@RomanEcom @MentorPass Is he technical? What kind of dev does one look for here?
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Mike Eli
373 posts
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
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Introducing Slash Global Cards: USD virtual cards built for non US businesses.
> Issue virtual cards at scale
> Granular spend controls
> No US entity required
Join the dollar economy today.
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It took my 12mins to show a guy starting out in ecom how to build a creative ad generator.
We took 10 winning ads from his competitors and ran a prompt on them.
His agency was charging him $4,200/month for 8 ads. Cancelled them.
Now he ships 30 ads a week himself.
Comment "PROMPT" for the ad generating prompt.
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Mike Eli retweetledi
"You're not winning a subscription box war with Butcher Box—they do $600M/yr."
So @chrisorzy did the opposite for ranchers:
Whole cow for $7,000.
Cold traffic on Facebook.
FREE freezer included.
"The CAC didn't scale with the cost of the product. I recognized this. No one else did."
Chris Orzechowski@chrisorzy
@Empty_America That was my thinking. Next year’s cow share is a phone call away. They’ve already bought from us before and now our freezer is in their garage. Simply becomes a matter of how fast can we get our freezers into peoples homes
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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
Roman Khan - Founder of Peak 21. We acquire brands@RomanEcom
I launched the new brand and my CPMs are above $100 for the US market. I know that my compactors are sub $40 I'm wondering what to do to get CPMs down ? It's been ages since I've launched a new account. I've spent $3,000 so far.
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CPG / D2C having its moment.
Late 2024 I was chatting with an advisor that this time would come, considering how disruptive AI is to software/tech.
AI makes running a consumer brand easier but at the same time can’t disrupt physical products…
Going to see more activity incoming. 👀
CPG WIRE@cpgwire
Unilever is acquiring fast-growing VMS brand Grüns for an undisclosed sum. Founded in 2023 by Chad Janis, Grüns has become one of the largest brands in the U.S. Greens Supplement category. The company has also expanded into new categories like immunity, children’s nutrition, and pre-workout supplements. Grüns reached a $500M valuation 11 months ago. Investors in Grüns include Headline, Selva Ventures, Vanterra Ventures, Sugar Capital, and others. Unilever recently divested its massive food division in order to focus on beauty, wellness, and personal care.
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@samanizadiyar @RomanEcom What’s their price range? Looks decent if they can do real time accounting
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@RomanEcom Roman — ottit.com can help.
Full service bookkeeping firm for e-com, works mostly mid market (+10M), daily Slack comms, etc.
DMing
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I am looking for a bookkeeper for one of my US entities that can:
1. Do simple General Ledger reconciliation every Monday EOD for T-7
2. File our US taxes for this entity
3. Respond on Slack or email in a timely manner
Any recommendations?
How much would you pay for the above?
~$20m USD revenue entity
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Doing the next one this month.
Can't wait.
This time I'll have a content team and I'll share the agenda ahead of time here on X.
Hopefully it will induce enough FOMO for more of my American friends to fly out 15+ hours to the event next year
Roman Khan - Founder of Peak 21. We acquire brands@RomanEcom
@Peak21_ hosted a 3-day eCommerce get-together for around ~40 founders in Hong Kong last month. The occasion was the famous annual Canton Fair that many D2C founders go to. We had people fly in from the US, Canada, Singapore and all across the globe. The group of founders represented more than $400M of GMV - with mostly bootstrapped founders! Special thanks to @jeffreyclyam our founding investor for helping to arrange and co-host and for the team at Peak 21 pulling this all together last minute. We'll be hosting more events in the future - please leave a comment below if you want to attend the next one :)
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I wanna pay someone to teach me media buying on Meta.
Who do you recommend?
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@Peak21_ hosted a 3-day eCommerce get-together for around ~40 founders in Hong Kong last month.
The occasion was the famous annual Canton Fair that many D2C founders go to. We had people fly in from the US, Canada, Singapore and all across the globe.
The group of founders represented more than $400M of GMV - with mostly bootstrapped founders!
Special thanks to @jeffreyclyam our founding investor for helping to arrange and co-host and for the team at Peak 21 pulling this all together last minute.
We'll be hosting more events in the future - please leave a comment below if you want to attend the next one :)
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I built an app that lets you upload your 3PL invoice and automatically flags anomalies in charges based on two things: market benchmarks and your contracted rate cards (if you upload them).
We’ve been testing it with one client and caught around ~$1K in overcharges from just one invoice with 100 line items, not bad. Nobody's auditing 100+ line items in their invoice now.
Then it helps you draft a dispute email.
BONUS: It lets you watch my youtube video while crunching the numbers (lol)
I also mentioned this during my interview with @andrewjfaris.
If you want to try it with your own invoices, DM me, I’m happy to share the link for beta testing.
