CommerceTomorrow: Recent Episodes
CommerceTomorrow
COMMERCE TOMORROW is a podcast series hosted by tech entrepreneurs and ecommerce veterans Kelly Goetsch and Dirk Hoerig discussing the latest developments and technologies used at global brands and retailers that are at the forefront of growth and innovation. Listen in to interviews with recognized technology leaders and learn how technology is driving their business.
It's the end of the year, and the end of an era. In this special episode of the Commerce Tomorrow podcast, Kelly and Dirk reflect on the transformative changes in commerce and at commercetools throughout 2024. They share their favorite moments, discuss industry highlights, and provide a sneak peek into what’s next for the commerce world in 2025. Tune in for insights, laughs, and a heartfelt farewell to this chapter of the podcast.
Special edition! commercetools announced Compilations, a new semi-annual showcase featuring over 50 product and feature updates, reinforcing the company's commitment to delivering constant innovation, faster time to market, and improved customer experiences for both end users and commercetools Platform customers. Dirk and Kelly discuss the Fall 2024 Compilations announcement, the impact these features drive, as well as what’s ahead for commercetools in the coming months and the next Compilations showcase.Time stamps:00:40 What is Compilations?03:30 High-level themes for Fall 2024 compilations (customer experience, user experience, platform experience)04:44 Customer Experience08:29 User Experience13:33 Platform Experience19:20 What’s next for commercetools in the coming months & for the next Compilations showcase20:38 Closing
Is shopping entertainment? Evan Moore, Senior Vice President, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships, answers the question. NBCUniversal uses composable commerce to enable seamless shopping experiences but their unique approach to commerce is also leveraging moments of inspiration (built with their audiences) to the benefit of the brand partners they work with. Evan recounts a key moment when instead of moving an existing audience to a new ecommerce destination, they pivoted to bring the commerce experience to where the audiences already were. If phase one of shoppable television is taking existing content and layering it on top of ecommerce capabilities, then what’s around the corner for phase two? Evan explains what he foresees will be a valuable extension of the entertainment experience.Timestamps:00:35 - Introducing Evan Moore, Senior Vice President, NBCUniversal Advertising & Partnerships, his role & NBCUniversal’s approach to commerce02:04 - What has the impact of composable commerce been on NBCUniversal’s business and what innovations is it enabling?07:06 - What opportunities are composable commerce bringing to NBCUniversal? (use cases, shopper experiences)16:36 - What do you foresee as the future of commerce in entertainment? What trends are you paying attention to?25:02 - The intersection between commerce, entertainment and advertising
From airport terminals to what happens when you run along the Hudson river, commercetools has some big news to share. Like Marcia, Marcia, Marcia! (if you know, you know), we’re at it again with MACH MACH MACH. Post MACH Three in NYC, commercetools announces a new CEO and a partnership with Microsoft/Azure. Needless to say, commercetools is not slowing down. For our valued listeners, we’ll discuss best practices for a digital commerce project implementation and what signs to look for that your project is going well. Structuring your company for success is a must - how customer meet ups and your CSMs can help. Finally, Kelly answers the question, “Are you a benevolent dictator?”Timestamps:01:08 So much is happening! MACH Three, Microsoft/Azure partnership, HIPPA, commercetools new CEO06:39 Best practices for a digital commerce project implementation10:17 During the evaluation, what are the signs that a project is going to go well16:41 Structuring your company for success18:58 Are you a benevolent dictator?20:24 Getting the most out of your vendor26:43 When/how should SIs be used?
Imagine a world where everyone uses AR enabled by AI—what will shopping look like? Will we all have our own AI shopping assistants? Back again by popular demand, Dirk and Kelly find time in between their travels to explore "The Future of Shopping." With AI rapidly evolving into mainstream use, they discuss its significant impact on digital commerce, retail shopping and consumer behavior.01:10: Anecdotes from the road 02:38: Reviewing ContentCon & going deeper on content management 08:38: Future of Shopping - how end-customers will be shopping digitally in the future09:35: Digital commerce penetration as a % of overall retail16:50: Staggering timeline of commerce revenue numbers18:50: Technology changing consumer behavior - who wants a digital assistant?21:30: “Headless” and its future Listing out some exciting heads in the coming future:Desktop (21:38), Social Media (22:39), Super apps (24:38), AR/VR (31:10)35:30: AI & how it will change shopping41:20: How will our kids be shopping in 10 years?44:20: Movies/books, a technology predictor - envision how things will change once everyone simultaneously has access to and sees through AR and enabled by AI
Back by popular demand, we are back with another 1:1 episode where we're going deep on the topic of simplification. Dirk starts by talking through the founding of the commercetools product and original architecture goals, why MACH is mistakenly labeled as "complex" (hint: selection bias at play), how the buyers of commercetools have changed over the years, opinionated vs. unopinionated, the many ways we at commercetools are making our product and composable more generally easier, and where commercetools is positioned in the market.Timestamps:00:48: Founding principles of the commercetools product08:42: Selection bias - why MACH is sometimes labeled as “complex”10:42: How have the buyers of commercetools changed over time14:12: Opinionated vs. unopinionated21:00: How are we as commercetools making enterprise commerce even easier?28:02: How is Dirk feeling about the position commercetools is in the market right now?
