The Outcome-First CEO: Travis Hess on Transforming BigCommerce and Leading Through Disruption

Travis Hess - CEO of BigCommerce and veteran of the digital agency landscape (Accenture, LiveArea, PFS) - joins MarTalks to discuss leading a $350M+ public software company through a major strategic pivot. 

• Fixing a broken Go-To-Market: Why "trying to be everything to everyone" is a public market trap and how to narrow focus to ideal customer profiles (ICPs) for real growth. 
• The "Services" Advantage in Software: Why a background in business outcomes and holistic systems beats a traditional "pedigreed" MBA in today’s disrupted landscape. 
• Surviving Economic Cycles: Critical advice for the "generation of plenty" on navigating downturns and the "insourcing vs. outsourcing" swings that define tech cycles. 
• Leading with Radical Authenticity: The mindset shift from "scripted" leadership to improv-ready, collaborative management where the best idea always wins. 
• Software Transformation as a "Full Contact Sport": How to manage the "warts" of integration and the board-level reality of moving from defense to offense in a competitive market. 
• Bonus: The CEO Playbook for Disruption - Learn why Travis believes most leaders rise not from steady growth, but from pushing through professional dysfunction and adversity. 

Perfect for Founders, CEOs, CROs and investors seeking a masterclass in authentic leadership and large-scale platform transformation. Steal the strategy Travis is using to take on industry giants and navigate the "agentic" AI era. 

#ExecutiveLeadership #SaasTransformation #BigCommerce #MarTech #CEOInsights #BusinessOutcome #MarTalks

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Visit RosensteinGroup.com to find out more.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Well, hey everybody. Welcome to another episode of Mar Talks. And my next guest today is one crafty Martec e-commerce cat who currently sits in the captain's chair at Big Commerce, but who spent his formative years crisscrossing the digital agency landscape with Amplify, PFS, Live Area, and Accenture. Get ready to climb into the Wayback Machine with our friend, my guest, Travis Hess. Welcome to Marlon Mar Talks, Travis.

SPEAKER_00 0:33

Thanks, Dale. Thanks for having me, man. That was a nice uh energetic lead in. I don't get that a lot, so I uh I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_01 0:40

Well, you know, e-commerce CEOs really should be preceded by a band and uh, you know, and have theme music. So um I'm providing my own today. I would recommend it for you. Uh, I know there's plenty of great talent for music in Austin. So I would encourage you to kind of reach out to the community and see what they can put together for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:02

Yeah, I kind of like that uh, you know, the USC marching band and the uh the Tusk album for Fleetwood Mac. That would be great. They would have the theatrical sort of dramatic, uh, dramatic element of it, which um probably overkill. But yes, it's a great music scene in Austin for sure. Lots of options there.

SPEAKER_01 1:19

That that talk about the Wayback Machine. I mean, that was a killer video. I mean, they're there in the Rose Bowl, they're dancing all around, you know, uh when they were all still with us.

SPEAKER_00 1:31

I mean, I was besought, besought with yeah, I've got an old photo of Stevie, Stevie Nixon well, somewhere on the wall over there back there that uh yeah, back in the the good old uh rumors days, probably from late 70s, that um I don't know. It's a music I grew up listening to around my parents, and um yeah, it just it uh never gets old. It just uh sparks some semblance of nostalgia, but I think still still carries true to the day for people that didn't grow up around it. I think still have a deep appreciation.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

So hey, how can you not appreciate Fleetwood Mac? I mean, you really would have to be at Dullard. And for all those people who are listening that don't appreciate appreciate Fleetwood Mac, I'm gonna double down and say Stevie Nix was the greatest singing partner Tom Petty ever had.

SPEAKER_00 2:23

Ooh, okay. That's a bold, that's a bold statement. I I can't disagree with that. I mean, she uh I mean she doed it with a few. I mean, Don Henley comes to mind as well, and uh a few others. But yeah, I think um there's a great documentary called uh I think it's called Making the Album, and it's the making of rumors. If you haven't seen it, it's a little dated, but um absolutely fast. It's probably from like late late 90s or whatever, where they go back to the studio in like Sal Salito where they cut rumors and like all the drama in the band, with you know, Christy McVee and John McVee breaking up and Stevie and Lindsay Puckingham breaking up and Mick Fleetwood kind of the middle of all of it. It's it's uh with all the folks that cut that album and mixed it in the actual studio, still in Saul Salito with several of the band members. It it is um, yeah, it's uh it's one of the better musical uh or band-oriented documentaries I've seen.

SPEAKER_01 3:22

Yep. My apartment on Bridgeway in Saul Salito was about two blocks from that studio. So I've been there. Ah nice felt the vibe, smelled the smoke that had come out of those lucky strikes 30 years ago, uh, and you know, have cancer show for it. But you know, I'm rolling with that because that's the kind of guy I am. So, you know, we're we're I hate to do this, you know, because I could talk about music forever with somebody who's from my my decade. Um, but but we're we're gonna segue just a little bit. You happen to have a job uh today. Um today.

SPEAKER_00 3:59

That's a that's a good point today, I think.

