'm working on that technology curve right now with goodwillfinds. But I would say that I don't I'm not a Believer it in web 3.0 today it feels like, the.com in the late 90s where it was five years too early, there just weren't enough participants to make it viable I think web 3.0 in whatever form it takes is five years out before becomes something that you could commercially work on. And then you know I'd say I think the subscription in. In a lot of categories is having a lot of success right now which is less about technology and more about, business model but that's that's that's an area as well that I think is worth exploring for a lot of businesses that are trying to figure out ways to monetize Their audience. Jason: [1:03:40] Matt that is awesome, basically we're mostly aligned I'm 100% with you on a I I'm also with you on web 3 / metaverse being too early the one thing I'm gonna just for the record disagree on is I I can't public admit that marketplaces are thing because that'll that'll go to Scott said too much if we admit that. But, it's going to surprise no one mat that has happened again we've used slightly more than our allotted time so we're gonna leave it with those words of wisdom from you as always if listeners found value from this show we sure would love it if you'd jump on iTunes and leave us that five star review but Matt, so awesome to reconnecting and congrats on everything you're doing it's it's fun to watch and and put your point like it's also adding a heck of a lot of value to the world. Matt: [1:04:33] Guys I really appreciate the time always great to reconnect congrats on the pot I'm a huge fan and let's do it again at number five hundred. Scot: [1:04:44] Sounds good Matt if folks want to find you online or you on the on MySpace where do you hang out. Matt: [1:04:52] Yeah have you heard of Tumblr no. Um yeah I would just say if anybody needs to get ahold of me reach out through Linkedin and my contact information is there. Scot: [1:05:06] Sounds good we really appreciate taking time and good luck with the new Venture sounds really exciting. Matt: [1:05:11] Thanks guys. Jason: [1:05:12] And until next time happy commercing.

WOKV legal analyst Mark Rubin explains how and why the jury returned a recommendation for a life sentence without parole instead of a death sentence for the Parkland school shooter Nikolas Cruz. The sentence has been met with considerable criticism from victim family members and the governor. The judge scheduled a sentencing hearing for November 1st.

Retired St. Louis Co. attorney Mark Rubin, and musician Andrew Perfetti were guests of the program... See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Join Andreea Ceplinschi and David Banach for the latest episode of the Passengers Poetry Podcast, where they discuss their favorite poetry from Issue 3.1, including Anna Leahy's Let's Say There's a Place, Mark Rubin's How to Bring Them In, Christy Prahl's Throwaway, Bonnie Thibodeau's I nearly love you, and Emily Long's My queerness is a landscape. Edited and produced John E. Brady.Passengers Literary Press, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All staff donate their time and effort. If you'd like to support our mission to publish art that is necessary rather than desired, please consider donating at the link below.Support the show

Listen to Passengers Journal Volume 3 Issue 1 in its entirety. This issue features word by Anna Leahy, Mark Rubin, Michael McKeown Bondhus, Shatha Almutawa, Sophia Terazawa, Corley Longmire, Maureen O'Leary, and more. Many thanks to our Audio team, our contributors, and our editors and readers for making this listening experience possible. This Audio Issue represents the hard work and dedication of more than fifty individuals. Mastered by John E. Brady and Joe Cusimano. Produced by John E. Brady.  Passengers Literary Press, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. All staff donate their time and effort. If you'd like to support our mission to publish art that is necessary rather than desired, please consider donating at the link below.Support the show

The clarinet player, arranger, and driving force behind the Panorama Jazz Band has an affinity for exotic folk music from around the world. A founding member of the N.O. Klezmer All Stars, he’s been mining this vein since he first got to town. Panorama’s “Good Music for You” song-of-the-month subscription service keeps the fresh releases coming. Ben makes time to spell it all out for the Troubled Men. Topics include a trip to Chicago, college plans, a physical exam, a naked football fan, a gypsy roofer, stolen yard signs, street work, an Annapolis childhood, music training, Quaker schools, modern dance, Go-Go music, the Smithsonian, Jonathan Freilich, Arthur Kastler, the Little People’s Club, Dean Stockwell, “Compulsion,” “Blue Velvet,” Mark Rubin, Bruce Springsteen, a Passover program, the Spotted Cat, Frenchmen St., Turkish dates, a bar hustle, a Copenhagen hustle, the Music Box Village, a wedding story, and much more. Intro Music: Styler/Coman Break and Outro music: “Les Deux Jumeaux” and “Spin the Dreidel” by the Panorama Jazz Band Support the podcast here. Join the Patreon page here. Shop for Troubled Men’s Wear here. Subscribe, review, and rate (5 stars) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or any podcast source. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Troubled Men Podcast Facebook Troubled Men Podacst Instagram Panorama Jazz Band Homepage Panorama Jazz Band Facebook Ben Schenck Facebook

The self-proclaimed Jew of Oklahoma and founding bassist with the Bad Livers and Killbilly recently cracked the Billboard Bluegrass chart with his solo release “The Triumph of Assimilation.” It’s a Judeo-Americana meditation on the present, with a view of the past and a cautiously hopeful eye to the future. Mark’s a master of slap upright bass and its use in rockabilly, swing, klezmer, and the conjunto style he played on accordion great Santiago Jimenez Jr.’s Grammy-nominated records. Tonight he kibitzes with the Troubled Men. Topics include an empty nest, the Broadside, “POV: Neutral Ground,” trash, Donald Rumsfeld, Edwin Edwards, Dale Triguero and Chickie Wah Wah, the drop zone, Mordecai Gebertig poetry, Charlottesville, QAnon, blood libel, kosher food, a cross burning, punk and roots rock, Danny Barnes, Dallas, hate eating, Kevin Smith, Juan Viesca, Richard Linklater, “The Newton Boys,” sideman work, a regional music resurgence, klezmer in Europe, bluegrass heartbreak, Bill Monroe, the Butthole Surfers, John Paul Jones, steel guitar, Jimmy Day, the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, Leo Frank, and much more. Support the podcast here. Join the Patreon page here. Shop for Troubled Men’s Wear here. Subscribe, review, and rate (5 stars) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or almost any podcast aggregator. Follow on social media, share with friends, and spread the Troubled Word. Intro music: Styler/Coman Break music: “It’s Burning” and outro music: “A Day of Revenge” from “The Triumph of Assimilation” by Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma Troubled Men Podcast Facebook Troubled Men Podacst Instagram Mark Rubin, Jew of Oklahoma Homepage Mark Rubin Facebook Mark Rubin Instagram

Mark Rubin and Rich Jones discuss yesterday's news conference about the murder of Tristyn Bailey, including upgraded charges against Aiden Fucci.

Mark Rubin and Rich Jones discuss the charges against 14yo Aiden Fucci, charged with the murder of Tristyn Bailey.

