Here we go - just launched @trycreate_co

•What: One-of-a-kind creatine monohydrate gummy

•Why: Reverse the creatine stigma so more people can benefit from it

•How: Modern brand, delicious/convenient form factor, education & content, customer experience

More below: WHAT (1/5)

CREATINE MONOHYDRATE GUMMY
• 1 gram of creatine monohydrate gummy
• pectin (vegan) gummy base
• reduced sugar
• natural orange flavoring

We recommend most people take 3-5 gummies per day.

What do Shopify merchants care about?

That should, beyond running a sustainably advantaged business, be the driving question for Shopify and, in part, define its product roadmap.

I think Shopify lost sight of this for a bit, but is slowly coming back.

Here's what I care about: 1. ACQUIRING NEW CUSTOMERS

Help me acquire customers and help potential customers discover me more efficiently than my existing marketing channels. Anything to make the next incremental acquisition dollar more efficient is a win.

Shopify is finally rolling our features to boost cross-platform purchasing and help merchants discover customers.

The biggest feature you haven't heard of yet is called Shop Cash.

It's currently in beta and represents a major strategy pivot for Shopify.

Here's why: SHOP CASH

Shop Cash is a cross-merchant rewards program from Shopify.

Customers can earn 3% in Shop Cash rewards on purchases processed by Shop Pay.

Shop Cash is *only* redeemable in the Shop App.

Starting a physical product company is hard.

In fact, it's not advisable: tough margins, capped upside, capital intensive, overly reliant on trends + macro conditions.

But if you're going to start one, now might actually be the perfect time. Here's why: META CPMs

Meta CPMs are down ~20% YoY. All else equal, a customer that used to cost $100 to acquire, now cost $80.

Affordable customer discovery is absolutely key to building a successful online physical product company...and Meta is becoming more affordable.

Meta just announced that Susan Li, 36, will be taking over as CFO replacing longtime CFO Dave Wehner.

This is another C-Suite shakeup at Meta in the last few months + another sign Zuck is shifting into wartime CEO mode.

Here's what we know about Li + why this move is important. BACKGROUND:

- Grew up in Oregon
- Stanford'05 w/ degrees in econ & computational finance at the at the age of 19
- Spent 3yrs at Morgan Stanley in IB
- Joined FB in '08 as a financial analyst
- Big role on finance team during IPO
- Married to Meta VP, Ads & Biz Products

Full breakdown of the DTC value chain 👇 What is a Value Chain?

First described by Michael Porter (of Five Forces fame), the value chain is the set of activities involved in creating & capturing customer value.

Should your DTC business sell wholesale?

This is a multi-part story. Let me know if you want the rest.

Pt 1: A brief history of DTC's relationship with Wholesale 👇 Before we jump into wholesale, a quick reminder on DTC history.

The promise of DTC was that brands could offer high quality, branded products at affordable prices because they "cut out the middleman."

In return, they'd build a 1:1 customer relationship + get higher margins.

Candidates don't ask nearly enough questions about a company before accepting a job offer.

Asking the right questions will only become more crucial in this market.

Here are 7 questions (and follow-on questions) you should ask before accepting a job in DTC today 🧵 These questions should help shape your view of:

- Will this company be around in the next 6,12,24 months?
- Is this company self-sustaining or reliant on outside $?
- Will my equity eventually have value?
- Is this company transparent & honest?

Let's jump in:

Get up off your Casper mattress, lace up your Allbirds and pop a few Roman pills - it's time to get all jazzed up for a Friday
💥Ecommerce MegaThread💥

- Capitalizing DTC business
- 8 Traps To Avoid
- 1st 10 People You Hire
- Thriving in a Recession
- Extending Runway
& more👇 1. Capitalizing a DTC Business
• Don't over-capitalize your DTC
• Low-Medium Growth + VC-Backed is optimal approach
• Optimal P&Ls for multiple stages of growth

https://twitter.com/damccormick13/status/1533063526792564737?s=20&t=ITjds75Jokekyz3T75hrUQ

The next 18 months are going to be tricky for DTCs. There is (likely) a recession coming and consumer behaviors will change.

But it also presents an opportunity for patient & opportunistic operators.

Be conservative now & aggressive when the market drops: 🧵 This prediction pre-supposes a recession is coming (or that, its already here.)

Recessions are (obviously) bad for the overall economy, but present unique opportunities.