SPEAKER_01 4:01

You know, which is kind of where all of us are in the world of e-commerce. It's like, what's gonna happen now? The AI agents are gonna come and take everything away. What's uh what's up with that? So you know, you're you're you're with big commerce. I mean I've always been a huge fan of big commerce. Uh I go back with big commerce to when Todd Klubvick was their CRO once upon the day. It was kind of the I think it was the third company that I had recruited for Todd at, I think we started out at Zillient, another fine awesome startup, still with us in the startup scene. Um Todd was just a great CRO. He was also a ball buster. I think I had to had to like present, I don't know, 5,000 resumes to get an interview, something ridiculous. It was just, you know, he put me through the ringer. Nonetheless, everybody that he hired ended up doing great. But, you know, let's talk about big commerce because um, you know, you're you're you're still recently installed in the chair uh in the world of I don't know, long-term professionals, uh tenure or whatever. Uh and uh that's uh no pun intended, a big responsibility um because you you you're kind of every day going to work and uh selling into the teeth of the big bad wolf in e-commerce in Shopify. Do you just do you jump out of bed with that prospect? You just like, hell yeah, let's go. I'm gonna show these Canadians how to do business.

SPEAKER_00 5:41

Uh yes, I do. Although, listen, my relationship there is complicated. And, you know, I've been fairly public about this too. I loved my time with Shopify, like I really did. Um, personally and professionally. I still have many friends there that I deeply uh love and respect, and former um employees there that have gone on to do other things. Um and listen, I I I think it's they've done an amazing job for all the obvious reasons, and that and to be part of that kind of run-up into the space uh as tangibly as I was, albeit from the services side of the business, um, was amazing and fulfilling on a number of levels. Now, that being said, there's a reason I came here and not anything against Shopify. I don't, I don't think going there, um, if that was an option, um, would have uh mapped necessarily to my skill set or what would have been fulfilling. And and again, not because I'm, you know, everything's in sliced bread. I just, it wasn't as interesting. I I felt like the opportunity here and just with the collection of assets and where the business was at the time, um, I felt like was a much more interesting opportunity for me personally um to go leave my fingerprints on something and be part of it, transform the business into something that in some ways compete with Shopify, but that's the other misnomer too. I don't I don't view them um as a direct competitor uh in many capacities. And I know that may sound odd to and unorthodox to some people. Um they they they have their own ICPs that they compete and and in some cases dominate. Um, and good for them. That takes a lot of skill and and and capabilities to do it and a lot of investment. I think we have our own, and I think we have a different collection of capabilities here than what they do. And for me and where the market's going, I feel like it gives us an advantage, albeit being a fraction of their market cap and their size. But I am competitive and and yeah, I mean, listen, I I I read the trades and watch LinkedIn and and um yeah, they've got a lot of uh what I would call, you know, the shopperazzi on LinkedIn amplifying that that message. And I understand yeah, the enthusiasm behind that ecosystem and things like that. And, you know, people dog us a lot publicly, and and maybe we deserve it for where the business is or was, or in some cases, subjectively, where people think that we're going. But um, you know, listen, I of course I'm competitive, and yes, I'm motivated to go out and um not so much compete directly with them per se, although where we find ourselves in similar uh deals, yeah, I want to kick their ass. Uh, as I suspect they want to kick ours, but I'm not worried as much about what they're doing. Um, they're doing okay on their own. I'm worried about what we're doing, and um, you know, that's where the focus is. And if that so happens to overlap from time to time, they're uh certainly we're prepared to do that. I just I get asked the question a lot, obviously, given my history. And um, listen, I get the questions and and I'll continue to get them. It's totally fine. But I don't I don't have any ill will towards them, certainly. But yeah, if we're competing, I would very much like to kick their ass. And I do think we do certain things better than they do. And my focus has been focusing on those ICPs, those areas, those differentiators and capabilities, and doing a better job of telling that story and articulating it and executing against our own strategy and market, despite the size differences and the publicity differences, which, you know, again, they get a lot more attention, certainly, than than than we do.

SPEAKER_01 9:10

Well, you know, I'm not hearing what I want to hear, which is basically that when you and Tobias are sitting on the floor at Shop Talk, that it's kind of like bird and and and magic, you know, and that classic rivalry where you're just trash talking each other, you know, and you're getting emails, you know, you you're sending each other gad gifts. I mean, I want to know, I want to know how much that goes down because you know, I I I I've got to believe that somebody's poking Tobias' bubble. Because uh otherwise, you know, what might happen to him? He might become, you know, I don't know, one of the technaroti.

SPEAKER_00 9:43

I've actually like the truth is uh I've never actually met him. Um listen, I I I think he's brilliant in what he's been able to do.

SPEAKER_01 9:51

And I can set up a cage match, dude. I can set up a cage match.

SPEAKER_00 9:56

I I wanted to meet him. I it was like it was always sort of this weird things, you know, as we got deep, as I got deeper into that ecosystem, then obviously COVID happened, and and Shopify at the time kind of ended up shutting down offices like a lot of other people did, and they went more remote. I've I've actually never met the man. I obviously have a great deal of respect and admiration for him. I think he's a visionary, and I think, you know, listen, he sets an amazing tone and tempo to that business. I mean, I would say the same thing for Harley and different reasons. I have met Harley. I think he is a I mean, as for as far as an investor relations perspective and a pitch man for the company, uh, he's an absolute gold standard. Like the guy is just uh I mean he's just I mean, he is amazingly charismatic and energetic, and and he is like a bundle of authentic energy. And, you know, uh wherever I had a chance to take advantage of that in that ecosystem, I certainly look to do so. I've got other friends over there. I don't, you know, Bobby and I were close. Um, we still, you know, I mean, we'll text back and forth from time to time. Certainly, if I saw anybody in person, we would go, you know, give each other a hug or whatnot. But yeah, I don't, you know, I don't have the bandwidth, honestly, to go do those sorts of things. I do talk with a lot of other people in the space across other platforms, probably more so than I do the shop folks. But like with my friends and things there, like I don't want to put them in a word spot either of like, you know, what we can talk personally and catch up and things like that, but I just I just don't think it's fair of me to go like even indirectly. They've got great gigs where they are there. I don't want them to intentionally or unintentionally feel like there's some sort of conflict of interest. So I wish them well personally, but again, competing head to head, I very much would like to kick their ass. All due respect.

