Podcasts about quidsi

Marc Lore is a serial entrepreneur and self-made billionaire renowned for his innovative ventures in e-commerce. From an early age, he harbored a passion for growth and risk-taking, wanting to be a farmer when he was 4 years old. While not a farmer in the traditional sense, Marc's entrepreneurial journey mirrors the same principles of cultivating and nurturing ideas into successful enterprises.Marc has founded and sold several companies, notably Jet.com, which was acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016, and Diapers.com/Quidsi, acquired by Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. In 2021, he founded Telosa, a proposed $400 billion futuristic city he envisions to be a model for urban living with a focus on innovation, sustainability, and quality of life. In the same year, he also launched Wonder, recently raising $700 million to build curated food halls offering a diverse selection of top chefs and restaurants nationwide.Marc's approach to entrepreneurship emphasizes building mission-driven cultures, prioritizing customer value, assembling exceptional teams, and empowering them to achieve ambitious goals swiftly. His evolution from "mercenary" to "missionary" reflects his transition from pure profit-driven ventures to a deeper commitment to fostering startup ecosystems and guiding fellow founders through the challenging startup landscape.Marc is also the owner of the Minnesota Timberwolves and Minnesota Lynx basketball franchises, along with partner Alex Rodriguez. Driven by a desire to push boundaries and support the next generation of entrepreneurs, he continues to inspire and empower others with his wealth of experience and strategic insights into building successful businesses.***CHA-CHING! Customers are rushing to your store. Do you have a point-of-sale system you can trust or is it (ahem) a real P.O.S.? You need Shopify for retail.Shopify POS is your command center for your retail store. From accepting payments to managing inventory, Shopify has EVERYTHING you need to sell in person. Get hardware that fits your business. Take payments by smartphone, transform your tablet into a point-of-sale system, or use Shopify's POS Go mobile device for a battle-tested solution.Plus, Shopify's award-winning help is there to support your success every step of the way.Do retail right with Shopify. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at www.shopify.com/founderhour. Once again, go to www.shopify.com/founderhour to take your retail business to the next level today.***The Founder Hour is brought to you by Outer. Outer makes the world's most beautiful, comfortable, innovative, and high-quality outdoor furniture - ALL from sustainable materials - and is the ONLY outdoor furniture with a patented built-in cover to make protecting it effortless. From teak chairs to fire pit tables, everything Outer makes has the look and feel of what you'd expect at a 5-star resort, for less than you'd pay at a big box store for something that won't last.For a limited time, get 10% off at www.liveouter.com/thefounderhour. Terms and conditions apply. ***Follow The Founder Hour on:Instagram | www.instagram.com/thefounderhourTwitter/X | www.twitter.com/thefounderhourLinkedIn | www.linkedin.com/company/thefounderhourYouTube | www.youtube.com/@thefounderhour

El episodio 36 es una fiesta! Lucas Lopatin y Cristobal Perdomo se encuentran por primera vez y graban el primer episodio en persona! Nos traen gran cantidad de temas sobre el mundo de los negocios. Empezando por la disputa Tom vs Zuck, Lucas y Cristobal nos cuentan de qué lado están. Surge el tópico de los ecosistemas y comunidades, algo que Cristobal no le encuentra el el sentido, pero que Lucas nos comparte su experiencia. También responden preguntas de oyentes y nos cuentan sobre el Framework de Marc Lore para las Startups: The VCP Framework. Y como siempre, te traemos algunas anécdotas de empresarios polémicos, que no pueden faltar! No te pierdas este episodio! __ Show Notes: 01:31 Tom My Space 04:44 Seguridad de las Startups 10:30 Marc Lore VCP 14:37 Trabajo en Indie 18:16 Ciudades utópicas 21:07 Comunidad y Ecosistemas 30:07 San Francisco 42:06 Preguntas de los oyentes: Data Room, Incorporation, Finances __ Links Mencionados: Diapers.com VCP: https://twitter.com/MarcLore/status/1456671973522612224 My Space Tom https://www.instagram.com/myspacetom/?hl=en https://cityoftelosa.com/ https://sfstandard.com/criminal-justice/san-francisco-stabbing-victim-bob-lee-former-cto-square-mobilecoin/ https://stripe.com/atlashttps://www.xero.com/ https://openvc.app/blog/winning-data-room https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/51977468 La historia de Quidsi https://collaborativegain.com/the-diaper-war-amazon-whole-foods/ https://www.wsj.com/articles/bob-lee-stabbing-sex-drugs-lifestyle-san-francisco-5a7da970?st=i6fu9bdtiig25xl&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink Tenes alguna pregunta? Escribinos y seguinos en: Twitter: @CristobaPerdomo y @llopatin Linkedin: Lucas Lopatin  y Cristobal Perdomo  y Visitá: Indie Build Wollef --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/indie-vs-unicornio/message

Entrepreneurs are like farmers, but instead of growing food, they grow ideas into businesses. Wonder CEO Marc Lore loves watching things grow and has a knack for it. He founded Jet.com, which sold to Walmart for $3 billion, and Quidsi.com, which sold to Amazon for $550 million. Learn more about the person behind these successes in today's episode. Marc Lore's grandmother pitched he should be a doctor or a lawyer, but Marc insisted he wanted to be a farmer. The working-class kid wasn't the best academic student, but his struggles to make acceptable grades gave him something better: resilience. Marc developed what he calls a small memory card, where he keeps the learning and deletes the failure, enabling him to move forward. Besides farming, seventh-grade Marc developed an interest in stocks, going so far as to journal about stock options. That's why he initially went into banking, but he was disappointed when his first job placed him in the back office faxing trade confirmations. Marc kept moving forward, transitioning into a career in the emerging Financial Risk Management field. He had his first entrepreneurial experience when he founded the industry's professional board and certification exam. Mark's next entrepreneurial ventures were all risks, but he always leaned into whatever it took to nurture the business and provide value. We discuss being motivated by money versus being motivated by the mission. For example, you'd expect to feel joy at the life-changing $550 million sale of Quidsi, the parent company of Diapers.com, but Marc describes a profound loss. Hear why selling Jet.com was different and the importance of the motivation-driven entrepreneurship. With his latest venture, Wonder.com, Marc grows another mission-motivated business. Discover how Wonder.com is addressing the challenges the food industry presents while striving to provide value for others.

Season 3 Premiere! So excited to welcome the CEO and Co-Founder of Mojo, Vinit Bharara. Mojo is a sports stock market, where fans can literally invest in their favorite players' careers. Along with Vinit, there are some pretty big names as co-founders, Bart Stein, Mark Lore, and a baseball player turned businessman,  you might have heard of Alex Rodriguez. Vinit has founded and sold multiple companies prior to this. Quidsi to Amazon, Some Spider Studios to Bustle Digital Group, and CAFE Media to Vox Media, so it's safe to say he knows a thing or two about building companies. We absolutely nerd out about sports in general, and we talk about the vision for Mojo.Mojo is now live in New Jersey, check it out! 

Carolyn Childers is the CEO and Co-Founder of Chief. She is an experienced leader and operator, having successfully scaled several early-stage businesses. Prior to founding Chief, Carolyn was SVP of Operations at Handy. Previously, Carolyn led the launch of the site Soap.com (Quidsi) and acted as its GM through its acquisition by Amazon. Carolyn also had roles at Victoria's Secret and Avon Products where she worked on strategy and business development. She started her career in finance where she spent over three years in investment banking at Deutsche Bank. Carolyn has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BS in Finance from Boston College.I was able to have such a fun interview with Carolyn live at Collision Conference in Toronto this summer! We cover what it's like to have a successful career and subsequently, the vulnerability one feels becoming a co-founder and CEO. Carolyn discusses the early days of founding Chief with her co-founder and the breakthrough moment they found after that, what it feels like to have so many people not see your vision, and how she learned to be a leader from her background in sports.To stay up to date on future episodes and learn more from Alisa, sign up for her newsletter.If you like what you hear, please subscribe to the podcast!Learn more about Chief | LinkedInFor more stories and advice on founders and CEOs, head to alisacohn.com

Jeff Bezos controls Amazon. And Whole Foods. And The Washington Post. And IMDB, Zappos, Souq, Blue Origin, Kiva Systems, Alexa, DPReview, Fabric.com, Woot, Goodreads, Twitch, Audible, Elemental, Quidsi, Annapurna Labels, Accept, Living Social, Twilio, HomeGrocer, Bill Me Later, eZiba, BankBazaar, Kozmo, Ionic, Songza, and Wine.com. Plus he has VC stakes in Lookout, Juno, Grail, Workday, Vessel, Domo, Fundbox, Stack Overflow, Everfi, Remitly, Rethink Robotics, General Fusion, MakerBot, Unity Biotech, General Assembly, Business Insider, Google, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter. And he's working on acquiring MGM. Plus he owns at least eight mansions and 100,000+ acres, a bunch of penis-shaped rockets, and a $500,000,000 hyper-yacht.Bernard Arnault controls LVMH, which has swallowed more than seventy of its competitors, including Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Dom Pérignon, Loius Vuitton, Moët & Chandon, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loro Piana, Princess Yachts, Bulgari, Sephora, and Tiffany & Co.Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns massive chunks of nearly fifty companies including Apple, Amazon, Amex, Bank of America, Chevron, Kraft, Mastercard, Sirius, Visa, Wells Fargo, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, GM, Merck, T-Mobile, GEICO, and Coca-Cola, which itself has eaten more than 400 competing drink companies.Blackrock, which owns a piece of 5,480 companies including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Nvidia, Tesla, JP Morgan, Paypal, Home Depot, Disney, Exxon, Pfizer, Pepsi, AT&T, Nike, Walmart, McDonald's, Costco, and Netflix, just bought Reese Witherspoon's media company for $900 million, adding to its $9 trillion Smaug-like horde.It makes you wonder when monopolists will stop growing larger and larger.And then one day it occurs to you…They will not stop until they are stopped.The factsThere are now 2,755 billionaires on the planet, not including “royalty” and dictators.In the year 2000, they controlled less than $1 trillion.Today, they control more than $13.1 trillion.13.5X in a generation.And they've grown their wealth by $5.5 trillion during the pandemic so far.The world's richest eight men now own more than the bottom 4 billion.On the flip side, there's never been so many people experiencing suffering and deprivation in human history:* Systemic inequality pushed 200+ million people into poverty and cost women around the world at least $800 billion in lost income in 2020.* 690 million people go to bed hungry every night (and the number is rising by 16 million per year.)* 5.5 million people are moving into slums per month.* 2.3 million children die from malnutrition every year.Clearly, there is no limit to the depth of poverty and deprivation to which our global society will allow humans to fall — never forget that millions of children are still trafficked for rape annually and that nine million people die from starvation each year — yet somehow elite individuals are allowed to amass unlimited plenty in a world of deprivation?It begs the question: Is it moral and right for us to allow individuals to hoard extreme wealth in the face of overwhelming widespread poverty, documented democratic subversion, and environmental catastrophe?If humanity saw itself as the global family that it truly is, it would be morally impossible to not limit the amount that one family member could control while another suffered and died.“Earned” wealthIt is impossible for an individual to legitimately earn a billion dollars.If someone earned $100 per hour — more than enough for anyone to live in luxurious comfort — in order to truly earn a billion dollars, they'd have to work 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for five thousand years.So how is a billion dollars actually amassed?By skimming a profit off the backs of untold others:* off the workers they employ* off the suppliers they squeeze* off the carcasses of the competitors they destroy with monopoly* off the planet they unsustainably extract from* off the governments from which they gain subsidies and advantages* off the stable societies they sell to while evading taxation* off the democracies whose rules they change at will* off the shareholders they dupeHow is the ability to skim achieved? Through unfair advantage and privilege.It is impossible to “work hard, save, and invest” your way to a billion dollars.Let's be crystal clear: billionaires don't “create jobs.” They extract value — time, talent, creativity, effort — from others at an industrial scale.Decentralize everythingHere's a short thought experiment.Which is better: 2,755 billionaires and their $13.1 trillion, each monopolizing roughly one industry apiece and subverting democracy, or 131,000 centa-millionaires in competition?How about 1,310,000 deca-millionaires?Or 13,100,000 millionaires?13.1 million millionaires would do far more for the economy in terms of spending, hiring, diffusing power, avoiding democratic destruction, increasing competition, and sparking innovation.Are there truly enough benefits to the global population to merit supporting the costs of maintaining billionaires? Surely not. No rational person can make the argument that 2,755 billionaires are globally preferable to having 13.1 million more millionaires, or 131 million more workers each controlling a $100K stake in the businesses wherein they constitute all of the wealth-creation.“But those poor billionaires are just rich on paper!”Sychophants for the ultra-elite are quick to cry out that most billionaires don't actually have $1,000,000,000+ sitting in a Scrooge McDuck-style vault. Their wealth is usually tied up in shares of the companies they almost always undemocratically control.But these people don't understand how billionaires work.Billionaires borrow colossal amounts of cheap debt against those paper shares, and let inflation devalue that debt over time.So you and I — the real taxpayers in society — end up footing the bill as the money-printing machine devalues our actual-earned money.We need a more equitable pre-distribution of ownership, wealth, and opportunity.Mathematical doomI believe — as do most of the working masses and the desperate poor — that it is morally wrong and utterly inhumane to be a billionaire whilst millions starve and billions suffer.Full stop.To paraphrase the Bible: “The poor will always be among us because the rich will always be above us.”The world and planet can't afford to support billionaires anymore.Corporatism is a gross inefficiency and major source of economic inequality; it is anti-democracy; it is ecological unsustainability.We should replace it with an economy of sole proprietors, partnerships, cooperatives, not-for-profits, and for-benefits — all the wealth to all the workers — massively diverse, all competing and cooperating and innovating within a body of economic law that enforces ecological sustainability (as defined by biology) and economic fairness (as defined by real democracy.)If we don't, we're mathematically doomed.Charting our trajectory to zeroWhen will billionaires stop amassing more wealth?The answer is clear:They won't.Our total global wealth is currently $431 trillion.In the past twenty years, billionaires have grown their wealth by 13.5X, to $13.1 trillion, far outpacing the poor and total growth in global wealth.At their current pace, billionaires will control $176 trillion in twenty years and $2.3 quadrillion in forty.You read that right: If we do not stop them, billionaires will control the entire globe's resources within our lifetime.From there, it's simply a game of thrones to determine which few families will survive.In the winner-take-all economy, elites will not stop until they are stopped.Why can't voter-shoppers fathom this fact?The solution is frightfully simpleIt's a radical idea that will be common sense to future generations:Individual private wealth must be limited.That's right: No more billionaires.Every dollar over $1 billion in net worth will be taxed at 100% or placed in a commons trust.As one Redditor put it:Once you reach $999,999,999 we give you a plaque that says, “congratulations, you won capitalism,” and we name a dog park after you.A global Billionaire Ban will have wonderful implications for protecting democracy and making the economy more robust and fair. Obviously, democracy can argue over the exact number for our new global limit — 10 million, 100 million, even 1 billion — so long as we agree on the underlying fundamental that private wealth must have an upper limit.Older right-leaning white men will now scream “Communism! Socialism!” while failing to realize this piece is not advocating central ownership or central control of the economy. That's what billionaires are working on.We need to reform our economic system. We need a more equitable pre-distribution of ownership, wealth, and opportunity, and we desperately need democratic limits to protect against monopoly and wealth hoarding.This isn't optional for the survival of our species: it's now required for the survival of all species.The Christian response to wealth inequalityWhat's incredibly disturbing about the wealth inequality discussion is how callous many Christians have become to the plight of the poor.As if the riches of the wealthy matter more to our God than the survival of the poor!Luke 3:11 is perhaps the most economically-convicting verse in Scripture:“Whoever has two tunics is to share with him who has none, and whoever has food is to do likewise.”Clearly, God is not in favor of infinite wealth accumulation. Regardless of what reasonable limitations secularist governments place on private wealth, surely God always calls His family to a higher standard of generosity and stewardship.Mark 14:7 says that “the poor will always be among us”… but that's only because the rich will always be above us.Do you where there weren't any poor people? In the Acts 2 church, when those of means rejected the temptation to accumulate infinite wealth and instead sold assets to help others. And according to Acts 4:34, “There were no needy people among them.”That's the power of Christians who actually obey Scripture… what a testament such a church would be to their community!Christians live by a principle that transcends all secular economic schemes. When it comes to finances, we express our faith with one principle: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.When we align our financial thinking with the Bible's, we end up using all of our abilities for His glory, and He meets all of our needs, not just as individuals, but as a community. After all, unlike the individualist anti-culture in which we find ourselves, we profoundly understand that we're all in this thing together.We need to move quickly.In the time it took you to listen to this episode, the world's billionaires gained $62 million in wealth, while sixty people moved into slums and thirty children died of hunger.How many more people must suffer and die before we re-structure the global economy — or at least our local church community — for widest-spread wellbeing?Thanks for listening to Future Faith. We are 100% follower-supported, so please head over to jaredbrock.com to become a gospel patron.If you think this episode is important, informative, or provocative, all I ask is that you email the link to your friends or share it on social media. Get full access to Future Faith at jaredbrock.substack.com/subscribe

