#287 - Meghana Dhar - Social, Creators, & Future of Digital Commerce

Meghana Dhar is a tech advisor and investor passionate about creators, brands, social media, and commerce. With a background in big tech, she worked at Ebay where she discovered her love for e-commerce, marketplaces, and direct-to-consumer (DTC) business models. Meghana's strategic expertise led her to become an advisor to the CEO during the spin-off of PayPal. She later served as the head of shopping partnerships at Instagram, witnessing its growth from inception. Recently, she held the position of global head of partnerships at Snap, accumulating valuable experiences in social commerce.

Victor Guardiola and Jordan Hicks are the co-founders of Bawi. With a passion for entrepreneurship, they turned their vision of creating ready-to-drink agua frescas into a reality. From testing their products at farmers markets to securing distribution in over 600 stores nationally, Victor and Jordan continue to grow their brand and bring refreshing beverages to consumers nationwide.

Meghan Higney is the founder of Message, a innovative slide sandal brand. With a background in private equity investing, Meghan then served as President & COO of True Botanicals. She is advisor to several brands is extremely versed at all levels of operation within consumer brands.

On this episode of DTC pod, Blaine & Ramon break the latest news and analysis in the consumer & commerce space, with some in depth breakdowns.

Mike Xhaxho, an Albanian-American entrepreneur, started his career in finance and investment banking. After leaving finance, he created one of the first creator led fitness app business, which he scaled and sold, before finding his way into e-commerce and importing rattan bags. In 2020, he noticed a whitespace in the market around hydration products, and Waterboy was born.

Jordan West is a successful entrepreneur, owner of multiple brands, agency owner at upGrowth Commerce, and host of fellow e-commerce podcast Secrets To Scaling Your E-commerce Brand . With his expertise in digital advertising and e-commerce, Jordan has a background in growing brands, navigating advertising platforms, and understanding customer psychology.

Liz Giorgi is the co-founder and CEO of soona, a platform that specializes in creating visual content for Ecommerce. With a background in television editing for networks like CNN and PBS, Liz transitioned into the world of digital video content creation in 2013. After successfully running her own production company, she sold it in 2019 to focus on the opportunity with soona. Liz recognized the need for affordable and high-quality product photography in the Ecommerce industry and has since helped shoot 5 million Ecommerce assets and onboarded 15,000 merchants onto the soona platform.

Robbie Salter is the co-CEO and co-founder of Jupiter, a scalp health brand that has revolutionized the hair care industry. Robbie and his team have successfully developed top-notch scalp care products that are free of harmful chemicals and safe for color-treated and chemically treated hair. Before Jupiter, Robbie worked in the film and television industry and received his JD and MBA from Northwestern University.

Blaine & Ramon break the latest news and analysis in the consumer & commerce space.

Adam Robinson, the founder & CEO of Retention.com. A Rice University graduate and former credit default swap trader, started building in the email marketing space until he found a way to get website visitors' email addresses. He rebranded the company as Retention.com and now has 50 employees and an ARR of almost $20 million.

Frank Faricy is the founder and CEO of XGen, an AI platform that provides enterprise brands with complete autonomy in deploying machine learning systems and pipelines to solve e-commerce challenges. The concept was created in early 2019, and it has since helped some of the largest fashion brands in the world like Valentino, Armani, Sonos, and more deploy modern ML tools.

Dylan Menter is the founder and CEO of Bear Balanced, creators of the world's first Creatine Gummy. Prior to starting Bear Balanced, he built rockets at SpaceX, before his CPG side-hustle really started to blast off.

Chris Kippenberger is a media industry veteran who played a significant role in turning Vice Germany's magazine into a moving image and news organization - working closely with Spike Jones and team. He has collaborated with brands from RollsRoyce to OVO to Luis Vuitton. He's built Vehicule with his wife, Jo, who studied graphic design and visual communication in Switzerland and is the one responsible for making everything the duo creates look great.