Dirk and Kelly dive into all things B2B commerce with Andy Hoar, one of the world’s foremost experts in B2B commerce. From a modern definition of B2B, to the state of B2B commerce, this episode covers composability in the B2B context, what’s next from Paradigm B2B and a sneak peek into an upcoming digital maturity report from commercetools and Master B2B.https://www.paradigmb2b.com/https://www.linkedin.com/in/andyhoar/https://www.linkedin.com/in/dirkhoerig/https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellygoetsch/01:00 Welcome back for a second time Andy Hoar! Personal background/Paradigm B2B Consulting intro02:28How does your combine process differ from a traditional Gartner MQ or Wave?03:45How Andy evaluates commerce platforms07:11“B2B” is a pretty broad term. Define its taxonomy and distinct needs for each? 09:15 What differentiates digitally mature B2B’s from immature B2B’s? 14:15 What's the state of B2B today vs. B2C? What holds back B2Bs as they build out new direct to consumer channels or attempt to modernize? 20:53 Distribution: is connecting distributors w/ the consumer a future model?23:16At Elevate you mentioned that all 18 of the 18 vendors you evaluated claimed to be composable. What in your mind equals true composability (in B2B context)?29:18 What hires do B2B’s need to make (by profile, skills, and temperament) in order to succeed in digital commerce? 35:35Tell us about your Master B2B classes?38:47 You work with vendors all the time. What could we do better? Give us your top recommendations
Recorded live and in-person from commercetools’ Elevate - The Global Commerce Summit in Miami Beach, FL, we welcome Paul Hornby, Director of Digital Commerce Experience at The Very Group which boasts a heritage dating back to the late 1800s. Paul speaks of his journey towards composable commerce.
Step inside commercetools with Dirk and Kelly as they sit down with commercetools’ own CFO, Dan Murphy. This is an enlightening discussion around company efficiencies, key metrics to judge the health of a SaaS business, and what metrics to look for at various stages of company growth. Are your customers renewing? What does it cost to acquire a customer? Are the company goals aligned with its employees? How efficient is the sales organization? Is revenue growth the end all be all? Tune in to gain a CFO's perspective on this and more.00:50: Introduction to commercetools, CFO, Dan Murphy01:52: What does a CFO do?04:14: Defining key metrics use to judge the health of a SaaS business (NRR, GRR, CAC + CAC payback, LTV, ARR/employee, Quick ratio, Magic number)10:42: What is the rule of 40 as a metric and is it outdated?16:04: Key metrics to look for at various stages of growth - Seed round, IPO, pre-revenue...20:25: The market for enterprise SaaS has dramatically changed. Dan summarizes the market from ~2020 -> present day. What is valued today vs. a few years ago26:35: At what point should VC-backed enterprise B2B SaaS aim for profitability?35:44: When/why do you IPO? Tell us about that process
From a technology-standpoint, MACH is fantastic. However, the commercial-side of MACH can be cumbersome. Live from MACH Haus in New York, Kelly and Piyush Patel (Chief Strategic Business Development Officer of Algolia) go deep on the various industry initiatives to simplify the commercial-side of MACH. We discuss white labeling, BPO, cloud marketplaces, what the MACH Alliance has/can do, and more.00:35Welcome to NRF 2024, MACH Haus02:17What is NRF?03:03 How does NRF differ from Shoptalk?03:50More about Algolia04:55 Why the market is adopting MACH10:03Making the commercial side of MACH easier11:45Vendors and organizational boundaries within an enterprise - tech, business, finance, procurement, legal, etc12:30Defining Terms: SI/GSI, ISV, Order Form, MSA, DPA, NDA, SLA16:00Straight up purchase: What is it, how it works, when it makes sense, drawbacks17:35How do accelerators work?19:25AWS & GCP present/sponsoring at MACH Haus. Discussing their marketplaces21:40MACH Alliance and streamlining the commercial & legal side24:25What can individual vendors do to simplify resell25:53ISVs embedding other ISVs26:31Vendor consolidation28:24Let's say you're a retailer and you use an SI. Does that make it easier? BPO31:35What's the hope for the future? 34:50Kelly’s challenge to the MACH Alliance
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 update00:23:24: How’s the overall economy doing? How is that impacting the tech ecosystem?00:36:27: BF/CM recap00:50:11: Strategic initiatives at commercetools for 2024?00:57:10: NRF00:59:10: 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, 10:54Explain the Shopify / Flexport debacle 04:33, 09:17What is the Shop app? 06:06Define fulfillment and order management. Common use cases, features required by software, etc 12:40When does it make sense to have a standalone OMS vs one combined with your commerce platform? 14:36, 20:24How does an eCommerce-only OMS differ from a retail OMS, or some other industry? 14:36Should best in breed exist as a separate category? 19:17How have Order Management Systems changed over the last 20 years? How have customer expectations changed and what are today’s use cases? 17:35Tell us more about Forum Ventures and what types of companies you're looking to invest in 22:40What are the thresholds that companies have to meet to be fundable? 23:31Wrap / Where can people follow you? 28:20, 30:20FYI - watch the MACH Alliance OMS CEO panel that Maia led 30:45