Welcome to Surviving Tomorrow, a podcast, newsletter, and publication that helps you navigate life in an age of democratic destruction, ecological collapse, and economic irrelevance, available for FREE on Substack, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Facebook, and Youtube.Jeff Bezos controls Amazon. And Whole Foods. And The Washington Post. And IMDB, Zappos, Souq, Blue Origin, Kiva Systems, Alexa, DPReview, Fabric.com, Woot, Goodreads, Twitch, Audible, Elemental, Quidsi, Annapurna Labels, Accept, Living Social, Twilio, HomeGrocer, Bill Me Later, eZiba, BankBazaar, Kozmo, Ionic, Songza, and Wine.com. Plus he has VC stakes in Lookout, Juno, Grail, Workday, Vessel, Domo, Fundbox, Stack Overflow, Everfi, Remitly, Rethink Robotics, General Fusion, MakerBot, Unity Biotech, General Assembly, Business Insider, Google, Uber, Airbnb, and Twitter. And he's working on acquiring MGM. Plus he owns at least eight mansions and 100,000+ acres, a bunch of penis-shaped rockets, and a $500,000,000 hyper-yacht.Bernard Arnault controls LVMH, which has swallowed more than seventy of its competitors, including Dior, Fendi, Givenchy, Dom Pérignon, Loius Vuitton, Moët & Chandon, Marc Jacobs, Stella McCartney, Loro Piana, Princess Yachts, Bulgari, Sephora, and Tiffany & Co.Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway owns massive chunks of nearly fifty companies including Apple, Amazon, Amex, Bank of America, Chevron, Kraft, Mastercard, Sirius, Visa, Wells Fargo, P&G, Johnson & Johnson, Dairy Queen, Fruit of the Loom, GM, Merck, T-Mobile, GEICO, and Coca-Cola, which itself has eaten more than 400 competing drink companies.Blackrock, which owns a piece of 5,480 companies including Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Google, Nvidia, Tesla, JP Morgan, Paypal, Home Depot, Disney, Exxon, Pfizer, Pepsi, AT&T, Nike, Walmart, McDonald's, Costco, and Netflix, just bought Reese Witherspoon's media company for $900 million, adding to its $9 trillion Smaug-like horde.It makes you wonder when monopolists will stop growing larger and larger.And then one day it occurs to you…They will not stop until they are stopped.The factsThere are now 2,755 billionaires on the planet, not including “royalty” and dictators.In the year 2000, they controlled less than $1 trillion.Today, they control more than $13.1 trillion.13.5X in a generation.And they've grown their wealth by $5.5 trillion during the pandemic so far.The world's richest eight men now own more than the bottom 4 billion.On the flip side, there's never been so many people experiencing suffering and deprivation in human history:Systemic inequality pushed 200+ million people into poverty and cost women around the world at least $800 billion in lost income in 2020.690 million people go to bed hungry every night (and the number is rising by 16 million per year.)5.5 million people are moving into slums per month.2.3 million children die from malnutritionment every year.Clearly, there is no limit to the depth of poverty and deprivation to which our global society will allow humans to fall — never forget that millions of children are still trafficked for rape annually and that nine million people die from starvation each year — yet somehow elite individuals are allowed to amass unlimited plenty in a world of deprivation?It begs the question: Is it moral and right for us to allow individuals to hoard extreme wealth in the face of overwhelming widespread poverty, documented democratic subversion, and environmental catastrophe?If humanity saw itself as the global family that it truly is, it would be morally impossible to not limit the amount that one family member could control while another suffered and died.“Earned” wealthIt is impossible for an individual to legitimately earn a billion dollars.If someone earned $100 per hour — more than enough for anyone to live in luxurious comfort — in order to truly earn a billion dollars, they'd have to work 40 hours per week, 50 weeks per year, for five thousand years.So how is a billion dollars actually amassed?By skimming a profit off the backs of untold others:off the workers they employoff the suppliers they squeezeoff the carcasses of the competitors they destroy with monopolyoff the planet they unsustainably extract fromoff the governments from which they gain subsidies and advantagesoff the stable societies they sell to while evading taxationoff the democracies whose rules they change at willoff the shareholders they dupeHow is the ability to skim achieved? Through unfair advantage and privilege.It is impossible to “work hard, save, and invest” your way to a billion dollars.Let's be crystal clear: billionaires don't “create jobs.” They extract value — time, talent, creativity, effort — from others at an industrial scale.Decentralize everythingHere's a short thought experiment.Which is better: 2,755 billionaires and their $13.1 trillion, each monopolizing roughly one industry apiece and subverting democracy, or 131,000 centa-millionaires in competition?How about 1,310,000 deca-millionaires?Or 13,100,000 millionaires?13.1 million millionaires would do far more for the economy in terms of spending, hiring, diffusing power, avoiding democratic destruction, increasing competition, and sparking innovation.Are there truly enough benefits to the global population to merit supporting the costs of maintaining billionaires? Surely not. No rational person can make the argument that 2,755 billionaires are globally preferable to having 13.1 million more millionaires, or 131 million more workers each controlling a $100K stake in the businesses wherein they constitute all of the wealth-creation.“But those poor billionaires are just rich on paper!”Sychophants for the ultra-elite are quick to cry out that most billionaires don't actually have $1,000,000,000+ sitting in a Scrooge McDuck-style vault. Their wealth is usually tied up in shares of the companies they almost always undemocratically control.But these people don't understand how billionaires work.Billionaires borrow colossal amounts of cheap debt against those paper shares, and let inflation devalue that debt over time.So you and I — the real taxpayers in society — end up footing the bill as the money-printing machine devalues our actual-earned money.We need a more equitable pre-distribution of ownership, wealth, and opportunity.Mathematical doomI believe — as do most of the working masses and the desperate poor — that it is morally wrong and utterly inhumane to be a billionaire whilst millions starve and billions suffer.Full stop.To paraphrase the Bible: “The poor will always be among us because the rich will always be above us.”The world and planet can't afford to support billionaires anymore.Corporatism is a gross inefficiency and major source of economic inequality; it is anti-democracy; it is ecological unsustainability.We should replace it with an economy of sole proprietors, partnerships, cooperatives, not-for-profits, and for-benefits — all the wealth to all the workers — massively diverse, all competing and cooperating and innovating within a body of economic law that enforces ecological sustainability (as defined by biology) and economic fairness (as defined by real democracy.)If we don't, we're mathematically doomed.Charting our trajectory to zeroWhen will billionaires stop amassing more wealth?The answer is clear:They won't.Our total global wealth is currently $431 trillion.In the past twenty years, billionaires have grown their wealth by 13.5X, to $13.1 trillion, far outpacing the poor and total growth in global wealth.At their current pace, billionaires will control $176 trillion in twenty years and $2.3 quadrillion in forty.You read that right: If we do not stop them, billionaires will control the entire globe's resources within our lifetime.From there, it's simply a game of thrones to determine which few families will survive.In the winner-take-all economy, elites will not stop until they are stopped.Why can't voter-shoppers fathom this fact?The solution is frightfully simpleIt's a radical idea that will be common sense to future generations:Individual private wealth must be limited.That's right: No more billionaires.Every dollar over $1 billion in net worth will be taxed at 100% or placed in a commons trust.As one Redditor put it:Once you reach $999,999,999 we give you a plaque that says, “congratulations, you won capitalism,” and we name a dog park after you.A global Billionaire Ban will have wonderful implications for protecting democracy and making the economy more robust and fair. Obviously, democracy can argue over the exact number for our new global limit — 10 million, 100 million, even 1 billion — so long as we agree on the underlying fundamental that private wealth must have an upper limit.Older right-leaning white men will now scream “Communism! Socialism!” while failing to realize this piece is not advocating central ownership or central control of the economy. That's what billionaires are working on.We need to reform our economic system. We need a more equitable pre-distribution of ownership, wealth, and opportunity, and we desperately need democratic limits to protect against monopoly and wealth hoarding.This isn't optional for the survival of our species: it's now required for the survival of all species.We need to move quickly.In the time it took you to read this article, the world's billionaires gained $62 million while sixty people moved into slums and thirty children died of hunger.How many more people must suffer and die before we re-structure the global economy for widest-spread well-being? Get full access to Surviving Tomorrow at www.surviving-tomorrow.com/subscribe

Marc Lore is a serial entrepreneur turned investor who's started and sold four companies. Most recently Marc was the President and CEO of Walmart eCommerce US following the sale of his company, Jet.com, to Walmart for $3.3 billion in 2016. Prior to that, Marc founded Diapers.com/Quidsi which sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. As an investor, Marc announced his new venture firm, Vision Capital People, with his co-founder, Alex Rodrigues, earlier this year with $50M of Alex and Marc's own money. Fun fact, in 1996 Marc qualified to be in the US national bobsled team. In Today's Episode with Marc Lore You Will Learn: 1.) How Marc made his way into the startup world, how he came to found Jet.com and what led to his most recent transition to the world of investing? 2.) How does Marc assess human potential? What does he mean when he says "the resume test"? What are the clearest signals of outperformers? What are signs of lack of performance? Why does Marc not believe in referencing? Does Mark start from a position of trust for it to be lost or with none and for it all to be gained? 3.) How does Marc evaluate his relationship to risk and fear? How has it changed over time? What did Marc's wife say when he left his safe job and put all their savings into his new business? What does Marc mean when he discusses finding "Sixth Gear"? How does Marc balance that intensity and ambition with romance and family life? 4.) Why does Marc believe Chief People Officer should be one of your first hires? What are the commonalities of the best Chief People Officers? What does the optimal relationship between CEO and CPO look like? How does Marc test for his core characteristics in interviews? What questions does he ask every candidate? What are the most revealing? 5.) How does Marc think about portfolio construction with the new fund today? Does Marc believe it is possible to take 40%+ of companies without alienating future investors? Is Marc concerned about over-capitalising companies too early? How does Marc think about reserves strategy and concentrating capital into the best companies?

Welcome to the Conversations with CommerceNext podcast, Season 1, Episode Three  , I'm your host Michael LeBlanc, and this podcast is brought to you in conjunction with CommerceNext and presented by Wunderkind.In these times, insights on modern, post-COVID ear consumer attitudes, behaviours and norms has become the new life's work for brands and agencies alike.  How can retailers find opportunities for growth in a consumer environment that is recovering from widespread disruption?  What strategies and tactics can their agency partners bring to bear to get them there?In this episode I meet Ryan Urban, the founder of Wunderkind, and Seth Goldman, the CEO of UrbanStems. These two founders share their analysis and experience regarding the latest trends in retail marketing, customer engagement and employee empowerment.Together, they discuss they discuss their respective career paths, how finding and retaining great talent has changed and evolved, and ultimately how connecting all of these dots leads to better customer experience. [End]Thanks for tuning into this episode of Conversations with CommerceNext.  Please follow us on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music or your favorite podcast platform where we'll be sharing career advice and marketing strategies from eCommerce and digital marketing leaders at retailers and direct-to-consumer brands each and every episode.   CommerceNext is a community, event series and conference for marketers at retail and direct-to-consumer brands. Through our online forums, interviews, webinars, summits and other in-person events, we harness the collective wisdom of our community to help marketers grow their businesses and advance their careers. Join CommerceNext events to meet other industry leaders and learn the latest ecommerce and marketing strategies. You can find upcoming events at CommerceNext dot com Have a fantastic week everyone!Seth GoldmanExperienced e-commerce manager with strong finance and analytical skills and a passion for consumer products and services. Industry expertise in consumer consumables, food and floral.Seth is currently the CEO at UrbanStems, an ecommerce company disrupting the floral and gifting space. UrbanStems' mission is to send 'Send Happy' to all of its customers, and to make it easier to send a beautiful gift to friends and loved ones. As CEO, Seth has successfully installed processes and reporting to allow the business to scale significantly. He has focused on increasing margins while maintaining strong top-line growth.Prior to UrbanStems, Seth ran the US division of HelloFresh, and helped scale that business into the leading meal kit company. HelloFresh raised nearly $300 million from its investors to disrupt the food delivery and grocery space, culminating with a successful IPO in 2017. While running the US business, Seth added facilities in NJ, TX and CA, expanding HelloFresh to a national footprint. Seth built many parts of the business from scratch, including the operations, finance and HR departments. Under his leadership, HelloFresh was able to secure a $37 million incentive package from the state of NJ to support their exponential growth.Before joining HelloFresh, Seth was at Quidsi (acquired by Amazon), where he was on the launch team of Wag.com, a pet-focused commerce site. At Quidsi, Seth led supply chain for Wag and three other sites. Seth began his career working in management consulting and private equity. Seth holds an AB from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Stern School of Business at NYU.Areas of expertise:* E-commerce* Consumer Products, with specific expertise in food* Scaling high-growth businesses* Operations, supply chain and logistics* Hiring and managing high-performance teams* Cash flow modeling and valuation analysis* Statistical and quantitative analysisRyan Urban ABOUT US:  Scott SilvermanAn ecommerce veteran, Scott Silverman has been active in the industry since 1999 and is passionate about digital retail and the innovation driving the industry. Scott Silverman is the Co-Founder of CommerceNext. Previously, he spent 10 years as Executive Director of Shop.org where he launched the Shop.org Annual Summit. Scott co-invented “Cyber Monday” in 2005 and was the founder of Cybermonday.com in 2006, a shopping site that has generated more than $2.5 million for Shop.org's scholarship fund. Veronika SonsevVeronika Sonsev is the Co-Founder of CommerceNext. She also leads the retail practice for Chameleon Collective and is a contributor for Forbes on how to grow retail and ecommerce in the age of Amazon. Having spent the last 10+ years working with some of the largest retailers and direct-to-consumer brands, Veronika has intimate knowledge of the challenges facing retail and ecommerce today. She is also an advocate for women in business and founded the global non-profit mBolden, which is now part of SheRunsit.  Michael LeBlanc  is the Founder & President of M.E. LeBlanc & Company Inc and a Senior Advisor to Retail Council of Canada as part of his advisory and consulting practice.   He brings 25+ years of brand/retail/marketing & eCommerce leadership experience, and has been on the front lines of retail industry change for his entire career.  Michael is the producer and host of a network of leading podcasts including Canada's top retail industry podcast,       The Voice of Retail, plus        Global E-Commerce Tech Talks  and       The Food Professor  with Dr. Sylvain Charlebois.  You can learn more about Michael       here  or on       LinkedIn.  About CommerceNextCommerceNext is a community, event series and conference for marketers at retail and direct-to-consumer brands. Through our online forums, interviews, webinars, summits and other in-person events, we harness the collective wisdom of our community to help marketers grow their businesses and advance their careers. Join CommerceNext events to meet other industry leaders and learn the latest ecommerce and marketing strategies. You can find upcoming events at https://commercenext.com/commercenext-webinars/. 

Episode 559 Steve Raye interviews Lindsey Andrews of Minibar Delivery After graduating from Stanford, Lindsey began her career as a Financial Analyst for Antares Investment Partners. She then pursued her MBA at Wharton, and although she didn't know it at the time, this is where she met her future Minibar Delivery co-founder, Lara Crystal. Lindsey and Lara went off to pursue more traditional careers after leaving Wharton - Lindsey spent the years after Wharton in consumables e-commerce, first at FreshDirect and then at the Quidsi portfolio of brands (owned by Amazon) as the Head of Marketing at Wag.com. Lindsey and Lara remained good friends, often brainstorming business ideas together, and ultimately decided to start Minibar Delivery in 2013. Since then, Lindsey has played an active role as CEO & Co- Founder of Minibar Delivery, growing the company into the on-demand alcohol delivery powerhouse it is today, operating in 200+ American cities. For more info on Lindsey check out: Website: minibardelivery.com Facebook: Minibar Delivery Instagram: @minibardelivery Twitter: @minibardelivery Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/minibar-delivery/mycompany/ Check out Bevology inc here bevologyinc.com/ Check out Mozzarella e Vino here www.mozzarellaevino.com/ Let's keep in touch! Follow us on our social media channels: Instagram @italianwinepodcast Facebook @ItalianWinePodcast Twitter @itawinepodast Tiktok @MammaJumboShrimp LinkedIn @ItalianWinePodcast If you feel like helping us, donate here www.italianwinepodcast.com/donate-to-show/ Until next time, Cin Cin!

Nate Faust has spent years in the e-commerce business — he was a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com), co-founder and COO at Jet (acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion) and then a vice president at Walmart. Over time, he said it slowly dawned on him that it's “crazy” that 25 years […]

Nate Faust has spent years in the e-commerce business — he was a vice president at Quidsi (which ran Diapers.com and Soap.com), co-founder and COO at Jet (acquired by Walmart for $3.3 billion) and then a vice president at Walmart. Over time, he said it slowly dawned on him that it’s “crazy” that 25 years […]

