Offcuts

We discuss why Shopify POS was an important service in the early days at Kubix, a day in the life of an agency Ops Director, why brands are likely already using AI but don’t know it, navigating the tech partner landscape and the most challenging aspect of the current economic climate; hiring.

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We discuss the beauty of building and selling something you enjoy, the pros and cons of bootstrapping, the similarity in challenges at each stage of the agency life cycle, value-based pricing, the best uses of AI in an agency context, the importance of cultural fit between a buyer and seller and what life looks like after an exit 🚀

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We discuss how a challenging personal period and extensive experience in the FMCG space led to the creation of the brand, the power of combining beauty and emotional well-being, why barriers to entry in the DTC space are both a blessing and a curse, the pros and cons of celebrity-backed brands and what Namrata is most excited about in 2023.

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We discuss what skills he acquired after the Peoplevox acquisition, why becoming a trusted advisor is an excellent sales tactic, what a dark stack it is and why it’s important, the power of eCommerce tech curation, why software sales experience is an advantage when advising eCommerce brands, balancing work and life and Ollie’s secret business book recommendation 🤫

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We discuss how a last flight out of London at the start of the COVID lockdown kick-started the brand, the advantages of crowd-sourced product development, why embracing a COVID-enforced D2C strategy was so powerful, the process of moving from D2C only to a multi-channel player, using D2C data to inform your retail strategy, why not spending any money on acquisition until the eComm basics were in play was a smart move, why sticking to 0% alcohol, whilst difficult, has been a key ingredient for success and their five year mission to build the world's next great beer business.

We discuss why being exposed to her family fashion business was a stepping stone to a corporate career, the importance of personal values alignment when making career choices, the untapped potential of Web3, Sprint’s investment criteria and process, the current state of financial markets and central bank strategy and advice to anybody considering a pre seed, seed or Series A investment raise.

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We discuss the print services origins of Wiro, pivoting from a platform-agnostic model to Shopify only, his take on Commerce Components and why this additional enterprise layer is useful from a pricing perspective, the similarities of brand expectations and caution between COVID and now, using the current market volatility to their advantage when hiring, why partnerships with bigger agencies is a great growth initiative, why we need to enter a new era of hyper-realistic case studies and his go-to internal agency stack including Slack, ClickUp, Notion, Google Drive, Pipedrive, Quickbooks and Loom.

We discuss building the Lizz Truss of Shopify apps, the advantages of being non-developer founders, approaching the agency business from a fist principles perspective, the keys to hiring great people, why the best partnerships are based on client needs not the best technical solution, the advantages of having a wide partner network including VCs and branding agencies, why adding quality to the conversations is the key to good personal branding, the advantages of a fully remote team and why working with your best mates is a good foundation for a successful business  

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We discuss getting approached by an agency group in 2019 sparked the idea of an exit, how COVID derailed the exit plans, the key milestones of the Born deal; the initial conversation, due diligence and SPA negotiations, the advantages of having one person focusing on the deal, the importance of the business being able to run in parallel to the exit plan, the challenges of due diligence, specifically the difference in process between the target and acquirer, the lessons learned of not taking corporate finance advice, the inherent risk of a deal falling through and what he’d do differently if he did it all again.

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I sit down with Gavin Ballard, founder of Disco Labs and Submarine.   

We discuss how a love of Shopify led to the creation of Disco Labs, why they decided to pivot from an agency to a product, the challenges of process transition when pivoting, why being at the coal face of client issues helps with product development, Submarine’s GMT through their existing agency partner network, the importance of the developer experience and a revolutionary new paradigm in online retail; ‘flexible commerce’   

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