SPEAKER_01 11:41

You're you're such a CEO. I mean, you really you're telling you're telling the line, but you know, I mean, what it comes back to is you're you got a reputation, man, for being one of the most authentic and grounded leaders out there in technology. And uh, you know, I I I could I felt it the minute you know I met you at uh NRF. I was like, this guy is not a stiff, and that's that's not a good thing. Oh, that's good to know. You know, well, hey, you know, when you when you sp when you've spent 25 years recruiting sales professionals, if there's one thing they sniff out and run from, it's the geek CEO who has to control everything, and you are like the opposite of that. It's like, hey man, what's your bag? What do you do? All right, terrific. That's great. How can I help you? I love that energy, I love that feel, and I want to know, you know, what do you think shaped that for you?

SPEAKER_00 12:41

Um listen, I I've never had like uh an official mentor in business, right? It's not like I worked for somebody where I was like, oh, geez, he or she took me under their wing, and there's a lot about them that I admire, I have worked with and for uh many people in my career that I have uh a deep appreciation for, um, starting out out of school and then and obviously continuing on. Um, some of which I'm still like Barry Clark, who I never worked for, but uh is is I whether he recognizes or not, he's been an unbelievable mentor uh to me, whether he's tried to or not. He has. He ran global sales at ATG and then and then led uh sales there on the retail side in the RGBU for several years at Oracle before he's gone on to do some other things. So I've had folks like that in my life that have left a big impression. I think the consistency across all of them of what I've appreciated most is their own authenticity. And um, you know, I don't even think I have the skill set to pretend to be something that I'm not. I'm just too demonstrative. Uh, I'm not an insular person where I keep things inside, um, you know, and it just eats away. I think uh I'd be a terrible spy, probably, and a terrible poker player. I think you would know exactly where where I stand. And I think, you know, um one of the things I realized early on in my career is, you know, obviously people starting out on the on the on the on the sales and the revenue side, I mean people buy from people, and I think people buy from people that they trust and like. And and you don't need to be a shapeshifter. I think it's just just be you. And um, as long as it's you, it's just like swinging a golf club. There's not one correct way to do it. You could swing it a thousand different ways and hit it consistently down the middle every time. Who am I to say that my way of swinging the golf club, metaphorically speaking, is the right way? I just, it's right for who I am and what my skill set is. And just like I'm not a script-oriented person, like if someone put a script in front of me and said, I want you to give this speech verbatim on what's been written, especially if someone else wrote it, I'm gonna fail miserably. Like I am an improv, like shoot, not from the hip. I'm certainly educated on what I'm talking about, but like that is my strength. I know scripting and trying to pretend to be something maybe that I'm not, either better or worse, isn't me. And I think I've picked that up along the years from people that I've worked with, worked for, that have worked for me. I've been able to, you know, plagiarize those characteristics and it just reinforced my own approach. I try to lead the way I would want to be led. I try to manage the way that I would want to be managed, and it's led me to strategies and hiring practices that um play to those strengths, right? And and avoid my own sort of shortcomings and weaknesses, of which we all have, and some of which are are insurmountable. Like they're just, you know, you're just not going to change. You get to be our age uh at least within the same decade as you alluded to earlier.

SPEAKER_01 15:33

Like I am having I got a little on you, but you're not thanks. That's okay. That's all right.

SPEAKER_00 15:37

I mean, appreciate that. I could always dye my hair. I guess I could come back as a blonde or something.

SPEAKER_01 15:41

Well, you have hair to dye. So I mean, that's just that's a whole different subject.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Yeah. But that's the long short of it. I mean, there's there's nothing like there's no framework or methodology that I followed uh around it. I've I've I do have a good sense for um people and uh talent. And um, and I've been able to lucky enough, quite frankly, just being the oldest of three boys, I didn't have an older brother or anything. I've been fortunate enough to have folks older in their careers, whether they're peers or superiors or or however many layers up. I've been fortunate enough in my career to surround myself with some of those folks um and really learn from them. Whether they knew I was learning from them or not, uh, who knows? But um, that's something that I I have been deliberate about, although it's not been planned. I'm not like some sort of weirdo. Um, you know, I just enjoy spending time with people that I can that I can learn from and and and evolve from, whether we have the same style or not, even learning like what their style is and how it differs from mine is beneficial.

SPEAKER_01 16:39

So well, you know, you mentioned plagiarizing, and I I feel like a lot of folks uh do that. I mean, I plagiarized my entire career, and chat GPT has just made it so much easier to do that. And I really, I mean, hats off to the folks uh, you know, at Anthropic and Open Open AI for making that easier for all of us to uh essentially claim somebody else's words as our own, you know. But clearly you're not completely comfortable with that, which is good, which is good. I I have to I have to laud that. But you know, going going back to you know, you're sitting in the CEO chair, you're a big company. Uh you've uh typically boards are looking for somebody who's pedigreed. Yeah, this is coming from the headhunter who's who's who's always been very suspicious of companies say, well, I want somebody coming out at this company. And that's one of the things that kind of turns my stomach about what's going on with Meta raiding all of these uh other firms with hundred million dollar signing bonuses to geek out and you know build Zooks monster, whatever it's gonna be in the virtual world, hunting us all. Uh what do you think of uh, you know, this this uh preconception that's out there in in particular in the software community, that it's better if somebody, it's it's it's easier to hire somebody if they come out of this big name, if they come out of Oracle, or if they come out of Salesforce, or I mean, does that background really prepare somebody for anything in software?

