Ecom Growth Insider

Most ecommerce brands compete for attention on the same two platforms, against the same competitors, at the same rising cost. Brand licensing is the other way in: you borrow a fanbase somebody else spent decades building, put it on the product, and pay for it out of sales.

David Born has worked in licensing for about twenty years. He was inside Warner Bros. Consumer Products and at Cartoon Network, on the side of the table that decides which brands get a license. For the last twelve years he has run his own licensing agency, and a growing share of that work is now ecommerce brands.

This episode is the practical version. What a first license costs, line by line. How long it takes before anything can be sold. And why the character on the mood board is almost always the wrong one to start with.

What we get into:

- The minimum guarantee, and why it is owed whether or not a single unit sells

- The royalty rate he says an ecommerce brand pays on average, and the worked example behind it

- The two sales-forecast mistakes that kill a deal before it is drafted

- Why the hottest IP in the world is the worst possible first license

- Twelve months from first email to first sale, and where that time goes

- The ten working days every approval takes, and what resets the clock

- What a license does to the value of a company on the day it is sold

- The reason a licensing agent tells people licensing is a non-starter

The anchor case is Plum Deluxe, a loose leaf tea brand his agency works with. David relays what founder Andy Hayes told him: ten years in business, never licensed anything, then a Peanuts collection at Christmas that sold out in twelve days, with less ad spend than a normal launch. Those are Andy's numbers as David reports them.

CHAPTERS

00:00 Intro and what licensing actually covers

03:45 What a first license actually costs

04:38 Minimum guarantee and royalty, defined

05:37 The worked example on a Hello Kitty deal

10:52 Never make the hottest IP the first one

12:45 Who says yes to a brand with no track record

18:49 Twelve months from first email to first sale

19:56 The 10-day approval clock that resets

26:38 What has to be true before a license helps

27:17 Licensing does not save a struggling brand

28:06 A ten-year-old tea brand's first license

30:15 The second collection and the basket effect

34:43 Cash flow, margin and absorbing the royalty

40:02 The most expensive mistake he has seen

41:00 What a license does to a sale of the company

42:22 Overrated or underrated, five calls

45:29 The first move for an operator next week

FIND DAVID

Born Licensing: https://bornlicensing.com

Born to License: https://borntolicense.com

Learn to License: https://www.learntolicense.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidborn1

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidb0rn

Ecom Growth Insider: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Figures are David's own, or his clients' as he reports them. Nothing here is legal or financial advice.

Her store locator tells you to go buy from a shop she does not own. If that shop is out of stock, you email her the store's name and she sends you a free shipping code as a thank you for trying. She built a seven-figure haircare brand on that instinct and never bought an ad to do it.

Kate Assaraf founded Dip in 2021 — plastic-free shampoo and conditioner bars, now in a little more than 500 independent stores. She spent the first year not building but watching: standing in drugstores, supermarkets, salons and Sephora, quietly observing what people actually do when they pick up a bottle. What she saw decided the product.

Her argument in this episode is that sustainability is the third reason someone buys from her, behind "it works" and "it's worth the money" — and she has a Warby Parker survey to explain why leading with the mission loses. She built the brand so the plastic-free part never had to do the selling.

One thing the intro does not say: she is running paid ads now. She hired an agency and fired them two weeks later, and she tells that story here for the first time, at 29:31.

This one is for operators whose brand has a mission — clean ingredients, sustainability, ethics, a founder story — and who are currently leading with it.

In this episode:

• The first thing a shopper does with a bottle, at every price point in every store

• What men actually do on the women's shelf, which is not what she expected

• Where the mission ranks among the reasons people buy, and the survey behind it

• One distribution channel, picked deliberately, and the line she used to open it

• The page on her own site that routes buyers to a shop she does not own

• How the business grows when the product lasts a year and nobody needs to reorder

• The ads agency she hired and fired in two weeks, told here for the first time

• What she would build instead of another ad account

Chapters:

