Commerce Conversations

Episode Highlights: 

• Guidewire provides a core cloud platform for property and casualty insurance providers, making the providers smarter and faster with technology. In a corp dev perspective, Mike is always looking for the next thing that will make the business more valuable to its provider customers.
• It’s easy to assume that when you build a new and shiny product that it will be adopted, but Mike cautions us that this simply isn’t the case in insurance. You need sector specific experts to give you perspective.
• Buying power is extremely concentrated in insurance, you have 30-40 carriers whereas in FinTech you have 100s of banks who are willing to buy new technology. 
• Most insurance product have 70-85% renewal rates with NPSs of 10 so they are uniquely positioned 
• Why do carriers view themselves as independent players vs buyers as a collective?
• If they’ve got two paying carriers using the tech in production and a pipeline of 10-15 that is traction in Mike’s mine
• The best thing an InsurTech founder can do is raise a big round early so they can avoid the spiral of raising everything a sales cycle is delayed
• B2B SaaS players in InsurTech can reach out to Mike on Linkedin to connect

About the Guest:

• Mike Chen on Linkedin
• More about Guidewire

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• After seeing her mother show hesitancy in the financial realm, Vrinda grew up deeply understanding that financial literacy and independence were critical to her success.
• Vrinda was on the Visa Chase Sapphire Reserve product team after her undergraduate study, but when she applied for the card she got rejected.
• Women’s discrimination in the financial sector is a complex and compounded issue: consider the wage gap making women have to utilize more credit, how women are saved for less for second education and thus have to take on more debt, and historically women are not educated to the same level as their male counterparts.
• Vrinda shares the opinion that capturing women as a customer segment in financial services will be something that only a new challenger can address. Because legacy institutions were built fundamentally during a time with exclusionary principles, startups can build with co-creation for new tools in a way major players simply cannot.
• Communal ways to interact with finance like saving circles are a fundamental way incumbents haven’t been able to leverage.
• “For Women” products are saturating the market but a real solution for women addresses specific issues with a tailored product, not just marketing.

About the Guest:

• Vrinda Gupta
• More about Sequin

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Episode Highlights: 

• Brandon Schulz: is the founder of Violet who
• Jordan Gal: is the founder of Rally. He started out as a merchant himself and jumped into the merchant software side of things.
• Thinking about one of the last things he bought online, which was in fact on Amazon, Brandon reflects on how Amazon sets the tone on how consumers expect to interact with checkout. Since their one-click checkout patent expires 
• Matt reminds us that after that patent expiration the market rallied around big brand companies like Fast and Bolt attacking checkout and its rise and fall. Jordan underscored the entertainment of the Twitter war-zone. Overall, Jordan feels the prize for checkout is a mammoth one and that’s what draws so many eyeballs because an unbundled checkout has the ability to dethrone platform
• According to Brandon, the kind of phenomenon that happened to Bolt and Fast simply happens because the internet loves bigness. Because checkout touches so many different money flows and general market froth, ridiculous market sizes like Bolt’s $12B valuation at $5M in revenue could fly in a bull market.
• FinTech investors or specialists in developer tools almost simplified checkout and capital flowed into the space, but people are starting to realize e-commerce requires a LOT of infrastructure and a LOT of nuance.
• The manual card payment conveyance, fill out form virtually hasn’t changed since the 1990s.
• Today Shopify can help solve some of that because you can do one-click checkout across the network, but if the merchant isn’t on the network that experience is still very fragmented for the consumer.
• “The Front-End Trap” is when folks who want to build cool new commerce products get distracted on the look and feel without having the sufficient context to truly address the infrastructure

About the Guest:

• Jordan on Linkedin, Brandon on Linkedin
• Rally website, Violet website

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Episode Highlights: 

• Bradley defines web3 and what it means to be a driver of the next generation of the internet.
• If the medium for exchange with a creator and the community is a currency then we are enabling individuals to create their own economies. 
• Social tokens is a reinvention of the term “social capital” but with true fungibility and value
• Bradley recognizes that just in the span of 4 years recognition of crypto has completely transformed to be known by the general public
• Bradley sends Kendall a token on a web2 web3 bridge, where a custodial wallet can send an erc-20 token to a non-custodial wallet like MetaMask
• They imagine a world where you can swipe your credit card and pay for a pizza with the coins you hold
• Music, Youtubers, and creators are now all onboarded onto Roll - “The great thing about money is it’s universal… it appeals to every type of creator.”
• Kendall and Bradley discuss smart contracts 101 and how that create security and compliance