Do you drink kombucha? Do you even know what kombucha is? Don’t worry if the answer is no, you have plenty of company. In fact, various sources have put the awareness of kombucha at less than 50% for certain age demographics. Nevertheless, kombucha is big business (we’re talking a multi-billion-dollar market), and Health-Ade is right in the thick of the hunt for a slice of the pie. Health-Ade was created in a one-bedroom apartment when the founders were looking to create a product to regrow hair with the fermented tea's living culture. The kombucha liquid was just a byproduct, but after getting an offer to sell the kombucha at a local farmers market, they jumped at the chance. Health-Ade now generates more than $100,000,000 in retail sales, and is sold in 30,000 stores. But just like any brand in an emerging market, the company is looking for ways to grow even bigger.Enter Calvin Lammers, the VP of eCommerce for Health-Ade. Calvin joined Health-Ade after cutting his teeth at some of the biggest healthy CPG brands on the market, Kind, Bai, and Spindrift, where he launched a number of new products and elevated their ecommerce operations to new heights. But when he entered the world of kombucha, he had his work cut out for him. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, Calvin talks through how he not only had to develop and execute content to help educate a consumer base, but also about how he had to build an entire ecommerce department from scratch. He gives advice to other brands who are facing similar struggles, including what to focus on when building an ecommerce team and what metrics to hone in on in the early days. Plus he discusses why it’s important to have a holistic view of the customer journey. Main Takeaways:An Eye Toward The Future: If you are building an ecommerce team from scratch or scaling up your ecomm operations, long-term planning is important. Think two or three years down the line at where you want to be and build toward that, but make sure you are not overextending or, overspending or over hiring because more is not always better. In fact, having too many resources might be crippling down the line as your organization gets into crunch time as you try to reach the next level of scale.Go Wide, Stay Shallow: Successfully launching a new product or product line is dependent on how many people you can get in front of. Regardless of if your product is niche, the goal should be to get your message to as many people as possible, and to have that message be simple and memorable. You don’t want to overload new customers or audiences with too much information, it’s more important to raise awareness. Small Tweak, Huge Impact: It’s not big or sexy, but focusing on small things like site load times and the checkout experience actually have the most impact in terms of ROI, so those are the things any ecommerce leaders should focus on when deploying their early resources.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone, I'm Stephanie Postals, and you're listening to Up Next In Commerce. Today on the show, we have Calvin Lammers, the VP of eCommerce at Health-Ade. Calvin, welcome.Calvin:Thank you. Thanks for having me.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm really excited to have you on. I was looking through your background, and you've worked at some of the hottest, healthy CPG brands. I was looking at Kind, and Bai, and Spindrift most recently. And so, I feel like you have a lot of good knowledge, and you're a veteran in the eCommerce world.Calvin:Thank you. Yeah, knock on wood. Yeah, thankfully I've been able to be a part of some really great brands. I mean, it's been fascinating from a personal level. It's also been helpful from a selfish consumer level as I've been able to enjoy some really good product as well, while working for these companies. So, I think it's definitely shifted my taste buds, I think for the better.Stephanie:Yes. That's great. Yeah, I just started recently enjoying Spindrifts, and my two and a half year old wants one everyday now. It's probably a bad habit that I've formed. This is so perfect California kid wanting his sparkling beverage everyday.Calvin:That's amazing. No, I definitely got my niece and nephews hooked on Spindrift. And so, it's always funny whenever my family send me photos of the kids taking a big sip of Spindrift. So yeah, love it.Stephanie:Yep, you understand then. So, with all this great background that you have, how did you land on this eCommerce path? How did you first get involved, and know this is what you wanted to do?Calvin:Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's definitely been a journey. Even just 2020 as a whole but even just getting to this point, it's interesting because I always like to say that there's no one linear path to eCommerce. I feel like everybody I've talked to that's been in this space for a while, or even new to this space, they've had a different journey than mine. So different. So, going way back when, I graduated from college and was in the mid-west in Minneapolis, and worked at Target Headquarters. Obviously, knew Target, new and loved it. So, thought that would be a great opportunity. So, worked in the snacks department there for a while. Realized, not quite for me, too corporate, very big company, and wanted to... And also was in the mid-west for a while, [inaudible] Change of pace. So, was looking to get out to New York, and looking for a retail related jobs.Calvin:And happened upon this start up, or newer company called Quidsi, which Amazon had just acquired right as I joined, and they had multiple eCommerce sites, they had diapers.com, soap.com, and a few others but obviously, I was familiar with Amazon at the time, still pretty early in the journey but was familiar generally with it but had never worked at an eCommerce company. And yeah, thankfully landed the job at this Amazon subsidiary, and really cut my teeth in the eCommerce space, building eCommerce sites, overseeing assortments, [inaudible] overall UX layouts. Really just ran the [inaudible] And I think it was exciting because there was just a lot of, what's now proven to be, it was a really good incubation for a lot of great eCommerce minds.Calvin:So, is Mark Laurie who is now the CEO of walmart.com. That was his former company, before he actually started Jet. There are a number of leaders there that they were at Jet, they started their own eCommerce companies, eCommerce D2C brands. And so, yeah, it just was really great learning around and realized I loved the entrepreneurial space, the vibe, and just loved that world. And so, obviously was working on the eCom retailer side, and decided to make the switch over to the brand, and basically be that voice and leader to build out eCommerce on the brand side, and have been doing that basically ever since. And so, as you mentioned earlier, I've been able to work either at a number of great brands, doing that same thing, in building a eCommerce focus and in channel strategies for the respective brands.Stephanie:That's very cool. So, at Quidsi, you were mentioning that there was a lot of great leaders there that you got to learn from. What is some of the advice that you remember, or that still stays top of mind from some of the people that you learned from there? Because like you were mentioning, that was a good name there, jet.com, that's great. I'm sure there's a lot of good things that you refer back to every now and then.Calvin:Absolutely. So, I think the biggest piece of advice, and I still... This is how I think I view eCommerce, and what I've carried with me, is really viewing even if it's a category, or viewing... Even if it's a certain sub-category on the site, viewing that, and as well as eCommerce, there's a whole in taking ownership, and business ownership, and really just viewing it as a business leader. So, through in through. So, while you might... Maybe you're focused on acquisition, but really having a full view of how it's going to impact the overall business where that's just going to help you work cross-functionally if you're on a team or a business leader, that's going to really carry through to being more strategic with all of your decisions, all of your investments, all of your prioritizations. Just really keeping that lens on whatever you're owning at that point in time, I think is crucial, and that's just how I've carried through to at my various stops in my career.Calvin:And even now, we're overseeing an entire eCommerce department, it really is a true business unit within the overall company since you have your separate operations, [inaudible] eCommerce divisions that companies have their own finance department, their digital marketing component. So, really having that lens, I think has been helpful for myself, and I think in general, that's just been a beneficial way to how I viewed my surroundings in business, depending on the company that I've been at.Stephanie:Yeah. I think that's an important reminder about how they are their own business unit but how do you make sure they don't become a silo? Because I think I was reading in one of the articles that when you were working at Target, the eCommerce group was in a separate building, and there was two people or something.Calvin:Yep, yep.Stephanie:And I'm like, obviously that was a long time ago, and that's how a lot of companies started out but how do you make sure that the team integrates with the company as a whole and doesn't become, "Oh, that's just the eCommerce group, that work on their own."?Calvin:Yeah. Even now, it's still a challenge, I would say but I think it's become less of an issue, or a challenge, or a hurdle, than it was when I was at Target, or at prior companies, just again with the changing views of eCommerce as a whole. But as I said, you still need to work to be integrated and fully aligned across departments, full company. And so, I think that's where... That's the other piece, is that, that's not always the case, it depends on the company. Some companies have eCommerce as it's own business unit, sometimes it lives in marketing, sometimes it lives in sales. And so, I've had differing experience but the biggest thing is, it is whether you have those individual responsibilities, or head count in the eCommerce department, or they still live in different departments, it is one of the most cross-functional areas as well for that exact reason.Calvin:Because you're touching operations, you're touching marketing, you're touching finance, you're touching brand. So, there's an innate need to interact, and work closely, and be involved with each respective areas. So, I think that's where it really the whose... Any eCom leaders, or practitioners that are either starting out, or obviously, well into their careers, really making that effort to both educate in terms of why they should be caring about eCommerce, what of the benefit, how will it impact them, how will it impact the broader company and organization? And really just being that leader, and educational voice, I guess, for the company to gain that [inaudible] And sign on. And I would say that's been one of the biggest focuses at any company, is really making those pitches, and sell-ins.Calvin:And then, obviously, at the same time, going the extra mile to show why it is beneficial for the respective department leaders to work closely with the eCommerce team, and myself personally.Stephanie:Yep. So, you were just mentioning around them being a cross-functional team, and when I think about a cross-functional times, I think about, a lot of times... And I was one of these back in my earlier days. You're not always doing the work but you're there to coordinate many groups, and bring them together, whereas in eCommerce, team having to also be a cross-functional team seems tricky. So, how do you go about building up a team like that? What are some best practices, and how do you make sure you hired the right people, and build up a good team who can do both of those functions?Calvin:Yes, I think that's... It's definitely something that I have very recent experience with. So, I think, a lot of times... And this has been the case at previous companies as well, where eCommerce was maybe less of a focus for a brand, or there weren't as many resources put into the company, or the headcount was on the lower end of the spectrum. So, you have to be very, very efficient, and careful with how you were filling any headcount openings that you had available because that might be the only one you get for the next year, or the next budget cycle. So, it's previously been super important for that reason but even now, as I just joined Health-Ade six months ago, when I joined, there was no dedicated eCommerce team. There were shared responsibilities but there was no eCommerce team to speak of. So, very quickly had to be mindful with the roles that we were building out and filling right off the bat because again, we were building this essentially from scratch.Calvin:So, had to be very thoughtful and mindful about, "Okay, over the next two years, what areas of responsibility, and what departments, or what coverage do we need? And will that last us for presumably the next two years? Because we need to be hyper-efficient, and competitive with how we're proofing out the success and viability of the channel. So, we don't want to overload, and hire a 10 person department before we break six figures in revenue." So, we want to be very strategic in that. So, with that, I think that also goes back to my mindset from Quidsi where I still very much have that start up entrepreneurial mindset. So, I've worked at companies where I was the only person on the eCommerce team for a year.Calvin:And so, it's a lot of work. I think it's been helpful for myself, as I've touched every aspect of the business, and while I don't work in a day to day at this point, I have at least a background and knowledge of how everything works, and I think that is really important for eCommerce leaders to be able to speak knowledgeably just about eCommerce fulfillment just as much as they are about eCommerce acquisition, or marketing. I think that is hugely important. And so, that's been my mindset, is hiring people that are not the jack of all trades, but maybe a utility knife, where they're able to... Quick learners, able to pick up things very quickly. They have an interest, they're super curious. But they're open, and willing, and wanting to touch multiple things of the business and not having very narrow minds that then, "Oh, that's not my responsibility."Calvin:Again, going back to having that ownership view, carries through to how I view headcount, and bringing on new team members because I think that's just hugely important. Especially early on, as you're building out a team.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, you have to have those scrappy individuals who are ready to treat the company as if it's their own, and ready to jump in wherever needed, even if they're on a team that maybe isn't relevant to the task.Calvin:100%.Stephanie:So, let's talk a bit about Health-Ade. So, I'm a fan of Health-Ade. I have been following it for a while. I also just love the story. I mean, I think the CEO was selling it. She started with $600, and she was selling it at Farmers markets, and now I think I saw you guys generate over 150,000,000 in revenue, and you're in 30,000 or more stores. So, I want to hear a little bit more about Health-Ade, what is it, and what drew you to the company?Calvin:Yeah. So, obviously, great to hear you're a fan. I am myself, I like to say that, that's been very much a part of my career path and choices where I worked at, and wouldn't be joining a company if I didn't really enjoy, or love the product, and that absolutely was the case with Health-Ade. Yeah, thankfully, I got connected with the team here. As I mentioned, they were looking to build out their eCommerce channel with really no focus, or presence to speak of before I joined. I was a big fan, it's a probiotic tea, kombucha, is their primary product line, that's as you mentioned, founders and [inaudible] Where they started out a number of years ago. That's really been the key focus for the brand, and where we've seen most of that growth to that surplus of over 100,000,000 in retail sales.Calvin:We obviously have looked to expand the kombucha, and recently, we just launched a new product line called Booch Pop, which is a ambient soda made with kombucha. And so, looking to expand into some of these other areas but really, kombucha still is the first and foremost, and primary product line for us. And it's been great to see obviously kombucha as a whole, has been a huge growth driver and really fast growing category, and Health-Ade has really been the primary contributor to that growth over the last few years. So, love the brand, loved what it stood for. Just loved everything about it. The unique challenge, and I think the thing that caused me hesitation was just obviously, with the kombucha product, it is [inaudible] Requires refrigeration, it's also in glass bottles.Calvin:So, obviously, anybody that knows anything about eCommerce fulfillment, not really the easiest things to turn into a viable eCommerce business right off the bat. So, very difficult, very, very challenging, and very costly just from an operations standpoint. So, that was definitely the biggest hurdle, or thing that gave me pause but always like a challenge. I like to say that every single brand that I've worked at, I've wanted to make more difficult. So, I've gone from snack bars, to refrigerated beverages, so gone one end of the spectrum to the other, and the food and beverage space. And that's been a big focus for us, and making that a very viable channel, and obviously just making sure that our operations and fulfillment is a strength for us, out of necessity really.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I'm definitely going to be diving into the logistics piece in a bit, so be prepared. It seems like you choose brands too that... I mean, maybe everyone say, every brand needs convincing, to convince a buyer to buy it. But you choose brands that aren't very well know. I mean, I'm thinking about Kind, when they came out. I remember when I worked at Google, they started having the bars there but people still really weren't sure what they were. Same thing with Buy, the coconut water. And Spindrift more recently, I mean there were so many sparkling beverages [crosstalk] Convincing someone of why you don't want that artificial flavor, and why you [crosstalk] I mean, it seems like you have a pattern here where you're picking harder, and harder things, and now kombucha.Stephanie:I think I was just reading that maybe between 20 and 40 year olds, more that 50% still don't know what kombucha is. I saw that stat somewhere and I'm like... I mean, that's crazy to me. Maybe it's because I'm in California, and it seems like everyone here knows what it is but it seems like it's a hard market. How are you going about educating people? Is that why you chose to do the soda route where it's still kind of kombucha, but maybe might connect with a whole different audience, and bring them into the network of kombucha?Calvin:Yeah, no, and I think that was a definite thought and factor in the development of the Booch Pop product line, and having multiple ways in for consumers. To this point, there's been... You're a kombucha consumer but that's something that we've done studies on, and have research on in terms of the overall awareness and knowledge of kombucha. It is limited, it still is not as mainstream, or widely known as you would think at this point. So, that also is impactful to how we're approaching overall messaging, and advertising, and just overall content on digital for us. So, that follows through from everything from our Amazon product pages, to our own website, to our email flows, to our SMS marketing, to influencers. So, it's hugely impactful, and I think that's been a major, major focus for us in the brand, in that we realize that there still is a huge section of the population that not only doesn't know Health-Ade, but doesn't know even what kombucha is.Calvin:And so, I think that, at the end of the day, presents an opportunity, and I think is what we see as the open lane for us, or opportunity for Health-Ade, is really being a leader in terms of contents and education for kombucha, and gut health overall. And so, really making that case, and driving home that education piece around what is kombucha? What are the prebiotics, what are probiotics? Why are they important? What benefits do they actually help? How does that contribute to overall health and wellness? Because what we've seen, is that, that benefit is actually, strangely enough, unlike most food and beverage categories, taste is actually a second driver. It's actually the health and benefits that is the primary driver that we are focused on.Calvin:So, we're really making clear why somebody should be incorporating kombucha in their daily diets, what are the benefits? And just really driving that home. That's, I think, where we see the opportunity. And so, that also relates to content and messaging. And again, you have a better ability, or avenue to do that on digital as opposed to just your traditional retailing on shelf, and you're limited to just the label, or the packaging. So, I think that actually is where it helps brands like Health-Ade, or even start up an emerging brand, so you can create more engaging, and enticing, and interactive content in messaging that really can hit home the messaging and objectives that you're trying to drive, especially as you're building awareness, and overall education for the brand or category that you're in.Stephanie:Yeah, I think the gut health thing is still new to a lot of people. I mean, my friend the other day just got a test done to show the bacteria in their gut, and it was really bad, the test results, where she's having to do a whole entire diet reset, and take a bunch of things out, and then, re-introduce them, and take all these probiotics and stuff.Calvin:It's certainly been an education process for myself because yeah, certainly, I had somewhat general awareness of good health, and probiotics, but even the amount that I've learned, being at Health-Ade for the last few months, yeah, it's a very, very important part to the overall body, and there's just so many aspects to it, that it does require a decent amount of education. So, it's a journey that we've also got to bring consumers along. It is, as much as I'm going through the same journey myself.Stephanie:Yep. So, are there different channels that you utilize when you're maybe going the education route, and you want to get in front of the new people, and educate them on why this a good product to try out? Especially now when they can't maybe test it.Calvin:Yep.Stephanie:I mean, I remember, in the early days of Health-Ade, there was a lot of samples at Whole Foods, or wherever I would go, that's how it came on my radar. But what are you doing now to introduce it to people, especially if they can't really try it?Calvin:Right. Yeah, so I think that's where we have a couple of different channels that we're focused on. So, obviously, within the eCommerce and digital purview, we have our D2C businesses, we have Amazon, our eRetailers. And then, we also have Last Mile. So, obviously, on eCom, going back to the overall financials, and build of that business, it gets very difficult to [inaudible] individual bottles of kombucha. It just overall doesn't work, the economics don't work out. So, traditionally, we sell 12 packs, which again, are quite a bit of product for a consumer who's new to kombucha, or new to Health-Ade, and hasn't tried before. So, what we've done recently is that we built out some sampler packs, so included a couple of different flavors for our different product lines [inaudible] As well as our new Health-Ade plus line, which is our kombucha with additional benefits.Calvin:And so, that's been our primary focus recently in driving new customer acquisition in these sample packs, or variety packs, and we've seen some really good responses mixed with that education which again, via our different channels. So, via paid social, we've tested out a few different things for longer-form content, and driving to landing pages, and that's worked extremely well where you have use [inaudible] Initial tidbits, or insights that you include in the copy in the messaging with the paid social campaigns. And then, driving to the landing page which really fleshes out more of that storytelling piece. And these are all consideration and top of funnel campaigns and tactics, and we've seen really, really strong responses to that. And so, that's been super efficient for us, and seen really good responses.Calvin:And then, at the same time, we also are focusing on... We have our delivery partners in Last Mile, partners like Instacart. And so, with Instacart, and these other channels, you can obviously purchase just one bottle. So, been really leveraging the ad platforms, and some of these emerging platforms as the way to drive trial where the cost to entry, or the barrier to entry is a little bit lower, just because they're just buying one bottle. And so, we've been actively engaging in working with the Instacart ad platform to promote our products on Instacart as well, and really seen some huge gains there, and see that as a really good opportunity to drive trial on individual bottles when sampling isn't an option obviously, currently.Stephanie:All right, so let's talk a bit about launching products. So, you have launched a bunch of new products but also, for the first product maybe in the line versus launching a newer [inaudible] Like you just did with the soda. So, tell me about the differences when a brand is just starting out, trying to get the word out there, and putting out their first product or two versus launching something very different like soda to a market who's maybe expecting just kombucha.Calvin:Yeah. So, I think it really goes back to, I think, overall with the roll out and marketing approach. So, obviously, with a new brand, or really establishing any market space as a whole for a new brand, you're going to go to much wider, you're going to have to go much, much shallower with the content that you want to engage right off the bat because you're trying to drag overall impressions, and touchpoints, and just top of mind awareness for that new product line, or new brand. And you're going to have to go a little bit wider spread with your focus, and your tactics that you're employing, and really going true, true top of funnel brand awareness as opposed to a new product line. With Booch Pop, obviously, this is going to [inaudible] Similar or, if you're drafting off a different category, like at Kind is probably the best example where Kind had it's original nut bar line.Calvin:And then, came out with the clusters, then the granola bars, and came out with a number of different product lines. And so, with that, it's different because once you establish that brand recall and awareness, you're either able to leverage that and target within that specific category, or... I think this is the [inaudible] With Booch Pop, is that even people who might be aware of Health-Ade, or again, maybe they weren't interested in kombucha, or they hadn't tried before, and we've gotten this response to where it's like, "Is it too healthy? Do we want to target some more mass consumers?" We can draft off of that brand persona and establishment, and cache, and either go super targeted within that and say, "Okay, these are the specific audiences that we want to target, and draft, and leverage that brand cache."Calvin:Or, if there's just general awareness, the brand can draft and go into an entirely new segment or audience, and utilize that established brand elements as much as you can. Obviously, finding that right balance and depth that you go is the... End of the day, that's the biggest question but that's, I think, the difference that I've seen in my experience and how that's been incorporated to the roll out for new product lines, and yeah, very much similar story to how that played out at Kind as well.Stephanie:Yep, very cool. So, let's talk logistics a bit. So, you're talking about the cold chain process, and you've got glass bottles. What did it look like when you joined and they want you to build out the eCommerce channel, what did that look like behind the scenes? And what were some of the lessons as you've been going about that?Calvin:Yeah. So, I think right off the bat, when I joined, I guess the biggest thing is that we were utilized... And again, because Health-Ade, like a number of brands, saw huge demand and interest in eCom and direct-to-consumer earlier this year due to the COVID surge, and it was a minimal business. And so, right off the bat, needed to get things rolling forward to meet the increasing consumer demand. So, for the fulfillment itself, really hadn't been a focus for building out what that actual packaging, and refrigeration, and insulation looked like. So, we were just using styrofoam coolers to keep the kombucha cold, and adding some ice packs, and shipping to consumers. So, not the most sustainable, or eco-friendly option, especially as we're increasing volume. So, right off the bat, that was a big focus for us, is really finding, and implementing a sustainable, and eco-friendly liner and insulation option, which thankfully we were able to get in place pretty quickly when I joined a few months ago.Calvin:And so, that was one of the biggest pushes for us, is obviously, just fitting with our brand, and our persona, wanted to make sure we were also being very sustainable, and mindful with how we were actually getting product to consumers. So, that was the biggest thing right off the bat. Currently, we have three different fulfillment warehouses, and so that helps us get to most consumers in two day... Or, 95% of the country in two days. But it still poses challenges because there's still that refrigeration requirement, so that limits the number of days because we don't want a product obviously waiting in trucks over the weekend or anything like that, so it limits the number of days that we can actually ship.Calvin:And as consumers as we know these days get more and more... Their expectations for delivery times increases. There's an opportunity to decrease the delays in delivery times with their products, and so, that's the current focus, is how can we reduce from two days to even one day, or even next day delivery? Especially, in key markets So, that's really the journey over the last six months that we've been in. And obviously, it's been a lot [inaudible] In six months, and I got a lot more to go here going into next year.Stephanie:Yeah, and how's the forecasting process been? Because I mean, the world's just been so crazy, and especially, leaning into eCommerce right when things are crazy, how do you go about forecasting things so that you have what you need, you don't go out of stock, you've got your variety packs? I mean, it sounds like you've brought a lot of new things to the brand but that's a lot of new challenges that'll come with it.Calvin:Yeah, you hit it spot on. So yeah, especially, we have no historicals, no base line to go off of, so that's... Our team has been hyper focused in really nailing down, and narrowing in that forecast, especially, we added new SKUs to the mix. So, it's really been... Thankfully, our warehouse and 3PL partners have been super, super helpful in partnering with us, in maybe over-stocking based on previous demand to ensure that we have sufficient inventory, especially if we have an upcoming promotional push, or we're leaning more on any of our acquisition campaigns. If we were just going off of historicals, obviously, if we were selling a couple hundred cases a month a year ago, to then change and go to a few thousand cases, even alone, that's a huge increase. At first glance, it'd be very tough selling with a lot of partners, or 3PLs that would take the traditional growth and forecasting route.Calvin:So, with that, they've been really helpful in loading, and carrying more inventory than needed to anticipate any increases. But then, on top of that, it's really staying close to the vest and staying ery, very... Being very diligent with how we're tracking it. So, we built our reporting to track by location, by SKU, on a daily basis for inventory levels. And then, if we see any risk, working quickly to turnaround shipments to get out the door, and get us back in stock. And so, it takes a village to say the least, and thankfully, it's just again, having the right partners, and really having the team be hyper diligent, and stay close to it, has really made a huge difference.Stephanie:Yeah, I've got it. So, I'm guessing you've also had a lot of experiences when it comes to figuring out what platform you want to choose, or re-platforming at the brands that you've been at in the past. How did you do that with Health-Ade, and how do you figure out what platform's going to work, and what kind of features you need, and how to make it so it'll convert?Calvin:Yeah. So yeah, the platform side's been interesting because even that's evolved pretty extensively. So, for me, at the end of the day, you want to have scalability, and also enough customization, especially early on, that you can really make the full use of any platform. Calvin:Long term, you want a turnkey Platform that again, can scale, integrates well with most of their channels, apps you need but you don't want a very dedicated, or customized CMS that will require a lot of heavy lift, or work whether it's on the internal team, or external party because the cost and hours are going to quickly snowball from there. So, I think that's where for us, again with a limited team, or smaller team, and especially early in our journey, that, that customization, scalability is really the biggest piece for us in deciding with platform we ultimately landed on.Stephanie:Got it. And what kind of metrics are you looking at after you... You've got the platform up and running, what kind of things do you look at to make sure things are going well, and how do you figure out what you want to maybe test maybe, and see how to even optimize it further?Calvin:Yeah. And that's a big thing for us. Obviously, there's a couple of components there. So, there's the Platform A, but then there's the overall site design, and architecture. And so, that's the biggest piece that we still have in our journey, we previously were on WooCommerce with WordPress as the CMS. And so, a lot of that is legacy content, and pages, and code that's been built there that we've evolved and tweaked it over time, before we had the eCommerce team. So, that's where we're making... We're flying the plane as we continue to tweak it, and build it, but really, that's the biggest opportunity, is that there's only so much that a platform can do without the actual highly functional, seamless UX experience for consumers. Super engaging navigation and content, that's still needed in order to best leverage and utilize whatever platform you end on.Calvin:And so, that's the next piece, is we've seen... We continually are looking at our conversion rates, our balance rates, our time on site, our click throughs, and the time to conversion. And that's really what we're holding as our key metrics here, to measure true success of the website before we get into consumer journey, lifetime value, and things of that nature, just the overall site experience. So, that's the biggest thing that we're trying to address, and improve now over the next few months, now that have the right platform in place. So, working with an overall site redesign, and site build, to really bring our full digital experience for the website to match our brand persona, and really bring that up to speed, and make a viable experience for consumers that really will sustain us long term.Stephanie:Got it. Are there any changes that come to mind that have made the biggest impact around the consumer journey, or seeing those conversions increase? Even if it's maybe starting to introduce that variety pack. What do you think the impacts have come from this year?Calvin:I think site load times, honestly. So, it's just something as simple as that. Obviously, a second in the digital age, or a D2C experience is a life time. So, that was a big focus just recently, just reducing page load times, reducing font sizes, page weights, image weights, all these things. And almost impacting how the page are loading. Making sure that add to cart buttons are loading first, as opposed to maybe copy further down the page. So, just those small tweaks have huge impacts just right off the bat. And so, that's really what comes to mind right off the bat, is just making sure the time from landing to checkout is as seamless and as quick possible because you want to make it as easy for customers to checkout and give as little reasons as possible for consumers to bounce. And so, I think reducing the page load times has been crucial, as well as testing out... Again, just where we're driving new customers to.Calvin:So, we've updated our collections pages where we drive a lot of our traffic, and just updating the layout, and the overall structure, adding add to cart buttons on the collections page. Again, just to remove another step needed to checkout. So, those minor tweaks are really what we're focused on now until we completely revamp the website as a whole, and thankfully, they've made some significant improvements, and had a marked impact so far.Stephanie:Very cool. So, where do you see the world of eCommerce and D2C brands headed in the next year or two?Calvin:Yeah, I mean, if I had $1,000,000, and wish I can do and embed on that because yeah, I mean, if anybody told me that in 2020 we would see eCommerce penetration go from the five, 6% to... I think the last figure that I saw was 11, 12% just in 2020 alone. Yeah, I would have said, "You're joking." So, who knows at this point? But at this point, I don't think we're going back. I think this is the new standard for new consumers. I think that's what I've seen, is that every consumer, or most consumers that have either been forced, or shifted purchase behaviors to online, especially in the grocery space since food and beverages still being the lagger in terms of under indexing versus other categories in eCommerce penetration, and that's changed tremendously over this year. So, I think that the consumers are going to stick with that trend.Calvin:So, a lot of consumers that have tried grocery delivery for the first time will likely stick with that over the next couple of years. I think it's going to be more... I think the biggest thing is that it's just going to become more seamless with... Especially, on the brand side with how they view channels, I guess. So, instead of having this prior mindset where it's like, okay, there's brick and mortar, then there's this eCommerce thing, and they're separate channels, you need to be mindful of the entire customer journey because yeah, you might have a consumer that you have a programmatic ad that they get started with, and then, they're purchasing in store. Or, they see a programmatic ad, and they're purchasing on last delivery, or maybe they're in store, or buying a pick up order, or maybe they're ordering via an SMS channel.Calvin:So, I think it's just becoming more holistic with it's not a matter of channel separating but having a true, unified vision of that customer journey, and approaching that as such as a company, and a brand, and that's very much what we're thinking off as we're building out our collective efforts at Health-Ade.Stephanie:All right. So, how are you guys prioritizing retail versus eCommerce? Where are you investing right now? Are you pulling back a bit from retail, and learning more into D2C, or how are you thinking about that?Calvin:Yeah. So, I think that goes in line with my previous comments. So, we're absolutely still supporting our retails channels since as I mentioned earlier, that is where the bulk of our business is currently but we're also changing in how we're activating and supporting those retailers. So, maybe traditionally, or previously, we might be supporting retailers in on shelf, or POS material, instead we're running geo-targeted display ads, or paid social ads, or running a programmatic display campaign to support a specific retailer. So again, just leveraging more digital components as well as supporting the last deliver, or Last Mile platforms like Instacarts that still... Obviously, the revenue in volume is being pulled through the retail stores.Calvin:So, it's definitely not a shift of focus, or priority, or in an investment, it change in terms of how that support is played out, I guess. So, that's, I think really been the biggest change for us. And then, on top of that, obviously [inaudible] that support from the eCommerce piece, and how that plays into the mix. What I've also seen at previous companies, and a number of white papers, and research that I've seen, is that any eCommerce advertising, or digital advertising, it will drive eCommerce, and it has obviously a huge impact on eCommerce specific sales but a lot of the impact is actually seen in your traditional brick and mortar, or retail sales. And so, having that lens, and that... If you're spending a dollar for eCommerce advertising, it doesn't mean that entire pack is going to eCom, it is also driving the overall brand awareness, and retail sales.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, which is definitely a tricky thing to measure, and then try and convince maybe [crosstalk] It's having brand awareness, and it's also driving those retail sales but I can't exactly track it right now.Calvin:It's the age old debate. Yeah, I've been there all too many times. That's a fun one.Stephanie:All right. So, with a couple minutes left, let's move over to the lightning round. The lightning round is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This is where I'm going to ask you a question, and you have a minute or less to answer.Calvin:Oh, man.Stephanie:Are you ready, Calvin?Calvin:I think as ready as I'll ever be, so let's do it.Stephanie:All right. What's the best piece of advice you've ever gotten?Calvin:Best piece of advice, I guess is... Again, don't look back. Take ownership, and own your mistakes. I think you can't shy aware from your mistakes, just make sure you don't make them again.Stephanie:I like that, that's a good one. What's up next on your reading list?Calvin:Next on my reading list, I would say right now, I actually got a book that I've been meaning to get to for a while. It's called The Sympathizers, it's a historical fiction novel set after the Vietnam War, in the US. So, it's one of those that I've had on my list for a while, and it's about time I finally get into it.Stephanie:Sounds good, I'll have to check that out. What do you not understand today that you wish you did?Calvin:I would say the biggest thing that I understand today that I wish I did was just the impact to that eCommerce operations and fulfillment has, and in total business. I've said this, I think, in the past speaking to other people but if I knew then what I knew now, I would have gone back and got an MBA in logistics and supplier chains, just with how much of an impact that has on eCommerce. And again, going into it, had no idea how crucial that is to a viable eCom business.Stephanie:Got it. That's good, you pivoted the question which now I think I want to ask going forward because you took it in the route of what do you understand now, that you didn't understand that you wish you did. So, I like that. That's a new question I'm going to have to add in.Stephanie:So, if you were to have a podcast, what would it be about, and who would your first guest be?Calvin:Oh. I would say it would probably be about pop culture in... I guess pop culture and entertainment in the '90s, and my first guest would definitely be Conan O'Brien, I think just because in general I love just talking about pop culture, and entertainment in the '90s, and Conan O'Brien was one of... It still is absolutely one of my favorite late night hosts, and his podcast has been one of my favorites, and it's been a good one to have a hefty playlist for his podcast episodes to get through the past few months.Stephanie:That's a good one. All right, and then, the last one, what one thing will have the biggest impact on eCommerce in the next year?Calvin:Biggest thing I think will be, I guess technology at the end of the day but then, also, just again, how consumers are changing their shopping behavior. So, I've said this in other forums but previously, my biggest expectation is that integrating technology into just the kitchen and the pantry, again, speaking more on food and beverage since that's been my space, my territory. I think that really seems like the opportunity where you want... Especially, if consumers are shipping more to eCom and digital delivery, having that be less of a top of mind thing, I think, and making it more efficient and removing any legwork on the consumer side will be beneficial in the long run. So, whether that's scales that you're placing products on, so that your subscription knows when you're almost out of your coffee, and you need a refill, or anticipating based on your purchase behaviors, I think that is probably the next trend.Calvin:Especially, on the consumable side. That's, again, just going to remove pain points in consumer's journeys, especially when you're getting it delivered to home, that's really the biggest one at the end of the day.Stephanie:Cool, I like that. That is a really good, unique answer that we have not had so far.Calvin:Oh, great.Stephanie:I like it. All right, Calvin. Well, this has been very fun. Thanks for coming on and sharing all your eCommerce knowledge. Where can people learn more about you, and Health-Ade?Calvin:Yeah, you can find me on LinkedIn, Calvin Lammers. And if you want to check out more about Health-Ade, and read some more about that education content that I mentioned, you can go to health-ade.com.Stephanie:Thanks so much.Calvin:Thank you.