00:00 Seven figures, no ads, no Amazon

01:20 A year spent watching people shop

03:48 Smell decides it before anyone reads

04:40 Men shop the women's shelf the same way

05:16 The sustainable shopper who does not exist

06:48 Sustainability is the third reason to buy

07:08 Warby Parker surveyed, and the mission lost

11:14 The people who care are in refill stores

14:06 Five hundred doors, one did $200,000

15:14 A store locator that costs her the sale

20:56 Revenue is not profit on a marketplace

21:55 The Amazon carrot she calls moldy

24:15 Where AI is an equalizer, and where it is slop

29:31 Hiring an ads agency, firing it in two weeks

33:23 When the repeat purchase is a gift

36:45 Clean beauty and subscriptions, overrated

39:23 Build a community before another ad

Dip:

https://dipalready.com

https://dipalready.com/pages/store-locator

https://www.instagram.com/dipalready

https://www.tiktok.com/@dipalready

Kate on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/kate-assaraf-b25a741a7/

Ecom Growth Insider is hosted by Andrej Tuma. Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrejTuma

Running a DTC brand between $100K and $1M a month and want the profit side looked at properly, not the traffic side? https://hologrowth.com/audit

The same product does not behave the same way in two places. Langer's blood orange sparkling water is the number one seller on a supermarket shelf; on Amazon it is ginger. Their zero-sugar cola outsells the regular roughly ten to one on Amazon, and closer to 60/40 in grocery. Same brand, different winner — because browsing a fixed shelf and searching a marketplace are not the same behavior.

Bruce Langer is the president of Langer Juice, the company his father started in 1960 and which now runs more than 200 products through Walmart, Costco, Kroger, Albertsons, Bristol Farms and Amazon. Two generations, sixty-five years, and a launch-and-kill engine that has outlived several fads.

A note on the opening: Bruce's father, Nathan Langer, survived the Holocaust, came to the United States after the war, and started this company in 1960. Bruce tells it in about a minute and then moves on, which is how he wanted it. We spent the rest of the hour on the work.

This one is for operators who sell physical product — whether that is a first retail account, a better-run Amazon listing, or a Shopify catalog you have never split by channel.

In this episode:

• The signal a retailer gives long before orders drop, and why it is not the shelf

• Why his drink in the biggest new category in beverage has zero grams of protein

• How he tells a megatrend from a fad, and the 99-truckload order that taught him

• What a buyer is actually solving for in a first meeting, and why something has to come out

• Find the retailer that wants to be first, and what that is worth

• The same product, two channels, two completely different best-sellers

• What he told a founder who wanted to quietly cheapen the formula

• Why out-of-stocks cost you twice

Chapters:

00:00 One Kmart order, then the fad died

01:38 A celery juice route to a national brand

05:15 The zero-protein bet in the biggest category

09:56 The 1980s seltzer fad and 99 truckloads

11:06 Display space is the canary, not shelf space

13:53 Swapping corn syrup for cane sugar

16:41 The founder who wanted to cut the formula

18:39 Cut cost anywhere except the ingredients

19:22 What actually makes a retail buyer say yes

20:35 On a shelf, something has to come out

22:16 Budget to promote, or the shelf does nothing

23:36 Getting on the shelf is the easy part

24:31 Blood orange on the shelf, ginger on Amazon

25:27 Zero sugar outsells regular ten to one on Amazon

26:32 Running one catalog across every channel

28:09 Keeping founder taste at 400 employees

32:34 The category he thinks gets big next

Langer Juice:

https://www.langers.com/

https://www.instagram.com/langersjuice

https://www.tiktok.com/@langersjuice

Bruce on LinkedIn — https://www.linkedin.com/in/bruce-langer-9135004/

Ecom Growth Insider is hosted by Andrej Tuma. Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@AndrejTuma

Running a DTC brand between $100K and $1M a month and want the profit side looked at properly, not the traffic side? https://hologrowth.com/audit

A buyer is not trying to work out what a brand is worth. He is trying to find a reason to pay less for it. That is the half of due diligence nobody explains, and it is where most founders lose money they had already earned.

Dave Guttman has bought, run and sold companies for most of his career. He was President of First Stop Health, a telemedicine company that made the Inc. 500 in back-to-back years — No. 276 in 2018 and No. 375 in 2019 — and he now mentors founders through their own exits.

This one is for operators who have ever thought "I'd sell at the right number." Andrej and Dave get into what an acquirer is actually doing during diligence, the three numbers that set a multiple, why polishing every last opportunity before a sale costs you money rather than making you more, and the one deal Dave says he should never have done.