Our guest on this episode is the well-traveled, well-spoken, and unapologetically outspoken musician Mark Rubin. From co-founding the influential Americana trickster band The Bad Livers to being a leader in the contemporary klezmer scene, Mark’s storied career strands weave together perfectly in this latest release, The Triumph of Assimilation. We talk about the new album, his experiences as a Southern Jew, the intersectional fascism reboot, cultural appropriation do-nots, and Yiddish songwriter/poet Mordechai Gebirtig. Featured music is “It’s Burning,” “A Day of Revenge“,”Royal Street Shuffle” and, just in time for Revenge of the 5th, “The Dark Side Has Doughnuts,” by Mark Rubin, courtesy of the artist. FOLLOW MARK AND PRE-ORDER HIS NEW ALBUM https://www.jewofoklahoma.com/ LEARN MORE ABOUT MORDECHAI GEBIRTIG At Home with Mordechai Gebirtig https://ingeveb.org/texts-and-translations/at-home-with-mordecai-gebirtig "Our Town is Burning" and "A Beam of Sunlight" https://www.yiddishbookcenter.org/language-literature-culture/yiddish-translation/our-town-burning-and-beam-sunlight Mordechai Gebirtig Memorial (link is to English translated page from original Polish) https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=pl&u=https://mordechaj-gebirtig.pl/&prev=search&pto=aue Wiki Page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mordechai_Gebirtig P.S. SARAH AND JOY WERE REMEMBERING THAT THING ABOUT THE COLOR BLUE CORRECTLY! https://www.iflscience.com/brain/when-did-humans-start-see-color-blue/

Dr. Matt Lodder is a Senior Lecturer in Art History & American Studies at the University of Essex. His research focuses on using art history as a lens to understand the history of western tattooing from the 17th century onward, specifically in the ""professional era"" which began in the 1880s and continues today. You can find him on Twitter @mattlodder, and learn more about his research here: https://www.essex.ac.uk/people/lodde23007/matt-lodder Here are some links to sources discussed in this episode: -Mikak the tattooed woman visits London in 1767: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40513264?seq=1 -Marks of Civilization by Mark Rubin: https://books.google.com/books/about/Marks_of_Civilization.html?id=kZ_pAAAAMAAJ -Modern Primitives: https://books.google.com/books/about/Marks_of_Civilization.html?id=kZ_pAAAAMAAJ -Tattooed Bodies by Nikki Sullivan: https://books.google.com/books/about/Tattooed_Bodies.html?id=n7qAAAAAMAAJ Inking of Immunity is made possible by all these humans: Chris Lynn - Executive Producer & Co-host Becci Owens - Associate Producer & Co-host Mike Smetana - Associate Producer & Co-host Julia Sponholtz - Assistant Producer Patricia Arnett - Assistant Producer Kira Yancey - Production Manager Find us on social media on Facebook (inking.of.immunity), Twitter (@inking_immunity), and Instagram (@inking.of.immunity) A transcript of this episode can be found here: https://otter.ai/u/WdpGOO16kald1918FKsY4BowL6g