In recent years, UrbanStems has grown from operating its online flower ordering and delivery business in a few markets to processing and delivering orders from coast to coast. It’s a DTC success story, but it was by no means an easy road to get to where the company is now. Scaling is one of the most challenging parts of running a business. Where do you allocate your resources? How do you enter new markets? And what do you do when disaster strikes in a way that could topple your business?Seth Goldman had to answer those questions and more when he took over as the CEO of UrbanStems in 2017. On this episode of Up Next in Commerce, he spilled the tea on everything he learned along the way. Seth explains how to navigate through the process of scaling, finding bottlenecks in your operations, and breaks down the ways to look at ROI when trying to break into a new market. Plus, he gives some insight into best practices when adding headcount. Main Takeaways:Finding the Bottleneck: There is a tendency for everyone to think everything is the problem, so it’s important to use data to prove that you have an actual bottleneck rather than anecdotal experiences. With the data as a guide, you can zero in on the actual bottlenecks and fix them at the source.Tipping The Scale: There are various hurdles to scaling. Doing it successfully is about finding the right level of balance when it comes to allocating resources. Are the current processes failing? Is there new technology that can create efficiencies? Or maybe you should be allocating headcount in a different way. Answering those questions is the best way to determine how to stimulate sustainable growth.Welcome To [Enter City Here]: When expanding your business into new markets, understanding the ROI of moving into those cities is the first step. It’s not enough to figure out if there are potential customers. Other factors such as supply chain, cultural considerations, and non-financial benefits also need to be taken into account.For an in-depth look at this episode, check out the full transcript below. Quotes have been edited for clarity and length.---Up Next in Commerce is brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. Respond quickly to changing customer needs with flexible Ecommerce connected to marketing, sales, and service. Deliver intelligent commerce experiences your customers can trust, across every channel. Together, we’re ready for what’s next in commerce. Learn more at salesforce.com/commerce---Transcript:Stephanie:Hey everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Up Next In Commerce. This is your host, Stephanie Postles, co-Founder at mission.org. Today, on the show, we have Seth Goldman, the CEO of UrbanStems. Seth, welcome.Seth:Thank you, Stephanie. Great to be here.Stephanie:Yeah, I'm excited to have you. For anyone who does not know UrbanStems, can you tell me a bit about it?Seth:Sure. UrbanStems is a six-year-old old company that is the premier provider of direct to consumer florals.Stephanie:That's awesome, and how long have you been with the company?Seth:I've been at the company for about three and a half years.Stephanie:Cool. What brought you to UrbanStems and what was your background before?Seth:Yeah, so it was a person actually that brought me, the founder, Ajay Kori is a dear friend of mine, and we both worked at a company called Quidsi together, which was acquired by Amazon back in 2011, and we remained very close friends from that point on. I went off to a company called HelloFresh. He went off to found UrbanStems, and we reunited in 2017.Stephanie:That's great. What did you do at HelloFresh?Seth:Yeah, I was the CEO of the US business, helping to grow HelloFresh from its near infancy in the US to a much larger business, and it was a wild ride and I had a lot of fun doing it.Stephanie:That's great. It seems like a good company to get a lot of lessons from, to bring to UrbanStems, like similar problems maybe, or things to tackle.Seth:Absolutely, both in terms of the apps, specific product, a perishable product, and a complicated supply chain, as well as I'd say the softer skills in terms of scaling a business, scaling a team and the challenges that come along with that.Stephanie:Very cool. When you came into UrbanStems, what was going on back in 2017, and how has it changed since?Seth:Yeah. When I came on board, it was great. Ajay brought me in and asked me to help beef up the operations of the company. I'd say, as a consumer, the biggest difference between now and then is that you could only get UrbanStems in a few select cities across the US at that point, and we made a big decision to go nationwide in early 2018, and that's really helped us scale the business since then. Although, we really still love our city delivery method that we still have in New York and DC. It creates that really intimate relationship with the customer and their recipient. We hope to be able to do more of that going forward.Stephanie:Tell me a bit about how do you pick cities? Of course, if it's started in a certain city, you're probably going to launch there, but how would you go about picking which cities to start in and having that city method that you're talking about, is developing a good relationship in that city?Seth:It's a pretty simple exercise of figuring out which cities are likely to have enough revenue and an ROI on that city to get in there. We believe there probably around 30 cities that we could identify today that likely makes sense. In terms of which cities we'd prioritize next, we would really rely on data. That data would help us understand what would be the revenue opportunity, how quickly we might get there. From there, we would also layer on supply chain and we would try to figure out if that city was easier or more complex from a supply chain standpoint. Finally, we'd overlay brand. We'd try to understand if there were any idiosyncrasies of that city that made it more or less attractive. Then finally, we might say, does that city have any sort of non-financial strategic importance to our business?Stephanie:Oh, great. Okay. This is a very interesting topic that I actually have not talked to many people on the show, so I want to double click into all of those, if you're happy to go there with me.Seth:Sure, let's go.Stephanie:All right. When you're picking your cities, you're talking about developing which ones have an ROI, and then of course, looking into a bunch of data for rolling out to the next cities. How do you go about developing which cities will have a good ROI?Seth:Yeah. The great news is that we have data to show what revenue we have in those cities currently. We would have to do a deep dive analysis of what zip codes we thought we could actually deliver to, depending on the city, if it's a city that we could get in with bike messengers, as we currently do in New York and DC, or if it's a city that would force us to rely exclusively on cars, which is not a major concern although we really love our brand promise of delivering via bike where we can.Stephanie:That's fun.Seth:Yeah, we would then use analytics to understand where we stand in each city revenue versus where we think we might be able to get to, where we start to have to look at some proxy data. For example, Google can help us understand what we believe our penetration in that city is versus a benchmark say of New York or DC, where we currently have our strongest brand recognition. That could give us some guidance as to whether, if we're doing X dollars of revenue, do we think if we jump in, we can increase that by 25%, 50% or more than 100%? Then we have to partner with the marketing team to understand what sort of a marketing effort would be required to get us there within a year or 18 months to break even, which is sort of, not a hard rule, but it's sort of a general proxy of what we're going to be looking for.Stephanie:Okay. When it comes to that marketing effort, what kind of channels do you look for, especially when you're launching in a new city where maybe you're not well-known and it's like, this seems like a city maybe similar to DC, but we've never been there before? What kind of things do you explore to get those new customers and brand awareness?Seth:We have to probably devote certain on the ground marketing campaigns. It could be as simple as going to street fairs, it could be that we would take some sort of local radio or other sort of top of funnel awareness advertising out. Each city though, is really going to be unique. I think that's something that we've learned, even just having New York and DC, we see small differences in the average order value. We see small differences even between, say Manhattan and Brooklyn, in terms of the percentage of flowers versus plants that the consumers purchase. So, we'll have to do some research that helps us understand the consumer and then that would help us figure out which marketing channels would make sense. But we almost certainly would be more comfortable getting aggressive in awareness marketing when we jump into a new city, because the return on that investment should be pretty strong, given that when we get into a city, the conversion rate, we would expect to be higher on our ecommerce platform.Stephanie:Yeah. That's cool. I can also imagine if you have bike deliveries, like if they had the backpack with your logo and beautiful flowers sticking out of it. That in and of itself could be a great marketing tactic to spread word of mouth.Seth:Absolutely. That is an entire romantic vision is true, except hopefully for the flowers sticking out the back, because they should be in contained packaging.Stephanie:Oh yeah. I guess I would just buy all over the place if they're just sticking out. Huh.Seth:But we do have branded everything for our couriers, t-shirts and vests, the coveted sweatshirts and hoodies. In fact, one of the downfalls of our sort of head of delivery was that he designed a hoodie that was too well loved that, not to accuse our corporate team, but they started taking them in numbers that they shouldn't have so we had to place an extra order. It really is the most comfortable hoodie.Seth:But it accomplishes two goals. The first, as we discussed is, it's really nice branding and advertising for the company. The second is it helps make these employees in these remote locations feel more part of our broader and greater team and brand.Stephanie:Yeah. I love that. Are there any other on the ground methods like that, that you're experimenting with or that you are hopeful of to promote word of mouth in maybe a new and different way?Seth:It's interesting in, especially the last nine months, we probably pulled back on a lot of that for obvious reasons. I think that it's an area where we would experiment, but I think you also have to be careful because it's hard to measure the effectiveness of that spend it takes, not just monetary resources, but really time. One of the things that I noted when I came on board in 2017 is that my city managers were being asked to do a lot of these in-person events. We hadn't really thought through how much of their time was being taken and how to think about them as an operations manager versus a marketing manager when we had a lot of work to do to scale the operations of the business. I think people just have to be thoughtful and careful about the KPIs that they're going to measure people against.Seth:But the people who are responsible for budget, but also the people whose time is going to be taken during these events. The good news is that the people love doing the events. These small scale events were very popular for the staff that, even after I told them that they should pull back, I found out months later, they were still doing them because they enjoyed them, but then they would complain that they didn't have time for other things. It did have to lead to some alignment meetings.Stephanie:Yeah. That's a really good point. So, thinking about the next piece that you mentioned was layering on supply chain when rolling out into new cities. It seems really difficult of course, with fresh items. So, how do you all go about thinking about that in a new city and building out a good supply chain that makes sure the flowers don't just die in a warehouse or something?Seth:A very sort of blocking and tackling for our goods is that you have to have a refrigerator. It has to be something that you have confidence is going to maintain temperature at around 35 degrees. And you, say very simple things like just like you're developing any real estate, make sure you give enough time to build it out, so you're not under pressure, because it's hard to come back from that if you're forcing yourself to open up on January 1, but you just can't have the refrigerator installed before then, you're going to fail. Making sure you understand your lead times. But for our business, I'd say the most important thing is understanding the notes in our networks. We have a larger facility in the Greater DC Area that helps service our New York and DC same day delivery locations.Seth:We have to think through as we branch out to more cities, if so for example, Philadelphia, we could certainly service from the same Maryland facility with limited additional CapEx, with limited additional complexity added to our supply chain. As we think to the West Coast, or as we think to, say the big populations in Texas or in the upper Midwest, if we have a facility nearby, there may be synergies where we can pull product from there and deliver it to a local facility. I would say that the farther we get from our home base, in terms of miles, in terms of being three hours and three time zones behind, you have to just ... it's hard to model it out on paper, but you have to start to acknowledge that the difficulties, things that could get lost in translation. You go from having everyone on the same eight hour, 9:00 to 5:00, to only overlapping for five hours, that can just sort of add strain to the systems.Seth:If you're going to go to the West coast, have you hired someone, did you decide that you're going to spend three months having them on the East Coast, training up, learning your culture before you send them to the West Coast, or you're going to take a gamble and just hire them on the West Coast and through more Zoom calls and maybe someone flying to California, try to build them into the culture and the brand of the company? I think those are really important decisions that don't sound like supply chain decisions, but ultimately, really help you down the line when someone is going to have to make a lot of executive calls that will impact your supply chain and will impact your ability to be successful or not on a day-to-day and week-to-week basis.Stephanie:Yeah. I think that's so important around building culture and a team. I mean, especially right now, where everything is digital and companies are still having to hire and find the right people, and it's kind of hard over Zoom. I've interviewed some people over zoom and it's like, you don't really know if you know them or how many notes they have in front of them, or what's really going on. How do you guys go about building a relationship and hiring? I think earlier you mentioned having this connection economy, where everyone's on digital tools, but people still want to connect in the real world, but maybe you can't right now. How do you think about that with teams and cultures and hiring new people?Seth:Yeah, that's a great question. We actually have hired probably about half a dozen people since the lockdowns were initiated and since our corporate staff for the vast majority of folks have not gone into the office. I'd say that we had one key advantage, which was that, before March, we did have a team that was split between New York and DC, so it was not uncommon for us to be on video conferencing. That transition was, to some degree, at least natural. In terms of the hiring process, I'd say the hardest part, and one that we definitely still have not right, and I'll be honest, for some small company, we didn't have it right necessarily before the pandemic was the onboarding. That the team though has started to make headway, we've gotten our swag. We've actually pulled it from the various physical locations and people are getting a care package now when they are in their first week at the company.Seth:I make sure to reach out to new hires during their first week to just welcome them with a warm email and then tell them when they're feeling no longer overwhelmed that we'll have a 30 or 45 minute call with no specific agenda other than really getting to know each other. I can try to sprinkle a few of my thoughts around company mission and values into those calls. Seth:I think for hiring managers and/or senior executives out there, I would also say, it's not just you making sure you know them. If you have someone that you really like, how are they getting to know you and feeling it on both sides? That you have an easier time convincing them to come on board.Stephanie:Yeah. Are there any best tips that you recommend to make sure that the candidates get to know you because, especially over Zoom, it seems like people are always talking over each other, even with ... I was talking earlier about internet, the video's not on, I had to turn it off. Is there anything that you guys practice to make sure that, not only are you getting to know the candidates, but also that they feel comfort with you and can ask questions and feel confident about that?Seth:Yeah, so we do as much as possible try to do video rather than just phone call interviews. I guess you could make arguments that that's better or worse, but it certainly allows people to respond to facial expressions, queues when it looks like someone is about to speak so you can try not to talk over them. I do reserve the last 15 minutes of every interview to allow the interviewee to ask me questions. That's both for them, and also, I secretly am looking to see how prepared someone is by the quality and thoughtfulness of the questions that they ask. If anyone is local, I will try to meet with them in person. We have to be thoughtful about that. Let's say we have two candidates and one is in New York and one is in DC, and we haven't crossed this bridge yet, but how do we make sure there's no implicit bias that we're pushing for the person that we met in person? But we try to have a variety of interviewers for each role. I think we've done a pretty good job with that.Stephanie:Okay, cool. Thinking through bringing on new employees, the first thing that's coming to my mind is scaling companies, something you've had quite a bit of success with around HelloFresh and now UrbanStems. I wanted to hear a little bit about how you think about scaling companies, whether it's at UrbanStems or HelloFresh or anything in the past that you've worked on.Seth:Yeah. I think what I try to do is, when I do have a moment to step back, is look at each function within the business, or I look what our plan is, where are we expected to get to over the next year? Whether that's our revenue mark, whether that's improvement along other KPIs or important metrics, and I try to pair that against each function. Is each function at a point where they can make that leap without any additional people? Are they at a point where they can make that leap but they'll need to improve just process? Do they need technology investments in their function in order to be more successful? We are nowhere near perfect on this, but each year we've gotten better. Our planning process is in the sort of June/July timeframe, of talking through what that plan is, and each team trying to think through what they will need to be successful there.Seth:I would say that stepping back where you run into problems, and it's sort of dual-edged sword, is if you put cash out and investments ahead of growth, you can get yourself in trouble. But you can also get yourself in trouble if you put growth ahead of investment. It is a dangerous game. I think, when it comes to hiring people we try to be thoughtful. It's also, what level are you hiring at? That's something you'll often hear me say to the team if they ask for another resource. To me, it's most important that we get that right level right. Very different to hire an associate versus even someone with two or three years of experience where you're saying, we just could not be successful, we hired someone just out of college. My next question will almost assuredly be, why?Seth:And managing the specific work that someone needs to do against the experience that you're saying is required. You don't want to hire someone too senior to do junior level work. They won't find it satisfying. There is such a thing as overqualified. Then on the flip side, you have to be careful what you can expect of someone more junior and what level of accountability and ownership you can place on them. I think, to me, that's the most important thing, is making sure you're hiring it to the right level, that everyone is aligned, that this role is needed. The reality is, in almost any startup, you're going to have a whole slew of resources that are not yet hired that people think are necessary, and trying to at least agree on alignment on when those might get prioritized.Seth:If something comes up that accelerates something, that happens too. That can throw a wrench in plans and you have to walk people through that that's happening and have conversations, well, hey, how did this new role cut in line ahead of the others? That can be hard, but you have to do it.Stephanie:I've definitely seen that in the past. At previous companies I've been at, I worked in finance, and every team always wanted headcount. Everyone always had a reason and were pretty good at justifying why they need those people. How do you go about spotting those opportunities of like, this is an area that obviously needs investment and I see growth coming after that? How do you actually think through finding the opportunities when they seem like they're pretty hard to spot? What's holding what up to create growth or to create exponential growth in the future?Seth:Yeah. I would say that you're sort of hiring for two reasons. One is growth, like you said, we're truly, there's a revenue or a profit or a customer experience opportunity that's not yet ... We can't go after because we don't have someone on the team. The other is that we're, I don't want to say things are crumbling, but sort of this more fixing the foundational type hires that you have a critical process that's not being executed the way you want. That's where you have to start to lean in and understand, is that a process technology or a resource issue? Once you get comfort that that's a resource issue, from my standpoint, typically that's a pretty easy hire, because, unless you have invested in something that's causing friction, that itself is not worth investing in, that hire will pay for themselves financially, because they're going to unblock something that, that is important to be unblocked.Seth:That's how I get comfortable with those kinds of hires. On the revenue side, if it's creating something new, you can run ROI models. Sometimes you can do those in your head. Sometimes you put them down on paper. Then for other functions, sometimes it is a little bit of taking a risk. For example, it was about a year or 18 months ago that we decided we needed a stronger social presence. We weren't sure exactly what that meant financially, but we brought someone on board on our brand director, Megan's team. After a few months, we started to really see results. We were really impressed. We managed to, in the last 18 months, five X on our Instagram following, not that that's the be all and end all of KPIs. Then for the sort of CFO in me, we started to see revenue, directly attributable revenue follow that.Seth:I think the other thing that, this is where managers have to do, is they have to sometimes take a risk. They say, there's a resource I'm really asking for, this is what I think it will return, and when they have something pan out, they are able to probably come to that next meeting with an ask with a little more confidence themselves, and with the, me again wearing my CFO hat, and me having more confidence to say yes to that opportunity.Stephanie:That's cool. I like you wearing your CFO hat. I appreciate that with a background in finance. You just mentioned, which I'm now I'm sure a lot of people are like, well, tell me how you grew your social, because that is an avenue that obviously a lot of brands are relying on and it's becoming even more important with the ability to click and buy on social, or at least it's headed in that direction. What did you guys do to grow your social presence?Seth:Yeah, so the very first thing we did is, like I mentioned, hire a dedicated resource, someone who spends probably 75% plus of her time thinking through our social channels and how we can become more influential there. Second is, once we started to see some results there, we added a SaaS software platform that helped us assess which visuals were going to be more engaging for our customer base. We did, though still have conversations, interestingly enough, the photos that I'd say I prefer from a brand perspective, those with people in them significantly underperform those of just flowers.Stephanie:Oh, interesting. This is a piece of tech that you guys were utilizing to figure out which ones like, which images would you best?Seth:Yeah. I actually don't know how precise it is, but it certainly helped us. We didn't need that to tell us that people underperformed flowers, but even just different variants of a similar image, they were able to pretty convincingly predict which one was going to outperform. Obviously we are betting on engagement, at least these measurable engagement statistics mattering. I think one of the hardest things in social is understanding what matters and what doesn't. Like I said, having our Instagram following at 150,000 versus at 30,000, where it was, we think that is directionally very good, is that, can I quantify what that means for our company? No. Will we continue to push to increase our reach. Absolutely. Are we seeing that increased reach is translating into direct revenue? Yes. Is that our only goal? No.Seth:Do we know the relationship between directly attributable revenue and non-attributable revenue? No, we have no idea if that even is the same month over month. But these investments that we made in a resource, training her, we actually had some, at one point also gave a green light to bring on an intern so that our full-time hire could manage up and start to add strategy to how she was thinking through, not just executing every day, and that's been great. We talked about that. How much is this going to cost? What is this person going to do? It was a pretty quick decision. But because it wasn't a ton of money, but even there, what I think is still critical is that someone comes to the table with that analysis done that's thoughtful, and that they seek to justify any investment, whether it's $100,000 or $1 million or $1,000.Seth:It just gets people in the discipline habit of understanding that money is going to be invested or not across teams, and it's not ... there's not an infinite amount of it. Stephanie:That's very cool. Now that your social person is able to start managing up, what kind of tactics or strategies are they hoping to implement over the next couple of years? What are they saying they believe in, or they want to try or test out?Seth:Yeah. I think a big buzz word in social is influencer. One of the things I've said is, if Oprah came out and endorsed UrbanStems, I don't know if that would even help us because our website would probably crash. We'd be out of stock on inventory in the next 20 minutes, and we'd enrage all of our good customers who came back and sold out. So, we have to think through how we would even execute that, but the team is bullish that, that matters. So, we're trying to think through that. I certainly also believe in content. The team believes in that. So, expect the we'll invest more in content. It's no secret that video content outperforms static photo content. So, looking at that, but it's also no surprise to anyone that videos are a lot more expensive to make than taking photos.Seth:You have to figure out what your budget is. You have to still be able to test very scrappily. I still will always believe in that, some of the best content is always going to be UGC. Some of the best content is going to be filmed in an iPhone, or for suckers like me, Samsung Galaxies. It's about mixing that with the more professionally created content, figuring out where and when to spend bigger, both from a photography standpoint and from a video. For example, the team did a wonderful job. This Thanksgiving, we have a dedicated lining page, which features video for the first time on the site.Stephanie:Oh nice.Seth:I'm really excited about that, testing it and testing more of that. With everything digital, the best thing is that you can always AB test that. Even if you spent a ton of money on something, I still encourage you to AB test it, to ensure that it's working. If you want to AB tested at 80% with the video and 20% control without so that you get more out there, that's fine. It'll just take a little longer to get the results of that test.Stephanie:Yeah, that's great. I appreciate you letting us look into the future with you and your team. I'm sure that you're probably like, ah, I don't want people bringing this up anymore. That's so three years ago. However, it came to my mind when you were talking about Oprah and if she were to endorse you guys and you could sell out, and their website will crash. It brings me back to, of course what happened in 2017 that I think a lot of people could learn from, who are listening, around, I think there was like a Valentine's day snafu where you had too many orders and the website maybe crashed or something. Tell me a little bit about that and what you guys have ... what actually happened, what are the details on it? I know you weren't there, but what are the details? What have you learned from it? And what do things look like today?Seth:Yeah. No, I wasn't, but I don't think that's the sort of important part of the story. I think, in three short words, we messed up. We did not fully understand how we were going to execute the holiday. It was unfortunate that it was on Valentine's day, which is one of these two days a year that everyone looks to flower companies to sort of solve their buying need, which is to get flowers delivered. We were better at marketing than we were at executing that year. We learned a lot. I think that that's the most important thing, which is we learned that we needed a more sophisticated plan. That plan needed to be backed by data. To be honest, this is why I came in. This is why Ajay asked me to come into the business, which was to help figure it out for the next year.Seth:The first thing I did was I talked to people. I got the stories. I started sharing those stories around to make sure that they matched with what people thought went wrong. I started to look at data, and data helped me craft a plan. One thing that I actually think I did really well is that we had the data and we had the plan, and we just kept going over the plan. I think that is one of those things that, for people who would like to move quickly, can infuriate you. It's infuriated me at times. The number of times that I think we had to go over the plan or that we went over it was well into the double digits, just reviewing and reviewing, but we were successful and it wasn't just that we fixed everything from the previous year.Seth:In fact, we had to make changes that had nothing to do with people making mistakes. We had just pushed too many orders into certain physical facilities than we could handle. Our tech had not been robustly tested to meet the peak needs by a combination of looking at data and incorporating feedback from people who had gone through it. We were able to create a plan that was, again, based in numbers and efficiency metrics, and a realistic execution, still stretched by all means. We did not pull back. But to the credit of Ajay, he brought me in, and he gave me the green light to bring in some additional resources, which I did. We did some new things. We delivered for the first time in the company's history via a third party parcel carrier that allowed us to take orders that we otherwise wouldn't have been able to take.Seth:We had an on-time rate of about 98% to 99%. So, it was a nice reversal from the previous year. The way we phrase it with the team is, it's three and a half years ago, so it's, we don't dwell on it. But we do remember it, and we remember it as a way of motivating ourselves to make sure that our plans have been vetted, thought through, are based in data and have been shared with the team well enough in advance so they feel confident in their ability to execute them.Stephanie:Yep. What are some of the biggest data points that you looked at? When you were coming in or when you reviewed what actually happened, what were some of the biggest things that stood out where you were like, oh, was it the website crashing because it was the tech stack? Was it the supply chain? What specific things were the biggest contributors that maybe any new company can learn from of like, oh, if I'm setting up a similar type business, I need to look for this, this and this. If Oprah decides to come out and give me a shout out.Seth:Yeah. And Oprah, if you're listening, we will still take the shout out.Stephanie:Yeah, send it our way.Seth:But I think the challenge was, when I got ... everyone thought it was everything. It was really important to help people compartmentalize. It actually brought me back to a course in business school. I feel like, in many respects, I was one of the only people, one of the only ones of my friends who actually learned something in business. I remember taking an operations course and it talked about a factory that made, I forget if it was chocolates or chairs, it almost doesn't matter, and they said it was an assembly line and it took a minute to make the first chocolate. The chocolate had to go through, it doesn't even matter, let's call it six steps that each took 10 seconds, and it said, how many chocolates can you make in an hour? I got it wrong.Seth:I said, well, you can make 60. It takes a minute to make each chocolate. It turns out that there were six, like I said, six steps, each were 10 seconds. So, you can actually make six a minute, or 360 an hour. My mind was blown. It was really cool to figure out how an assembly works, what throughput is. I went to a Chipotle just to observe it in action, to find out what the bottleneck was and to figure out actually how a company like Chipotle does an amazing job at lunchtime. It's actually the cashier who typically is the bottleneck. So, you can see they add an extra cashier. Sometimes it's the first person who has to do both your burrito and the meat. So, you'll see they have an extra person who just does the meat. If you ever want to understand operations one-on-one in action, go to a Chipotle at peak time.Stephanie:Oh, that's good. I'll be looking at police so differently now.Seth:What really I just had to understand, and what was clear to me is they hadn't really done that kind of analysis to look at throughput, how many orders can be packed out. We also have to ... people kept telling you what the bottleneck is. The bottleneck is basically where your business chokes, what's the slowest part of your operation. People kept telling me things that ... and then I would say, well, how long does it take to do this? And I would write down the answer, and the numbers they gave me did not match with it being a bottleneck, which either meant that it wasn't the bottleneck, or that it took a lot longer than what they thought.Seth:The key thing was keep digging, keep trying to understand, is it ... because at the end of the day, the math will be the truth that you can use. But if your assumption is based on faulty math, then it's just garbage math. So, you have to look at the operation in action and you have to understand, so for example, with us printing out these custom note cards, whereas it's the note that you wanted for your mother for Mother's Day, right? That's what makes every UrbanStems order unique, besides the fact that you get to pick the bouquet you want and the ad-ons that are specific to your order, which took a lot of technological build hardware and software, to be honest, but it's that note card.Seth:I was told, "This is our bottleneck," and I said, "Well, how long does it take to print a note card?" And they said, "Five seconds." I said, well, it takes a lot longer to pack out an order than five seconds. That can't be. But then I started to lean in, and it turns out that they would print 20 of these note cards at a time, and then they would organize these into a folder, and then they would put the folder away, and then they would bring the folder back out when they were ready to pack out. What was five seconds, when I did all the math, ended up being a minute, and you couldn't even do them one by one, like in the chocolate example, because you had to get 20 chocolates assembled at once. You had to wait for 20 of those chocolates to go down to the end of the assembly line before. So, if you ever got behind, the time to catch up was significant.Stephanie:Oh, wow. That's really Interesting, about like something where you're like, oh no, that's not the problem. Then being like, oh, actually your process is the biggest part of the problem.Seth:Exactly. This is a very cool evolution. People who have not been at the company for at least two years, don't understand. With a bottleneck, you have two solutions. You either make it more effective or you add resources to the bottleneck. The first year that's what we did. We had five of our most analytical people, five very smart people who just on Valentine's day helped us print them. As absurd as that sounds, that's what we did. We just overwhelmed the process with resources. This past year, the tech team and the supply chain team got together and they completely reinvented. Now, every single order is sent to a specific person's queue that ties to their physical desk, and there's a printer at every station and that printer prints out one note card at a time that's tied to that a specific order. Now, it takes five seconds to print an old card, and it is no longer a bottleneck.Stephanie:Yeah. That's great. It seems like there'd be a lot less room for things to get lost. I mean, if everything's in a folder and you're trying to sort through it, [crosstalk] maybe picking up the wrong notes and you'd be like, hey grandma, and be like, oh, this is the wrong note that got sent out. It seems a lot more. Yeah. You're not going to have any errors doing it this way now.Seth:Yeah. The error rate, both reported and for sure, actual declined. We also saw that our throughput overall went up by 50%, 60%, 70%, and we could train people on this new system much faster. Those five people that I mentioned that had to be in that room on Valentine's day now don't have to be in that room.Stephanie:Yep. That was very good reminders about bottlenecks. I think it's very encouraging for every new brand to kind of look into that and really dive deep. So, yeah, I love that example. All right. The couple of minutes left, let's jump over to the lightning round brought to you by Salesforce Commerce Cloud. This I'm going to ask you a question and you have a minute or less to answer. Are you ready, Seth?Seth:I am ready.Stephanie:All right. We'll start with the hardest one first. What one thing will have the biggest impact on ecommerce in the next year?Seth:The one thing that'll have the biggest impact on ecommerce is FedEx and UPS.Stephanie:Okay. Tell me a bit more.Seth:Yeah. Their ability to grow and sustain their supply chains and deliver on time is going to be critical to, in the next 13 months, they're going to have two holiday seasons, and either a lot of happy customers or a lot of unhappy customers. It'll be really interesting, your 800 pound gorilla. Amazon is highly confident because they've largely disintermediated their over-reliance on UPS. In fact, FedEx and Amazon, they're divorced for the most part. I think that their ability to continue to shift to ecommerce to add Saturday and Sunday delivery nationwide to do FedEx, and UPS delivery to do ground deliveries next day, seven days a week, based on a previous day pickup, all of these things are going to either allow ecommerce to continue to blossom or hold it back. Also, what's very unclear is how much they're going to raise rates in January. Typical years call it 3% to 6%. There is a lot of concern that they could be above, and potentially well above that 6%, and what does that do to demand?Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, that's a really good answer. What one topic or thing do you wish you knew more about?Seth:One topic or a thing.Stephanie:[crosstalk] technology or ...Seth:I've been in and around physical product ecommerce businesses. I think getting more in the data and technology side is always the right ... that is always the future. I love being in consumer businesses. I love the ability to ask almost anyone about the product or service that I'm working with and trying to lead forward and getting their opinion and having that opinion matter. That's the joy and the challenge of ecommerce, but certainly getting deeper into data, getting deeper in technology is something I'm going to encourage anyone, especially anyone young, certainly what I'm going to get my kids into.Stephanie:Yep. I love that. If you were to have a podcast, what would it be about, and who would your first guest be?Seth:I think it would be about brands that do it right. I think that I so admire people who build iconic brands, and it goes back to this consumer side of things, but to me, it's looking at these revered brands and whether they are the Phil Knights, Nikes of the world, Reed Hastings and Netflix, or some lesser known smaller brands. I'm always so impressed with people who take the leap to do it. Those, especially who do it without raising significant amounts of capital and create something that just clicks and resonates with consumers, because I think we can all learn that. I find that I've been around companies that have done a nice mix of brand and execution, that have focused so much on execution. I think it's something that I'm good at, and I've been around other people that have been good at it. Maybe it's because of that, that I so admire the folks, those creative, just truly creative visionaries on the branding side.Stephanie:I love that. And who would you pick to bring on as your first guest?Seth:Who would I pick to bring on as my first guest? I guess, not that Reed Hastings would agree, but Netflix ...Stephanie:He might.Seth:Netflix so transformed and based on an industry that could have gotten there, had they seen it coming. In fact, I think at some point he had discussed with them with blockbuster buying out the business, and they dismissed him. I'm sure he has fabulous stories. I'm not so interested in actually the last three years where they've been a powerhouse. I'm really interested in those first years when he struggled, when he kept the faith when things were not going well, how he saw the future when others didn't, how he pivoted from CDs delivered, when he knew it was the time to digital and build something big and special, how he hired people in those early years and got them convinced it was going to be big and special. Those are the questions that are ... and/or now getting the best and the brightest is easy, given the company that they've built. But it's those early years that I'd be really excited to learn about.Stephanie:Yep. Yeah, I love that. I think we have the same kind of passion, and you would probably like one of our other podcasts called the story, because it's about people like that. We did retastings Phil Knight, We do Elon Musk, and it talks about the early days, how they got started and then you guess their identity at the end, because you wouldn't actually all the things they went through to build the companies that they did. You have to check that out.Seth:Very good. I will.Stephanie:All right, Seth. Well, this has been a great interview. Where can people find out more about you and UrbanStems?Seth:Yeah, UrbanStems is the company name and it's also our website, so urbanstems.com will get you there. If you want, you can also reach out to me, seth.goldman@urbanstems. I'd be happy to chat with you. I'd be happy to provide you with a promo code on your first order. We love people enjoying flowers, and more importantly, we love people sending gratitude to people that they care about.Stephanie:Awesome. Love that. Thanks so much, Seth.Seth:Thank you so much, Stephanie. Bye.