SPEAKER_00 18:19

You know, I can only speak from my experience. I think um listen, I've said this again before, and I'll say it again. I give a lot of credit to my predecessor, Brent, um, who certainly looked at, you know, however many candidates they looked at, I don't know, uh, but certainly looked at at folks coming out of that that background. And maybe in the past had hired folks coming out of that background. And I I don't think I was the obvious choice. Quite frankly, when I um was recruited for the role and was, you know, in an earnout over at Accenture, um, I didn't like honestly expect to get the job. Um, not because I didn't think I'd do a great job, and not that I wasn't like enthusiastically excited about it. Um, you know, you're balancing that like everybody does when you're in a role and and running whatever it is anyone's running, and you're kind of it is a weird mental uh state, like younger people that end up coming taking a job and then getting recruited, and it feels like this weird, like, you know, I'm secretly taking calls and meetings and I feel like I'm cheating in some way. And it's it you get over that as you get older, obviously. But um, I didn't think for exactly that reason. Um, on paper, you know, uh, despite having accomplished, in my opinion, you know, I'm proud of what I've been able to accomplish, but I wouldn't say it maps exactly to what the use case is here or what people traditionally would have expected in the role in a software company that's a bit of in a bit of a turnaround in a public market. That being said, um, I do think the market has shifted a ton. I think it's been massively disrupted. I think it's continuing to be disrupted by AI and agentic and a bunch of other things. And quite frankly, I do think it favors not only the experienced, I think it favors folks with a services background. And you're starting to see that trend more and more where services folks are coming out of services and landing in software. And I think it's for a reason. I think services folks are are tend to be business outcome oriented. They tend to look at things holistically, they tend to understand all the other ancillary things that go into and complement such software uh to actually bring it to life. And I think it's just a different mentality. So I think that that's an advantage. On paper, you know, I don't have an MBA, you know, I didn't go to Harvard or an Ivy League school. Um, you know, and the and you know, I've gotten some compliments uh privately and publicly where people are appreciative that I I don't I don't act like I have. I don't at first, I don't know if that was an insult or a backhanded compliment, but like, listen, I am who I am. Like, I'm not gonna change. And if people like that, great. And if they don't, okay. Like, I'll appreciate feedback if it's constructive, if it's insulting, maybe I'll laugh at myself for a minute. But it's just like it is what it is. I can't go back in time and change any of those things. It's just I'm gonna do my thing. And I think um, listen, I've taken a hiring approach as well. I think a lot of other people have too, realizing that college is very expensive. I think it's a gate for people of a certain lifestyle and household income and not to get political or things like that. Like, I don't know how much valued it how valued it is now versus 30 years ago. Presumably it's valued less. Depends on what you do, depends on what you go into. I don't want to take anything away because it takes a shitload of work to get into a really good school for people and test and things like that. So I don't want to diminish the benefit of it, but I think for where this business was, for what it needed at the time and the role that I was hired into, I don't think, you know, my education 30 years ago would have made a damn bit of difference. I think it was practical experience and acumen and mindset to want to come in and take on what needed to be come on and taking on. And a lot of that is around the transformation, which isn't for everyone. In fact, it's it's it's it's for for very few realistic. And that doesn't make me special. Maybe it makes me masochistic. I just, it's just a different, it's just a different gig than coming into a mature oil machine and and expanding on that machine. That is not what this was. And um, that is what attracted me, and I think it's what maps to my skill set. So that's my long-winded uh answer on my pedigree or lack thereof.

SPEAKER_01 22:26

Well, you know, you you you bring up a really interesting point uh that you didn't feel you got over feeling bad, like you're cheating on your girlfriend when you were interviewing. Yeah, and I and I think that's very important for individuals uh at that C level to really they need to learn that because you become an asset to the industry. Your knowledge set, your experience, it's it is special, that cumulative capability that you have. And if it's not being fully utilized, it's being wasted. And you have a responsibility at this point because you knew you know how to do stuff to actually put yourself out there and to make sure that if there's some place where you could be more fully utilized, you're doing that. And you know, I'm um you know, I appreciate that, you know, you may not have gone to some Ivy League school, and uh, we're not gonna poop on education right now. But in this day and age, we've found more and more that there's so much learning opportunities that take place outside of traditional uh routes. And it's it's great to hear you in a leadership position are recognizing that. And it's a it's about the qualitative nature of the individual. And I'm not gonna stick too many more words in your mouth um because I don't want to blow out a cheek or anything, but that's about that's that's good to hear from you. But you know, you you you you inherited a $350 million business in BigCommerce. Uh you you say it's in a turnaround. Well, what was broken? And what have you rebuilt? And, you know, where are you staring? Where what are you staring at to now?