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 recap9:30: MACH / composable adoption18:53: Shoptalk US / EU recap27:21: Macroeconomic outlook33:47: Shopify analysis43:24: 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 | 1:17What drives a teenager to build a commerce platform? (Dial up, the first webshop, the first flat platform) | 2:16Why do Germans like commerce so much? | 7:38About Shopware - employees, customers, fundraising, stats | 11:48Mid-market takes and a hundred million in funding | 13:03Go wide or go narrow, the shopping experience | 15:15The customer profile | 18:04Why open source? Advantages/disadvantages of open source over MACH? | 19:51Comparisons - Magento and Shopify | 24:50How is it being co-CEO with your brother? | 28:57What's next for Shopware? | 30:32Commerce 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 | 1:19Linkedin then, LinkedIn now-Darrell was one of the first!? | 2:25How the executive staffing industry works | 4:47Engagement work behind the scenes | 6:52The Kolbe method | 8:55What are the differences you look for when hiring for various company sizes? | 12:41What types of profiles do seed stage companies need to hire? How does that differ from series D and IPO-bound companies? | 18:26Why do companies hire you to find executives, rather than train and promote from within? | 21:56So you you've described yourself as a people capitalist - what does that mean? | 26:34The provider’s mindset | 30:15What signs do you look for when approaching potential recruits? Are there signs that a prospective recruit may be disgruntled? | 31:18What traits do you look for in a Ceo as a potential client and a potential investment target? | 39:49Who makes the best CEO? Product people? Sales? Combination of the two? | 42:47In this tight job market, how do candidates stand out? | 46:58The Greatest Hits! Those spotted early on in their careers? | 55:20 How to get in touch with Darrell | 1:34
In this episode, Dirk Hoerig speaks with Gary Survis, Operating Partner at Insight Partners. Gary has learned that years of experience (whether it be marketing, owning & selling companies, being a CMO, operating partner) equates to various accumulated tools to put in your toolbelt. The learning never stops - nor does the selection of tools - confidence and trust being among them. Gary explains why marketing is a science and an art, why generative AI is going to disrupt and change marketing forever, what a brand really is, the CMO mystery and bonus, offers five marketing strategies leaders need to succeed.About Gary Survis | :40How does Insight help its portfolio companies with marketing? | 05:01Why is marketing a science and an art? | 11:31How generative ai is going to disrupt & change marketing forever | 13:32"Brand + demand = growth.” Why? | 20:20 What is a brand? How do you build one? | 22:23How is a brand score created? | 24:00When do you start branding and ways to build your brand | 26:30When do you need a CMO and what does a CMO do? | 30:16Five Marketing Strategies leaders need to succeed
In this special episode, Kelly sits down with Mike Sharp to discuss all things product management. They discuss the scope of "product," Mike's view on the commerce space (having joined commercetools from telecom space), and the future of MACH
In the first episode of 2023, Dirk and Kelly review Kelly's 2023 predictions: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/23-predictions-2023-kelly-goetsch/. They discuss emerging competitors to commercetools, Shopify's "Components" announcement, the emerging role of DXC, AI, ChatGPT, and more.
Pipe17, a new member of the MACH Alliance, is pioneering the entirely new Order Routing category, which connects and routes various back-office systems and allows for intelligent routing of order-related data, thereby replacing legacy-style Order Management Systems. With the many parallels to what's happening in the commerce platform space, it's a fascinating listen!
In this episode of the CommerceTomorrow podcast, Dirk and Kelly sit down with Microsoft's GM of Retail and Consumer Goods, Sid Jatia, to talk through Microsoft's turnaround, Azure's approach to retail and consumer goods, Microsoft's various commerce offerings, Microsoft's in-store offerings for retailers, and the future of commerce, retail and consumer goods at Microsoft
In this wide-ranging episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with Chris to discuss the Jamstack revolution that's sweeping commerce, MACH and Chris's involvement as an executive board member, Netlify and how it differentiates itself in the market, the emerging Digital Experience Composition space, and more.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly try a new format and discuss the economy, the MACH startup ecosystem, thew 2022 Gartner Hype Cycle and more. If you like this episode, please let us know and we'll do more of these on occasion!
