July 10th, 2023: 100th Episode: Venture Capital and Fundraising, Amazon and Shopify: featuring Victor Castro and Hendrik Laubscher

Jul 10

Today’s episode of the Watson Weekly podcast is sponsored by Commercetools.

It’s July 10th, 2023, and this is the Watson Weekly: Your essential eCommerce Digest.

For today’s episode we have something very special for 100th episode: an interview with eCommerce industry experts and fellow Watsonians Victor Castro and Hendrik Laubscher! In this episode we talk about some of the most important things going on in eCommerce from an investor point of view, as well as digging into both Amazon and Shopify.

That’s right friends, we started this podcast about two years ago today and we are still going strong. Thank you again for your support.

Introductions

Hendrik Laubscher is an experienced commerce executive with over 15 years experience in global e-commerce with a focus on marketplaces and cross-border e-commerce. He offers boutique consulting services to brands of all sizes and also works with startups in fast growing sectors such as Live steam shopping, customer to manufacturer and more.

Victor Castro

100th episode

Consistent, timely, short.

Shout out to Citizen Racecar and Commercetools our official sponsor.

Fundraising and economy

State of Venture Capital & Mergers & Acquisitions

We have to talk about AI. Do any VCs know what they are doing here?

How does this not become like the eCommerce aggregator or crypto bubble times ten?

Outside of AI, what trends are you looking at?

What consumer trends are you both seeing?

Amazon

Has 1P become more relevant in 2023? H

Buy with Prime opportunity?

Has Amazon’s flywheel changed? H

* Advertising?

Software rollups vs aggregators of brands H

Shopify

What next? Payments? H

DISTRIBUTION VS DATA OWNERSHIP

Will Shopify need its own extensible payments vault?

- identity

- owning the swipe

- payments is a race to the bottom

- omnichannel open payments vault

Paypal vs Shopify

- Venmo/Braintree acquisitions

What’s the future of Shopify’s relationship with Stripe?

What does that mean for Stripe’s IPO?

Retail

Is Walmart the darling for the next 18 months? H

podcastepisodewatsonweeklyamazonshopify

Rick Watson

Rick Watson founded RMW Commerce Consulting after spending 20+ years as a technology entrepreneur and operator exclusively in the eCommerce industry with companies like ChannelAdvisor, BarnesandNoble.com, Merchantry, and Pitney Bowes.

Watson’s work today is centered on supporting investors and management teams incubating and growing direct-to-consumer businesses. Most recently, in partnership with WHP Global, Rick was a critical resource in architecting the WHP+ platform, a new turnkey direct to consumer digital e-commerce platform that powers AnneKlein.com and JosephAbboud.com.

Watson also hosts a weekly podcast, Watson Weekly, where he shares an unbiased, unfiltered expert take on the retail sector’s biggest players.

In the past year alone, Rick has spoken at many in-person and virtual events as well as podcasts on topics ranging from retail/ecom to supply chain/logistics and even digital grocery including CommerceNext IRL, ASCM Connect, and Retail Innovation Conference.

https://www.rmwcommerce.com/