The Exchanges

Q And so tell me about that. What, what happened there? Why, why'd you, why'd you leave?

A Oh, well, we'd sort of conquered the market. So we'd raised forty million bucks. We'd resisted the fair share of acquisition offers. Um, you know, we had a large office, a large team. I think that we'd identified ourselves as sort of category winner, even then for the design side of things. Um, you know, I'm addicted to this idea of creating companies, as my bio would say way too many times. So I felt at that time that it was probably the right thing for him to sort of blossom out as he'd learned all the lessons I could surely pass on, um, for me to take another swing at it. So went back to the, uh, the start.

AI assessment note: “for me to take another swing at it. So went back to the, uh, the start.”

Q Now are you, I mean, so do you see yourself as basically giving SMBs the power of kind of Amazon and how Amazon does data on the back end to recommend things? Is that what you're doing?

A Yeah. We sort of see ourselves ultimately trying to defend them against those kinds of marketplaces. Um, you know, the problem is that Amazon is using a huge amount of data. It has aggregation across so many products that it's very hard in isolation to compete, but in isolation is where all innovation happens. So these small manufacturers and crafters and creators are actually making better products, better experiences because they're trying to innovate. But they're getting lost against the seas. You see Amazon's dominance continue. So the advantage that we can hopefully give, and hopefully tools like us, is start to provide the technology underpinning that lets them actually compete. Let customers, Communicate out in the same way that Amazon would.

AI assessment note: “Yeah. We sort of see ourselves ultimately trying to defend them against those kinds of marketplaces.”

Q Wait, wait, wait. Tell us more of that story. So what did that sound like, and how'd you find him? Why'd you want to buy him?

A A mutual friend of ours identified him. At the time, I had known Carp and some other people who were looking Who are in, um, in the same Podcasting company. I was working in a company called Vidivi, which is a competitor to YouTube at the time. So I had a big belief in this idea of content creation. Um, and I got introduced to him and thought his product, even back then, was just, uh, light years ahead. As an engineer and a founder, he was exceptional, is exceptional. He has a sense of design and technology that's really rare. And, but he was really young, and I'd been through this so many times, I was like, oh, well, this would be really easy. So, um, we sort of danced around for a while. Eventually, we had lunch, I think, with his dad, which is my final pass for approval to, uh, growing up. Um, And we quickly grew from there. So I think, you know, the months after I joined, we, uh, we built the tech team. We added, uh, all more support and started.

AI assessment note: “A mutual friend of ours identified him.”

Q So tell us more about, I mean, cause this podcast obviously has an opportunity to drive a lot of people to the website, but I want them to really understand what it does. Can you tell us a story of how business is using you? You know, your headline on the website is your personal data scientist, but what does it actually do?

A Yeah. So I think that the, the sad part about the way the ecosystem is changing is small businesses are have to have a PhD in analytics and marketing and, Right. So for us, the advantages of your small business and you connect your data, you put in your social services, you put in your Shopify account, your Etsy account, or your PayPal, you put in your ads accounts, and you see everything in one place. We'll give you a sort of a rundown each day of what's happening. So for best practices, you can sort of see yourself evolve and understand where the market looks around you. And then we sort of automate away some of the basic stresses. So we help create content, um, you know, take products out of Shopify and we'll help list them inside of your social account. So we'll find the best trending products and we'll help market that. So lowering sort of the workload that people have to do. The future where we see ourselves going is as we continue to consolidate and get enough data to do these things smartly is there's a lot of, uh, pain and work that the small businesses shouldn't have to do that, you know, AI machines can just do for them. So we're starting to look at more and more automations that are intelligent that just take away the work.

AI assessment note: “you connect your data, you put in your social services, you put in your Shopify”

Q everyone's Shopify products because you'll have the same competitors using your platform. You know, you know, a thousand different people selling a shoe that you know is trending. You can only, you know, pick one of them. Do you understand what I'm saying? So how do you, you know, people have an advantage if they use you, but what if everyone's using you? Do, do, do you lose that advantage?

A Uh, no. So I think that the way like Amazon works is they, they have thousands of, you know, similar items that are all sort of related to each other in the way they sell. The way we work is slightly different. We're working one to one with each vendor. So in theory, if we actually were to penetrate the entire SME, every single company picked the same automation. They said, pick my number one trending product and let, let's talk about it when it's succeeding. That would definitely crowd the communications a bit, but it's a very one-to-one communication between that brand and their customers. So if that Shopify store is talking about their high heeled shoes, and the next Shopify store is talking about their high heeled shoes, they're really targeting Like two sales are up. I changed the price on it. These kinds of things. Um, so I don't think they would be competitive. Some of the aggregate roll up stuff maybe, and you can't get around products that just aren't strong. I guess part of the process of developing your business is finding out when things work, but we want to get away from is having to be a marketing expert to actually go into small business or having to be, you know, a data scientist to actually make sense of what you want to do. Like it used to be, you could hang a shingle outside your door. Now it doesn't work anymore.

AI assessment note: “no. So I think that the way like Amazon works... We're working one to one”

Q So they built the store and API stuff, right?

A They'll connect Etsy to us through an allot process. And then we'll start talking about it inside of the social services to let them or we'll help them create the ad campaign to help them, you know, get visibility. So they're not actually having to, I mean, if you look at the small business, the average small business has 14 integrations right now. They're using 14 SAS's just to survive. It's just lunacy. And when we started with Squarespace, like the average company had two or three SAS they're using. They found us. They were like, oh my God, this is an amazing thing. I can give you my credit card and have a website. Like, wow. Now it's, the poor operator's like, yeah, I've got a Zendesk account. I've got a Shopify account. I've got a PayPal account. I don't even know where all my passwords are, right? So the, the stress for them is they have this huge proliferation of information. It's not helping you. Them at all, right? They, they're collecting information inside of one service, inside of Etsy, but it's not actually getting to Mailchimp, right? They're not getting it out into Facebook or anywhere else. So consolidating that data in one place that helps them, I think is a interesting new category. And to the reason that I sort of moved on is I've always loved the idea of stretching out to new categories. Um, so I think that there is A coming wave of this sort of automation s…

AI assessment note: “They'll connect Etsy to us through an allot process.”