As Chief Growth & Innovation Officer of Saadia Group (New York & Co, Lord & Taylor, Fashion to Figure, etc), and the great-grandson of retail pioneer and legend Lane Bryant, Nick is a wealth of knowledge on the state of retail and technology. In this wide-ranging interview, Nick walks us through his career and the changes he's seen as well as talks through his views on current and future business and tech trends.
Tekton is a family-owned hand tool company that questioned conventional assumptions in its industry by building a direct-to-consumer channel. It sees benefits in running a vertically integrated model that goes from making wrenches all the way to fulfilling orders. In this episode, Dirk and Kelly speak with brothers John (CEO) and Jeff (CMO) on why and how they built out a new channel, without hiring outside help. They went full MACH using an in-house tech team out of Grand Rapids Michigan.
Having spent time at Circuit City, 360Commerce, Oracle Retail, Infor and now AWS, David Dorf is among the preeminent experts in our domain on POS and its ongoing evolution. In this wide-ranging interview, we discuss where the POS market is heading, his work establishing retail standards through the NRF, Amazon.com and AWS, and the great work he and AWS are doing through the MACH Alliance.
Dubbed “Ecommerce Aholic,” with a top-performing Magento YouTube channel, this episode of CommerceTomorrow welcomes Jamersan Founder and CEO, TJ Gamble! Tune in to discover the nuts and bolts of Magento through the lens of a small-town Magento native, as well as how the platform is evolving under Adobe. This episode confronts Magento-gone-MACH rumors, and the comparison between BigCommerce and Magento buyers. Listen in for exclusive Magento insights and market predictions from the “Ecommerce Aholic” himself!
On-site personalization is all about helping users have a better online experience through providing them with the right advice at the right time. In order to create a personalized experience for each user, there has to be a means of data collection. In this episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with thought leader and CEO of trbo, Felix Schirl, to discuss all things personalization and the methods of collecting first party data in the midst of privacy legislation. Discover how data is collected, stored, and used, and why Felix says that a customer data platform (CDP) is a “must have” for personalization. If you’re interested in the ad tech space, this episode is for you.
The ever-changing eCommerce industry is fueled by immense innovation in both B2B and B2C markets. In this episode, Kelly and Dirk sit down with CEO and Founder of RMW Commerce, Rick Watson, to discuss the companies driving industry improvement, the mistakes of software vendors, the role of marketplaces, and the overall direction of commerce platforms.
Make sure to check out some of Rick's favorite thought leaders on LinkedIn:
Benedict Evans / https://www.linkedin.com/in/benedictevans Scott Galloway / https://www.linkedin.com/in/profgalloway Jason M. Lemkin / https://www.linkedin.com/in/jasonmlemkin Ian Altman / https://www.linkedin.com/in/ianaltman Chris Walker / https://www.linkedin.com/in/chriswalker171 Juozas Kaziukėnas / https://www.linkedin.com/in/juozas Hendrik Laubscher / https://www.linkedin.com/in/henlaub
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly speak with Guillaume on how Checkout.com became a leader in payments so quickly (and a decacorn along the way), why the existing payment infrastructure is so old/inefficient and what could be done to improve it, thoughts on cryptocurrency, and the future of payments and Checkout.com's role in that landscape
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly have an in-depth discussion with Carrie about her time as CDO of Neiman Marcus, the changing nature of the CDO role, how Google generally and Google Cloud more specifically approach retail and the future of commerce platforms.
Home Depot is arguably among the most digitally savvy retailers in the U.S., with unmatched omnichannel capabilities. Learn how Fahim's $100m/year budget ensures that Home Depot remains at the leading edge of tech
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly chat with industry leaders Rob and Adam on Salsify, the PIM market and changes over the past decade, the challenges that organizations face when enriching product data, whether PIMs will eventually surface product APIs (or GraphQL) directly to frontends, and more
Deloitte Digital is one of the biggest players in digital transformations for large enterprises and Gagan, as managing director, sees it all. In this discussion, he gives his thoughts on the present/future of the commerce platform space, how enterprises are changing how they buy software, how enterprises are developing commerce competency internally, and advice for enterprises that are going through digital transformation around commerce.
Allison and her team at Fast are out to eliminate checkout friction with their 1-click checkout solution. By eliminating passwords, they give their customers an Apple Pay-like experience across any eCommerce website or app that integrates their software. Have a listen to understand how Allison's background of scaling payments at Uber is now being applied to disrupt eCommerce checkout.