SPEAKER_00 24:07

Yeah, I mean, I I think the go-to-market certainly was broken. I think that was probably the most visibly obvious to everyone in the space. And I think um, you know, maybe an over-indexed good thing over the years of coming out of SMB and um falling into this trap of trying to be everything to everyone. And um it it's hard. It's hard in a public market to do that and and and distinguish yourself and market. I think um you had two acquired assets and Makeswift and Feedonomics that had not yet been integrated into the business. I felt like they were a critical part of the story and the narrative as well as kind of where I felt like the market was going as well. And um, you know, they they serve different markets certainly and different capabilities, but I think, you know, there was a better together story there, most certainly, that that was opportunistic to your point. You know, inheriting a $350 million business is is I had nothing to do with building that business. I think very fortuitous that I was able to take that over. That helps a ton. Um, and not that the company didn't have warts, of course it did, every company does, but I felt like it was a manageable array of warts that could be, you know, frozen off or or what have you. I knew the company needed some changes. I I've done this before. I've I've done it under different circumstances. I would say in in this capacity, it's been easier in some ways. Uh, Brent was very supportive of me coming in and I was able to bring on new folks very, very quickly. I've not always had that in the past. I've worked for folks in the past under similar circumstances that I wasn't as aligned with and they were a bit more of a challenge. I didn't have that here. Um, I certainly, you know, wasn't expecting to be put in a chair five months after starting that happened, and that transition and the board and everyone else has been very supportive, as well as Brent. So that's seamless, that transition was seamless. And I think for us, integrating the products, um, you know, focusing on our ICPs, uh, being more deliberate about who it is that we're for and why, articulating in a way that is not only authentic but differentiating. And then I think, you know, we're about to go through a uh a parent rebrand here shortly. We've got earnings coming up in a week and a half, where I'll be able to share more. But I think all of this coming together at the same time, given where the market is going and where the demand is right now, I think there is a lot of tangible goodness that will become more clear in a few weeks after earnings of what it is we've been doing, why it is we've been doing it. We've been kind of deliberately non-hand wavy, uh, despite the rest of the industry, which tends to be, you know, in certain cases, we won't name names, very hand wavy. Um making commerce great again for everybody, I understand. But um, we haven't had a lot to wave, honestly. Like the business has been, I don't want to say pedestrian. I I think we've done a really nice job uh inside the four walls. A lot of a lot of amazing work and transformations gone on that hasn't necessarily been reflected in the numbers as yet. And we've guided to that that the first half this year was going to be sluggish. We've got some some stuff to work through and reorganize. It's tough to do that in a public market. And I think as we come out now in H2, we're now kind of getting into execution mode uh and executing against that strategy. And the hope to use the sports analogy would be, you know, play a little bit more offense than defense. And I know most of us internally have been part of this, have been chomping at the bit to get to that stage. So that that's where we're at. I think, you know, certainly not immune to to past challenges and and and um you know issues in markets certainly has hit everybody with all the macro not all the macroeconomic volatility. But I feel really good about where we are and where we're going. And um, yeah, no, I mean, uh I wouldn't take back a thing, honestly, in in what we've been able to do. It hasn't been perfect, but it's it's been pretty damn good.

SPEAKER_01 27:54

Well, composability as a whole hasn't been perfect. I mean, I I've been a fan from the beginning. Uh, just the idea of being able to interchange components to build your best version of yourself. What's the store you always wanted? How did you want people to you know look at that Birken bag and hold it like the jewel it is and eventually buy it for a hundred million dollars and you know, never wear it again, never use it again. I I I love that, but it's hard to explain to folks. You've got, you know, you you I think BigCommerce has done a much better job of making the pieces bite-sized so that the pedestrian business leaders out there and the IRC 500 and beyond and Global 2000 could go, oh oh, that's how it works. Oh, I didn't I didn't understand. It's like they've been they've been snowed under by you know uh you know, Salesforce Commerce saying, that's gonna kill you. It's like, no, it's not. This is not heart surgery. This is not heart surgery, okay? We we can rebuild you, Steve. Better. I mean, you your store just went through, it's like the HL10 video from from the six million dollar man. It's like, we're we can't hold it, just cry. It's like the the stores are crashing out there. I mean, I just read uh yesterday that Shopify experienced the greatest exodus uh of customers uh over the last uh th four years in the last two months. And it's because these marketers and these e-commerce store leaders are like I really am not that differentiated, and this really isn't exactly how we work, and we want to do things differently, and you need a more flexible platform. You need a more flexible platform, but you've said it yourself, composability isn't for everybody. You know, what's what do you think big commerce's unique take on composability? Who is it for?

SPEAKER_00 29:58

Well, I mean, listen, I've described this as a um as a different religion than than maybe a monolith approach, not a different denomination of Christianity or whatnot. We're not like wearing different types of clothes and and maybe you know dancing and standing up versus sitting down and kneeling.

SPEAKER_01 30:14

Uh I'm gonna put on some tunes, okay?

SPEAKER_00 30:16

Just just just because I think I think it it is a different approach. And like I said, it doesn't, I'm not professing it needs to be for everyone. I think the downside to the approach historically has been it's been uh expensive and complicated. And for it to work at scale needs to be commercially, technically, and operationally uh easier and feasible and consumable, digestible. So a lot of what we've been doing is is um, you know, I again it's not hand-wavy, call it curated composability or pre-composed, or everyone's got their own vernacular for it. Like for us, I think, I think most companies haven't been in the space for a long time, view themselves um as peers to people in other like type industries or sub-industries. And I think they expect what feels like bespoke specialized capabilities for their specific industry or or sub-industry, and they expect that at at speed and at scale. And I think for us, we do really well in specific industries. They tend to be innately more complicated than maybe your traditional, you know, fashion peril and accessory sort of spaces. And um, you know, I think uh we're leaning into that a bit more. Obviously, B2B is a whole nother animal that I think uh plays to the the capabilities of the business and um on the platform side, certainly our own capabilities against the competitive landscape. But I think we've done a lousy job historically of articulating that to market and what it actually means and the benefits of such back to consumers. And and again, we've had some some success there year to date. I think we're looking forward to amplifying the the actual stories of folks going live and reaping the benefits and things like that. But I just I think in this new world order of agentic, first of all, I think data, you know, in many capacities is a new storefront. I think we've got some innate advantages there uh that may be obvious to some, maybe not as obvious to others. And I think on the platform side, composability is going to be king. I think. I think people want optionality. Hallelujah. Um they don't want to be painted into a corner. It doesn't mean you know that's everybody. Like whatever, you do you. Uh, I just me, my perspective and my lens, if I was sitting at a brand, regardless um of who it is, I would like um I would like optionality. I would love organizational agility. And I've said this from the moment I stepped in the door here, coming out of services. Uh, brands, regardless of size, organizations, regardless of size and industry, need to go where their customers want to engage them. That is fundamentally changing now. All the proliferation of channels and all these channels we have now that we never had before. Now you have all the answer engine uh channels, which is sucking in all the traffic. And to optimize for that is very different than what we've optimized in the past. Brands are figuring out how to get there, get there with relevance, be discoverable, play a role in what that shopping experience may ultimately be and where it evolves, who knows? But I think um I like, as I said, why I took this gig. I like openness, I like composability, I like optionality, and I like data. Um I don't need to be the super target. Uh I I just I don't need to be everything to everyone. And I don't think most folks, it's certainly up market, want all of that in one. Now, commercially, they may want it easier as one, and we're doing it.

