@RomanEcom @MentorPass Out of pure curiosity, why would a founder crushing it making $45mm TTM have to pay someone on @MentorPass for this discussion?
English
Dave Bochetto
2.1K posts
Dave Bochetto
@D_chetto
Founder of CatalyzeX. Building teams and automated software to support businesses. Prev: President @ VoyageSMS; Ares Mgmt.; IB @ UBS Lev Fin; Booth; Duke
Los Angeles Katılım Nisan 2009
481 Takip Edilen194 Takipçiler
Another bear case on $SHOP
Talked to a founder on @MentorPass yesterday who’s done ~$45M TTM and is projecting $100M+ run rate with an AI-first approach.
Duo-channel business:
- Native ads
- Google Ads
Zero Meta. Zero AppLovin.
The reason he’s growing so fast? He’s not on Shopify.
He runs everything on a Medusa-like headless solution built on Next.js (blanking on the exact name).
His rationale was simple:
1/ Seamless plug-and-play with Claude
2/ Can spin up landing pages + localization insanely easily (he launches hundreds of products per month)
3/ Way more iterations, flexibility, and speed vs Shopify
Cost wasn’t even the deciding factor (though it’s much cheaper than a full $SHOP stack).
This is becoming the new normal. Pretty crazy to watch.
If I had the courage I’d switch Linjer tomorrow — our catalog management and especially localization is an absolute nightmare on Shopify compared to what this guy had.
But we're growing a lot this year and I don't want to disrupt the train.
Roman Khan - Founder of Peak 21. We acquire brands@RomanEcom
Had dinner with some sharp D2C founders the other night. One dropped a fascinating bear case on $SHOP: He previously built + sold his own D2C brand. Now he’s rapidly testing a bunch of new ones — all built with Claude + a custom-coded checkout from a Scandinavia-based payments company. CRs are higher and oddly $META CPMs are lower on the non Shopify store. His co-founder is technical, so he can execute on this without worrying too much. I wouldn’t have the guts yet… but with AI moving this fast, maybe in 3-6 months I will. Curious if anyone else is seeing similar custom vs. Shopify gaps. In particular for $META CPMs
English
I’m hosting a free online workshop on Tuesday, May 19th at 2pm EST.
The topic: How to build an insanely profitable company.
I’m giving out thousands of dollars worth of bonuses to folks who attend live.
I hope to see you there!
luma.com/fx59uqzr?utm_c…
English
@ShakerBall_Cap You're right. He's not funny... he's absolutely hilarious
English
@TheICHpodcast The business owner will just work for 4 more years and make the same as he/she would by selling... would be an awful decision
English
@TheICHpodcast No business owner smart enough to make $3mm annually will ever sell for 4x... Hormozi has clearly never worked in lower MM PE... min 7-8x multiples
English
Alex Hormozi reveals why increasing annual profit from $3,000,000 to $8,000,000 could increase a company's valuation from $12,000,000 to $100,000,000 🤯
“If you have a business that is doing, call it $3,000,000 in profit, and you can make a handful of tweaks and get it from $3,000,000 to $8,000,000... The $3,000,000 profit business might be worth $12,000,000, maybe.
The $8,000,000 profit business can probably get somewhere between like $80,000,000 and $100,000,000 on a sale.
You have a huge multiplier effect that increases once you get above about $5,000,000 in profit, and especially as you approach $10,000,000, where you now become a target for institutional-grade investors.
Because they have to put to work hundreds of millions of dollars, and sothey basically become the customer of buying the product, which is the business that you created.”
English
@3YearLetterman never insult george costanza like that again. Chirayu Rana isn’t nearly clever enough to hatch one of Costanza’s schemes
English
Has there ever been a worse rollout of a credit card than that of @BiltRewards when they ended their relationship with WF? The amount of issues I have faced is staggering and adding up by the day.
English
She is now gaslighting consumers. Wow
Elizabeth Warren@SenWarren
Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline. FWIW, JetBlue merger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal. Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.
English
To make matters worse, Bilt's customer service is woeful, even as the company itself has admitted.
The experience is just far worse than Chase or AMEX. Not sure what they are doing over there
English
Borderline criminal that a major sport league’s playoff game is only accessible via a streaming platform
English
Dave Bochetto retweetledi
The fake "boss forward" is the most overplayed cold email tactic and it's not even close.
English
@t_blom hard to credibly trust the numbers when there is clear evidence of this being a pattern for YC companies along with the Delve scandal. It’s not people refusing to believe the “new norm”
English
The replies are illuminating.
People are so afraid of what’s about to happen to the world that they convince themselves it’s not true so they can justify continuing on as if nothing’s changed.
Tom Blomfield@t_blom
Two years ago, a good YC demo day target was $150k of annualized revenue. In my group office hour today, the lowest demo day target was $800k, and most companies were aiming for $1-2m.
English
@tbpn @chadjanis i heard he founded the company only two years ago!
English
Grüns founder & CEO @chadjanis, who just sold his company to Unilever for $1.2B, describes the 3 biggest factors that contributed to Grüns' billion-dollar outcome:
"The first is novel innovation. Each of the products you see us launching does not exist in the market. So when people say 'Who are you competing with?', we're kind of creating our own new categories against large outstanding categories."
"Second is unrelenting urgency. I look back at the urgency my team and I have had for the last three-and-a-half years, and it compounds over time if you're delivering that much urgency and impact every day."
"Third, and this is the most important, is the team. We have 130+ individuals here at this company. We have a culture of autonomy and accountability, and each individual here wakes up every day as the CEO of their domain. So when you take 130+ people who are CEOs of their function and stack that together, you end up where we are today."
English
With the $1.2B acquisition of Grüns by Unilever, we officially have a new quickest brand to a $1B exit
Achieving a $1.2B outcome in just 3.5yrs, or $343m of EV created per year
This also means that Chad & co have IRRmogged Hailey Bieber & Rhode, who held the record at 4 years after their $1B acquisition by ELF a year ago
English
@btaylor I am pretty sure insurance calls get way more intense than this to say the least. How do you handle anger?
English
Here’s a demo of a healthcare payment phone call with the new PCI compliant payments functionality in Sierra
Bret Taylor@btaylor
In a first for the conversational AI industry, Sierra agents are now Level 1 PCI compliant, which means your agent can collect card and ACH payments securely, directly in the conversation. This is a huge step forward for subscription businesses and commerce sierra.ai/blog/payments
English
@pitdesi have a hard time believing any of this. how do they fund their CAC?
English
cool- but I don’t understand it.
There are 100s of GLP factories that prescribe GLP’s after a few Q’s
Medvi’s flow is particularly bad.
I assume margins would have been competed away
Hims did $2.35B of revenue with 2k employees. This 2 person co in the space is doing $1.8B?
Sar Haribhakti@sarthakgh
.@eringriffith: "His start-up, Medvi, a telehealth provider of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs, got 300 customers in its first month. In its second month, it gained 1,000 more. In 2025, Medvi’s first full year in business, the company generated $401 million in sales. Mr. Gallagher then hired his only employee, his younger brother, Elliot. This year, they are on track to do $1.8 billion in sales." nytimes.com/2026/04/02/tec…
English