1/ CPMs will drop
2/ Talent will be cheaper
3/ People buy necessities
4/ Subscription biz less vulnerable

The first 10 people you hire at a DTC brand can make or break the company.

You don't want to over hire, but you don't want to hold your business back.

Here's a guide to thinking about hiring for DTCs. Before we get into some specifics, let's set the stage.

- Co-founders know enough about every aspect of DTC to be dangerous (product development, brand building, growth, ops, etc).
- Standard DTC (Shopify website, physical product)
- Bootstrapped w/ just founders into $2M Seed

8 traps to avoid when running a DTC brand...👇 1/ "CAC will go down"

Everyone has intellectually honest reasons for forecasting that CAC will go down -- building out a growth team, high CPMs will fall, new channels, reinvestment in organic.

But ultimately, CAC rarely goes down as you scale. The best brands maintain CAC.

10 DTC brands and why they were (at least initially) successful (thread) 1/ Away

Bigger Carry-On Suitcase was one of the best products one of these DTC brands ever put out.

- Perfect for gifting
- Rolling advertisement
- Aspirational, but achievable travel brand

I have worked on or led finance teams at DTC brands that collectively raised over $225M.

I am also a ecommerce nerd that obsesses over how to make DTC a sustainable business model.

Providing a few benchmark P&Ls for a bunch of different types of DTC companies below. Before we get into that, a framework for how to finance and operate DTC Businesses.

Expected Value: The probability of an outcome x the size of that outcome.

You can analyze the three ways of running a DTC company through this model.

Meta is the company that everybody loves to hate.

I tend to think that it's neither good nor bad - that it's complex.

And to understand it, you need to understand the people running it.

Here's Meta's newly formed exec team (thread) Mark Zuckerberg

Title: Co-founder & CEO
Tenure: 18 yrs
Mandate: Set vision & strategy
Competencies: Critical thinking, vision setting, assertiveness, equanimity
Fun Fact: For all of 2011, he only ate meat that he himself killed.

The podcast game is not for the faint of heart.

There's over 2M podcasts out there and limited ear time.

Unless you're already famous, building a podcast audience these days is almost impossible.

Here's 10 lessons from 10x'ing our podcast audience in the last 18 months 🧵 Lesson 1:

Build Audience on "Arbitrage Platform"

We're lucky enough that @packym built a big, loyal newsletter audience long before getting into the podcast game.

Packy built his newsletter in the early days of the pandemic and has been able to transfer them to the podcast.

Advertising mediums & what they're good for:

Instagram:18-45 affluent coastal, customer discovery

Facebook:30-55 US adults, customer discovery

Google: converting preexisting intent into conversion

TikTok:18-30 affordable CPMs, top-of-funnel engagement

LinkedIn:B2B leadgen👇 Twitter: supposedly brand marketing but they just have lots of eyeballs they sell against w/ little backend.

Pinterest: "digital billboard" ie discovery of new products, but little targeting beyond self-selecting userbase

Snapchat:between IG & TikTok, not good at either

Meta just named longtime COO Sheryl Sandberg's #2 as her replacement.

His name is Javier Olivan -- and if you advertise online, he just became very very important to you.

Here's what we know about him 🧵 Olivan is a Meta veteran -- he joined in 2007 right after graduating from GSB.

He's spent his entire career in growth related roles and most recently served as Chief Growth Officer.

He's known to be maniacally data-driven.

Symbiotic Ecommerce is the future for DTC brands.

For the last ~10 years, brands have been paying FB & Google ~30% of revenue to acquire *basically the same exact customer*

Brands should *share* customers in a way that drives down CAC & is beneficial for the customer. Frankly, DTC growth has largely been fueled by paid advertising on Google & FB. By some estimates, 30% of all revenue goes directly to these platforms.

That's not good but its only getting worse. CPMs are rising due to adoption by legacy brands and targeting constraints.

Shopify is a $1T (5.5x) company in the next 10 yrs if any combo of the below work in its favor:

1/ Ecomm penetration continues to grow
2/ Global churn increase/US DTC model becomes viable
3/ Brand discovery (key!)
4/ Larger cut of each transaction

A thread: 1/ Doesn't require much explanation - the more things people buy online, the more $ Shopify makes. 2 things in Shop's favor here:
Can Shopify make ppl buy more things? *Did I really need that 5th pair of Allbirds?*
What other retail categories will move more online?