EP255 - Instacart Chief Revenue Officer Seth Dallaire Seth Dallaire is the Chief Revenue Officer at Instacart. In this interview, we cover his experience at Amazon, the challenges of operating Instacart’s 4-sided marketplace, key trends in the digital grocery space, and Instacarts evolution as a retail media network. Episode 255 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, February 10th, 2021. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scot show this is episode 254 being recorded on Wednesday February 10th 2021 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. Two of our topics we have really been Drilling in onto the last year our digital Grocery and the impact of covid on overall digital adoption. One company sits squarely at the intersection of both of those Trends and we are really excited to have them on today’s show. That company is instacart and we’re real thrilled to have on the show their Chief Revenue officer Seth Del are welcome to the show Seth. Seth: [1:09] Hey thanks for having me nice to be here. Jason: [1:12] Seth we’re thrilled to have you and as you may know from listening to the show we always like to start by giving the audience just a little bit of background about our guests and and you of course have a, a very interesting e-commerce background so can you share it with our audience. Seth: [1:30] Sure and again thanks for having me on the show so current title is Chief Revenue officer here at instacart and really what I’m focused on and have been working on for the past 16 months since I joined the company is creating an advertising business and I come at this opportunity after having spent just about eight years at Amazon. Where I was in various leadership positions in the advertising sales and marketing teams over there, I joined in February 2012 and prior to that I was at Yahoo prior to that. At Microsoft and prior to that Amazon so the bulk of my business career has been in digital media both in terms of sales and buying, and really the emphasis for the past. Ten years at least has been on e-commerce and Retail so it’s really exciting to be here at instacart particularly in this moment when, a consumer behavior is is tipping into. Grocery shopping online and I’m able to use a lot of the experiences that I’ve had in my career too. To help make it making ads business happen over here. Jason: [2:56] That’s awesome and that the timing for having you on this show is terrific Scott obviously mentioned. Covid in the intersection of digital and Grocery and I know instacart it’s even bigger than grocery so we’ll eventually talk about that, um but a close second to digital and grocery that we’ve been talking about lately are all these retail media networks and you’re obviously squarely there as well, so our last episode of the podcast we actually recovering Amazon’s earnings, and to me one of the the standout features of their to as earnings was this that they’ve now surpassed 20 billion dollars in ad Revenue over the last 12 months. I know you you were heavily involved in building that business, I mean a is there any part of you that’s proud or sad to see the success now that you’re not there, not implying it success because you’re not there, but the related question I was interested to ask is in my mind it’s entirely possible that at 20 billion dollars in ad Revenue that the ad revenue is more profitable for Amazon and AWS is, and I feel like that doesn’t get talked about a lot. Seth: [4:15] Yeah so to answer the first part of the question definitely proud the experience that I have there was a lot of fun it was a great learning experience and I was able to work with some very talented people and there aren’t many opportunities where you get work on an entrepreneurial project, within the safety or that has the resourcing of a large successful company and that was really what the experience was like for me. [4:52] Getting in there in 2012 and really. Helping build the business from a sales and marketing side for sure but then working shoulder-to-shoulder with some pretty talented people on the product side, and watching that business move from what I would argue was an experiment, into something that is a material contributor, to the business and so those those earnings reports when they come out I actually I get excited about them for that team that’s still over there I think, I think it’s pretty great what they’re able to do or have been able to do. Even if I’m not there anymore and the reason why I say that 2 is not. Because I enjoyed my time at at Amazon but the success that Amazon has in terms of creating. [5:50] Any Commerce advertising capability or marketing discipline if you will is important for the industry in that it allows other, businesses to to do something similar and you mentioned there’s a whole bunch of different retailgeek. Ad networks that are starting up or or media networks whatever the term was that you over you referred to them but the reason why they’re popping up is because, they’re durable pieces of business and the if I reflect back to. [6:26] Early 2012 when I had arrived at Amazon to help set up the North American. Ad sales team there was a lot of waiting around in the lobby at the agency a lot of explanations as to why Amazon even a dad’s like why don’t you know why does why do they need to have advertising like where are the ads on Amazon you know just give us your data that’s what we want and. That that was a difficult mentality to change and really we were successful in creating a. And understanding that e-commerce as a marketing discipline is similar to the same sort of trajectory or life cycle if you will of paid search or social media that both of those. [7:24] Practices if you will started because and they were new they started from scratch they required a lot of Education to the industry, a lot of risk taking on both the publisher side and on the advertiser side the marketer side to to invest in those areas and. Ultimately they became things that were overtime well understood and really performing, pieces of advertising and marketing and. I see a lot of those similar traits over here and instacart and, while instacart is e-commerce singularly focused on Grocery and. [8:19] The opportunity in the grocery space is super compelling just because you have a couple things one on The Advertiser side of the business you have not a lot of insight there’s a lot a lot of capacity in terms of what’s happening in the online grocery space, and there are many in the grocery industry is still Regional in many cases it’s a one trillion dollar a year business in the United States alone that maybe has somewhere between 5 and 10%. [8:52] Of an absolute dollars of that that business is being conducted online and that looks different from Mass merchandiser general merchandise environments like an Amazon a Best Buy Walmart where they’re selling you know all sorts of things hard Goods as well as as food, but what’s exciting to me is that we’re able to work with brands that maybe haven’t been able to participate in e-commerce as much as they would like to because the transactional component just didn’t exist our measurement of the transactional component was difficult to do and instacart sits in a unique place where we’re working with, almost 600 different grocery banners now and have significant reach where we can help marketers understand how consumers are interacting with their brands and, how much they’re buying online relative, the behaviors that there they’ve been demonstrating historically through physical retail so, that gets me super excited because those that grocery piece of the business even two years ago was, it was very nascent now it still is today but as a result of covid it’s been an accelerant in terms of pushing consumers. [10:16] Into trial of online grocery shopping and what we found is a lot of that, trial is durable Behavior Analysis we’re continuing to wind our way through covid but it’s also. Created a ton of opportunity for for for marketers as well. Scot: [10:37] Maybe let’s let’s start at the top so I think everyone knows what instacart is but just in case like when you’re when you’re at a cocktail party describing instacart to someone that doesn’t know how do you describe it. Seth: [10:50] I describe it as a so we are an online grocery delivery service and we. Work with. Over 600 Grocers nationally in the in the US and well in North America really but. [11:12] You know we allow consumers to shop for the fruit the food that they love. And do it at the stores that they love. [11:22] And get a whole bunch of time back that they can use to spend enjoying that food with their family and loved ones and. That in very high level is how I describe instacart you know it in a more tactical level and certainly in these times. We we talk more in focus more on the convenience and the safety, of the service and that were allowing people to shelter in place to to have contact list delivery of the grocery items and help solve for trip occasions that normally they would be doing in person but you know for for their own health or safety reasons they’ve elected to to find a way to have someone else do that for them. And we do that really well and. We’ve been delighting consumers with that service and and then we’re also you know offering retailers the opportunity to, meet that consumer expectation that they can shop for groceries online and that’s another critical part of our. Marketplaces the relationships that we have with retailers so you know we help retailers. Offer online grocery shopping and delivery or pickup as well so. [12:46] It’s a you know we’re not just about grocery delivery you know we also as a business you know solve. Some provide opportunity for for retailers as well as well as consumer Solutions. Scot: [13:02] Awesome and then I kind of think in the bombers world of it as a three-sided Marketplace I don’t know if you guys use that language or not so on one side you’ve got this grocery store component and you said, over 600 and then you have to call them instacart errs or Shoppers or what do you call. Shoppers okay and then then over on the other side you’ve got consumers do you guys talk about any scale of the Shoppers and consumer legs of that imagine thousands of Shoppers and millions of consumers. Seth: [13:32] Yeah we that’s exactly right so you know millions of consumers hundreds of thousands of Shoppers and then the the other sort of component of that Marketplace a Time, responsible for is the The Advertiser marketer component as well so they’re a new element to our Marketplace but we’re also working with those Brands to make sure that they have an opportunity to promote their products to those consumers, when they’re coming through the store to build a basket and shop and consumers have the expectation that they’ll be able to find products in our store fronts, in our Marketplace that they would find if they were shopping at their favorite local grocery store so that’s the another component to our Marketplace that, is newer but one we’re investing in heavily. Scot: [14:27] Yeah I’m a full disclosure I’m a big instacart user and have been for. Feels like three or four years so that early days and it’s been really impressive as a entrepreneur to watch you guys build it out and the early days you know it had all these it was hard to find things that are in stock and, and then the experience just got better and better and better over time and then, it’s been really impressive to watch you guys deal with the surge of covid I imagine that’s been pretty pretty crazy scale that you guys have had to work through as that’s it. Seth: [15:00] Yeah first of all thank you for your business and glad that that’s the experience that you’ve had covid has been transformational in many ways for, or business you know it’s forever changed the consumer shopping experience for sure it’s been an accelerant for online grocery shopping and and really led to. A ton of trial in the beginning and you know when we were sort of in the the marsh last few weeks of March first few weeks of April where we saw the. A wave of consumer demand come through that was unlike anything that we had really seen before and. You know as the pandemic is we’re coming up on a year now. [15:51] Sheltering in place and sort of how we’ve modified our own behaviors you know. A lot of these these trials or things that consumers were trying certainly Within instacart. Had become habitual their habit forming and because they’re their habit for me and providing value and convenience and utility or durable and that’s what we’re seeing across the business so we did, learn a ton in terms of how to execute. Against a huge wave of consumer demand and that’s really made us better prepared for. The in the event that we see another sort of search like that we will we will be able to deliver the same level of efficiency and meet the same sort of standards that that you just mentioned. For your own experiences and instacart consumer in the future so we’re really excited about that it was it was challenging for sure a lot of a lot of hard work went into execution not only from The Shopper side and. And making sure that. All the consumer demand was being met but then just the stress on the technical ends of the business and the technology and making sure that you know that we were able to. [17:17] Function and and under all of that demand. In provide the consumer experience of people were expecting was. [17:28] It was remarkable and and it took quite a bit of time and energy from the teams here from partner teams with whom I work with every day so it was a great learning experience for us as a business and its really. But it’s in a pretty good place for for how we scale going forward into the future. Jason: [17:47] That’s awesome Seth and you you hit on a topic that comes up a lot in my work life I’m curious to hear your perspective at the beginning of covid-19. Everyone’s talking about oh my gosh this is going to accelerate digital shopping immensely and you know Mackenzie famous we write came up with this. Ten years of digital adoption in 10 minutes and they predicted that like 35 percent of all sales would be online and that didn’t really happen right for general merchandise. E-commerce Grew From like 13% It price spiked it 19 and came back down to 16 which is, still a significant acceleration and meaningful but it’s not it’s not 10 years of progress but, I do think in grocery we may have experienced like 5 or 10 years worth of progress specifically because of covid and I know there’s a lot of different data sets out there but the the data set I use. We were at like three percent digital grocery penetration before covid so I three out of every hundred dollars was spent online, and now we’re probably sitting somewhere Slightly North of ten percent so that’s that’s enormous and you know whenever I talk about without a client with a client their first question is. Is that permanent is some of that going to go back when people can go back to restaurants like what you know how do you see it playing out in the long run. Seth: [19:14] Pretty simple so we’re looking at the same data sets that you just cited or or similar so you know the. Jason: [19:22] Nice we’re wrong together at least. Seth: [19:24] Well no the 10% that number is basically what we’re seeing and you know I guess like wrong in the best way and that everything I mean I’ll talk to my own personal experience about why, in one of the decision criteria for me coming over to instacart to begin with what’s that I just I believed that over time. [19:44] Consumers would become comfortable with shopping for groceries online that this is one of the last behaviors to tip into e-commerce. With any scale and in fact everything that I thought would happen over three years happened over three weeks between the last the last week of March and the first two weeks of April and you know the estimates that we were using, as a business for forecasting this point last year look more similar to probably the 3/2, 5% or it’s a wow that would be great if just that much consumer Behavior came into this gigantic us grocery market and in fact now those third parties are saying that it’s probably somewhere at 10% and, you know that’s that’s a dramatic move and, what were you know we can’t can’t cite specific numbers but what we have seen as much of the behavior both from a customer acquisition standpoint, people who we acquired who are new to instacart, but then also from a frequency standpoint so people who once acquired like are they ordering a second time the third time and using that as a measure of the durability. [20:58] Those numbers are are I’ll just. It’s a very positive without sharing any specific details so this is something that you know that we’re expecting to continue we aren’t, there may be of course at some point like some variants and. In consumer behavior that is a result of things you know hopefully going back to quote unquote normal that may impact the whole host of different, behaviors that we had historically been measuring in some way in a pretty static form but from a grocery standpoint. [21:40] Getting your food delivered. Or being having the ability to solve for a trip occasion that was related to food when you can’t go out for dinner or you don’t have as many options to go out for dinner or you don’t feel safe shopping, or you’ve been told to shelter in place like it had a dramatic impact on our business and industry. It’s not just I mean instacart or other online grocery folks you know my former employer, being one of them where you know they’re they’re seeing big grocery numbers as well so it’s that to me is just another sign of how durable this behavior is. Jason: [22:20] Yeah no I would tend to agree you know your old boss used to talk about one way doors versus two-way doors, and it sort of feels like you know when you get all these these items showing up at your house and you don’t have to do any work that that kind of feels like a one-way door that you’re not likely to walk back through. Um the I do have a question though Scott and I are super old you’re a little more youthful. But so we are around in the beginning of e-commerce and there’s kind of this common way in every category when it got disrupted by digital, um the Legacy players weren’t very good at digital and there there was some third party that could really accelerate their digital capability right so, um early on of course Target and Toys R Us famous we Outsource e-commerce to this startup called Amazon and that. Like arguably was a smart decision for them to you know dip their toes in digital eventually they wanted to bring that in-house a lot of retailers Outsource their digital to this. This digital facilitator back then called GSI Commerce. Which in many ways I think of is kind of a an analogous company to to instacart. [23:38] And and just like commerce was enormously successful the founder of GSI Commerce now is Mark Rubin and he owns the 76ers. The but I am curious like is there a risk like yours you’re sort of an intermediary that helps all these retailers get really good at digital grocery really fast and solve a bunch of really complicated Harry problems. But in the long run if digital grocery becomes 10% or more of all grocery sales do Grocers need to develop. Native digital chops and does that make that it, rescue likely that they would continue to stick with you Ike what do you think the the long-term ramifications are like you know does does instacart it’s roll need to evolve or you know can you kind of play this this intermediary role forever. Seth: [24:26] Well we emphasize our Partnerships with retailers because we helped enable them like we don’t compete with them and. That I think is one major distinction between the analogs that you drew with Amazon and. And Target and Toys R Us and that in each of those cases. Amazon was maybe not only helping Target or Toys R Us, execute against an e-commerce strategy but they are also competing with them in some cases you know in the same sort of environment or using the same. [25:08] You know are trying to attract the same audiences if you will and you know we are working with retailers. Helping them. Deliver a technology solution to Consumers who have an expectation that they can shop their neighborhood grocer or their National grocer. Online and if the retailer is prefers to work with us because our technology is great and the service levels that we provide are great and the consumers love using. The service then we think that’s that’s a great place to be we’ve been very clear publicly about our position and enabling our Retail Partners and really servicing them so we spend a ton of time and attention working with them every day to develop capability and improve the capabilities that we provide them with and. [26:13] So what we aren’t doing is competing with them or running our own grocery store you know right next door to their storefront which is more analogous I think to, to what the situation you described what the Amazon was in the way back so I just see them as being totally different and. Yeah there I’m certain that there will be some grocery stores or or retailers that decide to. You know go it alone and at some point and that you know. [26:49] But certainly their decision to make right now you know we’re focused on helping as many grocery stores as we can. [26:57] Figure out how to help consumers shop online for groceries. Scot: [27:03] Yeah and Jason could go as listeners know he could go another eight hours digging into the grocery industry but I am curious about your main role there you are selling you know ads and. As an instant Curry user I’m guessing so occasionally you know I’ll have a brand it seems to be brands that will pop in there and say. Hey you’ve got some granola bars in your cart would you like some Quaker Oats Oatmeal kind of thing and is that kind of the ad network is it is it mostly Brands you’re selling to maybe walk us through. Who’s in this ad Network and what kind of AD units are you guys offering to him. Seth: [27:46] Right now we are just selling ads within our owned and operated, platform so we are not sort of working with what I would consider non-endemic partners, you know all of the advertisers and we’re addressing have their products on the Shelf the grocery store so that’s the presently that’s the addressable market for us so you know that is largely the domain of big cpg companies medium-sized cpg companies food a lot of food, and household goods and things that you might find where you walk in the aisles of your brick-and-mortar grocery store and what we do is, we help those Brands get in front of consumers when they’re coming in and shopping and the shopping behaviors that are consumers. [28:43] Perform our take a couple different. Forms of first one is that we may have someone come into the store and start using the search bar to build a basket very directed