In this episode:

• The second reason buyers run due diligence, and how it shows up in the final price

• The three numbers an acquirer checks before bidding, and the floor Dave puts on each

• Why maxing out every opportunity attracts a worse buyer, not a better one

• How being the face of the brand quietly caps what it is worth

• The handshake rule he learned across 18 months of depositions

• Why he walked from a deal with 70% of revenue in a single client

• The timing move he credits for holding his price through the 2008 crash

• What he does first with a struggling $5M brand and 90 days

Chapters:

00:00 The half of due diligence nobody explains

04:59 The first meeting, and what drops his offer

05:29 Lifestyle business or exit business, pick one

07:12 Make every month they wait cost them more

09:31 Being the face of the brand makes it hard to sell

14:02 Diligence exists to cut the price, not to check it

14:46 He timed the exit to his three best months ever

19:47 A big cash payment at close spooks buyers

22:54 Stop looking at CAC and LTV blended

25:05 The three numbers that set the multiple

27:42 The cold plunge brand that added a subscription

29:30 Two identical $3M brands, 4x versus 7x

30:09 Leave the acquirer some low-hanging fruit

31:53 Max out the upside and you attract a worse buyer

34:23 Start planning the sale 18 to 36 months out

35:43 The deal he should never have done

38:05 70% of revenue from one client, and he walked

41:59 What an acquirer wants the key employees paid

45:27 A struggling $5M brand and 90 days

Dave Guttman:

https://www.guttmanmedia.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/drguttman/

https://www.instagram.com/realdaveguttman/

Ecom Growth Insider is hosted by Andrej Tumachowitsch. Watch every episode on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL785J5b_VfDG4PrhJ0OVdkDlUioSkb-tf

Running a DTC brand between $100K and $1M a month and want the profit side looked at properly, not the traffic side? https://hologrowth.com/apply/

Adam Hotchkiss runs a bootstrapped telehealth brand doing over $1.7 million a month with a team of four. Net margins above 30%, no outside investment, and he threw out the entire brand six months in to get there.

Six months of purchase data told him who was actually buying: young athletic men. So he killed the clinical, stock-photo look and rebuilt AlgoRX around the people already paying. Revenue almost doubled inside two weeks.

Full disclosure: AlgoRX is a HoloGrowth client. You will hear what we built together discussed from the inside, including the parts that did not work.

He describes the arc as $70,000 a month at the beginning of last year, $1.4 million for the last completed month at the time we recorded, and $1.7 to $2 million projected for the month itself. They have since passed $1.7 million a month. Every figure is his.

In this episode:

- What six months of purchase data told him about who was really buying, and the rebrand that followed

- Why he ran zero ads for six months, and what changed when he turned them on

- Why the uglier ad usually wins, and why that was the hardest thing for him to accept

- The 6,000-follower affiliate outselling accounts with millions, and the case for an army of small ones

- How four people hold net margins above 30% on a stack they built instead of rented

- What checkout friction really costs when the customer pays a doctor fee and shipping on top

- Losing the ad account five or six times while fully compliant, at $50-60K a day

- Why he no longer thinks the software is the asset, and what an acquirer would actually be buying

- His honest answer on selling, and why an earnout means you effectively bought yourself a boss

Chapters:

00:00 "You're a company for no one"

00:23 $70K a month to $1.7M a month, on a team of four

01:09 The surgeon who walked out of the operating room

02:55 The $700 wall before anyone gets treated

07:11 "I wanted to make the Honda for healthcare"

10:24 The rebrand that nearly doubled revenue in 2 weeks

11:55 He ran zero ads for six months, then turned Meta on

18:40 The uglier ad usually wins

21:01 A 6,000-follower affiliate outselling mega accounts

25:59 How four people hold 30%+ net margins

28:13 64% cart abandonment, and why he says only

31:02 Building a cult on a pharmacy, and the tattoo test

43:30 Losing the Meta account five times at $50K a day

48:37 Would he sell, and the honest answer

54:11 The tech moat is gone. The brand is the asset now

57:07 The one lever he'd pull at $100-300K a month

1:00:46 Where to find Adam and AlgoRX

Full chapter list and transcript: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com/episode/adam-hotchkiss-algorx-bootstrapped-telehealth-team-of-four

Connect with Adam:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/drhotch/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@DrHotch

X: https://x.com/drahotch

AlgoRX: https://algorx.ai

AlgoRX on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/algorx/

This episode is a business conversation, not medical advice. Nothing in it is a recommendation to take any medication.