SPEAKER_01 33:42

CFO wants one contract. Yeah, one throat to choke, but you know, they're they're not, you know, they they have to be brought along in that journey. It's like, look, we're actually putting control in the hands of your department heads, so they have more ability to innovate and respond and change. It's like, how do you calculate the ROI on that? How do you calculate?

SPEAKER_00 34:05

Well, that's that's the funny thing now. I mean, you you I read all this stuff about like TCO and uh ROI calculators and all this other stuff. It's sort of like by definition, if if you've got to go subscribe to whatever, pick your poison, you've got to go subscribe to six to 12 third-party apps to extend a platform to appease your use cases. First of all, I can tell you as an agency guy, you don't know what those apps are when you sell the deal. You've got to get deep into paid discovery and extrapolate use cases and requirements before you can make a make a call there. And by the way, these apps are not like plug and play. You've got to extend, oftentimes you've got to customize them. There's a cost of doing so. There's a cost of licensing. You may outgrow that app in a short period of time. You've got to make sure that it doesn't, you know, deprecate performance and other things. So there is a lot of you know variables and moving pieces and parts here that that is in almost impossible to quantify in that model to sit there and say, I've got an ROI or a TCO calculator, you can just plug a bunch of shit into online. It's gonna spit out the savings, is just complete bullshit, nonsense. Like it just, I don't care who the platform is. Um, and if we're doing it, shame on us too. I don't think it's an accurate output. I don't believe we are doing it, but uh, I say that somewhat tongue in cheek. But I think um composability also gives an advantage to not having to do everything at once either. And it allows uh incremental transformation that ultimately uh not only mitigates risk, but it also can facilitate transformation and efficacy without painting someone into a corner. I again, I'm not saying it's for everyone. I do think it's for a lot. I just don't think the market, including us and many others, have made it consumable enough, digestible enough at scale where it's a no-brainer, this, I believe this is easy while also mitigating risk. Because hard in this market doesn't play for anyone. Like no one has the risk tolerance to do something hard or something that could get them fired, like because there's a massive overrun or it takes three years to do whatever it is we're trying to do. There's no patience or runway for that anymore either. So for us, yes, we're we're obviously all in on composability. We have been for a long time. We are actively operating in a way to make that easier, faster, cheaper, uh, more risk mitigated, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And you'll see, you know, you'll see different bits and pieces of that in market as the rest of the year rolls out.

SPEAKER_01 36:34

Well, I mean, I love following Serge Ostapenko. I think he's a great, you know, talk about another big personality in the industry, uh, and and his agency, Mira, and they've done magnificent work with Big Commerce, and they talk about how they've made it bite-sized to move off of. You know, take your pick, ATG, Salesforce, Commerce, Shopify, whatever. And it the control that they posited into the hands of the entire leadership team at the brands, as they've done so, and that journey. And I think, you know, going back to your earlier point about seeing how many more services people are making it into the software side of the equation, I think it's that journey, man. I think you guys are better uh Sherpists. I think you've just because you're on the delivery end. You're on the delivery end. It's like we've lived, we've lived we've lived with it. You've lived with it. It's like if the guy dies like 100 feet from the from the summit, it's like, well shit, we we blew it, you know, and and that's uh that relationship's over. And you you you we're never gonna get a referral from him for sure. Uh and uh, you know, well, I'm not good at writing these letters. So I mean, uh I think the services experience is so critical in the age of composability because it's also understanding how does this company, what is their mission, what are they really about, and what technology uh is going to best facilitate them becoming the best version of themselves. And that's what uh I love about composable is that it doesn't put any limitations, uh doesn't say, nope, you're gonna, this is what your business catalog is gonna look like, and this is your this is your PIM, and now you're only gonna have this much data available for these agents. And the agents are gonna eat advertising, they're gonna eat SEO first. That's the first thing they're gonna do, which I'm not gonna shed a tear for Amazon. I am not, I am not. They've they've been a magnificent retailer, but I am not gonna shed a tear for them. That experience is so one-dimensional. It's like, oh my gosh, for a nation of shoppers that we've settled for that crap for this long, awe-inspiring. All because they've got trucks. Come on. Um, I think that being you you your point that making that data accessible for those agents, as those agents become more sophisticated, because businesses were just at the beginning of individuals educating their personal agents on this is the kind of shoe I like. I don't like, I don't wear socks. Um, if I do, I like them not to match. Um, I'm probably sharing too much. I'm probably sharing.

SPEAKER_00 39:20

Well, you like is that like a punky brewster thing? You get the mismatching shots, or what's it?