self-selected search behaviors where they’re looking for a particular brand or they may be looking for a particular, a commodity term for a type of product like milk for instance in which case we’ll, we’ll work with Brands to to provide them some counsel on how to get their products up to the top of the Shelf if we if you will or the best placement on the Shelf which is are. [29:19] What we call our featured product placements and those are paid paid search placements within within that type of, consumer shopping experience then you know we have. Other browse behaviors that consumers May perform or they come in and they start looking or shopping and browsing through a specific category or I’ll. [29:42] We have standards that are graphical display units there that will allow Brands to create awareness about products or, advertise specials to could do consumers who are who are shopping and building their business or building their baskets that way and then we have a number of products that are temporary price reduction tpr types of products so coupons for individual upc’s and products that might give, a consumer some incentive to try a product or what we call delivery promotions which are, incentives Brands may use to help a consumer build a basket and they may take the form of save five dollars when you buy $25 worth of product, for a free delivery so in that’s really what we’re focused on right now is making sure that. [30:39] The brands understand how to engage with consumers when they’re coming into our market place to shop, and that the opportunities the advertising that we’re putting in front of the consumers is accretive to the shopping experience so we’re not doing things that are you know interruptive, you know we’re and we’re also not running sort of non-endemic advertising in those placements we’re really focused on, working with with those Brands and manufacturers whose products are on the Shelf at the grocery store. Scot: [31:18] And it seems like in traditional grocery the Brand’s there’s like, all these slotting fees there’s like getting in the end cap there’s couponing there’s the circular are you guys, is that where the dollars are coming from are you guys pulling from like the digital side like the maybe Google AdWords or something like that. Seth: [31:41] It’s situation dependent and it’s all over the place so we aren’t, not right now focused on any one particular team within any one particular. Enterprise or manufacturer we’re really focused on telling a story and a narrative we’re trying to educate. [32:01] People within these big with any type of cpg manufacturer the medium size small startup e type of company or it could be a large established manufacturer they they all have similar learning agendas for online grocery shopping because the behavior is so new so while there are some manufacturers who are really good and very evolved in terms of their e-commerce strategies for. Does let’s call them like general merchandise retail experiences when you’re talking about, being able to Market Frozen Goods or non shelf stable, items that’s a totally different type of behavior and marketing behavior and then a totally different type of data set that we’re working with that, it just hasn’t existed before so it’s existed in a brick-and-mortar environment not an online and so we can show up and and talk, about the performance of a particular investment that you’re making so if you’re buying paid search. We can tell you. [33:18] The the return on that ad spend if you will and those are the table Stakes that’s the beginning of the conversation it’s like okay how many sales. Did you Jen did did I generate by giving you this dollar for promotion and we have a closed loop attribution those are first that’s first-party data that we’re observing so we’re not inferring what’s happening we’re actually seeing the transaction happen and then. [33:43] Once in the irony here is that that sort of the table Stakes that today Annie calm yourself as know this, it’s just ironic to me that’s the least interesting part of the conversation right now because everyone expects of course you’re going to give me that, in you know 2012-2013 when when I was at Amazon and we were really working to bring e-commerce advertising to the industry that was not a well understood. Output or measurement for for advertising and it took us a while to, to talk about that and get engagement and acceptance from the industry for that particular. [34:27] Metric and here we have it and it’s like okay great of course you’re going to give me that, what I want to know in addition to that are any types of signals that you may see that are adjacent to that particular Behavior so yes I got, you know six dollars back for every dollar in sales for every dollar that I gave you in in advertising. But can you help me understand of those people who bought the products like is their behavior purchase frequency different than someone who came through an organic listing and didn’t click on an ad is there something about that this particular cohort of consumer that their basket composition for instance that might be different like is that I could say okay this is a trip occasion that is different from. Something else or that another consumer may be performing the oftentimes when we show up we have. Representatives from the digital investment team from the or ecomp team. [35:31] We have some brand marketers we have the chief commercial officers in the sale side, we we have really and the Shopper marketing teams to come in and with their pencils sharpened ready to talk about results and, so the fun part about this is that we have an instacart has visibility and all sorts of different data signals that can help, these manufacturers get smarter about promoting their products and how to speak to consumers in this in this new shopping environment, the another part of the fun challenge here is that there are other, e-commerce platforms out there that are doing a good job of providing that data and have been for years so that the sophistication of the people with whom we’re talking is quite high so we don’t have to do a lot of the work about this is, let me talk with you about your return on ad spend or row as they’re already there they want to go to okay let’s what’s the lifetime value of the customer can we look at basket decomposition can I define different consumer cohorts in ways that map back to things that I might be doing in other parts of the business, so we’re aspiring to help the brands with whom we work with understand that. Jason: [36:55] Yeah you know it’s funny like you guys have are tackling a really complicated space, and so it makes all of these conversations more difficult than they are in some other categories but like one of the things I’m always curious about is because as you and Scott mentioned the funding for an ad may be coming from the brand marketing department may be coming from a brand retail trade, team or a shopper marketing team historically at a brand those kinds of teams had different success criterias right like that The Shopper marketers might have been looking at actual cell through a product and those brand marketers might have been looking at. At Impressions or brand recall or things like that so you’re you’re potentially getting funded by both and your the super complicated I would even argue four-sided Marketplace because you’ve got, consumers Shoppers retailers and brands. [37:56] Right are you able to have that kind of detailed. Cohort analysis incrementality conversation with with all of your brand advertisers because part of me would be worried. As a brand I might not even see myself through on instacart because, it’s not actually my inventory and you’re not wholesaling my products right like your I sold the product to a retailer and then the the consumer bought the product through you from that retailer so it seems complicated to track. Seth: [38:29] Well the everyone wants to everyone understands that there are new signals here from in all of the sides of the marketplace that you just described and we do see ourselves as a four sided marketplace with each of the constituents that you identified. And. Each one of those has some type of data signal that would be helpful to the brand Advertiser and and so when we show up to talk about our offer. We’re talking about tactically like here’s here’s where you can place your ads or your promotions and here is the, the. Receipt if you will that will give you an exchange for that investment that talks about the things that are causal to that investment. [39:22] It’s often the more sophisticated questions are coming in the things that are adjacent to and maybe not a direct cause of the ad spend so. You know consumer behaviors it could be how often was a particular item that was added to the basket not found in the store for like out of stock it could be. Something along the lines of, you know content like and data feeds and the quality of the content that the the brand sees in in our Marketplace and like how they tune that up or put their best foot forward. [40:14] There’s no lack of interest in what we’re trying to do and so I see that as a great learning opportunity for our business if we can understand how. The brand or if we can end this applies not to every side of our Marketplace understand the brand understand the Shopper understand the consumer understand the retailer and if we can do that. And then help each one of those people you know improve It Whatever the result that they’ve decided it’s important. Part of it is the determinant of success if we can help them improve then. [40:49] Then we will we will not have a lack of requests for meetings. Jason: [40:54] Yep yeah no I get it and I know you get this but just just for our listeners like I would argue, um the digital advertising in this category is even way more important than a lot of other categories because in a, a traditional in store grocery shopping visit that shopper makes a lot of unplanned purchases like they serendipitous we discover a lot of products they walked by a lot of products and they put a lot of products in their bag that were not on their shopping list and so when they they shop digitally some of those opportunities are much more challenging right people I imagine tend to shop off of their list a lot more and so, um brands have to work harder and and leverage tools like you’re providing to help introduce new products and sell new things to kind of break onto that list. Seth: [41:46] Yeah and that’s a great challenge for us as a as a Marketplace like we we want to be able to. Create those serendipitous moments in the decision journey and you know because consumers love that stuff. You know they’re there they wouldn’t they’re not being forced to add a bag of Milano cookies to their basket when they’re walking through, you know the physical grocery store because it’s in the end cap they’re doing it because they’re reminded like I love those cookies I’m going to buy them. And those same types of behaviors happen within our Marketplace, and what we’re seeing is that trip occasions may be different so we may be a consumer may be coming into our Marketplace and, has a very specific trip occasion where this is a stock up or this is my sort of junk food run or whatever and so what we’re trying to do is help. [42:48] Bring those data points and signals back to brands in a way that helps them get smarter about how consumers are shopping. And then anything that we can do from a an ad product perspective that will make that. Trip through our store that basket building experience accretive and more fun and and more convenient and more efficient we’re going to do that. We’re just getting started there really so that that’s the fun part and I agree with you there. There are many behaviors that happen in the brick and mortar store that would lend themselves to e-commerce then there’s a whole host of different things that are exclusively the domain of e-commerce that can be transformative for a business, and then we’re just getting we’re just scratching the surface there. Jason: [43:39] And to be clear those Milano cookies are on my shopping list I didn’t want to imply. They weren’t but I do take your point and and speaking of cookies I wonder if that’s another thing that’s maybe driving advertisers in here arms a little bit more right now like as as the third party cookies are getting depreciated and the mobile tracking you know dispute between Apple and Facebook I could imagine that for a lot of these cpg Brands the, their ability to Target and effectively advertise on their traditional digital media networks are are eroding a little bit and so it is that another Trend that maybe you no favors people putting more dollars into the into retail media like instacart. Seth: [44:23] I mean it could in certainly the landscape is is changing and everyone needs to be aware of the compliance obligations that we have so we’re taking a. [44:36] We’re very cognizant of that and the fun part about being here it instacart, right now or really for the past you know 16 months is that you know we’re building this from the ground up so we can in some ways try to anticipate some of those changes in the industry because things are happening right now, that without the burden of a legacy of or technology or Tech debt that would put us in a much more precarious position, so so yeah we’re like. But I’m certain that over the course of time that you know the we will also have to be, cognizant of those changes and you know it’s not something that we go out and you know I’m not talking about that it’s not a selling point. Necessarily when we’re talking with sophisticated. Programmatic advertisers you know what we are talking about and what we’re trying to focus on at this stage is just on the. Amount of concern consumer adoption just the surge in online grocery shopping Behavior that’s sort of tipped into this everyday behavior for. [45:52] It sort of gigantic you know part of part of the. The grocery industry and focusing their first on the size of the opportunity in the size of the prize has the right place before. [46:06] We’re start getting into some of the more Technical and legal components here like where. That’s just that hasn’t that it hasn’t been our focus and you know most of our products are all within our owned and operated, you know site right now too so we’ve we’ve, I’ve been watching that and we’re paying attention to it for sure but it’s not a selling point that we’re pushing in the marketplace right now or in the industry. Scot: [46:37] Yeah it’s gonna be interesting to see how that impacts folks that are crossing sites and with how they react to it. The one and this is kind of a total newbie question of my side you guys are the ad Geniuses here I’m just a e-commerce guy trying to find my way in the world the where are you guys on, you know like self-service tools so if I am starting Scott’s coconut water can I just go somewhere and run my own little search ad or are you not quite at that kind of. Google / Amazon self-service Point yet. Seth: [47:10] Well we launched a self-service offering and platform last year. So we’re getting started there the and continuing to push more capability through that platform so we have a number of. Of advertisers that are in agents who are using those self-service tools. And you know we’re working with apis as well with some of those Partners too and some of them are big. Companies some of them are small it’s really you know we’re going to map to however the advertiser wants to work with us self-service as one of those options so and it will I think continue to take on. An increasing amount of importance for us as as the Brand’s get more comfortable with with buying their ads that by 2. Scot: [48:01] Yet another thing I’ve seen I was kind of curious how this works so I’ve been on Brands sites like. And I would call him bram’s that kind of usually go into something like a like a chicken or, condiment or something like that and I’ve seen these recipes and you know the recipe you’ll have all the stuff and you can usually there’s a button and you can either you can kind of add it to your instacart. Is that an ad unit or is that just you guys having some apis so that they can put those things into the cart on behalf of the consumer. Seth: [48:30] Well the adding things to your basket across the site is. We have many different ways that you can do that so there’s no single point of Ingress but we are you know we are looking to enable both the, sort of adding just an ingredient for instance like very easy like making that super convenient and simple adding an entire recipe to your basket, as well, or allowing for promotion for the case of like a commodity item or if the recipe has branded ingredients allowing Brands to promote those items so it’s we’re coming at it in a whole host of different ways. Scot: [49:16] Yeah and then I did notice you guys had started pronounce more traditional retailers I think it was fora and maybe Staples. Is that and we’ve talked a lot about ship again and we actually coined that on the show here I don’t know if you know that and you know it’s kind of interesting because you could you could think of that as a release valve for you know. The existing networks of e-commerce that are the last mile got really jammed up due to covid plus the holiday, um is that how those retailers are utilizing you guys or is that different in some way. Seth: [49:53] They’re so you’re right we have started working with some retailers that are not in grocery I will I will state though the grocery remains, our foundation and focus for the company there’s so much opportunity for us there. That that’s continues to be where we’re placing our emphasis but there are. Instances and companies like some of whom you just cited who have very successfully calm businesses. But would benefit from having instacart as a service to solve for that more immediate or urgent triplication. And. [50:38] So the tziporah who you mentioned you know you could have a beauty occasion or emergency where. You know we’re solving or bringing Cosmetics or beauty products to a consumer an hour or less would be. [50:56] An awesome convenient service offering it’s really more about awareness for our consumers when they coming into instacart are they aware that they can shop those those marketplaces or those storefronts with in our Marketplace and we’re just getting started there so it’s a great experiment for us. But the and while we’re focused on grocery right now you could see where there would be other retail experiences for things that aren’t food that would benefit from our service the the example that that I tend to site is as my 17 year old son so he has some expectation that he can find anything on his phone any type of content video content music content podcast a book report instantaneously if he doesn’t he gets super frustrated you can order a burrito online you know over his phone in an app you can get a Teriyaki Bowl you can order a ride somewhere all these things show up in 30 minutes or less or an hour or less and the irony is that the Slowpoke and his. Consumer experience are the companies that deliver things in two days and in his. [52:23] Experience as he ages into a consumer who will be shopping for Home Goods or groceries I just don’t see his expectation for convenience lessening over time. [52:37] And. Right now instacart is great at groceries we have a ton of room to run in the grocery space but you could see where a company you know like Sephora would be like right we did you know having that, Last Mile hour or less delivery with instacart bringing those products to the consumers doorstep or the trunk of the car, for a pickup would be. But hugely helpful and and may be expected in the future so this is a great opportunity for us to learn about the sum of the expectations for those retailers in and also from the consumer demand for them. Jason: [53:19] Seth I don’t know if you realize this but you totally hit it on the head it’s a little known fact but Scott and I used to have so many 1 hour Beauty emergencies, that’s actually why we decided to start a podcast. Seth: [53:31] There you go. Jason: [53:32] Yeah it’s just it’s it’s a lot easier than starting a YouTube channel so so I totally totally get that listen we are coming up on time so I do I do want to squeeze one last question in, we talk so much about acceleration in this cone crazy covid year has made things go so fast, if I jump back in the hot tub time machine and kind of jump forward a few more years in the future. Do you have a vision for for how instacart has changed or evolved or there are there like. Particular types of categories that you your interest that you think you guys might expand into or new types of products or services that you think you might offer anything you can reveal. Seth: [54:17] No major reveals but if I’m looking into my crystal ball and thinking really about the ambition of what we’re doing. I’m making a bet I’ve made this bet by coming here that in the next five years if that’s the time Horizon for the future, that as much as 20 or 25% of all grocery shopping will be occurring online. [54:44] And if that’s the case that’s a massive amount of consumer Behavior a massive amount of consumers, looking for that are expecting a very specific type of shopping and delivery experience or pick up experience and, all all of that are much of that from an advertising perspective is yet to be learned. And we’re learning it right now so from a from an AB product perspective. What we will deliver to the industry will be products that make the consumer shopping experience accretive for sure but then also are able to help. The manufacturers get smarter about how the products are being purchased what what types of products are desired and. I just see that as so much open territory for us and really for the industry to run it and. That that is where my head is Alec where I’m focused for the next five years and I think a lot of those things. Progressor e which you can argue as one of the most complex retail experiences to solve for because of the perishable nature of much of the product. Many of those successes that will we have will lend themselves to other retail categories so I’m super excited about that. Jason: [56:08] Yeah I I tend to agree I think it’s a super fun space to be in because it is. So important and evolving so quickly but Seth that’s going to be a great place to leave it because it has happened again we’ve used up all our allotted time as always if you have any comments or questions about this episode feel free to hit us up on our Facebook page or send us a question on Twitter. Seth really enjoyed talking to you and thank you very much for sharing the instacart story with our listeners. Seth: [56:39] Well thank you very much for having me I appreciate it stay safe. Jason: [56:43] Until next time happy commercing.