Tui Allen is a world renowned product builder. She's the head of product & design at Ampla, and before led Shopify's Capital & Financial Services initiatives. She's an expert in solving customer problems, removing friction, and leading teams, and aligning on product strategy.

Derek Osgood is a seasoned marketing and product professional. He began his career at PlayStation as a brand manager and has since worked in various tech and startup companies leading marketing and product teams. Before starting his own venture, Ignition, he was a crucial part of the Rippling team, where he established the product marketing function. Currently, Derek is focused on building a platform that helps DTC brands, SaaS companies, and anyone launching products, effectively bring their ideas to market. The platform provides market research tools, planning capabilities, and measurement metrics to ensure the success of product launches. Derek is enthusiastic about bringing his comprehensive product launch knowledge to the masses through a user-friendly platform.

Philip Ruffini is the founder and CEO of Content Assistant, a content production agency. He studied business and computer science at the University of Michigan, where he also ran his own e-commerce brand. After selling his business, he worked as a product manager at Microsoft before leaving to start his own unsuccessful startup. He then became a growth consultant for startups in various industries and completed his master's degree at Tsinghua University in China through the Shoresman Scholars program. Philip started Content Assistant after seeing a need for content creation services in the startups he advised.

Scout Brisson is the CEO of De Soi, a non-alcoholic sparkling aperitif brand co-founded by Katy Perry and Morgan McLachlan. With a technical education from MIT, Scout also brings prior experience from working in consumer packaged goods, starting her own functional food and beverage brand, and working in venture and consulting at McKinsey.

Sydney Sykes is an investor, entrepreneur and nonprofit leader who is passionate about the direct consumer space, ecommerce, and venture capital. After graduating university with a psych major, Sydney was drawn to the world of startups and venture capital and joined NEA as an early consumer investor. During her time at Dollskill, Sydney grew and strategized the company's native brands while also angel investing and doing scout investing for Lightspeed. Sydney later joined Lightspeed as a Partner to focus on commerce, future shopping and ecommerce enablement for early stage companies. She is now committed to making an impact in the venture capital space by increasing diversity and furthering innovation in the industry.

Lio Pinchevski is the founder and CEO of Finaloop, the company providing real-time bookkeeping services specifically tailored to DTC and ecommerce brands. Formerly he was a CPA & parter at PwC, as well as a founder of a 7-figure e-commerce brand. Frustrated with traditional bookkeeping systems that couldn't keep pace with e-commerce, Lio built the platform for e-commerce which provides necessary integrations, and eliminates the need for a bookkeeper.

Izzy Gewirtzman is the founder of Shiplion - a consultancy that helps brands optimize and save on shipping costs. After realizing that contracts between businesses and carriers could be optimized to reduce costs and improve service, he started helping companies doing larger volume re-coup costs and optimize COGs by renegotiating their contracts with carriers like FedEx and UPS.

Athan Didaskalou is founder of July, the fast growing travel & luggage brand. He's a product guy by default, and decided to launch July 2019 with business partner, Richard We. They have been pushing to create innovative travel accessories and products that stand out from the competition.

Justin Seidenfeld is an experienced consumer goods expert with over ten years of experience in product design, development, and supply chain management. He is the founder of Doris Dev, a product design, development and supply chain management company, and the creator of Canopy, a humidifier with technology that offers health benefits for skin. Most recently, he incubated a managed service software company, Factored Quality, which provides quality control and supply chain management services through a single point platform with managed services.

Marshall Nyman is an expert in affiliate marketing, having worked in the industry for over a decade. After working in-house for brands on email marketing and affiliate marketing, he started Nymo & co - a DTC agency helping brands grow through affiliate.

Stephanie Kimel & Celia Lewis- Product Innovation: Personal Storage x Home Decor

Johnathan Solorzano is the founder of Solo Media Group, a digital agency specializing in Shopify development. After working as a whitelabel agency developer on some of the biggest shopify brands like Oatly, he started to work directly with brands within Shopify ecosystem.