One of the things Jeremy has encountered in his research is that people with diverse life experiences are actually more likely to be more reliable in forecasting what’s to come. That’s why we wanted to speak to Vinit Bharara. He’s worn quite a few hats. Now he’s the Founder & CEO of Some Spider Studios, the folks behind Scary Mommy, Fatherly & The Dad - and along with his brother Preet Bharara, he’s also the brains behind CAFE, which covers news, politics and law. He was also the co-founder of and COO of Quidsi, which sold to Amazon in 2011 for over $500 million. Since he’s had a pretty good track record to date of picking winners, I wanted us to have him on to discuss his past successes, becoming customer-centric, the silver linings of COVID, how to identify opportunities - and how to know when it’s time to move on. So let’s jump right in!As always, we welcome your feedback. Please make sure to subscribe, rate, and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, and Google Play.

He is the president and chief executive officer of Walmart U.S. eCommerce, appointed to the role in September 2016 when his company Jet.com was acquired by Walmart Inc. He founded and grew Jet.com to a $1 billion gross merchandise value run rate in its first year. Prior to Jet, he was the co-founder and CEO of Quidsi, the parent company of e-commerce websites Diapers.com, Soap.com, Wag.com, and more, which was sold to Amazon in 2011 for $550 million. His industry accolades include E&Y’s Entrepreneur of the Year regional winner and being named one of the “smartest people in technology” by Fortune. Prior to being a serial entrepreneur, he held various investment banking positions, including executive vice president of Sanwa International Bank in London, and vice president of emerging markets risk management at Credit Suisse First Boston. He graduated from Bucknell University, where he received a Bachelor of Arts in business management and economics, graduating cum laude. Join me on this episode of the Curve Benders podcast with Marc Lore. Don't forget, I turn the show notes from these podcasts into more in-depth articles, so check them out on our blog at NourGroup.com/Blog. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/david-nour/message

Today I’m joined by Abby Coleman.    Abby is the CEO of Territory Foods, a healthy meal delivery service offering personalized meals prepared by local chefs.    In today’s episode, we talked about Abby’s experience at Amazon, how Territory Foods uses data to improve its platform, and how she plans to scale the company’s meal delivery platform.    Let’s get into it.    More from Abby >>    Abby is the CEO of Territory Foods, a chef-prepared pre-made meal delivery service that creates nutritionist-approved menus tailored to support various dietary preferences and regional market tastes. Territory Foods uses data science to identify emerging eating patterns and anticipate the food needs of its customers, optimizing retention and driving personal variety at scale.    Prior to Territory Foods, Abby was the CEO of a Type II Diabetes meal plan and behavior change start-up. Previously, she spent three years at Amazon, most recently as Vice President of Marketing and Strategy at Quidsi, a $600M specialty retail subsidiary.    More from Fitt Insider >>    Fitt Insider is a weekly newsletter and podcast about the business of fitness and wellness.    From product launches and funding news to game-changing innovation, Fitt Insider provides listeners with insights and analysis on this ever-evolving industry.    Join your peers and colleagues from companies like Equinox, lululemon, Peloton, Beyond Meat, Nike, and ClassPass by subscribing.      http://insider.fitt.co More from Fitt Insider >>    Fitt Insider is a weekly newsletter and podcast about the business of fitness and wellness.    From product launches and funding news to game-changing innovation, Fitt Insider provides listeners with insights and analysis on this ever-evolving industry.    Join your peers and colleagues from companies like Equinox, lululemon, Peloton, Beyond Meat, Nike, and ClassPass by subscribing.    http://insider.fitt.co

Marc Lore is currently the CEO of E-Commerce at Walmart in the US, an incredibly important and influential role that helps dictate how people buy and consume products. But that’s only the tip of the iceberg of his legendary career as an entrepreneur, risk-taker, founder, leader and innovator. After a career in finance, Marc risked his entire net worth to found Quidsi, a company that brought us the likes of Diapers.com and Soap.com, and was later sold to Amazon for a cool half a billion dollars. Marc then joined Walmart in 2016, after the retail giant purchased his next company, Jet.com, for $3.3 billion. Beyond the monumental sales, Marc’s story is all about understanding when to risk it all, and how to lead people with empathy and integrity to create and sell great products and ideas. Follow me on social: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tonygonzalez88/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/tonygonzalez88 Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tonygonzalez88/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tonygonzalez88/ & Watch Wide Open on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/tonygonzalez

Jenny Fleiss, Co-Founder of Rent the Runway, steps on to the New York Launch Pod to discuss her newest project as Co-Founder of Jetblack. Jetblack is a personal shopping service with the financial backing of Walmart, and Co-Founded by Jenny and Marc Lore (Jet, Quidsi/ diapers.com). Designed with the busy consumer in mind, Jetblack uses a combination of experts, algorithms and artificial intelligence to winnow down the sea of shopping options on the internet. Consumers are able to message Jetblack by voice or text to obtain product recommendations and often have the product delivered the same day, all at the cost of $50 per month. In the episode we discuss what Jenny sees in the new age of commerce, why she left Rent the Runway, and take a behind the scenes look at Jetblack! More on Jetblack: https://www.jetblack.com/ Transcript of the episode available at: https://nylaun.ch/jetblacktr