The boys remember the fun (and the cold) at the first NHL Heritage Classic. Russ was playing on Montreal's alumni team and Jim was doing his standard Oiler gravy training.Not all NHL players love the soap operas, but Wayne Gretzky always did. Russ gives Jimmy the gears for getting dumped and his new obsession with online blackjack.A cool story - with a Leafs' connection - about how Russ got started in real estate.With people stuck at home during the pandemic, people are renewing old hobbies. So hockey cards and other sports collectibles are making a huge comeback. Joining us to talk about it is Mark Rubin, owner of American Legends Sports Collectibles in New York. www.amerlegends.comMark even gives us the updated value of the 1986-87 O-Pee-Chee Russ Courtnall rookie card.

In this podcast episode, SPE's Jason Notoras and Nils Kaageson-Loe are joined by Mark Rubin, CEO (Society of Petroleum Engineers); Kari Ramstad, Keynote Speaker (Equinor); Eric Mackay, Committee Member (Heriot-Watt University); and Phil Chandler, Director of Europe & Caspian Events (Society of Petroleum Engineers). They discuss the 2020 SPE Virtual International Oilfield Scale Conference and Exhibition.  To learn more about the full event, click here.   We hope you enjoy the SPE Podcast… and take away something useful to your job and career along the way.  Your feedback is welcome, along with ideas for topics you would like to see us cover in future podcasts. You can also send your feedback to podcasts@spe.org.   Like what you are hearing? Give us a 5-star rating and leave a review – we love reading what you have to say. You can also get connected with SPE on all social media, just use #SPEpodcast.   Society of Petroleum Engineers on Social LinkedIn | Twitter | Facebook | Instagram | YouTube More Information Event Calendar | Membership | Publications | Training | Resources   Thanks for listening!  

