Dan O'Brien 🥞

It's Dry January. You want to go for a couple of Thursday drinks with your mates, but you can't. Instead, cosy up at home and throw on the first episode of the new @happystackhq podcast 'Lock-In'. @matthucius is the first guest up and doesn't disappoint. Links below 👇

After a couple of months off the pints, we're back talking customer acquisition with a few ecom heavyweights 🍻 Tune in to watch @JackRubin1, @matthucius and @oliverwhudson debate Meta over some of London's finest stout youtu.be/DlXyoEEtO9c?si…

They say back the jockey, not the horse. In this instance both are worldclass! We're excited to lead out @superfiliate's latest round at @happystackhq. Looking forward to growing the business with you lads in the months/years to come bit.ly/4k2Sq3B

I'm stoked to announce @superfiliate 's $2M strategic growth round led by @JackPierse and the great folks over at @happystackhq

What an absolute legend @SpencerMatthews is! He’s our latest guest on the @happystackhq podcast to chat about his journey with sobriety, building @cleanco and his recent world-record attempts! Link to watch is in the thread..

From mixing perfumes in his bedroom, to running the UK’s biggest DTC fragrance brand. @connor_m journey of scaling The Essence Vault to £50m / year is wild! Check out the latest episode of the Lock-In pod at the links below 🔥

Inspired by the Aimé Leon Dore x La Marzocco collab - here a 5 brand collabs that would hit hard 🧵 (images are AI generated so don't zoom in...)

@yhufnagel @happystackhq @lemonperfect The 🐐 - thanks for joining us Yanni

This might be the best 30-second Yanni clip of all time—so good! 😂 Thanks for having me, @happystackhq. I absolutely loved our chat. The new bottles are on fire! 🔥 @lemonperfect #drinkmorelemons 🍋💧

Bad week to be a pint in Augusta

We sent the sales team to Vegas for @shoptalk to meet some brands and close some deals. Here’s what they really got up to…

I'm a big believer that traditional SaaS GTM functions can add huge value to old school industries that don't traditionally use them. Some of you might know I own a pub in Dublin called The Storyteller. Last summer, for the craic and to test this theory, we ran cold outbound campaigns for the pub. We emailed hundreds of people working within a 2km radius of the pub to see if they fancied 'pints this Thursday' or 'making a corporate booking'. The result? Corporate bookings increased by more than 100%, and lots and lots of people were showing up for pints on Thursdays.

Ghost a few months ago in a billion dollar deal. Now Alani Nutrition. What a bloody time to be a beverage brand!

Hot take from @jolieskinco's Ryan Bab.. If you're a brand spending the majority of your marketing budget on Meta, it's unlikely you're going to be profitable 💣 With rising costs across all ad platforms, we're finally at a point where CTR's on Meta live in the .03-.04% range

The latest guest on the Lock-In pod is arguably the smartest founder in ecom. Ryan Babenzien has built @jolieskinco to $50mn in three years with just four employees, including him!! Not one to be missed, link is in the comments 🥞

@DsMatie More brands than ever will start on Shopify in 2025. New tool opportunities are popping up every few months. Couple this with the fact that many of the top performing apps in Shopify have a lazy UX, and it's a better time than ever to double-down on building a Shopify app

People asked me in 2021 if the Shopify App Store was saturated. They thought they couldn't start an app. "Everything has been done!" Since then, I don't know HOW MANY apps launched and literally made millions. Today, I still receive the question, "Is it saturated?"

Back in 2017 when myself and Bryan Addeman were building Worklilly, we were trying to raise funding from IBM Canada to build out the product. By some miracle, we managed to blag our way into a meeting with the CEO, which in hindsight still shocks me. The problem? I had no experience pitching a Fortune 500 CEO for millions of dollars. We weren’t polished investment bankers, or second-time founders. We didn’t have a slick pitch deck or a polished financial model. I was wearing a suit about two sizes too big for me which looked like I borrowed it from my dad, and the pitch I delivered was honestly terrible. But somehow, it worked! Looking back on it eight years later, I learned a few things from that experience: ⭕️ Pitching isn’t about showmanship—it’s about giving them a reason to say yes. I wasn’t the most experienced person in the room, but I knew exactly how Worklilly fit into IBM’s broader goals. My suit certainly didn’t impress him, but the deal made sense and this is the most important thing. ⭕️ You don’t need to be the best talker in the room—you need to be the one with the best offer. We had something IBM needed, and once that became clear, the rest didn’t matter. ⭕️ Most people overcomplicate pitches. They stress over the slides and the delivery. In reality what actually matters is alignment. Fair enough, a bit of polish on your slides won’t hurt (ours would keep any designer up at night) - but the most important thing is to ensure your offering is clear, not a fancy pitch deck.

Or it's someone who understands what they are investing in (most don't). Good investors know their industry and usually have a previous success there. This way they can act as mentors to the companies they invest in. Most early founders need guidance, network and someone to give them hard truths. The best investor can do all of these because they've been there and seen it.

The best investors aren't the ones with the biggest checks. They're the ones who've failed so spectacularly that they've developed an almost supernatural ability to smell impending doom.

@JoeWelstead @murphwork @Trustpilot Spot on!

@murphwork @Trustpilot The biggest honey trap of the world of ecom

Trustpilot gets a lot of hate from ecom founders, yet not enough. I want to let a team member respond to reviews. The cost of adding a new user? £3,108. @Trustpilot Get fucked.

Seriously though.. who's out there listening to us?

Youtube: bit.ly/4gX1yWX Spotify: spoti.fi/4aeXNcV Apple: apple.co/4294Gud

It's Dry January. You want to go for a couple of Thursday drinks with your mates, but you can't. Instead, cosy up at home and throw on the first episode of the new @happystackhq podcast 'Lock-In'. @matthucius is the first guest up and doesn't disappoint. Links below 👇