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