For more information regarding COVID-19 and available health services in Canada, call 1-833-784-4397 or visit canada.ca/coronavirus.  Special thanks to Zencaster who made it possible for us to record this episode while practicing physical distancing in separate locations. This is the twelfth and FINAL installment of our Memory Lane series, where we look back at the highs and lows of all things nerdy and geeky from the last decade. In this episode, we reflect upon the entire decade. What surprised AJ and BPR as they talked about each year of the 2010's. What are the most popular franchises of the decade? What are the personal favourites for the guys?  Sound effect is this episode are the property of 2MirrorsDialogue and Gaming Sound FX. Check out their channels on YouTube. Music and audio from "Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 - Campaign Remastered" is the property of Lorne Balfe, Mark Rubin, Infinity Ward, and Activision. Music and audio from "JAG" was edited together by MacPhoenix82 on YouTube. The content is the intellectual property of Steven Bramson, David Bellisario, Philip DeGuere Jr., Avery C. Drewe. Don McGill, Belisarisu Productions, and Paramount Home Entertainment. Music and audio from "My Hero Academia" is the property of Yuki Hayashi, Wakana Okamura, Kazumasa Sanjoba, Hiroshi Kamei, Naoki Amano, Hirokazu Mori, Bones, and Funimation. Music and audio from "Star Wars: Episode VII - The Force Awakens" is the property of John Williams, Kathleen Kennedy, J.J Abrams, Bryan Burk, Bad Robot Productions and Lucasfilm Ltd. The intro and outro music was created by Cackles and Jeremy Eckert. We thank them for their generous support of this podcast. Check out our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/batjarpodcast. Invite your friends to like our page! You can contact us at @thebatcookiejar on Twitter or you can send an e-mail to batjarpodcast@gmail.com.