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. Subscribe for episodes on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and the operating systems behind brands that actually grow.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

Most brands say creative is the biggest lever they have, then spend almost nothing on it. Matthew Gattozzi's answer is that the P&L already tells you the truth.

Matthew spent over a decade in ballet and danced professionally with Ballet Austin. A back injury ended it at 21. He took the standard that came with it and built Goodo Studios, a creative studio producing ads for e-commerce brands.

Spend roughly 10% of ad spend on creative production, sliding down as you scale.

Work out how many new ads you actually need, which is almost always fewer than you think.

Then make those ads different from each other, not just more of them.

In this episode:

- The P&L test that exposes what a brand actually prioritises

- The 10% rule for creative production budgets, and when it slides to 5% and 1%

- The math for how many new ads you need each month

- Why "make me 60 ads" reliably gets you 60 versions of the same ad

- Why diversity beats volume, and why more follows different

- What a plateau in the ad account usually says about decisions made months earlier

- Why he stays tool agnostic across cinema cameras, creators and statics

- The standard he brought from ballet: "we do not tolerate mistakes"

- Rapid fire: the best ad he saw this year, an underrated copywriting book, and his hottest take

Chapters:

00:00 "I've never met somebody overspending on creative"

00:46 Why this episode starts with ballet

01:01 A decade of ballet, ended by a back injury at 21

02:53 The gap between camera people and advertising people

03:38 Building Goodo Studios

04:48 Losing an identity, not just a career

05:43 Eight years sober

08:09 Harmony beats balance

10:59 What ballet taught him about creative standards

16:45 Is there such a thing as a perfect ad?

18:17 "We do not tolerate mistakes"

19:39 When the client disagrees with the creative

22:30 Lo-fi versus high production

24:41 Tool agnostic: only winning ads count

26:13 The P&L test for what a brand really prioritises

27:40 The $100K example: cut ad spend, fund creative

30:08 "I've never met somebody overspending on creative"

30:31 Two brands, two decisions, two outcomes

39:15 The 10% rule, and when it slides to 5% and 1%

43:15 Why plateaus are an under-investment problem

44:10 Diversity or just quantity

45:39 Why "make me 60 ads" gets you 60 of the same ad

48:25 Focus on different, and more takes care of itself

49:34 The math for how many new ads you actually need

51:27 Twenty thought-out ads beat sixty guesses

52:16 Rapid fire: best ad, best book, hottest take

58:07 Where to find Matthew

Connect with Matthew:

X: https://x.com/matthewgattozzi

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewgattozzi/

Goodo Studios: https://www.goodostudios.com

Newsletter, weekly: https://www.goodostudios.com/newsletter

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. Subscribe for episodes on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and the operating systems behind brands that actually grow.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

Most brands using AI for ads start with the prompt. Will Sartorius says that's the last thing you should touch.

Will runs SelfMade, a New York agency that raised around $19 million as an Instagram posting app, nearly went under after a bad acquisition, and got rebuilt into an AI creative engine when Will took it over at 28. His clients don't get creative brainstorms. They get three analyses that decide what gets made before anyone opens a tool.

Social listening on your own reviews.

A gap analysis on what your competitors run that you don't.

A time series on your own Meta account to resurface winners you killed and forgot.

Then the split: 80% AI-generated creative for volume and bottom of funnel, 20% fully human for the top, because that's where connection still does the work.

In this episode:

- The 3 analyses Will runs before a single ad gets made

- Why the prompt is the very last part of the equation

- The 80/20 rule for AI creative volume

- The persona, angle, emotion tree that replaces the creative brainstorm

- How to run the whole system from zero in a day with Claude and a folder of reviews

- Why Will refuses to run AI UGC even though he sells AI creative

- Authority, equal, or aspiration: the three positions every ad takes

- Why Grüns ran 45 separate landing pages, one per angle

- How team structure changes when AI does the analysis

- The most overrated thing brands do with their winning ads

Chapters:

00:00 Grüns ran 45 landing pages, one was about pooping

01:22 From Deutsche Bank to a DTC shoe brand

05:21 SelfMade: $19 million raised, then nearly dead

07:27 The ChatGPT moment that turned the agency around

09:13 The 3 analyses behind every great ad

12:01 Why "generate 100 ads with AI" is not a system

12:31 The prompt is the very last part of the equation

12:54 Why AI still needs a human in the loop

17:22 Can you train AI to have taste?