Fulfillmenttools, a cousin of commercetools, is a spinoff of REWE Digital that is taking REWE's in-house fulfillment technology to market. In this episode, we talk through the state of the fulfillment software market and how they have some unique competitive advantages by having started in the grocery space.
Description: With its $70m in revenue, search pioneer Lucidworks is a major force in the enterprise commerce search market. We sit down with CEO Will Hayes and commerce GM Peter Curran (former founder/CEO of Cirrus10, which was acquired by Lucidworks) to talk through the big innovations in search, the intersection of open source + search, and where Lucidworks is heading as a company.
In a first-ever for the Commerce Tomorrow podcast, we recorded a live episode on Clubhouse. We were joined by Mihaela Mazzenga (CTO of Sharper Image), Devashish Saxena (CDO of PPG Industries), Kunal Mukherjee-Chakraborty (CDO of GrandVision), Alex Shiferman (CTO of Nuts.com) and Tim Daneliuk (head of architecture of Zoro U.S.)
Fresh off a $27m series B fundraise, Yvan and Jay's 400+ person Bold Commerce is augmenting traditional commerce platforms by offering solutions for checkout, subscriptions, and more. In this episode, we go deep on the future of commerce platforms, Bold Commerce's part of that future, the differences between U.S. and Canadian business climates, and more.
From his long tenure as Forrester's lead B2B analyst to founding the world's largest B2B conference to founding Paradigm Consulting, Andy is a top voice in the world of B2B commerce. In this episode, we talk about the consumerization of B2B commerce, brands going direct to customers, B2B marketplaces, and much more.
PPG is a manufacturing giant with more than $16 billion in revenue. They produce paints, coatings and other specialty materials and operate in more than 70 countries. Devashish joined last year as CDO to lead their digital transformation. With more than 35 ERPs and many more systems of record, Devashish talks through the practicalities of digital transformation at scale.
Bob Burke took over as CEO of ATG in 2002 during the depths of the .com crash and led the company to dominate the commerce platform space, eventually leading to a successful acquisition by Oracle in 2011. In this episode, we talk about the evolution of the commerce platform market, ATG's role in driving that change, Oracle's acquisition of ATG, and Bob's role at private equity firm TCV
Ajay and Ishan have been at the forefront web performance infrastructure for most of their careers. Moovweb powers nearly $10B in annual commerce and their XDN platform extends the principles of Jamstack to large, dynamic websites such as REVOLVE Fashion, Shoe Carnival, and The Tie Bar, which boast average paint times under one second. Their approach is so new and different that there isn't even a term coined for what they do. In this technical discussion, we go deep on commerce-focused edge caching and frontend optimization and what the future of frontend development looks like.
From his early days at Amazon.com, to his time in senior roles at Endeca (from small company to Oracle acquisition), to now being CEO at Yottaa, Rich has seen it all. In this episode we talk about the early days of Amazon.com and Endeca, and the state of the art of frontend optimization and security
Alex joined Nuts.com in 2018 to lead their transformation from a custom in-house platform to an all-new best-of-breed headless stack. In this episode, we discuss Alex's background and his transition from the agency-side to the brand-side, the Nuts.com business model and how they've been impacted by COVID-19, their evaluation criteria for a new stack, their migration approach, and what's next for Alex and Nuts.com
While we've used the term "omnichannel commerce" for more than a decade, true omnichannel commerce has eluded most retailers because the point of sale remains separate from the rest of digital commerce. In this episode, Joel explains why that remains, 25+ years after digital commerce was first introduced. Joel has worked for DSW, Express, and now works for Abercrombie & Fitch as a senior manager architect
From founding Lieferando.de (acquired by TakeAway.com), to being an investor in many tech startups, to now founding and being CEO of Talon.One, Christoph has been at the forefront of the startup scene in Berlin. In this episode, we discuss his founding of Lieferando.de, the Berlin startup scene, the German venture capital market, and his founding/running of Talon.One. Talon.One offers promotions-as-a-service (API-based, multi-tenant, SaaS) to companies including Ticketmaster, Mercedes-Benz, Casper, Zipcar, and more
The Yes, founded by Amit Aggarwal (ex Google/Microsoft, ex-Bloomreach CTO, expert in AI) and Julie Bornstein (ex-Stitch Fix COO), offers an entirely new approach to shopping with its app-first, AI-based personalized shopping experience. Using more than 500 auto-generated attributes per product, The Yes is able to help shoppers find exactly what they're looking for. It's an entirely new approach to shopping that can be quite addictive! In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk through Amit's time at Microsoft/Google/Groupon, how he and team applied AI to commerce, and some of the initial findings/results from their time live. For more background on The Yes, see https://techcrunch.com/2020/05/20/former-stitch-fix-coo-julie-bornstein-just-took-the-wraps-off-her-app-only-e-commerce-startup-the-yes/
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with Bob Howland (CDO) and Gireesh Sahukar (Sr Director, Digital Technology) of Dawn Foods to discuss how they built an all-new Digital Innovation Hub in Boston and built an entirely new digital commerce platform from scratch. Dawn Foods is an enormous multi-national company that sells baking supplies to bakeries, world's largest retailers and convenience store chains. Their new platform leverages microservices, APIs, and other cutting-edge technology running atop Google Cloud to offer their customers a single place to engage with Dawn Foods across their entire lifecycle.