EP0105 - Stitch Fix IPO Hot Take This episode is a hot take of the Stitch Fix IPO Filing: How IPO's Work / Jobs Act $1B Exits in E-Commerce Zappos - $850m 2009 Quidsi/diapers - $545m -2010 Kiva - $775b 2012 Trunk Club - $350m 2014 Jet.com - $4b  8/16 Dollar Shave club - $1b 7/16 Chewy.com - $3b 4/17 Zulily - went public with $2.7b Stitch Fix Background Offering History Financing History Stitch Fix financial performance Stitch Fix Customer Value / Churn Personalization and Machine Learning Company size and roles Conclusion Don't forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 105 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Sunday, October 22nd 2017. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature - Google Automated Transcription of the show: Transcript Jason:  [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 105 being recorded on Sunday October 22nd 2017 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot:  [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show Sanders, we started working on a little new show this week and as we got into it real realize that the big news that is dominating the retail and e-commerce world is one event. stitch fixes S14 their IPO so as we got into it. And started working on this week we realized that the stitch fix IPO is really a platform that we can use to talk about some of our favorite topics here on Jason Scott show, it's a little bit of everything Jason it's got, Ikea's venture capital and exit e-commerce subscription Commerce which we talked about one of your favorite topics personalization machine learning and AI. There's an Amazon undertone where you know this is one of the few companies that's made it out hopefully knock on wood and then Amazon dominated world how are they doing that, and for all our e-commerce retail us there's this really interesting KP eyes are key performance indicators here like the cost to acquire customers at lifetime value turn, and one of our other favorite topics is private label and digital native vertical Branch so stitch fix IPO covers everything. Jason:  [1:52] It's like our last hundred and four episodes all rolled into one it's amazing. Scot:  [1:56] Yes clearly Katrina over there with says must be a big lesson her because she's kind of wrapped it all into one company which we appreciate. [2:06] To a lot of the distance, interesting stories so we were at code Commerce now we reported this on the podcast for those either that follow this so in March there was shot talk and Jason Delray the Commerce and had the founder of stitch fix Katrina up there and, she kind of baited her and said that his sources are saying that there are over 500 million in Revenue side I think a lot of people in the street didn't really believe there are that large, and then she said I can't talk about it but we aren't a billion dollars yet so that was really interesting cuz she. Not only was a denial about 500 it actually kind of put a bracket on it that simply said. I'm not going to deny 500 I'm going to say we're less than a billion so then it gave us kind of the sliding scale of somewhere between 500 million and 2 billion is kind of where they were so speculation was running rampant with that and then they hired a. CFO of the Hennessey low change and y La here we go boom the you know they're actually. 977 Million Dollar business this year which is. Pretty darn impressive there you're just as runs August to August I believe which is why they can talk about 2017 it's not over yet. So you know I think it's really interesting that here is this. Pretty big company like I'm in the billion-dollar Revenue Club here and then another thing that's interesting as it's pretty Capital efficient so it's profitable which is good and then also they raise between 40 and $59 in venture capital in a lot of these other billion dollar companies have raised hundreds of millions of dollars of capital so. [3:41] Really interesting case study they also talked about at the code conference that, you know they're there watching and other categories so they've launched men in that business in six months is where it took three and a half years for women and they watch plus and it's already doing it more in its first month, students first year so we had a lot of nice kind of little data points from that conference and then, you know the the s-1 launching has been pretty exciting to read through that but Jason I've read through it with a fine-tooth comb and are. Job in this hot take / deep dive is to pick up that you see parts for you guys and walk you through it. Jason:  [4:22] For sure and we're super lucky as a regular listeners will know Scott is the financial markets Guru amongst the two of us, partly because I'm completely inapt and partly because of you you actually took your own company successfully public and presumably learned a few things along the way so I'm hoping you can get things started by giving us all a primer in the IPO process, and I'm going to start you off with a question and I may have misread this but I had had to pick up a couple places that they may have filed. Earlier in the year confidentially and then there's all this talk this month about this them doing the s-1 filing was that a red herring is this in a new filing or are we just seeing what they filed back in. In July or August. Scot:  [5:13] Yeah the. [5:16] So what happened is the way IPOs worked before 2012 was you filed your S1 and everyone could see it and the super annoying because. That's ones go through usually like 10 or 20 drafts so you submit it and then the SEC is the government body that regulates these things will come back to you and I'll say, Jason what did you mean by that sending you don't answer and then I'll be like okay it while you need to tell potential investors that so there's this like back and forth also. You may not you may not know it's really the kind of a. Nonlinear risk point where you decide to file this one because you've really hung yourself out there and maybe have a bad court maybe you're talking to the SEC for 6 months it usually takes and yeah the back corner in there or, markets turn South so to help companies go public in 2012 they passed the jobs act which. Which does Stanford jobs but it actually stands for Jumpstart our business startups and what that allows you to do is date they separate the the filing so. As a startup and they're certain definitions around this you can choose to have a confidential filing so. We did ours we were totally confidential but I think stitch fix action now it's just that they had filed confidentially was just a signal. The car says it was their choice you can you can do that or not there's probably some reason they decided to do it. [6:44] So in July they announced that they had filed confidentially so would that allowed them to do is to work with their Bankers work with SEC get a quarter kind of under their belts and, then you expand I also let you see how other IPOs so in that time frame they were able to see how Blue Apron did for example or United Snapchat had gone public by then but they, I could see kind of how it worked so that that kind of. It's really nice because it gives you the ability if you want to you can actually kind of yank the filing and not go public financing of the kind of put themselves out there but it does help with this whole process so that's what that was all about. [7:27] So So yes it so we went public at Channel visor in 2013 did this whole process we did the confidential filing work with SEC and, actually use the same Bankers in the same banking team that song stitches could just, sent them a note and they said yep we're working on stitch excite I know exactly the kind of hell what's going to happen there it's going public is a very very exciting kind of a thing that sucks with lots of stress kind of power concert. Pretty interesting times and excited for for this company to get out we we haven't had a lot of IPOs in the market and in quite a while. [8:03] So [8:05] You know this is just one of the most-watched IPOs in a long time because we really haven't had a lot of e-commerce IPOs and then I posed that we've had kind of a dud larger digital world, how can I put two out there Snapchat they went public at a $30 price point in its now 15 and a blue apron when, public at 10 and is now five those are not really successful IPOs so so it should have come. Bad Dana Point out there then we have this company that I'm surprised everyone with the scale that it's at and there's this kind of. Waiting group of e-commerce and digital companies that are not be watching this and really closely and if this IPO can go off not only price well but staying well for for a year or two I think it means good things for this does not cohort of companies that are. Are probably ready to go so in there are the ones that that I kind of think about our you have wish which is the marketplace with largely Chinese Goods box Pinterest house Flipkart stripe. Fanatics instacart Warby Parker in Casper and Kendra Scott Kendra Scott's like more old school but I thought I'd throw it in there because it's kind of interesting. Most of these are unicorns which means they have received a billion-dollar private company valuation and you know any kind of thinks through the scale that they have to be at to do that. [9:27] Your bus is companies can have Revenue that are are very much north of a hundred million if not kind of closing in on 500 million in a billion dollars so they're definitely in that kind of class of companies that have the scale the growth brand to be able to go public. Also it's it's interesting cuz we don't have a lot of data on public e-commerce, that's because a lot of the ones that get ready to go public get snapped up by Amazon that's actually you know not out of the question that maybe Citrix doesn't actually make it public there's there still this is kind of the. [9:58] The about halfway point of that six-month process imagine before the end of the year though price and go out. [10:04] But a lot of times he's S1 stimulate buyers to come out kind of say this is my one time I have to buy this before it becomes public. [10:13] Can I take a new bladder so so why keep an eye on that. The the public companies that are out there there's only three so you have CafePress and Overstock and those are kind of. Micro Capstar kind of sub billion dollars the most successful public e-commerce company so around is Wayfair it has a six billion dollar market cap that's about two times its revenues I think. If you were going to hold my feet to the fire on stitch fix at a billion dollar Revenue. Growing 30% I think it probably is what's a 325 x multiple so I think we're going to see a a market cap. You know it does three to five billion range so much better multiple because it is much more subscription kind of recurring Revenue than you Seattle airfare which kind of has to sell. Everything each time so she Furniture you know I don't think you know in your life when you need furniture and then then you can out of the furniture business for a while. [11:13] Yeah yeah they're definitely you know just a different model but yet a lot lot better gross margins and net margins. And another thing I look at when I see these s ones from IPS perspective is what is the banking Syndicate the the blues to Blue Chip Banks are Goldman Sachs and Morgan, and what you do is when you look at the page and it actually put a digital copy of it even in the PDF or on the s-1 over with sec. There's different positions they mean different things the lead Banker gets this position is a larger font. There's all this kind of History around this that we can't going to but it's pretty interesting and. The. You guys look at the left first and the largest upper left is called lead left is Goldman Sachs and this example so Goldman Sachs is the The Bluest of Blue Chips. Yeah you know Jim Cramer calls them golden sacks slacks and another good company is they rarely do things with with Morgan Stanley those two kind of go head-to-head it's kind of like. [12:13] Oh I don't know Canton gun LG your two sports teams that are bitter rival State they look they usually don't do well together. [12:23] There you go there you and then. So you don't have Morgan Stanley on this week if you have JP Morgan which is very good bank and then you have Barclays RBC Stiefel Piper Jeffrey and William Blair and what will you do here is your thinking short and long-term sign, simultaneously, to the bank's you pick you want a great firm that's going to help you sell your IPO so they have relationships with the buyers of IPOs which are institutional buyers which tend to be hedge funds and mutual funds and. All these banks have that and they will do a great job selling this company. But then the secondary consideration is longer-term what you're trying to do is get a great internet analyst that are are great analyst this is called a cell site analyst dick in. Advanced buy-side analyst that your company is awesome and in public about it and you're in the show we talked a lot about you know these analyst we've had several on the show talking about the things that they report on and. Goldman Sachs you have all these guys have really good analyst and, many of them may be familiar with socks on the show so it will be interesting to see so he's Terry is the big guy e-commerce guy over Goldman Sachs I imagine that's who will cover it and, all down the line there there's some really good unless she wants to go public there's this waiting. And you have the analyst cover it and and it's good as a company to have. People that really understand your business out there banging the drum so that that's kind of what you do when you do the banking process last couple little points on the public market. Thinks there's ticker symbol is going to be S fix and they're going to raise $100 this is really just a placeholder what you do is you put out this initial draft and then you start to get reaction from. [14:04] From buyers are early reaction and then, as you see how the markets going you raise more and then you come up with your pricing and that kind of thing they're using their guitars to public market so you go on the New York Stock Exchange that's what we did at Chow visor they have chosen to go with the NASDAQ it's kind of a, six to one half dozen the other I do like the another aspect of an IPO it's a raising money kind of a thing and then it's a pyramid. And I do like the pr aspect of the New York Stock Exchange you get on CNBC get to ring the bell you're right there New York NASDAQ you just go and press a button at the NASDAQ Market Center in Times Square if so that's exciting in in grandiose, New York Stock Exchange. 22 is what we're going to run to hear is called the prospectus and that's the s-1 which is to the technical number given to these documents by the SEC. And it's only one. People read these aren't familiar with them they get really bogged down at the top the first 50 pages of an s-1 are really cya it's a bunch of lawyer stuff to keep people from suing so. Pass that stuff and don't get wrinkled up and it feels like this kind of effort lawyers called a parade of Horrors it's like literally a list of all the things, the wrong it is a really weird way to collect unit tell people about your company but it's just kind of the way it's done so. You know it's like everything that could possibly go wrong with your company and then you're like an end here's here's why we're so excited, it's really strange strange way to do it but it's done to reduce risk of litigation so skip to that and go right to the management discussion and usually there's a letter from the CEO so. [15:39] Yeah we'll put a link to this over on the SEC in the show notes or or like to download the PDF and use your fine function and go right to management discussion. Jason:  [15:50] Awesome tip let the record show channel advisor got to wake or ticker symbol then then the stitch fix it. Scot:  [15:59] Xperia S fix SF 49959, another thing that is good about this is we haven't had a lot of Billy dollar exits and e-commerce so if if my math right you again this could be hopefully north of Two And in that 325 range depending on how it prices. [16:25] There hasn't been a lot of VC investment in the e-commerce industry because we haven't had a lot of exits ovc dollars chase the exits, and exits are commonly referred to as liquidity events at the two most popular are acquisition or m&a and an IPO so just, quick history here. If some of the bigger one so we had in 2009 we had Zappos at i850 million Quincy diapers.com it 545 million that's Mark Laurie 1.0, and then we had Keva at 775 I don't know if I can count that as e-commerce but but I know this guy saw us let's talk about it 2012 Trunk Club which is very relevant to this one was acquired by Nordstrom for 350 million in 2014, that's not in the billion-dollar kind of close to Club but I thought I'd include it because of the proximity to stitch fix, and then. Mark Lori 2.0 soljet to Walmart for 4 billion on August 16th that guy had like a five five billion and just suck the last 4 years. It's pretty good. Shave club was acquired by Unilever for a billion and then Chewy was recently acquired by PetSmart for 3 billion, Zulily was an interesting one that kind of got the the double whammy so they went public I had about a three billion dollar valuation and then work wired that IPO didn't do well over time that's fatigue with our customer base, hot and then it was acquired by QVC for 2 and 1/2 2.4 billion in August of 2015. Seems like a lot when I say it like that but but since 2009 we've really had like 9 kind of exits 6 or so that are over that billion dollars. [18:03] And three of them were in the last 18 months this is an industry we really need a lot more of these kind of exits to keep venture capitalist investing so this is really important for industry I think we all are all need to be great for this to do really well and in kind of. Bring people back to the e-commerce fold-in Amazon his cast of pretty dark shadow when you talk to people that I know that are trying to raise money, you know they say it's Amazon question that really stops am at you every BC wants to know how is your five or ten million dollar company to go to survive in an Amazon world than now if this does well people and say well so I'm sure we can. That's some of the implications at a macro level. Jason why don't you would kind of gone a pretty long way without actually saying what's just fixed us why don't you bring people to speed on that. Jason:  [18:53] Yeah for sure so stitch fix is. You can think of is an apparel retailer they were founded in 2011 and they had what. I believe it was a novel concept back in 2011. They would sure ate a box of items for a customer and initially this was targeted just at women and so you would do a subscription and you can in that subscription you would get a box. Of 5 items of apparel and accessories and you could. [19:25] Cheap all some or none of the items in that box so essentially you paid $20 up front. Which was that sort of a styling fee the first time you use the service you fill out a survey so that the The Stylist can get your preferences they stitch fix picks five items they think you'll like and want to keep, they send them to you if you like him you pay for him if you keep all five you get a 25% discount if you just want to keep some of them you pay for him and send back what you don't want, if you like none of them you can send the whole box back and you're just out the $20 styling fee and I should mention the styling fee is waived if you keep any of the items. [20:04] I'm so back in 2011 this is the founder of Katrina Lake like literally. Getting customers to pay her for a box she would go shopping at Nordstroms by things know what the return policy was at Nordstrom's. Send them to the customer and the customer and keep them she would return them to the the retailers that she bought them from so she's. She's managing all these sort of return she's almost like a personal concierge, for the Shoppers and she turn this into a very significant Automated Business so over time that that business model is sort of evolved. Initially it was subscription-only and you could kind of pic. The frequency of the subscription you can get a box every month every other month every six months you know I'm a different set of periods. They they. [20:54] Shifted to a model where you can still can have that subscription but you can also just order a fix on demand so you since you don't have the pressure of a box showing up when you don't need one and whenever you feel like you just need to refresh your wardrobe. I want something new to you you can go online hit the fix button then and I'll send you a new box. Originally they were all selling other people's products, and they they started to develop their own Brands what they they call it exclusive Brands and so now portion of the, the products in the Box are coming from stitch fix which will talk more about it later they also added men's much more recently in Ascot mentioned the men's products scaled-up much more rapidly they've also offered plus size boxes, and I think the newest offering is maternity boxes and so all of this from a CEO Katrina Lake who's now. 34 years old which is pretty impressive. You know we're talking about the rare of 1 billion dollar e-commerce exits in the the relatively small number of of e-commerce companies that successfully doing lipo when you talk about those companies that are led by a woman CEO. It's it's like even extremely more rare which is I think exciting and and pretty awesome so you. If you were to read her letter in the s-1 she kind of highlights. [22:26] The Three core principles of the business right the first one is that they're always customer-centric that they're always focusing first on the needs of their customer. Number two, personalization is the future we'll be talking a lot about that and number three they think they have this unique combinations of humans and data and they have made some very substantial investments in AI which will be talking about and they think that unique combination of humans and data are better together than either. Human stylist or artificial intelligence is by itself so that. In a nutshell is the business order effects get these byproducts keep what you want. Send back what you don't and I would argue that it spawned a large industry of similar competitors. In the same category as in an other categories like Children's Apparel for example before we go too much further, do you want to dive into how they they were funded by once they got beontra Tina's original Nordstrom's credit card. Scot:  [23:32] Yeah yeah and she used to work at Poly where I don't know if you ever met her back when she was there at the podium for founder is an ex eBay guy that I've met several times and so she was she was kind of early on in this this whole industry to start with c. Pretty pretty neat that sheep spun out of that and it's. Effectively lap them I think at this point so I share your enthusiasm for female Founders and see is I think it's great the only other guy was kind of what he said that the only one I could think of. Was Meg Whitman at eBay I can't think of another you know kind of a the CEO female CEO kind of in our industry. [24:10] Yeah the IPO level so they are capital efficient and you. The sky saying they only raise 45 million you know it is interesting because 45 million is no no that's not chump change but you know it takes a lot of capital to build a business like this and I think. How many billion dollar businesses have soaked up your I said it before but 100 200 300 million to build a good almost take. 500 million pop service is very impressive and so the funding history. In 2011 Lightspeed Ventures did a seed round. [24:52] 2013 two headed around from Baseline and then very quickly on top of that and and, so I was in February 13th and then in October 13th at a 12-9 Darby with Benchmark and then Benchmark is the company is one of the Blue Chip VC's in the Bay Area, girly a bill girly is on their board from their heat that that's one of the firms that did eBay and Yahoo in the early days, I also an outspoken Uber investor and then they did a series C. In the sea 24 in 14th 6, teen ceduna 14 and then dated a top off kind of in 2017 of 12 million and, I just called a mezzanine round so ABC and mezzanine for those who that haven't raised Venture Capital with the way it works is in an IPO the same way you. You issue new shares so each time that kind of value the company at a pretty money you added this Capital you get a post money and then you get diluted I mention this because I saw a lot of conversations on Twitter when you look at the ownership. You end up with Baseline at 28% Benchmark 25% light speed at 11% and then Katrina Lake the founder at 16%, there's obviously a case there that says that's not fair Katrina should own 80% of this as a founder of you, we are doing is kind of making this bet on your is Venture Capital you get you get more than just Capital but just kind of keep it to that conversation you're making this. [26:27] To you when I take this 45 million and give up you know 85% of the company there should be a bigger outcome then if I didn't do that and. You're clearly these kind of cases you take her 16% you multiply it by that that 3 billion you get like 450 million kind of evaluation of her ownership, I probably the right choice but you don't you never know the other side of the outcome you know maybe if she'd bootstrapped this and waited 5 more years it would actually she could own 80% of it and have just a bigot as an outcome in fast-moving markets where you have, companies like Amazon swimming around its speed that is definitely something that that takes is probably a good choice to raise capital for. And then sink that covers. Big pieces so we don't want to get too bogged down in the financial stuff but Jason do you want to hit some of their revenue highlights. Jason:  [27:23] Yeah so they've had an ice hockey stick which is I think one of the things that that has caught a lot of folks attention 2014, they they reported 73 million dollars in Revenue, 2015 the ramped up to three hundred forty-two million dollars in Revenue 2016 they they doubled at 2 730 million dollars in revenue and in their fiscal year 2017 which is over as you mentioned they were just under a billion dollars at 7977 million dollars which. Parenthetically has to has to kill them that they didn't quite get over that. That be so so it's been a pretty good ramp up and, several of those years were profitable it looks like they they ramped up some expenses in 2017 and maybe weren't as profitable. Scot:  [28:17] Yeah and then the growth rates to just look at the growth rate between 14 and 15 like almost 400% growth so crazy but that was exciting time to be there and then from 15 to 1613 per cent growth death definitely Torrid but not as crazy as 400%, and then between 16 and 1734 per cent and in this is where you know what I'm imagining happened is that kind of said. Yeah should we go raise a $59 in turn around or should we just slow the growth rate get profitable and prove the model. This is interesting decision because what most pundits would tell you is while she loves growth so if they could have. I have gone public at 100% growth rate that probably would have been a different outcome than 34% but you know I think in hindsight it may actually. [29:09] Better that they're growing a little bit slower and more profitable because with the. I mentioned it the the Snapchat problems and questions around their ability to get profitable and then Blue Apron kind of hitting the skids. I think this is this ends up being a nice balance between growth and profitability of so so it will have to kind of see how it prices and then you know. What I'm engine is if they. Delray's over north of $100 that gives you a quite a bit of jet fuel to get that that engine going back up so I bet very quickly they'll try to get back to triple-digit growth building unnoticed looking at some of the numbers they don't. [29:47] The NEP now they don't specifically breakout sales and marketing or art effectively, marketing but I do kind of wrap it up into a number that has gnats GM and that is actually growing a good bit faster than Revenue so, between in 2016 840 per cent versus Revenue at 1:13 and then in 2017 and grew 55% versus 34% in. What you will you see inside a subscription models is in the early days you know it's you can you find your early adopters and it's pretty inexpensive too. Get to them but then as you grow your having spend more and more and more on the acquisition of of customers are the metric commonly known as cat that cost to acquire customer. Did you see any other metrics around that Jason. Jason:  [30:35] Yeah it was like I was the one of the really interesting things is are they. Capturing repeat customers and what's the lifetime value of those those customers, so they they did share a couple of things to give us some insight into that they they reported what they called this repeat rate which is. The percentage of customers from the previous year that purchase in the subsequent year and so they're sitting in in. [31:05] 2016 that was 83% and in 2017 that was 86% which sound pretty good, they also did this kind of convoluted cohort analysis that I'm going to rely on you to try to decode if anyone is cuz I I frankly didn't follow it it didn't seem quite as an. [31:28] As straightforward as I might have expected on one hand but on the flip side I guess I was pleasantly surprised that they tried to get some disability to that at all. Scot:  [31:39] Yeah and what you're trying to do coordinate a Caesar are very confusing because, we're trying to do think of it like a graduating class so teach your graduating class let's say you had a bunch of seniors that graduated in 2017 from high school, and then you followed him through college and the rest your life and you kind of saw what happened to those people that's a cohort analysis secret you lock in time this group of customers acquired from a certain. And you see what happens to them. So The first thing to do in the cohort analysis is they they look at a 2014 cohort and they show the value from that Court was 639. [32:19] And then the value of its dollar so than the value of a 2015 cohort with 718 so I think it is a fault this 14 people. [32:28] From 14 15 16 17 and they said those guys generated 639 / user / that life. [32:36] And they followed him and they said that. That actually went up pretty nicely you know about I will see what is that 10% in so that's good that shows inside of that cohort what you have is a lot of factors you have to learn so it's people that say. I tried this I'm no longer going to use it. It's more complicated in these models that do you have the on-demand like when does someone turn maybe they're on an annual plan you have to wait a whole year to see if they've turned maybe they're there every two years they want to get a fix or no. If someone moves from a monthly to accordingly that's not really churn so you. It gets really hard to measure turn so inside of that 10% increase you have some customers they're leaving but then you also have some customers that are buying more. So what their kind of saying here is the customers that end up buying more. Hope you're over Road by about 10% economically. The factors of turnt that's what's the story they're trying to tell I'd it's interesting I bet you know we don't have privy to this but I bet if we looked at the initial as when they filed this wasn't here and this is a reaction to Blue Nile to Napoli now but Blue Apron. Yeah I just felt like my at yeah it felt very much like a oh crap we have to really kind of figure out explain to people what's going on here. Then if you take that data point then they kind of looks and looks like the 16 cohort came down a bit and then they start looking at some of the first half's and what you see there and they had a little blurb in their hair that said. [34:07] The call in first half of a year so it's kinda like the six months. [34:13] Piece of the second six months they show you some of that and it's really fun and loaded so what happens is people by a fair amount in the first six months and then it kind of declines there, Ina, they talk about it as an opportunity it's also kind of weakness but it's not fair to do for them to get better with the data science this mirrors personal my wife. That was a stitch fix user had it for about four or five months and you have by the end of their had had. [34:41] Acquired enough clothes in it was kind of burned out by the processor forgetting to return it and getting fees and all this kind of stuff so hopefully something a little bit of yellow flag something they need to work on when I do my mask. [34:54] They give you just enough kind of figure this out so this is the first half of 2016 is 3:35 but then the total was like an essay. 