The Exchanges

Q So what happened with that brand? What did you learn from it?

A We learned that the habits of users combined with the culture of that particular industry Did not jive with having thousands of comic books sitting in your living room in some type of warehouse. Did not jive with going in and packaging, having to pull something, get an order, walk over, put in an envelope, all those things. And these are the painful lessons that I learned was just the fulfillment, the fulfillment, tracking, all those things. The administration for e-commerce is just Absolutely crazy, and that's where a lot of my e-commerce ventures have gone to die, but everything coming together, it was one of those ideas that if it worked, And we started a new trend and don't get me wrong. We got tons of traffic. We did all this crazy Reddit hacking and we got all the artist community involved and it was a lot of fun community, but just that last bit of getting someone to pay five dollars and then shipping something to them, the unit economics just did not work out.

AI assessment note: “these are the painful lessons that I learned was just the fulfillment”

Q The goal for me is like things you've learned, right? Things you've tried, what you've learned, whether it succeeded or didn't succeed.

A I've learned that right now, if you want to stand apart, it's a lesson that I learned in another startup is to go premium. I'll relate these two stories. We're launching an E An education, an ed tech platform in China is funded. And someone gave me some advice and they said, had to do with executive coaching. And they said, don't coach losers. That's what he said. It's easy to get the wrong customer. And so we applied that and I said, it's not going to work if our first cohort for this ed tech platform are not successful people. So we worked really hard to get the best of the best. We made it just very difficult. So much friction to get in. We increased the supply demand tension. It was up to a hundred. People were clamoring to get in, so we made it exclusive, and then we were able to take that group of people and show it to everybody else, and then the floodgates opened. So that's what we did. It was excruciating, but it was well worth it. So with e-commerce, I've seen the most successful ventures, and I've learned this by doing it the wrong way. Instead of trying to sell to the base, which is probably your late majority, if you're looking at the innovation adoption curve, you know, crossing the chasm, or your even early majority, the majority, the biggest part of the bell curve, It is just asinine. It is so difficult to stand out. But if you sell to rich early adopters, one, …

AI assessment note: “I've learned that right now, if you want to stand apart... is to go premium.”

Q What made you want to get into financing e-commerce brands? And, and she started, you told me as well to build your own e-commerce friends.

A Part of it is the challenge of it. And then there was a time when it was novel. So selling something online and going direct to consumer was the big rage. So you want to jump on that and you want to explore it because in hindsight you look at and go, okay, yeah, that's a no brainer. But back then it was pretty, Interesting. It was different. There was a lot of differentiation. A lot of people said there's no way you could sell direct and different variations. So that's the personal interest. And then just the challenge, see if you can do it and learning the industry. So if I'm going to invest in e-commerce brands, then I want to make sure that I'm versed. I understand what it looks like and then understanding everything have to do with financing. So if I'm going to be connecting an e-commerce brand with Money. Because one thing that you learn really quickly is that e-commerce, very capital intensive. So we have to figure that. And then with the new things with, you know, fulfilled by Amazon, all that distribution. You just have to learn all these things. And by doing that and being curious about it, that's what made me go deeper into the rabbit hole and explore everything to do with e-commerce.

AI assessment note: “Part of it is the challenge of it. And then there was a time”

Q So you said that the first brand you tried to build was nothing to write home about. What was that brand about? Why do you think it didn't go where you wanted it to go?

A One of the e-commerce brands that we tried to do was an online comic book. So we had this model where we said, okay, we're going to be the Netflix of comics. But because everybody wants their stuff for free, we need to have some type of physical good. So we combine it with doing Kickstarters, and then we sold the physical comic books like an online store, and we said, all right, people are going to want to order directly from us because they've been involved, and then they go out there. And so it wasn't an e-commerce brand specifically just for e-commerce. E-commerce was a Part of the entire package because I was never interested in creating, oh, a widget. So I'm going to create whatever, a coffee mug with an anti-spill, whatever, and try and sell it directly online. E-commerce for me was always a part of a bigger strategy, and that's because I'd learned and had enough hard lessons investing in other e-commerce brands or startups or founders. So you learn and you say, okay, we're going to do something different.

AI assessment note: “One of the e-commerce brands that we tried to do was an online comic book.”

Q I think a lot of brands falter at a 100,000 dollars per month. And that's what I'm looking at now with the services. How can I get to a hundred K a month? And then how can I protect myself from falling apart at that point?

A Right, because of the capital intensiveness of it all, and you can make a pretty bad move. You can take on bad debt. There's so many things that can happen and you can do the wrong deal. You can grow too fast as well. I've been a part of e-commerce brands. I wasn't the founder, but I was a VP where we had a deal with like Walmart and Costco and they almost killed us. Like they just send back the product, you know, type thing. Well, at the same time, if you look at, you know, some of these founders, what I like to do is, I like to say, would I use the product, one, and would I keep buying the product? Let's say the company went belly up. Would I buy all their remaining product and use it? And I invested in an e-commerce brand, and it was, it was this kind of like this health drink, and it had this really neat direct-to-consumer model using glass, and Craft stores and, you know, health food stores all over the place. I said, you know what? I, I would just convert everything in a product is really what it comes down to. Same thing. I'm, Looking at the beverage product and he wants to go direct to consumer and doing pretty well for himself. We want to add the e-commerce thing to it. And quite frankly, I take all my compensation and product. That's how much I love it. Right? So I want to add passion to it because if I can evangelize it, then I have a better chance. I find it difficu…

AI assessment note: “what I like to do is, I like to say, would I use the product”