Commerce Tomorrow

That’s a wrap for 2023! In this jam packed episode, Dirk & Kelly discuss their recent trips, recap Black Friday / Cyber Monday, AI innovations at commercetools and across the industry, the changing competitive landscape, the economy and its impact to the tech ecosystem, when someone is going to do a PE roll-up of MACH Alliance ISV members, strategic initiatives for 2024, and upcoming conferences.

00:00:53: Where in the world is Dirk?

00:11:00: AI update

00:23:24: How’s the overall economy doing? How is that impacting the tech ecosystem?

00:36:27: BF/CM recap

00:50:11: Strategic initiatives at commercetools for 2024?

00:57:10: NRF

00:59:10: Elevate

Hosts Dirk Hoerig and Kelly Goetsch welcome Maia Benson, Managing Director of Forum Ventures. The discussion traces Maia's e-commerce and logistics journey, spotlighting her pivotal role at Shopify and the challenges of building the self-embedded shipping network. They cover the Flexport acquisition, challenges in fulfillment systems, and the industry's dynamic nature amid Gen AI impacts. Maia also leads us through funding landscape trends and the startup thresholds needed to be fundable.

Timestamps:

Personal background / career to date 0:47, 01:10, 10:54

Explain the Shopify / Flexport debacle 04:33, 09:17

What is the Shop app? 06:06

Define fulfillment and order management. Common use cases, features required by software, etc 12:40

When does it make sense to have a standalone OMS vs one combined with your commerce platform? 14:36, 20:24

How does an eCommerce-only OMS differ from a retail OMS, or some other industry? 14:36

Should best in breed exist as a separate category? 19:17

How have Order Management Systems changed over the last 20 years? How have customer expectations changed and what are today’s use cases? 17:35

Tell us more about Forum Ventures and what types of companies you're looking to invest in 22:40

What are the thresholds that companies have to meet to be fundable? 23:31

Wrap / Where can people follow you? 28:20, 30:20

FYI - watch the MACH Alliance OMS CEO panel that Maia led 30:45

Greg Alvo, Founder/CEO of Ordergroove on Subscriptions by Commerce Tomorrow

In this episode, Kelly Goetsch and Dirk Hoerig speak with Phillip Jackson and Brian Lange, founders of the media company, Future Commerce. Tune is as this roundtable provides cultural insight on the future of commerce. Is commerce simply technology that we adopt or is the future of commerce a bigger, more abstract idea - and, what does human nature and culture have to do with it? Additionally, we’ll get Phillip and Brian’s hot takes on AR, VR, Conversational commerce, AI and more!

You can hear Phillip and Brian on their podcast, Future Commerce, on wherever you listen to podcasts.

Timestamps:

- Personal backgrounds 00:38

- What is Future Commerce? What does "Delivering cultural foresight for 8-9 figure eCom brands" mean in practice? 04:19 (04:53)

- With 13,000 subscribers to your newsletter, a popular podcast and huge social media following, you've built an amazing brand / following...how? 14:40 (15:30)

- 22:20 Lightening Round - The name of your company is "Future Commerce" - what do you think about:

- AR 22:32

- VR 24:21

- Conversational commerce 25:38

- AI (briefly) 26:17

- Live shopping 27:47

- Social commerce 28:44

- Metaverse 31:19

- AI 31:31

- What are some examples of retailers doing digital well? 35:45

Mu Ventures runs a $10m fund focused on seed and pre-seed rounds. In this episode, we discuss the role of venture capital(VC) in tech, key terms in the VC space, the value VC offers to startups and to end-consumers, and the mechanics of how fundraises work. We also get Mu's investment thesis, Gary's outlook on the fundraising market, and what Gary looks for when evaluating CEOs for his portfolio companies.

00:55: Personal background

03:58: What is a VC? Where do they add value?

07:50: Define key terms - fundraise, GP, LP, due diligence, term sheet, carry, etc etc

15:42: What immediately adjacent spaces are you looking at? Examples of portfolio companies?

19:57: Explain the seed -> IPO pipeline. What are milestones at each tier?

24:38: What do you look for in a founder?

29:05: How does the fundraising market look? What are you expecting for the next 6, 12 months?

Tercera is the leading growth private equity firm in the composable space, providing growth capital to systems integrators (including Orium). Think of Tercera as a VC but exclusively for growing SIs. In this episode, Bill and Michelle explain what they look for when making investments in SIs, how investment banking differs from private equity, consolidation within the SI ecosystem and more. Jason provides great context on the role that SIs play, why they took on growth equity from Tercera, and how he expects the SI space to evolve over time.