5061 FM 506 so that when you do the math in the second half is 154 if so. [35:10] Literally dropped by half over at the pier to be here so let's see what that be 2/3 would be in the front half and then a third on the back half so interesting kind of. Trend air it's not clear how much that Stern and I got two people saying I don't want to box it all or how much is you filled up their wardrobe in their closet they're good to go. Jason:  [35:31] Yep and I I guess I should have mentioned another potential way to think about this is we did not mention the growth interactive customer base but, the back in 2014 when they did 73 million and sales they had 261,000 active customers with their defining as. Someone that bought a box in the latter the received the box in the last 12 months and if you look at their growth of active customers. [35:56] At the end of 2017 they are like almost 2.2 million active customers so the the growth has been. Year-over-year it is always the same order of magnitude as their revenue growth but it it has been slower. Then the revenue growth so that the the fact that they're the revenue is growing faster than active customers. [36:21] The week like on the surface looks like a good thing because it that that implies that they're they're driving greater Revenue per customer as as they get a a bigger and more mature customer base. Scot:  [36:31] Yeah yeah yeah I agree in, I have a feeling that as they do their Roadshow so wanting to keep an eye out for if if this is topics interesting for you, when you do your road show you actually have to record it and it's part of the SEC rules that anyone can watch the road show so it's on Retail Road show if you go to Retail Road show.com you will find that, don't be a window of time in any sings expire pretty quickly so but Jason I will treat when it's up in what you have there probably is Katrina and probably the CF oh and maybe someone else maybe the cool actually walking you through the Roadshow and I. Bats that they have to peel out a little bit more information cuz I think investors are going to be very keenly tied into this and trying to understand really what I think. I think that's the one piece missing hearing and people don't want to know that so it's me an option to see if they have to disclose that. Jason:  [37:28] When are there fun tidbits when you were talking about this this sales and marketing spend they did mention in the ass one that they actually hired miller-brown to do this aided awareness study so essentially in like May of are in December 2016, they went out and interviewed a bunch of women that were in their target market which are women are making over $50,000 a year that live in us and said, are you familiar with stitch fix and 28% of the women that they surveyed said yes in, in December of 2016 so then in May of 2017 after they sort of double that adds fan that aided awareness went up to 41%. [38:11] Like I would take it away Ernest with a pretty large grain of salt. Cuz you're you're asking someone if they remember if they're from they were something in a lot of people will just frankly lie because they don't want to say, they're not friendly with something but if it's true that that 41% of their target market are now from there with them. Like that implies that the the next big tranche of growth is probably harder to achieve than the. The last one was cuz it's it's a heck of a lot easier to go from 20% to 41% then it is to go from 41% to 75%. Scot:  [38:50] Absolutely yeah yeah and then I Delray had an interesting article about talking about how you know it's really kind of a non Coastal audience I don't know, is data that really supported that but I think when you get too many people you have to kind of be spreading out to the Midwest and what not so interesting. Jason:  [39:06] Yeah and I think part of it is just that their price points are like these are not like, super premium price points and you know in general these are not Designer level Apparel in so it's, you know it's it's meant for sort of a more modest consumers and I think there was even I can't remember was in the interview or something that Katrina said recently but she talked about that they at one point had a pretty bad. Inventory glitch where they weigh over bought and the, the root cause of over buying the wrong inventory was it they were buying sort of on-trend stylish stuff and their customers were we're responding that they didn't keep any of the items because they were inappropriate to wear at the PTA meeting for example or that you know, the the the sort of everyday occasions that their customers were we're hoping to use the products for it so I think that that helped Define the. The Target in the use case for Katrina. Scot:  [40:08] Yeah that and that's a really good kind of transition to the AI machine learning in the personalization it's this is kind of a it's really interesting weed from that perspective I've never, you seen anything quite like it so and I know you spend some time on it so it should take us to that. Jason:  [40:23] Yeah yeah it so it's it's almost hard to talk about machine learning and personalization separately Katrina and her in her letter talked about those. Tubing Big premises personalization is super important and then machine learning plus humans you know being the secret sauce, and the reason it's hard to talk about separately is because largely what you're doing with machine learning is. [40:47] More personalizing the the offer in case the actual products to each customer. [40:55] So I do want to start by talking a little bit about this how they use AI overall, so you fill out a 60 question survey and then they want to pick the five items that you are most likely to keep and they said they don't have a standard starter box so it's not like they're sending the same box to everyone. Everyone's box is going to be different based on current trends. Seasons what they have in inventory right now and the the answers to the 60 Questions that they know about you and so one way to do that is have a stylus that. Read your 60 questions and then have him or her go pick the five items in another way to do it is to to use some sort of algorithm to pick those items in so initially, the the model at stitch fix was let's establish a computer algorithm to pick those items and then lets it let the stylist. [41:54] Override it so we know what will pull up a list of candidate items for The Stylist and maybe you know that has eight items in it and you let the stylus pick the final five or maybe that the algorithm shows the first. 5 in the stylus can say yay or nay but interesting Lee. Early on they hire this guy Eric Olsen to be their Chief algorithm officer and build this Audrey them to figure out what you you send in that first box based on the answers to your survey and. Eric is an interesting guy because he was literally the VP of data science at Netflix which we all use as one of the best examples of. AI driven businesses I think he was also a data scientist a Yahoo to a super credible guy that's been working at stitch fix on the this interesting answer to this question. How do I pick the five right things to send to this first customer so that sticky so that she buy some of them so that you're she's profitable but also said that she keeps using the service, cuz it does first five items are wrong your your odds of getting another chance or dramatically lower. So then they're also going to use a I once you. [43:06] Pick some of those first items and don't pick some of those first items they're going to use that data to refine the items they send you in subsequent boxes and that's where they start getting this really valuable contextual data that's both implicit and explicit like they, implicitly know you return something and they can make inferences about why you returned it but there's also an option for customers to tell. The Stylist why they didn't like something until they get this explicit information the him was too long it didn't fit me well. All all of these sorts of things and so very early on situation was a believer in leveraging deep learning. As the merchant instead of heading human sort of dictate what styles customers would get exposed to which Tamiya super interesting. But then in more recent times it actually taking it to the next level so we mentioned. That they started watching their own products and I'm not sure we said this but if it sounds like about 20% of all their sales are from what they call Exclusive Brands which are predominantly. Brands that they created and they're actually using AI to design the products they offer and so what they'll do is they'll say hey. We have a big segment of customers that don't like a neckline lower than. 8 cm and the majority of product we buy from third parties have this 10cm neckline and so we're going to design your own product and it's going to have a 7cm neckline and said they're actually using their they broke each. [44:45] Each piece of apparel into 60 different attributes and they're using a guy to define the attributes that their customers would want that might not exist in that Marketplace in so they're using that too to dictate what what new products. [44:59] The build which is super cool they had not that I have seen disclose any. Hard data about how successful that AI is or how successful that AI versus a human is but another in RF event there the interest x on it in San Diego this year and one of the speakers was this woman Megan Rose, and Megan is the founder of a a smaller company that in some ways is stitch fix for jewelry it's called Rockbox and. Very similar to stitch fix you get a box of five pieces of jewelry to keep what you want you buy it. You return what you don't want the others extra model where you can kind of rent The Jewelry by just keeping it for as long as you want until you want a new piece, but they also are leveraging aai's their stylist and what I found interesting is Megan shared some of the statistics that when they transitioned, from Human curators to machine learning the purchase rate on the first box increase by 300% so that that computer was. 3 times more likely to pick items that that customer would keep they were able to improve their inventory efficiency by 85% when they went to the the AI BAE Systems and they they still cheap stylist but they have the. The way I am. [46:20] Inform the stylist exactly like stitch fix is doing and that enabled them to reduce their stylist cost by 30% so. stitch fix is getting anything like those results that's super substantial. [46:34] Improvement via this machine learning and what's terrifying about it and cool at the same time is. [46:42] If you had a great stylist a great person picking all these products, and she kept doing it and should get better over time and the first time she reads a survey she gets it you know I'm kind of right but by the, thousand times she's read a survey she's much better at it right like this the person wouldn't learn over time and her hit rate would keep getting better but then when you hire the next person. [47:04] They would start at zero just like the first person did right and the magic thing about this that this machine learning algorithm is. [47:13] It has learned from all two point, two million customers of stitch fix and it keeps getting better and better and so it it's scales much better and we worms much faster than a human can come in so you don't potentially the more customers in the more time in service all these things get in the better of the algorithms get, the the the profitability metrics on this business potentially keep going up. Much faster because the conversion rate just gets better over time whereas a lot of other things we do tend to regress to this mean and you kind of keep the same. Same conversion rate over time so it's going to be super interesting to see you know if the actual performance of the company kind of bear out. Does hypothesis is but for sure a hypotheses I always say that wrong for sure. Ate a significant angle of stitch fix is. Personalizing the offer based on this machine learning I think they said they have over 75 data scientist on staff now. We used to joke because every time Katrina would speaking an event the number of data scientist she claimed, had that double then it it almost didn't sound credible but now that we see the the. Numbers behind the business it it turns out that we probably should have been joking cuz it seems like they're all sort of credible number isn't in line with the the revenue growth that they've they've been experiencing. Scot:  [48:44] Yeah one of those things I thought was interesting as they also have a section in there that talks about. Their usage of data science and the obvious one is you went through all this The Styling algorithm, and then they also talked about nustyle development and then what you covered another one is so they have something like how many was it was 3,400 Stylistics. [49:08] Yeah there's a human stylist so, actually have the kannada matchmaking algorithm and so this data science will actually kind of say you know maybe, maybe some The Stylist our new moms and I'll map you up with other new moms so I don't know what day they're looking at but that that's kind of cool and then these 3400 Silas, many of them are part-time so I don't know how the interface works I've seen Amazon. Do this with customer care, you do the thing where you can kind of check-in check-out and and then there's an online your face where you can kind of do whatever style posting things they do did they talk about an application in the s-1 about, I thought that was interesting kind of a matchmaking is how to use data science that use a lot of demand forecasting so you know. Understanding. [49:56] This is is interesting because they send all these products out right so the return rate is pretty important and it's not entirely clear to me what happens to all the stuff. The comes back out of it goes in other people's boxes or what happens but there's some demand forecasting that has to happen there, and then there's merchandising optimization which is. Understanding how to order what size color and style kind of information and even talked about they use a lot of data science in the filming centers in a used one example they have five fulfillment centers so there's a matching of, which people go to which data which fulfillment center and then also they optimize inside the Fulfillment center using the data science for pick path optimization so I thought it was interesting that they've, this YouTube Don't this engine and they're using it in like I bought this at like 7 or 8 different, parts of the business so there's really good scale from those 75 data scientist. Jason:  [50:53] Yep and we should mention I think they filed a number of patents as a result of all this right like they have something like eight eight pending patent application. Scot:  [51:01] Yeah I also thought it's interesting day they love data science but they also talk about there's a human kind of check elements I guess you know. I guess maybe something has arrived at these things sometimes like it want everyone thinks they need purple socks or something that don't have humans to catch them. Jason:  [51:19] Yeah I interpret that is twofold like that there is sort of the final check but I also think that they have decided that customers respond better. To a human interaction so I think, the reason that that one of those core principles is AI plus humans is you know there's a lot of businesses where they would just try to get the AI really right and have a very impersonal experience, and you know just have to let the customer know the computer is selecting these items for you I think the stitch fix model is. That they would like you to build a relationship with that stylist and rely on that stylist as a person, and if you're going to fight or stitch fix I think they want you to feel like you're firing your friend Susan who's your stylist not just fire firing some. [52:06] Some computer that's that using math to pick out that's for you and so I think the human element both has a practical element but I also think it has a strong marketing branding element for them as well. Scot:  [52:19] Yet they get this really interesting case study and then we can move on from machine learning they said one example or Delila embroidery neckline knit top is purchased 52% of the time, and then what's interesting is are algorithms, I can determine How likely a client is up to 80% to purchase the item if we include it in that's in her specific fix them so they can kind of show the power of the you know if you just blast it out to everyone you get 52% but if you can like use the machine learning. Machine engine you get like a order of magnitude higher conversion rate which is pretty neat to your point on the, what they're saying about the machine learning stuff is it used to be in that venture capitalist would look for your eyes looking for a company that has a bit of an unfair advantage and that unfair Advantage used to be Network effects, you like marketplaces are the kings of this like eBay or buyers Springs more sellers is this network effect LinkedIn the more people social. [53:19] That works out this too but now it's interesting is those that data on 2 million clients and think about all the. The transactional data there's there's probably I don't know zillions of Dana Point's there. Any company even an Amazon that has to compute these guys that they're going to have to climb that mountain so it makes it really really hard for a startup to catch up, you pretty quickly dwindle down the number of Cups companies that, eat here too but maybe three or four you can have maybe a Macy's and end their advantage would be they have more customers so they can get to that two million pretty quickly so. Pretty interesting application of machine learning and I think this will be the first machine learning IPO that I've I'm aware of so that'll be another kind of neat thing and that it's also in our space of e-commerce. Jason:  [54:06] Until I mean two things I would just highlight there that. [54:11] I think they're trying to generate you know a version of a virtuous cycle here or an Amazon flywheel that they. [54:19] Significantly invested in their own machine learning Tech and so that they have that capability that we just covered but they also have a business model that just gets them more. Valuable data right so if you think about it and most apparel manufacturers are totally disintermediated from the customer so they get. No data from their actual customers and even if you're a retailer or even if you're a vertically integrated retailer your the Gap and you make all this stuff and you sell it through your stores once it leaves your store for the most part it's gone and you don't you have a return rate you wanted to be as low as possible, but you really you know this this try-before-you-buy send them five things get back what they don't love. Get you a much more valuable data source so the fact that they both. Have this more valuable data and then they have proprietary technology to act on that that data is a potential flywheel for them. [55:19] Oh, I still think it's interesting and somewhat controversial the amount of investment they made in the the. [55:29] The core machine learning technology right like so I could imagine when they they say. Started this in 2011 and I assume that machine learning came in a couple years after that 2013 you could look at it the state of what was out in the market and say if I'm going to be good at this have to build it myself and if I wanted to be a core competency I need to. To build it myself and for sure you need your own experts but. [55:52] The last five years have seen such a huge Improvement and evolution of the off-the-shelf tools that it almost certainly has to be the case that. These guys have spent a bunch of money building their own machine learning tools that are frankly probably inferior to the the version of tensorflow the Google gives you for free today and so it. It is they may have been a little early in the curve having expertise about their data and about the the. Applying machine learning models to their data and having a unique data set seems like a huge competitive Advantage I imagine some smart people could debate about how valuable their their investment in their own. [56:40] Machine learning technology was versus leveraging some of the the amazing technology that's coming on the market now but but I'm not sure whatever know the real answer there. Scot:  [56:49] Yeah, tell if a competitor can get there with a lot less and catch up then it was worth it get a couple of anything else on machinery. [57:04] A couple other, miscellaneous little tidbits they talk a lot about being a good brand partner in this one so they they talk about they have over 700 brand partners and some of those brand selected to provide some exclusives in in the stitch fix this and then as Jason mentioned they do have their own private label and they call that exclusive brands, I am Jason Howard debating my reed was 20% of fish stitch fix his exclusive Brands were were privately, 20% of everything was their own private label but you kind of red it is 20% could be kind of including those non stitch fix brand Partners exclusive thanks. Jason:  [57:44] Yeah they did mention that that some third-party Brands give them exclusive products and so like I'm quite aware that 20% of stuff that stitch fix design or a combination of stuff that's only sold by stitch fix. Scot:  [57:56] Yeah and this reminds me of our Amazon private label discussion where where. Part of Amazon's private label strategy is there their data science is saying look we need a widget like this and no one's doing it you know we need batteries that come. 24 to a box and not in a packaging that you can open and quantity 8 so interesting to see that. Another little tidbit is so they talked about Outsourcing the manufacturing of that private label called exclusive brands, but in 2017 they actually acquired a pretty large thing as 20,000 square-foot facility that's actually an apparel making. The equipment and & Company in Pennsylvania somewhere so it it felt like they were going to go all the way over to clean the grading and start actually making their own things and United States which is pretty interesting. Jason:  [58:45] Yeah although I do think in the s-1 they they made it very clear that the right you should not expect them like to actually fabricate in the US that they wanted some capability in the US for experimenting purposes but the like. [58:59] You should not invest in them based on the premise that they were going to become a US manufacturer. Scot:  [59:04] Yeah and then people wise they have. Pretty impressive 5800 people total 86% identify as female so that it is, pretty amazing what you put 55% of the management team to have 5 helmet centers / 1.5 million-square-foot 1,500 employees in the Fulfillment centers, 3400 Silas 200 client experience Associates million customers that's like what does that 1 / 100 no a thousand. Yeah so that's good ratio there did you dream team is actually pretty small I was surprised 95 Engineers so that's. [59:44] Pretty lean mean for kind of scale they're at and Sadie I guess the 75 data scientist get it closer to effectively. 150 which is closer to what I would think it would be so that's how the people break out largest chunk is the stylist and then the Fulfillment center employees followed by. You know the client experience Associates and then a relatively small Engineering in data science team. Jason:  [1:00:09] Yep and this was not surprising I suspect to you or I but I still talk to a lot of people that aspired to be a billion dollar e-commerce business and they still imagine that they're doing that out of a single fulfillment center. Scot:  [1:00:24] Yeah no. Jason:  [1:00:26] And I at yeah I mean yeah. Not very possible and I'm like this is a perfect example of what you know again at their they're not at a billion dollars yet and there and they they have a customer-facing business where humans interacting with every customer and yet still the largest portion of their, their workforces you know that are close to the the second largest piece of those Workforce it as all those fulfillment employees. Scot:  [1:00:51] Yeah I wanted more information on, fulfillment centers just because again I imagine that that almost every box comes back with something so imagine the it's the reverse supply chain that I'll Eat You Alive on the stuff so. Jason:  [1:01:09] Reverse Logistics are much more, challenging than I mean things are very hard to reverse Logistics are in order of magnitude harder in your right like that's cooked into this model is there's always going to be a high level of reverse Logistics so that that would be an interesting area to have some unique competitive advantages and if they do they they haven't pitched them very hard. Scot:  [1:01:30] Yeah and the day of science didn't necessarily cover that and you know, Gillett Wisconsin to it so what cities send out of too many customers let's say every month they send out a million boxes will probably less a900. Thousand come back with at least one item coming back so I'm have all of them but you know that's hard someone needs to go through there and figure out all that out you kind of know but you have to match it up happens to it. I don't, do the brands allow them to kind of like put it back, or do you have to liquidate it and then does each of these fulfillment centers have an outbound peace and an inbound if they put it back on a shelf that's like a whole it's really super inefficient to like open a bunch of boxes and put all that stuff on shelves that doesn't seem logical that I have a lot of kind of questions around that I bet. probably the Harry part of this thing. Jason:  [1:02:21] And there is like so I think this is more rumor than real problems but so all of these industries are plagued with a little bit of the like. [1:02:30] Oh wait a minute is this close stuff that already got returned from some other retailer right and that. The fuel gets playing there several of these services and I think including stitchfix have at some point shipped products that arrived at a customer's location with another retailers price tag on it. [1:02:50] Right and that you know puts all kinds of questions in the in the mind of the consumer and you start wondering like waiter is this a TJ Max kind of play where they're getting the. The leftover stuff from some some retard where they couldn't sell and then their there they're selling it at at you know predominantly with price which is part of the reason I have such good margins. The. And and the explanation that that stitch fix gave and I think you know this is blown over several years ago now was no no no no we're not getting anything. Back from a retailer that were selling a customer but sometimes we buy something from a brand and we've had a brand make a mistake and send this inventory that was pre labeled. With another retailers labels on it before and so that you know then then created that whole set of conversation. Scot:  [1:03:38] Do you feel like the brands would let them return the stuff. Jason:  [1:03:41] I think you could I thought I do think Brands would let them take returns and resell it I doubt any brands are getting them stock balancing you know you like. [1:03:53] There's very little stock balancing in a pair of these days where you can actually just return stuff that doesn't sell you know they're there often can be some sort of negotiated terms where that the inventory doesn't turn gets. [1:04:06] Gets tossed reduced overtime and you get some price concessions and things that way but yet no I think. [1:04:15] That that stitch fix probably feels like a pretty traditional retailer in, having a match their supply to demand as well as they can and then having how to start a smart strategy for liquidating the inventory that they're not able to sell. So I thought you know I think the date they pay some of the same Challenges ever no spaces there I did there's one other. [1:04:41] I think that the s-1 reminded us up but we but we could have known before this stitch fix is running on an Amazon web services. Scot:  [1:04:49] Yeah yeah it sucks so does Netflix and always makes me wonder like do they sleep at night we're going to Amazon can you. [1:04:57] I don't think Amazon would ever do this but there's the potential for someone to Cana, take a little peek in there and see what's going on under the hood so that that would it's like one of those very very tricky situations there's not really a great Alternatives that I have found two but you know you're kind of your funding and your competitor and your competitor has potential access to your your secret sauce. Jason:  [1:05:20] Yeah and even if they had no access even if they're completely aboveboard and they would never look at the data you are you're still funding your competitor. Scot:  [1:05:30] Absolent yep so that's Amazon wins no matter what. Jason:  [1:05:36] I would prefer the record I would say like I mean AWS is a great service there's lots of reasons to use it it does to me feel like Microsoft with Azure in Google with Google Cloud platform like have some pretty competitive offerings these days. Scot:  [1:05:50] Yeah yeah once you kind of get married in the one who sings it's a little bit of a roach motel it's hard hard to check out. [1:05:56] Degree architecture at some level that you have to do so Jason was kind of. Land plane here with what do you think so we've gone through a lot of highlights and some impressive scale on Revenue growth slowed in a little bit, can't look like it's going up a little bit I'll TV hard to call with the cohort analysis looks like it's a little challenged on the back half of the first year, what's your conclusion Justice IPO mean that the subscription Commerce is the future or or or what do we look like your. Jason:  [1:06:26] Yeah well said to me that's a that's a funny question the. [1:06:32] Yeah we should have we should have mentioned earlier when you talked about it to some of these previous companies there there have. [1:06:38] In the past been these tranches where there was some trendy fatty thing in a bunch of companies had an exit based on that fad right and said the most most obvious recent one would be flash sales you know everyone got up. Advanced evaluation and a bunch of flash flash sale companies had. Had favorable exits in the beginning and less favorable exits at the end and you know today it's pretty clear that there's not a very exciting market for Standalone flash sales that you don't potentially that. A tactic that a retailer would have but it certainly isn't of itself a business model and so when I look at these guys if. [1:07:17] If you're evaluating them on the basis of subscription being the winning model. I think subscription is more likely to be a trend like flash sales I think it's a super valuable tactic. That retailers are smart to use but I don't think that the winning formula in e-commerce is just to go all in on subscriptions and part of the reason I think that is. Most of the companies we think of as subscription model businesses have. Why do they had to abandon their subscription model in order to be successful right and so you know stitch fix. Is a very Soft Cell on the subscription model like they started out subs