SPEAKER_01 39:24

No, I just uh I I'm really cultivating weird. I'm really just cultivating it. I I want to be the weird guy, um, and you know, observe people being worded out. Uh but I think that it's really important to recognize that we're starting to see companies that are raising money and getting money for building these agents for businesses. It's like to figure out what is, you know, and it's going to revolutionize everything, not just the procurement network uh and the extended buy chain and the extended supply chain and the visibility and contract management, everything. It's all gonna be an agent. But unless you've got a great platform that's consumed the data, organized the data, managing the data as efficiently as possible, as accessibly as possible, so that it's a value add to those agents, it's gonna be gone. I don't think five years. I don't think it's gonna be that fast. I think every I think it's gonna be slower. I mean, I talked to I talk to I talk to chat chatty every day, my chat GBT agent.

SPEAKER_00 40:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 40:34

And she's wonderful, but uh, you know, she's got her limitations. Uh I'm not I'm not scared. You know, um another thing that you said that I really like is uh you've got a product philosophy uh you know where you can be the target with the produce the farmer's market or something else entirely in the commerce ecosystem. What do you want to be? What does big commerce want to be?

SPEAKER_00 41:02

Yeah, I think the analogy, you know, it's funny, you you you talk to investors and others, and you're trying to articulate the difference between, you know, composability and maybe monolithic and other approaches. And I I like to use analogies because I just think it's easier for people to understand. I I would I would describe a monolithic approach as more of a super target, where again, I think anyone who's been to Super Target appreciates the benefits of Super Target and the convenience of being able to go in and you know, you're going in for five things and sure as shit, you're buying 15 coming out, maybe more. And and that's that's the brilliance of Target and making you realize uh you need things that maybe you don't need until you've left and you're like, gosh, that was I was just going in for you know toothpaste and something else. Um, and also you can buy, you know, obviously food there and and produce. And my argument and analogy I use all the time is I don't think people go to Super Target to buy produce if they're really into produce. I think they buy produce there by proxy because they're already there and it's convenient and they've got kids and a life and then they're tired and whatever. Uh, like it, they're they're not doing it because they have a passion for produce and that's an essential part of their diet. They buy it because it's convenient and easy. And my argument is uh I think most people that are into produce and value it want to go to a farmer's market. They want to know where the stuff is sourced, they want to make sure it's grown organically, they want stuff that, you know, tastes real and is nutritious and probably doesn't last five days uh once you bring it home. Uh, our job with composability is to kind of give you the best of both worlds where things are meant to be together and have harmony and synergy, great by all means. But we need to make the ability to go uh acquire that farmer's market produce at scale for um a reasonable uh amount of effort and cost, right? It can't be 40 miles outside of town. It can't be 3x the price. And I think, you know, maybe people get the analogy, maybe they don't. I think most organizations want best in class and they want optionality and they also appreciate the fact that the market moves so quickly. What's best in class today isn't necessarily best in class tomorrow, depending on shifts in their own business, shifts in the market, and things like that. So I think for us, we're trying to get everything to a standard where we're not building a walled garden. We're not in business with people because they feel, you know, like they're held hostage and there's some sort of Stockholm syndrome. Uh, like I want people to use us because they believe we're the best solution for them, regardless of product. And I think they also uh appreciate the optionality of building things to standard or at least attempting to in a way that that gives people an environment to consume things best in class at scale that isn't, you know, um overly expensive or exhaustive. And I think that's philosophically what we're trying to kind of follow. I do think to your point earlier, um, data is gonna be um king. And I think um, you know, data is gonna drive a lot of these things. So I I do think, you know, having a collection. Of capabilities here with Feedonomics, especially on the data side, I think gives us a unique differentiation just organically out of the box. And we happen to also do that way up market across 30% of the IR 1000, which is an added bonus. And I think it also plays philosophically into what we're doing with both Big Commerce as a platform and MakeSwift. Doesn't mean all three need to be combined. Feedanomics is agnostic to platform. We have many, many, many, many clients in Feedanomics that don't run big commerce as a platform. That's not going to change. Now, if we can make it more formidable for them to go together, and that makes sense for certain ICPs and certain clients, by all means, we would love to provide that increase in wallet share. But the intention of feedanomics was never to be for just big commerce. It's always going to be agnostic because, again, brands want optionality. For many brands, running Salesforce Commerce Cloud is best for that brand. Like people like, oh, Salesforce is terrible. Adobe's horrible. They're like, say what you want. There's plenty of people still running Salesforce Commerce Cloud, and plenty of people still running Adobe that love those platforms. Like, I don't say anything disparaging about those platforms because I think they're the right platforms for their own cohorts. And I'm not saying it's everybody, but there's a reason people are still using them. There's a reason still people use ATG that's been sunset for you know over a decade. Um, maybe they're good reasons, maybe they're bad reasons, but like for us to join it in months. Yeah, I mean, they're still, I mean, listen, I don't see them in market very often, but they're they still have a very rich install base, especially upmarket B2B. It's still a very formidable, you know, product. And um, is it for everyone? No. Or is there a subset of their install base that probably wants to leave? Yeah, of course. Okay, that doesn't make it a shit product per se. It just makes it the wrong product for where that business is and where that business is going. And if that happens to map to what we are providing and we can do, fantastic. We're all over that. But that doesn't mean we are for every single hybrid install. I think that is an arrogant and irresponsible thing to say. I don't think anyone's building a product like that that is the best for everyone. It's impossible. Like there is just no, there is no way, shape, or form where that is um feasible in the market, in my perspective. And it's why I also like imposable. I think more disruption will come by way of ISV than the platform companies per se. And I want to be able to ingest that disruption and that innovation um very quickly and at scale versus getting into this weird arms race with you know, shop and everybody else that we're gonna build the next best flux capacitor and you've got to buy it. I think those days are long, long behind us. So um anyway, that I'm not saying it's it's right for who we are and where we're going. I'm not saying it's right for everybody else. Hopefully that explains it. But yeah, that's that's kind of what we've been focused on.