If you're a listener to this podcast you probably know Adam as the preeminent eCommerce recruiter in our space. He's placed thousands of technical and business folks in the eCommerce industry, from fresh college grads to C-level execs at both brands and vendors. In this podcast, we discuss the business model of recruiting, how recruiting has changed over time, what brands and vendors look for in candidates, how candidates can better stand out to potential employers, the future of resumes, and more
Matt has been at the forefront of commerce in his C-level positions at BigMachines (acquired by Oracle), Steelbrick (acquired by salesforce) and Salesforce's Quote-to-Cash cloud. He also co-founded G2 Crowd. He is now CEO at Threekit, which generates product images for companies like Crate & Barrel and provides cutting edge AR for commerce, which you can see for yourself at https://quickdemo.threekit.com/product/1 (on a mobile device)
From designing planes, to designing rockets, to being one of the founders of the Java programming language, Dr. Robert Zores has seen it all. In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to him about his six years at REWE Digital. REWE is Germany's 3rd largest employer, employs 400,000 people across Europe, and has annual turnover of €63 billion. In 2014 REWE established "REWE Digital" and hired Robert as CTO to provide software and services to the entire REWE group. Robert and the management team then adopted a Spotify-style organizational model, built out hundreds of microservices, and built most of the IT entirely in-house.
Eli, an expert on computational logistics and veteran of Tumblr, Shutterstock and other prominent search innovators, has co-founded Constructor.io, an AI search startup that's built an entirely new search engine from scratch. Used by Sephora, Bonobos, and others, Constructor.io is on the leading edge of search tech and discusses how search engines actually work behind the scenes, what "AI" search actually means, build vs. buy, and the shortcomings of traditional search engines like Elasticsearch and Solr.
What is the scope of a modern OMS? How does an OMS fit in with an ERP, WMS, and a commerce platform? In this episode, we'll go deep on OMSes, talk about how Fluent Commerce is adding support for Coronavirus-related requirements, and what it's like to build a company in Australia
In this episode, we go deep on marketplaces with the preeminent marketplace expert - Mirakl co-founder/co-CEO Adrien Nussenbaum. In this episode, we explore the various flavors of marketplaces, where the lines is between commerce platform and marketplace platform, the role of B2B marketplaces, how to avoid the commoditization trap, and more.
Gartner and Forrester have an enormous amount of influence in the commerce vendor landscape but not that much is known about them. In this interview, Kelly and Dirk chat all things analysts with Andrew Hsu, managing director and co-founder of Spotlight, a firm devoted solely to improving relationships with analysts. We cover who the top analyst firms are for commerce, their business model, how they hire and evaluate analysts, what analysts do on a daily basis, reports like Magic Quadrants and Waves, and why legacy vendors do so well with these reports.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with Amplience's Founder/CEO, James Brooke to discuss the early days of enterprise SaaS, Amplience's founding story, the alphabet soup of acronyms that are commonly used in the industry, where the industry is headed, their relationship with analysts, where Amplience is headed and much more,,
Bob has architected and built an all-serverless back-end for Cazoo.com, a U.K.-based startup offering car sales over the internet. In this episode, Bob explains what serverless is, its origins, good commerce use cases (and bad ones), the current state of serverless offerings on the market, and where he expects serverless to go in the future
David is a long-time marketing consultant who is founder and CEO of the Customer Data Platform Institute. In this episode, we discuss what CDPs are, what type of data they typically contain, how they differ from DMPs, how CDPs intersect with commerce, and how CDPs can help comply with data privacy regulations such as GDPR
Podcast all Platforms https://linktr.ee/commercetomorrow http://commercetomorrow.com/ https://twitter.com/commerce2morrow https://soundcloud.com/commercetomorrow https://www.facebook.com/CommerceTomorrow https://www.instagram.com/commercetomorrow/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZHLe6SEep5zLnNoF7S0PA?view_as=subscriber
As chief architect of Intershop, co-founder and chief architect of Demandware, CPO/CTO of NewStore, and now board member at Frontastic and strategic consultant, Ulrike has seen and been part of the many shifts shaping the commerce platform market. Join us for a trip down memory lane and a look toward the future Podcast all Platforms https://linktr.ee/commercetomorrow http://commercetomorrow.com/ https://twitter.com/commerce2morrow https://soundcloud.com/commercetomorrow https://www.facebook.com/CommerceTomorrow https://www.instagram.com/commercetomorrow/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZHLe6SEep5zLnNoF7S0PA?view_as=subscriber
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with Contentstack co-founders Neha Sampat (CEO) and Matthew Baier (COO) to discuss the origins of headless content content management systems, their successes in displacing the legacy content management systems and digital experience platforms, and what's next for Contentstack after their recent $31.5m fundraising round
In this episode, we chat about Akamai's near ubiquitous role in delivering commerce experiences, how they approach computing at the edge, how they're improving the calls between "heads" and the backend application(s), how they prepare for Black Friday / Cyber Monday, and how they recommend that you prepare for Black Friday / Cyber Monday.