*sample below
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To add to Jacob's point, an *extremely* underrated diversity to add is to have female creative strategist/video editors.
Ecomm for whatever reason skews so heavily towards guys, and even more so in the ads side while girls are often in the organic/brand side.
This is genuinely not for DEI but for performance.
Girls just approach creatives completely differently. At the same time, women drive the majority of discretionary spending in household.
But I echo Jacobs point, we do exactly the same, especially because if you give 1 person too much the quality degrades. Good ads are difficult to make.
Jacob@jforjacob
One of the biggest unlocks I’ve had in Ecom is stupidly simple but not many actually do it It’s literally just having multiple sources of creative For us it looks like: Internal creative team Multiple agencies Freelancers Softwares for statics AI Seeding Every source sees things differently Every source makes stuff that is visually different Volume is there without stretching anybody and compromising quality I plan to keep scaling out our creative horizontally Which means, more creative strategists / video editors graphic designers each responsible for a different thing More agencies More freelancers More AI If each source has a positive ROI I will do this indefinitely
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Mike Eli retweetledi
This Figma file has 150+ skincare DTC pages.
My design team studies them over and over.
We've learned how top-tier skincare brands:
-> Position their core customer messaging
-> Use imagery to increase perceived product value
-> Structure their pages to keep customers in the funnel
If you want to win in skincare, analyze the competition.
Want the file?
Like and comment "Beauty" and I'll DM you a link.
(Must be connected so I can send)
P.S. I'll send it to people who repost first
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@JamesTyler___ @DaveDiederen Novel idea. Haven’t seen this out in the wild!
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With a strategy like this, price and preorder price are a function of current inventory to control the future stream of demand relative to incoming at the SKU level.
The price of both in stock and preorder want to be dynamic. This is not a set it and forget it type strategy.
In addition, its not just the price that wants to be dynamic and AB tested, its also the fulfillment date(s).
Price elasticity + date elasticity with multiple price and wait & save options allows for incredible control of inventory.
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Comfrt is doing something smart on their PDP that most stores haven't figured out.
Two add-to-cart buttons. Same product. Different prices.
One for in-stock: €73.95 - ships now.
One for pre-order: €48.95 - ships June 5.
That's a €25 discount for waiting 10 weeks.
Most brands treat pre-orders as a last resort. A sign the product isn't ready. Something to hide.
Comfrt turned it into a choice.
And that choice does 3 things at once:
1. It captures buyers who were about to bounce on price. It builds revenue before the stock even arrives. And it tells you exactly how price-sensitive your audience is, in real time.
2. The pre-order button isn't a backup. It's a conversion lever for people who needed one more reason to say yes.
3. You're not discounting. You're selling patience.
If you've got products on backorder right now, this is worth testing before your next restock.
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Just wrapped call w/ founder who wanted me to invest in his D2C business.
I gave him different advice and a potential solution that's way cheaper (at bottom)
Business owns him, not vice versa.
2025A: $17M rev, negative EBIT
2026F: $30M rev, <5% EBIT
Key stats:
- 21 day production lead times
- Terms: 30% deposit, 20% on delivery, rest NET 30
- CM2 70%
- High-cost debt (20%+ APR)
- 120+ SKUs, no sell-through or per-SKU interest allocation
- Factory solid (>30 mo relationship), unbeatable COGS-quality
- Shipped from China to the consumer globally
Recommendation:
- Give factory 10% equity
- Switch to consignment + EOD Friday payments for sold goods to remove cashflow constraints
- Visit factory quarterly (4×/yr)
I also shared how to prep 7 slides for supplier meeting. If post gets traction, I’ll recreate slides here as template. Just comment TRACTION. I need at least 100 lol
I think he’ll succeed. He's smart and he is clearly a winner. Website for his category was 10 out of 10.
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@jforjacob A little bit from everyone, and Q1 earnings look great 😂
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Solo Brands IPO'd in 2021 at a $2.1B valuation.
It's now worth $30M.
YETI, same market, same customer, is worth $3.3B.
The divergence isn't macro. It isn't DTC headwinds. It's about what kind of asset each company built.
Solo bought brands: Solo Stove, Chubbies, Oru Kayak, Isle Paddleboards, and called it a platform. $180M in acquisitions in four months before IPO. The pitch was synergy: shared infrastructure, shared data, shared back-office.
But a fire pit buyer, a kayaker, and a Chubbies shopper are three different people with three different purchase triggers. The synergy never materialized.
YETI built one brand and went deeper. The Hopper. The Rambler. The Tundra. Each new product deepened the same customer relationship instead of starting a new one. Today: $220M in annual free cash flow. $300M buyback authorization.
The public markets are not rewarding brand count. They're rewarding depth of customer relationship.
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