19:07 The AI stigma that shows up on sales calls

21:33 The 80/20 rule for AI creative

22:10 The free tool that finds the holes in your creative

23:23 Why people are starved for human connection

25:17 Why Will refuses to run AI UGC

26:27 Authority, equal, or aspiration: pick one

27:38 Top of funnel human, bottom of funnel AI

28:11 Message match from ad to landing page to email

29:40 Grüns: 45 angles, 45 landing pages

32:27 Starting from zero: the first three things to do

33:01 Step 1: your reviews folder plus Claude

34:49 Step 2: find the gaps in what you're running

35:12 Step 3: connect Meta and tag every ad you've run

37:13 How team structure changes

39:44 Rapid fire: the most overrated thing in creative

42:16 Where to find Will

Connect with Will:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/willsartorius/

SelfMade: https://selfmade.co/

Ad Lib, his free creative gap analysis tool: https://adlib.getskipper.ai

X: https://x.com/will_sartorius

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. Subscribe for episodes on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and the operating systems behind brands that actually grow.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

When did you last actually change your price? Not the ad creative, not the landing page. The price itself. If you are like most founders, you set it once on a spreadsheet and never touched it again.

Drew Marconi is the co-founder and CEO of Intelligems, the profit optimization platform behind a thousand-plus A/B tests and more than $600M in DTC transactions. Before this he was chief of staff to McKinsey's global managing director, then built the dynamic pricing engine for half a million rides a day at the ride-sharing company Via. He is one of the most rigorous pricing thinkers in ecommerce, and this one is packed with frameworks you can use this week.

His core case:

Raise price before you touch conversion rate.

A $10 increase on a $100 product can double your profit per order.

You can lose half your conversion and still come out the same.

In this episode:

- Why a $10 price increase can double profit per order

- How to find your free shipping threshold from your order value distribution

- The first question to answer before you price anything: what are you pricing for

- Why the right price is a mirage that changes by market and season

- Profit per visitor, the metric that should replace ROAS obsession

- The pricing mistakes Drew spots in seconds

- How Intelligems uses AI to design, build, and read your tests

- Where dynamic pricing crosses the line, and where it just makes you money

Chapters:

00:00 The pricing lever almost everyone ignores

01:43 From McKinsey to pricing 500K rides a day

05:45 The pivot: from mobile games to Shopify pricing

11:14 Why most ecommerce brands still price on gut feeling

15:34 What Gruns gets right: a storefront for every customer

18:02 Why founders optimize ads 10x more than price

21:46 The math: how a $10 price bump can double profit

24:25 The pricing mistakes that quietly cost you money

26:47 How to actually find your free shipping threshold

31:22 Why the right price is a mirage

34:25 How Intelligems uses AI to run your tests

37:46 The future of personalization and dynamic pricing

41:56 Is dynamic pricing fair to customers?

44:43 Lightning round and where to find Drew

Connect with Drew:

Intelligems: https://intelligems.io

Intelligems AI: https://intelligems.ai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andrewmarconi/

X: https://x.com/drewmarc

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for ecommerce founders who want to scale profitably. New episodes on paid media, CRO, offers, pricing, and the operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

Right now, while you read this, an AI agent could be on your store, reading your product pages and deciding whether to recommend you to a real customer. You will not see it in Google Analytics, and everything you built to convert a human is invisible to it.

Raphael Cohen ran product for 150 million people at Waze and has had two companies acquired. Now he is building Haggle (haggl.ai), the infrastructure that lets your store intercept AI buyer agents, negotiate with them, and win the recommendation before they move on. This conversation changed how Andrej thinks about where ecommerce is going.

The shift he is betting on:

Attention used to be the scarce resource you paid Google and Meta for.

AI agents have unlimited attention, so that lever disappears.

The only thing that wins an agent is a genuinely better product and offer.