- 1:35: What systems integrators are, the role they play in our ecosystem, etc. from an ISV standpoint

- 03:17: Introducing our guests

- 06:16: Explaining Terms: SI, GSI, agency and where Orium fits

- 08:27: The Tercera business model, investment decisions

- 12:45: What is an investment banker?

- 14:02: Why do SIs build IP when they are ultimately paid on billable hours?

- 17:37: There are commerce vendors out there who have substantial professional services teams, thereby competing for revenue. Why do they do that, how do you compete against a vendor's own staff? Thoughts on said venders.

- 22:25: Evaluating SIs - what are the red flags?

- 24:48: How does SI-focused PE differ from more traditional vendor-focused VC?

- 29:27: "Real" AI is here. How does it impact business, both today and in the future?

- 31:45: What’s the decision process around doing in-house, staff aug, having a partner do piece(s) or the whole thing? What type of orgs choose which approach and why?

- 34:02: Consolidation in the MACH SI space - why are the GSIs buying up smaller SIs in this market?

- 36:32: Closing remarks

In this episode, Kelly and Dirk go deep on everyone's new favorite topic - AI. They discuss why this moment in AI is fundamentally different than what we've seen in the past, explain the underlying technology that powers AI, discuss whether AI is actually "self-aware" (and what that means), where we are in the tech adoption hype cycle, how we at commercetools are looking at AI, how AI impacts the products we offer at commercetools, how AI impacts hiring, and how AI is already and will even further disrupt the commerce vendor market

By popular demand - Dirk and Kelly are back with another 1:1 episode! As they wrap a commercetools-offsite, they talk about the overall economy, what's happening with other commerce vendors, deep dive on the recent Shopify news, recap Shoptalk and look forward to MACH TWO, recap Algolia's news, discuss the future of AI + commerce, and provide some commercetools updates.

1:14: commercetools off-site recap

9:30: MACH / composable adoption

18:53: Shoptalk US / EU recap

27:21: Macroeconomic outlook

33:47: Shopify analysis

43:24: Algolia news

What drives a teenager to build a commerce platform? While many software vendors went bankrupt at the time of the dotcom bubble burst, brothers Sebastian and Stefan Hamann built Shopware and have gone to on to thrive in a very competitive market. From early beginnings to a hundred million in funding, the importance of remembering the shopper ALWAYS, to what it’s like to work with his brother for over 20 years, Sebastian discusses it all!

Timestamps:

Personal intro / background | 1:17

What drives a teenager to build a commerce platform? (Dial up, the first webshop, the first flat platform) | 2:16

Why do Germans like commerce so much? | 7:38

About Shopware - employees, customers, fundraising, stats | 11:48

Mid-market takes and a hundred million in funding | 13:03

Go wide or go narrow, the shopping experience | 15:15

The customer profile | 18:04

Why open source? Advantages/disadvantages of open source over MACH? | 19:51

Comparisons - Magento and Shopify | 24:50

How is it being co-CEO with your brother? | 28:57

What's next for Shopware? | 30:32

Commerce vendor market outlook 5-10 years from today? | 32:17

In this episode, Kelly Goetsch speaks with Darrell Rosenstein of the Rosenstein Group. Learn from one of the first ever LinkedIn users who literally went from index cards - yes index cards - to founding the Rosenstein Group, a leader in martech-related executive search. This episode features an overview of how the executive staffing industry works, how to stand out in this hiring market, how to prevent your top employees from being poached, who makes the best CEO, and how the types of people that companies hire over time necessarily changes.

Personal intro / background | 1:19

Linkedin then, LinkedIn now-Darrell was one of the first!? | 2:25

How the executive staffing industry works | 4:47

Engagement work behind the scenes | 6:52

The Kolbe method | 8:55

What are the differences you look for when hiring for various company sizes? | 12:41

What types of profiles do seed stage companies need to hire? How does that differ from series D and IPO-bound companies? | 18:26

Why do companies hire you to find executives, rather than train and promote from within? | 21:56

So you you've described yourself as a people capitalist - what does that mean? | 26:34

The provider’s mindset | 30:15

What signs do you look for when approaching potential recruits? Are there signs that a prospective recruit may be disgruntled? | 31:18

What traits do you look for in a Ceo as a potential client and a potential investment target? | 39:49

Who makes the best CEO? Product people? Sales? Combination of the two? | 42:47

In this tight job market, how do candidates stand out? | 46:58

The Greatest Hits! Those spotted early on in their careers? | 55:20

How to get in touch with Darrell | 1:34