Jan Hegewald, head of Zalando's product offer platform, joined Dirk and Kelly to discuss how Europe's largest and most innovative online fashion retailer manages its 2,000+ microservices across 200+ teams, with its 2,000+ technical employees. In this episode, we discuss how Zalando is structured, how they balance the need for centralization vs. the need for distributed innovation, their engagement with various open source communities, how they've instilled a culture of technical innovation and evangelism, and more.
Ronan Tighe, CPO of Moonpig, talks about their business model, why they as a DNVB have the role of CPO, how they roadmap, and what their current and future tech stack looks like. Ronan was formerly head of product at Net-a-Porter & Mr Porter
Corey is SVP and General Manager for Retail and Fashion at Infor where he oversees their broad portfolio of retail and supply chain-related technology. Infor is a 17,000 person company that powers the back office of many retailers and brands, providing software from the OMS down to the software that tracks individual containers on container ships. From his vantage point, a commerce platform is the "front end." In this episode, we go deep on Corey's experience with Oracle's retail business unit, his experience forming Infor's retail strategy and business unit, the state of retail software, and more
From the founding team of Endeca to Google to LinkedIn and beyond, Dr. Daniel Tunkelang talks through the early days of Endeca, his pioneering work at Google and LinkedIn and his life as one of the world's top freelance search consultants for companies like Flipkart, Pinterest, Yelp, Salesforce, and Apple. We talk through voice search, machine learning, the origins of Kafka at LinkedIn, popular commercial search products for commerce, and more. Connect with him at @dtunkelang, https://www.linkedin.com/in/dtunkelang, and https://queryunderstanding.com
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Dirk and Kelly sit down with Express's VP of Enterprise Architecture, Commerce and Enterprise Integration, Brendan Gualdoni to discuss how commerce platforms have changed over the decades and how Express has modernized their stack over the past few years. Brendan spent many years at Sears, which was an early eCommerce pioneer in the 1990's and later moved to Express where he's responsible for eCommerce technology and architecture
CommerceTomorrow #iTunes #podcast
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In this episode, Dirk and Kelly sit down with John Andrews to discuss inventory optimization, product management, Oracle Commerce (he used to lead product management for Oracle Commerce), and entrepreneurship
CommerceTomorrow #iTunes #podcast
Podcast all Platforms https://linktr.ee/commercetomorrow http://commercetomorrow.com/ https://twitter.com/commerce2morrow https://soundcloud.com/commercetomorrow https://www.facebook.com/CommerceTomorrow https://www.instagram.com/commercetomorrow/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZHLe6SEep5zLnNoF7S0PA?view_as=subscriber
As a senior commerce architect for AT&T's managed hosting group and now senior analyst at Gartner, Jeff has seen and driven many of the major commerce platform trends out there, from headless to microservices to GraphQL. In this episode, Dirk and Kelly geek out with Jeff over these trends and more
From Forrester, to hybris, to Accenture and Now Amplience, Brian has been a key player in the commerce platform space and is now applying his experience to the commerce-adjacent space of content management in his role as Chief Strategy Officer of Amplience. In this episode, Kelly and Brian go deep and talk through his career, the challenges he sees related to the commerce and content spaces, and where enterprise IT is heading. http://commercetomorrow.com/ https://www.facebook.com/CommerceTomorrow/ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsZHLe6SEep5zLnNoF7S0PA?view_as=subscriber https://www.instagram.com/commercetomorrow/
Dirk and Kelly speak with Sumit Dhawan, CEO of Instart about the increasingly sophisticated space between clients and the origin. Think next generation CDN-style technology. Instart has raised more than $140m from a who's who of Silicon Valley investors including A16Z and Kleiner Perkins to revolutionize this space.