The Phenom 100 is a "6 mile per minute", 4-passenger light jet which is ideal for the single pilot private owner. It's easy to fly, extremely reliable and has excellent luggage capacity.  The Phenom 300, on the other hand, is a 7-9 passenger light jet that has the performance of a 757 and is the perfect plane for nonstop travel from the West Coast to the Mississippi. It is extremely capable with great climb performance and able to handle all weather conditions. Hear more about how Mark Rubin, Wright Brothers Master Pilot Award recipient, shares his experiences with both of these jets.

After a hiatus due to many great composition and performing projects, the Radiant Others Klezmer Music Podcast is back! And we are back with a great one! In today's episode I talk to bassist, tubist, guitarist, producer, songwriter, guerrilla folklorist, and all around musical macher, Mark Rubin. Mark and I met at Klezkamp in 2002, … Continue reading Mark Rubin (Radiant Others Returns!) →

After a hiatus due to many great composition and performing projects, the Radiant Others Klezmer Music Podcast is back! And we are back with a great one! In today’s episode I talk to bassist, tubist, guitarist, producer, songwriter, guerrilla folklorist, and all around musical macher, Mark Rubin. Mark and I met at Klezkamp in 2002, … Continue reading "Mark Rubin (Radiant Others Returns!)"

Host Anthony Desiato takes a ride to the Scarsdale/Yonkers border for an on-location recording at American Legends--formerly known as ONE IF BY CARDS, TWO IF BY COMICS--with co-owner Mark Rubin (wife & co-owner Donna tags in for Mark on the After Show, available on Patreon). Mark recounts opening across the street from Dragon's Den, selecting the shop's original name, navigating the sports card market, rebranding in 2002, and seeing most of the other shops in the area fall away.

In this best of episode we've picked some interesting clips. Starting with a discussion on refactoring recorded live at Indie Devstock 2017. Next we replay a discussion of the Apple command key symbol, which was debated at 360iDev's Stump last week. The much maligned Notch makes it's appearance on Android phones. We also discussed the 10 anniversary of the iPhone SDK, so we revisited our early iOS development. The Touch Bar is banned when taking the Bar exam and we chat about 32-bit app developer shaming. The Canadian's, Aaron, Greg & Tim, take over the show and argue about the weather, latin and poutine. Greg tells us about his first visit with Mark Rubin. Mark introduces Buckethead to Greg, We surprise Tammy with the Roundabout Creative Studio questions. Special Guest: Joe Cieplinski.