Galyn Bernard and Christina Carbonell met while working at a Quidsi company, Diapers.com. Four years after the 2010 Amazon acquisition, they left to start the kids clothing brand they'd always dreamed of, Primary.com — a source for affordable, foundational, quality kids basics in every size. On this episode of the podcast, Galyn and Christina share their brand principles, their newfound appreciation of a strategic supply chain, and the invaluable lessons they took away from their days at Quidsi.

“I'm In – Now How Do I Pay For B-School?”  Most applicants are 100% focused on getting IN a top MBA. Then after the euphoria of getting in, the hard reality of financing the MBA hits them in the face. Darren talks to Phil DeGisi, Chief Marketing Officer of CommonBond, about what US applicants can do to get the best MBA loans for US MBA programs. Darren and Phil also talk about the Dartmouth Tuck MBA, the MBA's usefulness in the marketing industry, and what US applicants should look for in an MBA network. Questions What should applicants think about (strategically) to secure the best MBA loan (6:16) What is the common financing path for most US MBAs? What federal and private loan options are available? (8:40) Federal loans vs. private loans (12:28) Estimating your MBA costs and last financing tips (19:40) What applicants can do now (tactically) to secure a great loan (21:30) How Phil has benefited from the Dartmouth Tuck MBA (30:08) How to gauge the strength of MBA alumni networks (32:36) Phil's thoughts on the MBA's value in the marketing industry (34:50) About Our Guest As Chief Marketing Officer at CommonBond, Phil DeGisi oversees the marketing, business development, and creative teams. Prior to joining the CommonBond team, Phil held ecommerce and digital marketing roles spanning startups and large organizations, including Quidsi (a subsidiary of Amazon), littleBits electronics, and Walmart.com. Across these roles, he led direct response marketing, customer retention, and site merchandising/optimization efforts. Phil received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and his BA from Vassar College with a degree in economics. Episode summary, links and more at: http://touchmba.com/us-mba-loans Episode Sponsor Ever wish there was an easier, more affordable way to get your MBA loans? Well now there is. CommonBond is leading student lender, saving members up to thirteen thousand dollars on MBA loans.   Learn more at http://CommonBond.co/TouchMBA. CommonBond Lending LLC, NMLS number 1175900.

“I’m In – Now How Do I Pay For B-School?”  Most applicants are 100% focused on getting IN a top MBA. Then after the euphoria of getting in, the hard reality of financing the MBA hits them in the face. Darren talks to Phil DeGisi, Chief Marketing Officer of CommonBond, about what US applicants can do to get the best MBA loans for US MBA programs. Darren and Phil also talk about the Dartmouth Tuck MBA, the MBA's usefulness in the marketing industry, and what US applicants should look for in an MBA network. Questions What should applicants think about (strategically) to secure the best MBA loan (6:16) What is the common financing path for most US MBAs? What federal and private loan options are available? (8:40) Federal loans vs. private loans (12:28) Estimating your MBA costs and last financing tips (19:40) What applicants can do now (tactically) to secure a great loan (21:30) How Phil has benefited from the Dartmouth Tuck MBA (30:08) How to gauge the strength of MBA alumni networks (32:36) Phil's thoughts on the MBA's value in the marketing industry (34:50) About Our Guest As Chief Marketing Officer at CommonBond, Phil DeGisi oversees the marketing, business development, and creative teams. Prior to joining the CommonBond team, Phil held ecommerce and digital marketing roles spanning startups and large organizations, including Quidsi (a subsidiary of Amazon), littleBits electronics, and Walmart.com. Across these roles, he led direct response marketing, customer retention, and site merchandising/optimization efforts. Phil received his MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College and his BA from Vassar College with a degree in economics. Episode summary, links and more at: http://touchmba.com/us-mba-loans Episode Sponsor Ever wish there was an easier, more affordable way to get your MBA loans? Well now there is. CommonBond is leading student lender, saving members up to thirteen thousand dollars on MBA loans.   Learn more at http://CommonBond.co/TouchMBA. CommonBond Lending LLC, NMLS number 1175900.

Join the Acquired Limited Partner program! https://kimberlite.fm/acquired/ (works best on mobile)   Ben & David break down Jet.com’s meteoric rise, culminating in Walmart’s blockbuster $3B+ acquisition of the company just two years after its founding. Will we look back on this deal as an ‘Instagram-like’ bargain or a ‘Pets.com'-sized blunder? And most importantly, can *anyone* compete with Amazon going forward? We speculate wildly.   Topics covered include: Community spotlight: Nowdue, a super fast invoicing platform for teams on Slack. Invoice like it’s the future! This looks very cool.  Jet’s deep origins in Founder & CEO Marc Lore’s first two companies, The Pit and Quidsi (aka, diapers.com)  Lore’s chance run-in with Jeff Bezos at a school picnic in Seattle in the early 2000’s Amazon's dramatic acquisition of Quidsi in 2010, including Bezos’ admonition to Amazon corp dev to keep Quidsi from being bought by Walmart under any circumstances (covered well in The Everything Store) Lore’s less-than-favorable opinion of Amazon's culture Lore's vision of Jet as an ‘online Costco’ that can directly with Amazon on price by selling goods to a “huge middle-class of people" at effectively zero margin, and make profit on membership fees Jet’s huge, pre-launch fundraising rounds, and subsequent massively promoted public launch in July 2015 Jet’s pivot in October 2015 to drop the membership model (their only profit engine), and subsequent massive growth (but also accompanying massive losses)  'Admitting defeat” to Amazon in July 2016? Immediately followed by the blockbuster $3B+ Walmart acquisition announcement Is e-commerce really a winner-take-all business and will Amazon just take over the world? Featuring liberal citations (again) of Ben Thompson's Aggregation Theory and the importance of customer experience.  Is there any path for Walmart & Jet to compete effectively with Amazon? Is Marc Lore Walmart’s only hope? Fantastic interview with Tim Cook discussing (among other things) the massive amount of growth still left in the internet    Followups: Lucasfilm: Star Wars Rouge One trailer drops! Featuring a strong female protagonist!    New section: Hot Takes! (thank you @cteitzel on Slack for the idea) Verizon/AOL acquires Yahoo! Lyft reportedly turns down acquisition offer from GM Microsoft acquires Beam Randstad acquires Monster.com    The Carve Out Ben: Michael Mauboussin’s Talk at Google and Reflections on the Ten Attributes of Great Investors after thirty years of honing his craft David: Strava, the fantastic social fitness-tracking app

Sarah Tavel is a Partner at Greylock Partners. Prior to Greylock, Sarah was a product lead at Pinterest. As one of the first 35 employees, her first order of business was to launch Pinterest internationally and close the Series C financing. Sarah then moved into product, becoming Pinterest’s founding PM for search and discovery, and launching Pinterest’s first search and recommendations features. She also led three acquisitions as she helped the company scale through a period of hyper-growth. Sarah joined Pinterest in 2012 after co-leading the Series A investment while at Bessemer Venture Partners. She spent six years at Bessemer, investing in a wide range of businesses from Quidsi to Cornerstone OnDemand.     In Today's Episode You Will Learn: 1.) How Sarah made her way into the world of VC from selling ads in college? 2.) What is the deal sourcing story behind your sourcing of Pinterest for Bessemer? What made Sarah so excited about the product? At what stage did Sarah realise the huge potential Pinterest did have? 3.) How did Sarah decide Greylock was the right VC to choose over the plethora of other options? 4.) How does Sarah try and appeal to the inner founder? What does she do to make sure she is the first person they call? What forms of communication does Srah like to communicate with? 5.) What is Sarah's attitude to VC's personal brand? How has Sarah seen the personalisation of VC in recent years? Why the shift from blog to Medium? 6.) What is the most important attribute for a consumer product to have? Does it have to be both 10X better and cheaper? Items Mentioned In Today's Episode: Sarah's's Fave Book: Creating The Kingdom Of Ends Sarah's Fave Blog or Newsletter: A Crowded Space by Josh Breinlinger As always you can follow The Twenty Minute VC, Harry and Josh on Twitter here! If you would like to see a more colourful side to Harry with many a mojito session, you can follow him on Instagram here!

Ajay is a founders dream having been a pivotal player in several startups including Quidsi, and autodream.com, both which have since been acquired by major organizations. His latest venture? You may have heard of it … UrbanStems the charming is a DC-grown tech startup aiming to make anyone look like a hero. By utilizing new technologies and a curated selection of flowers, we allow you to send a hand-crafted bouquet to anyone in the District, delivered within an hour or so, for $35 - all inclusive.