Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is what is the best way for ecom business owners to incentivize the CEOs / general managers (GMs) of their businesses. At Agora we’re acquiring DTC ecom businesses. It would be impossible for my co-founders and I to run all of

A DTC ecommerce brand’s data is valuable, but only to the brand–not an external acquirer. I remember when Unilever acquired Dollar Shave Club for $1B in 2016. While DSC was massively unprofitable, a large part of the acquisition rationale was not only DSC’s revenue and team, it

Legend

I usually write here about DTC and e-commerce, but this post is about something far more important. It’s the 15th anniversary of the founding of Giving What We Can, an organization made up of people who have pledged to donate 10% of their income to the most effective charities.

Ever since I began acquiring DTC e-commerce businesses, people have asked me which business categories are “the best.” But I’ve concluded there’s no such thing as a universally good or bad category. I’ve heard the usual advice: look for categories with 60%+ gross margins, have a

Very soon, AI will let brands know all publicly available info about their customers. This is going to revolutionize ecommerce. I caved and subscribed to ChatGPT Pro for access to “Deep Research.” This is the tool that scours the internet to write a 5-20 page pHd-level report on