Join Tammy Coron and Tim Mitra on Episode 95, which was recorded on October 19, 2017. On this episode they talk with Mark Rubin, PhD. Mark is an iOS developer and consultant based in Silicon Valley. He’s also a co-host on the More Than Just Code Podcast. In 2009, he founded Smappsoft, an indie iOS development shop. In total, he’s developed more than 30 apps, in a wide range of areas including social networking, photo sharing, games, and music. If you like listening to Roundabout: Creative Chaos, and you want to know how you can help support the show, please visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/justwritecode. Don't forget to stick around for the after show! * This episode is sponsored by RayWenderlich.com.

The Internet is a great place to collect your hockey cards as we have discussed on past shows. But what about the local card store ? The brick and mortar places we go to when Hockey card collectors need their immediate fix. This week we are joined by Mark Rubin  Mark along wth his wife Donna are owners of one these rare establishments still quenching the thirst for Hockey card collectors the United States,  They both run a LCS where you can buy both Hockey cards and memorabilia called American legends located in Scarsdale, New York. Join us for what promised to be both a lively and informative show. The podcast is hosted by Eddie Gieck and is for both the collector and those who have a passion for Hockey.  This is one of the few trading card programs around today that is totally dedicated to Hockey.   Join the experience with our live chat or join our facebook group. You can also follow Eddie's musings on twitter about Hockey Cards @RockemsockemHC. Please Follow Us ! You will find no baseball, football or basketball card talk here. It’s all about the coolest sport on earth and the news and views that take place exclusively in the world and hobby of the hockey card enthusiast.  If you have a question about Hockey cards or their prices , I'm sure Eddie will be more than happy to answer them..  General Hockey talk always has a place here and listeners are always encourgaed to talk puck ! Your Phone calls are always welcome and sometime can garner you free giveaways ! The Call in # is (818) 514-1046. The Rockem Sockem Podcast also highly recommends that you check out the website Sports Card Forum.com  for all your Trading Card info and needs.

Danny Barnes became a major player in the evolution of alternative country music when his acoustic trio the Bad Livers broke out of Austin Texas. Danny, Mark Rubin and Ralph White wielded tuba, accordion, fiddle, upright bass and banjo in ways that might have been considered scandalous had they not been so creative, witty and cathartic. They toured with big punk bands and wrote smart, quirky songs. They were able to twist roots and bluegrass music so far by knowing and loving the genres so well. There was never a band like them before or since. After that chapter closed in about 2000, Danny Barnes pursued projects as wide ranging as his taste, always nipping the avant garde, finding a role in American music somewhere between John Hartford and Frank Zappa. He developed the esthetic he calls barnyard electronics, which he says combines various bits of bluegrass, noise, rock, and electronic music. Live, he often performs solo with computer effects and looping equipment. But this year, Barnes took the completely opposite tack when he made and released the first straight ahead, no-frills bluegrass record of his career, Stove Up. Also, the story of The Jimmy Nalls Project.  

On this episode, we talk with the entrepreneur behind a newly released tool called Bisualizer. Bisualizer was created to help small business owners and entrepreneurs visualize the gears and levers that drive any business forward. We discuss how energy, information, and rules are the 3 constants that move any business forward; the three other constants that they are more commonly known as; and the benefits any corporate leaders stand to gain from modeling the operations of their business. Mark Rubin, the founder of Bisualizer and a serial entrepreneur who was born with an uncanny talent for visual thinking, joins us on this episode. Mark has owned and grown several successful national franchises and credits his achievements to his innovative method of business visualization. He has worked directly with business coaches and consultants to develop their own Bisualizer diagrams, and as you will hear on this episode he has spent a number of years working on the software-powered version that he just launched to the public. Show Notes Find out more about Bisualizer: http://www.bisualizer.com/ Follow Mark Rubin on Twitter: https://twitter.com/markianrubin Watch a short video on how Bisualizer works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ztWEtaeS8ic

This week we follow up on Apple Pay. Our #askMTJC spawns questions about getting a start in freelance, bootcamps for Android, expectations of Xcode 8 and does host Mark Rubin have a personal Twitter account. We dive in and discuss Apple's newly announced App Subscriptions, Shortened Review Times and Paid App Search Ads. Jaime introduced WWDC Friends. We also discuss our WWDC wish list. Picks: Motion Stills by Google, Android iPhone Case, Oslo Coding, Creating and Distributing iOS Frameworks Osmo Coding iPad Pro 12.9 vine Episode 95 Show Notes: Farley's Apple Pay Tweet Yoko MittleFehldt's Freelancing Tweet Big Nerd Ranch Android Essentials Course Cocoa Programing with OS X The New App Store: Subscription Pricing, Faster Approvals, and Search Ads What’s New in Subscriptions Cinemagraph Pro iOS AppCode Versioning, Licensing, and Sketch 4.0 Briefs Federico Viticci WWDC.family AltConf Schedule Osmo Vine Cargo-Bot Scales & Modes Episode 95 Picks Motion Stills by Google Android iPhone Case Osmo Coding Creating and Distributing iOS Frameworks

This week Greg Heo and Tammy Coron take over the show along with special guests Aaron Vegh and Mark Rubin. They follow up on Apple's cloud services. They review the latest keynote from Apple discussing security, the environment, CareKit, Watch bands, the 9.7 inch iPad Pro and iPhone SE. Picks Selections: Patreon, Conquering Your Fear of Adopting Swift, Contributing to Open Source Swift. Episode 84 Show Notes: Report: Apple developing at least 6 cloud infrastructure projects incl. servers to prevent snooping Dropbox takes the reins, moves off AWS and onto its own infrastructure Jonathan Ździarski FBI says it may have found a way to unlock shooter's iPhone Apple’s Recycling Robot Needs Your Help to Save the World Our bodies, ourselves: How CareKit apps will revolutionize health care Apple Watch Bands Apple iPad Pro Apple iPad pricing chart Apple iPhone SE New comments on cost of app making on Episode 3 MTJC Patreon Just Write Code on Patreon "That guy we talked about at the beginning" - got cut from the show Episode 84 Selections: Patreon Conquering Your Fear of Adopting Swift Contributing to Open Source Swift

A discussion with Drs. Cumara O’Carroll, Mark Rubin, and Brian Chong reviewing recent trials demonstrating the clinical benefit of intra-arterial therapies in the management of acute stroke and how these trials could change acute management strategies and protocols. Editor’s note: In this audio clip, Dr. Chong refers to vessel stenting as being discouraged in the the ESCAPE and REVASCATS trials; we would like to clarify that stenting was discouraged in ESCAPE but did occur in 9/19 cases in REVASCATS. Click here to read the full article. 

In the September 17th show, we discuss John Gruber’s hypothetical Apple Watch pricing, upgrading to iOS 8 and caution over updating to iCloudDrive, experiences around pre-ordering iPhone 6 and which models we each chose and why, and Mark Rubin surprises us with his knowledge of integrated circuit manufacture.