Scott Brinker joins us to talk about the marketing technology landscape. As a well known author, speaker, founding CEO, and MarTech Chair, Scott Brinker demystifies the world of marketing technology and talks about its intersections with the commerce platform space.
Contentful is the rising start of the content management space, having grown from 30 to 200 employees over the space of just three years. In this episode, Kelly sits down with contentful's head of product, Peter Sunna, to talk about their rapid growth, where they fit in the content management landscape, contentful's intersection with commerce, their embrace of GraphQL and open source more generally, and the Berlin tech scene among many other topics. Note: Unfortunately Dirk was unable to join, though he will be back in the next episode.
Dirk and Kelly talk through the intersection of the content and the commerce worlds with CMS-Connected reporters Laura Myers and Gabriella Pirrone. They talk about CMS-Connected's origins, what the content world (CMS/WCMS/DXP) space looks like, how it intersects with commerce, and what commerce innovations they're seeing from retailers, brands and software vendors.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly welcome James Wiltshire, ATG legend and co-founder of Gradient Edge. They makes sense of all the changes in the commerce platform space, from APIs to Machine Learning.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Amir Konigsberg, CEO of Twiggle. They discuss state-of-the-art search capabilities mean in commerce and which role AI and machine learning play.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly speak to Raj De Datta CEO and Co-Founder at BloomReach. They talk about what the difference between a CMS, WCM, and DXP is, why it becomes increasingly important for brands and merchants to focus on delivering engaging experiences, how BloomReach uses AI and ML to support their platform, and what the reasoning behind BloomReach's acquisition of Hippo was.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Vamsi Muddada, CTO at FTD Companies. FTD is a floral wire service based in the US. Vamsi talks about the challenges of digital transformation, both on a technical as well as an organizational level. He also explains how to merge a multitude of legacy applications – involving almost every imaginable tech stack – to build a next generation commerce platform.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Drew Lau, VP Product at Mobify. Apart from mobile-first strategies in general, they talk about Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) as well as Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMPs) and discuss which business benefits brands and retailers can expect from using those technologies.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Bruno Borges, Developer Advocate at Microsoft. They discuss how, in the recent years, Microsoft has shifted its culture, became successful in the cloud business and has also managed to focus stronger on developer relations. Bruno also touches on the recent acquisition of Github and gives his views on the development of the Java platform.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Joel Crabb, VP Architecture for Target. Joel talks about how Target, being a very large retailer, has more than 3000 applications which need to be managed and run to support business. This is made possible by providing the right architectural vision and by establishing an engineering culture.
In this episode, Alexander Ringsdorff, Vice President of Corporate Development at NewStore, Inc. talks about the new startup from Intershop and Demandware founder Stephan Schambach and how they supports physical retail with they mobile apps.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly talk to Olaf Molenveld, CTO and co-founder of Vamp. He talks about their platform VAMP and how it enables retailers to plan and monitor the deployment of their applications.
In this episode, Kelly talks to Jess Moore, founder and CEO of 3Share, one of the largest Adobe SI's. Jess talks about how they got started and why it makes sense for a service provider to focus on just one software vendor.
In this episode, Dirk and Kelly welcome Jeremy Muras, SVP Digital at Lion Capital and the former VP Digital Commerce of Burberry. They talk about the challenges of the luxury industry and the investor's view on digital commerce. Also, they discuss the idea of the "platform" economy and which brands Lion Capital has invested in.
Martin Wild is the Chief Innovation Officer at MediaSaturn, the largest retailer of consumer electronics in Europe. He talks to Dirk and Kelly about how they work together with startups and small teams to drive innovation in such a large company. Martin gives the example of “Saturn Express,” a store which has no cash register, so customers can choose the products they like and leave - the payment is made in the background automatically.
This episode of CommerceTomorrow has been recorded live at the Shoptalk conference 2018 in Las Vegas. Dirk and Kelly talk to Zia Daniell Wigder, Chief Content Officer of Shoptalk Ventures. She talks about the beginnings of the show, which in its third year pulled an audience of more than 8,000 people. Zia also discusses how to attract and present a premium line-up of speakers and make sure that retailers, system integrators, and software vendors are on equal ground and all benefit from the conference.
For this episode of CommerceTomorrow, Dirk and Kelly have invited John Panella, Group Vice President at SapientRazorfish. As John has been in this position for almost 16 years now and knows hundreds of customer projects in the e-commerce space, he shares his views on the recent technological developments. He talks about how retailers currently seek to improve in-store experience by features like extended aisle or different sorts of clienteling apps. Other topics in this episode is the ability to be more nimble by changing the organization to vertical teams, and the strategy of decomposing the monolith and go for a headless architecture.
In this pilot episode, Dirk Hoerig and Kelly Goetsch introduce themselves and talk about what listeners can expect from their weekly CommerceTomorrow podcast.