In this episode:

- Why your urgency timers, pop-ups, and CRO tests do nothing for AI agents

- How AI buyer agents already scrape your store without showing up in analytics

- The "1% of traffic" trap, and why that number is about to 10x again

- How agent-to-agent negotiation works, and why you cannot bribe an agent

- Negotiating against verifiable data: discounts that only unlock for proven high-value customers

- Why heavy discounters should go premium up front and negotiate in the back

- Where brand still wins with agents, and where it stops mattering

- The one zero-risk step every Shopify brand should take this week

Chapters:

00:00 The AI agent shopping your store right now

00:55 Why he left Waze: the ad model is a zero-sum game

06:52 The end of the attention economy

09:15 What agents do on your store that you can't see

14:34 The traffic is already here, and growing 100x

19:09 Can you cheat the system? Negotiating against verifiable data

23:34 Why your CRO is invisible to AI agents

26:57 Why "I'll deal with it at 1%" is a trap

30:00 How Haggle works: agent-to-agent negotiation

34:30 Go premium up front, negotiate discounts in the back

37:23 Does brand still matter to AI agents?

39:01 Who actually deserves a discount: defining your ICP

40:37 How Haggle fits with OpenAI and Google's protocols

42:43 What every Shopify brand should do this week

45:18 Lightning round and where to find Raphael

Connect with Raphael:

Haggle: https://haggl.ai

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/raphco/

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for ecommerce founders who want to scale profitably. New episodes on paid media, CRO, offers, pricing, and the operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com

Your popup probably converts at 8%. The best Shopify brands are pulling 15 to 20% with the same traffic, and this episode is the playbook.

In this episode of Ecom Growth Insider, Shaan Arora, co-founder and CEO of Alia, breaks down the popup playbook he built into Shopify's fastest-growing popup app. Alia now powers Nike Strength, Peloton, Hot Ones, HexClad, ILIA Beauty, Milk Makeup, Skims, Toms, Aviator Nation, and 3,000+ other Shopify brands.

Shaan and his co-founders Cory Gill and Bill Wohlers bootstrapped Alia from $1M to $8M ARR in one year, then sold to Dotdigital in March 2026 for a $60M exit. No outside funding. No debt. Profitable since day one.

Shaan's popup testing priority:

Test timing first (5 seconds is the default).

Test copy second (mystery discount versus standard percent off).

Test X-button placement and exit delay.

Track on-site CVR alongside opt-in rate.

In this episode:

- Why Klaviyo's 1 to 5% "healthy" opt-in benchmark is wrong (Alia's brands hit 10 to 15%, sometimes 20%+)

- The single biggest lift on opt-in rate: copy, not design

- When mystery discounts beat standard percent-off offers (and the brand sizes where each wins)

- Why gamified popups (Plinko, slots, spin-to-win) work for some brands and kill the experience for others

- How Aviator Nation doubled their welcome flow revenue by fixing their popup

- The on-site CVR metric most popup tools don't track (and why it matters more than opt-in rate)

- How Alia captures quiz data even when a visitor doesn't submit their email

- The default 5-second trigger plus the "smart trigger" that re-shows the popup on the second pageview

- How to segment new vs returning visitors without giving away your margin twice

- The popup program differences between $1M, $10M, and $100M brands

- What Alia did differently to attract the Dotdigital acquisition

- Why Shaan would take 30% of $60M over 100% of $1M every time

Chapters:

00:00 Why most founders miss the popup growth lever

01:09 The invisible cost of a bad popup

02:15 Healthy opt-in benchmarks: Klaviyo's 1 to 5% vs Alia's 10 to 15%

04:11 What Alia's smart testing actually tests

05:05 The single biggest lift on conversion: copy

10:17 Gamified popups that convert: Plinko, slots, characters

13:05 The on-site CVR metric most popup tools ignore

14:24 Aviator Nation: how a popup fix doubled welcome flow revenue

16:47 Default timing setup and the smart-trigger second showing

19:14 New vs returning visitor segmentation

20:26 What every top popup program has in common

24:26 If you could only test one thing

25:24 Differences between $1M, $10M, and $100M brand popup programs

28:35 Building polished popups for premium brands (and when to skip the discount)

30:52 The Dotdigital acquisition: how it happened

32:56 Bootstrapped to $8M ARR in one year: what Alia did differently

34:15 The one thing Shaan would do again (and why co-founders matter)

37:19 Why sales is the best founder education

39:02 Where to find Shaan

Connect with Shaan:

Alia (book a demo): https://aliapopups.com

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/shaan-arora/

X: https://x.com/iamshaanarora

Ecom Growth Insider is the podcast for e-commerce founders who want to scale profitably. New episodes weekly on paid media, CRO, offer strategy, and operating systems that actually move the needle.

More episodes and newsletter: https://ecomgrowthinsider.com

Work with HoloGrowth: https://hologrowth.com