About the Guest:

• Bradley on Linkedin
• More about Roll

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• The creator economy is now all about owning the means of distribution, no longer the means of distribution. The means of production or publication are cheaper and easier than ever, but in the creator context that means those with only the most savvy distribution models will succeed financially. 
• One of the most damaging things you can do in Josh’s opinion is giving those early, dedicated fans underwhelming value… like rugging them in a crypto scheme
• Josh reflects on Facebook’s launch during his college career as a revolutionary effect on the way relationships formed.
• Josh saw that creators were really starting to expand their reach across multiple social platforms to more deeply reach fans.
• What’s a para-social relationship? The term refers to a kind of psychological relationship experienced by an audience in their mediated encounters with performers in the mass media, particularly on television and on online platforms.
• Crypto can dissolve the divide between consumer and co-conspirator. Social bonds are fraying: religious communities in-person relations are at lows and the digital socialization we can create is meeting that gap.
• Consistently driving demand and attention is difficult, because of the rules of novelty and the Portugal the Man token’s value change is a great example of that.
• Creators need to own the distribution outside of third party networks because they are at the mercy of algorithms.

Episode Highlights: 

• After studying economics at USC, Shveta inadvertently fell into a career in M&A after seeing many of her peers pursue the same path. She  started out at Deloitte’s mid-market investment banking practice.
• She then was able to steer important M&A decisions on the sell side as a leader in corporate development at Lynda, where she played a key role in Linkedin’s acquisition of the company.
• It was this transaction that encouraged Shveta to think beyond just the mechanics of M&A activities and more about how the entire process impacts  employees through the transition at large.
• Today, Shveta oversees more of the buy-side of M&A as the SVP of Corporate Development at Intuit where she has managed the acquisition of Mailchimp and Credit Karma.
• Reflecting on these deals, Shveta stresses that every deal is complex and unique in its own right.
• She shares learning from Credit Karma how to navigate a deal with potential regulatory scrutiny and from Mailchimp  how to operate in a very competitive and quick process.
• Shveta talks about gender dynamics in the M&A world and the way she personally creates space for access in her role.

About the Guest:

• Shveta Mujumdar on Linkedin 
• More about Intuit

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Episode Highlights: 

• Kaya talks about the transition of individual creators and entertainment personalities as growing business people and enterprises.
• Kendall and Kaya define what a social token actually is and how it’s used in today’s context, even though the majority of creators haven’t begun creating coins.
• 80% of creators rely on brand partnerships and Kaya believed that will continue to be the bread and butter of creator income however now more than ever there are more options to monetize.
• The two major challenges for creators to continue a smooth income Kaya often sees are back-office management for creatives and emotional burnout.
• Kaya believes the buzz around NFT and web 3 is exciting but still in very early stages where the clear value for the mass market is generally unclear. She believes that with time these kinds of products can help create more monetizable experiences 

About the Guest:

• Kaya Yurieff on LinkedIn 
• Subscribe to Kaya’s Creator Economy Newsletter

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Episode Highlights: 

• How does the leader fit in rest and balance in the c-suite? Blocking time for immersion in nature and being present with his family.
• Shane broke into technology first in sales and joined MX as chief revenue officer, after resonating with the mission orientation of the company and the stories of the leadership team he came aboard excited to apply his past experience and learn the unique nuances of the businesses. 
• Being a mission-driven company means creating a culture where employees feel a sense of purpose around their work. Coming from a household with a single mom, Shane felt a personal connection to the MX intent to make financial literacy more accessible and empower individuals. 
• Shane’s path to the CEO was unconventional to say the least after MX lost both co-founders, one to cancer and the other after he needed to step back due to the health of his daughter. For Shane, it was critical for him to do right by the founders and still piece together a fully conceptualized vision for the future.
• The interim CEO’s personal leadership philosophy is less about telling and more about supporting. Shane prioritizes showing up for people and showing up for people when they get stuck.
• The market is in an uncertain place but both Dan and Shane agree the need for a market correction is long overdue and what we see today is an early sign of this kind of return to Earth. While we don’t know exactly where things will land, it’s possible that the macro trends will get worse before they get better.

About the Guest:

• Shane Evans on Linkedin
• Company Website

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