Lessons from 2 Vets of Commerce

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- Blaine, Ramon, & the DTC POD team ✌️

This Week's DTC Pod Guests

The Founder & Investor Who Is Ready for The Next Era of Commerce

We've seen Jesse Pujji on Twitter, and now we're (finally!) talking to him on the pod! Jesse is a the Founder & CEO of Kahani, a shopify app that brings mobile first shopping experiences to e-commerce websites. He also runs Gateway.xyz a venture studio with portfolio companies like Burrow, Blueland, Ecocart, Redesign Health, and more! Jesse joins Blaine to talk about the future of commerce. They discuss mobile commerce, moving from agency to brand owner, increasing conversion, bootstrapping, fundraising, developing product roadmaps, and much more.

Lessons from A Second Time Founders

Gretchen Hollingsworth is the founder of Ink+Alloy, a fast growing jewelry and accessories brand featuring products built by skilled artisans in India. Formerly she founded Paddywax, an internationally iconic candle company where she designed products for retail behemoths like Whole Foods, Urban Outfitters, West Elm, Crate and Barrel, and Target. On this episode of DTC Pod, Gretchen talk about starting paddywax, leveraging wholesale early on, merchandising strategy, selling into big retailers, business building as a 2nd time founder, and much more!

AURA BORA RAISES SERIES A

Congrats to Paul and his team! Aura Bora raised a successful Series A round bringing their total funding to $10M. Can't wait to see what's next for this brand! Listen to our interview with Paul from back in April where we discuss his entrepreneurial journey from bootstrapping to Shark Tank to 5K+ stores (and now Series A!)

📰 HEADLINES

WHITE SPACE ON TIKTOK FOR MEDIA PUBLISHERS: There may be a serious white space on TikTok for media publishers. According to Axios, 25% of media publishers don’t have a TikTok. What do they have? YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook...but Twitter is where media publishers have the largest following. If you need some inspiration on how to get more followers, check out National Geographic. They have the most followers across all social accounts (360 million not including duplicates).

STARTUP RAISES $15M FOR NO-CODE BRANDED CREDIT PRODUCTS: Noble, a platform that lets businesses create credit products like credit cards and BNPL with no-code tools, emerged from stealth and announced a $15M Series A led by Insight Partners. Noble is founded by WeWork alums who were responsible for building the “underwriting infrastructure to help screen and assess the creditworthiness of tenants.” Read TechCrunch article here.

OUR DTC SOAP BOX: We know DTC brands have been hearing lots of doom and gloom over the future (or lack thereof) in DTC. And yes, our podcast’s name is DTC Pod, so it’s been a bit awkward! But the truth is that selling your product online is table stakes and having a retail presence is necessary - and may even be essential depending on your product category. DTC can be an important place during the early days of your startup because you can easily experiment with new concepts, messaging, and branding to see what sticks. But maybe after you've found a strong, product-market fit and you’re ready to scale, DTC can be viewed as “direct to community." Why? Because online is the no.1 place to build and engage with loyal customers and brand advocates. Douglas Yu’s Forbes article highlights some brands that do a great job doing this like MUD \ WTR, Mid-Day Squares, and BelliWelli. As BelliWelli founder Katie Wilson tells Yu, “DTC still serves an important purpose in creating communities, which in turn, drive retail velocities and growth. I’m confident that we wouldn't have the fan base we do today without DTC.”

🤔 Where Are They Now: Highlighting previous DTC POD Guests

Episode #192 Keta Burke Williams of Ourside (FKA Aspen Apothecary)

It’s kinda incredible to see what our guests have been up to and how fast things change in a mere matter of months! Today’s Where Are They Now features an incredible founder - Keta Burke Williams. Since we recorded with Keta she’s rebranded Aspen Apothecary to Ourside (check out her new site!), was accepted into the Ulta Beauty Accelerator, and received investment from Techstars!