SPEAKER_01 46:59

Well, I mean, that you it goes back to authenticity. I mean, you do have to you do have to accommodate what's right for the customer. You know, what is the optimal platform for them? And you know, yes, they may have an ancient platform that requires leagues of ISVs to come in there and update or change or do anything to. And they may be incredibly paranoid or making any changes to that because we're talking about tens of millions of dollars and careers are wrapped up in that monstrosity that's sitting in the basement, you know, taped together with duct tape, spit, a little bit of bubblegum, some hope, you know, a little dream catcher in the corner. It's like uh, you know, and then snoozing away is the Teradated database also in the back there. But one of the things I love about composable is the fact that you have such an empowered ISV community. You have so many service vendors that are fabulous, you know, that are just I think BigCommerce has done an amazing job of just building such an incredibly complex specialized network of ISVs that do one thing and it's okay. It's okay. You can only focus on platform, or you can only focus on you know product infrared, or you can only focus on data. And big commerce is like, sure, you don't have to sell everything. That's great. We'll we'll provide you uh a revenue recognition model that works for you, which which is wonderful, which is why your partners love you in this way. You got guys like Sir Sergei who would drop you in a heartbeat if you weren't producing a quality product that was really bulletproof and he could put out there and say, look at what we did.

SPEAKER_00 48:45

He would. That guy that guy's amazing. I would I would like to think there's more unconditional love there from Sergei because he has been, you know, uh one of our biggest advocates in market, is not afraid to speak his mind. Um, the guy is a brilliant guy in his own right. And no, I love, I mean, he sends me notes, uh, very direct notes, honestly. And they're not that these are not fluffy things like you're doing an amazing job. He it's it's almost as if he works here. I mean, he has a authentic passion as a partner for this business, and I appreciate the input and I deeply, deeply respect his opinion. And um, I'm not alone. Many, many, many other people have and clients, and that's why he does what he does and does it well. Um, yeah, I I think that is an advantage coming from services, is I can empathize um with not only the the business outcome orientation, but obviously the partners and what they go through to actually implement the product and and what's incentivizing for them, right? They need to make money and be able to keep butts and seats and things like that. And I think you know, a lot of software companies don't necessarily have that perspective. They're just, you know, they're they're slinging software and necessarily don't necessarily have a great appreciation for the amount of work and risk that goes into delivering it, especially way up market. I mean, I I don't think I've ever delivered a hybrid project on time or on budget in my career. Um, very few ATG projects and and lots of get backs and skin knees, and you know, it'll put a lot of gray hair on your head or strip you of your hair. Uh, but uh yeah, no, it's it's it's hard. It's uh you got a beautiful head, by the way. I don't I mean it's it's a good, it's a good sheen, the consistent sheen coming up, which is nice.

SPEAKER_01 50:28

You know, I buffed it. I buffed it, you know, for for the for the meeting. It's great, you know, just a little a light paste, a light carnule white paste.

SPEAKER_00 50:36

Yeah, it looks a little muted, which is good, which is nice. It's a nice jimmy, but not not over the top. You're not trying to draw attention to it, which I'm not gonna.

SPEAKER_01 50:42

You know, I'm really not. I'm just trying to you know, kind of provide a stage for my background. That's really what I'm doing, you know, to just demonstrate that I am a shop a holic. And yeah, all this stuff was was acquired online. And my head is just kind of the transition. It's just kind of the transition zone. It's good. I appreciate that. No, I I I look at you know, some of the partners that I talk to in the composable world, like uh Jason over at uh Orium, and you know, they've spent millions of dollars building an accelerator to make it easier for these for their customers to consume composable, to make it easier for them. And they darn well should have a seat at the table with with the vendors and saying, look, people are good, we're gonna install this, but people are gonna have to use it at the end of the day. Yeah, the customers are gonna have to be more enabled. Uh and if we're not achieving that, it doesn't work. Well, you know, this has been nice talking to you about business. Let's let's switch a little bit. I I want to talk about you know, I want to I want to talk more about the real deal because this has just all been bullshit so far. So I want to talk about Travis. I want to talk about Travis, you know, you've been through a couple of uh economic cycles now, and you know, most of the most of the up-and-coming vendors that I see out there in software, they they haven't. You know, they've only been in kind of this economy of plenty. And uh, you know, do you have any concerns about today's uh latest generation of tech leaders?

SPEAKER_00 52:12

Well, I mean, listen, I think I've said this a few times publicly too. I think if you're 35-ish or so or younger, you probably have not experienced an economic downturn in at least your professional career. Um, just going back, if you do the math, I run out of fingers and toes. But if you go back to to 08 in the last crisis, which was a pretty big one, um, like, you know, those of us that are old enough that have been through those sorts of things, I experienced the the late 90s bubble and the burst. And around that time, I experienced Y2K, an analogy I use a lot, and half the room looks at me like I have three heads. But um listen, we've all been through this. We know the kind of the ups and downs of of the macroeconomic swings. And then also, you know, on the services side, the ups and downs, the cyclical trend of insourcing versus outsourcing sort of thing, which seems to come around and change every four or five years. So I've seen a lot of it. Um, I think the dis the biggest disadvantage of younger people in the space, A, to your point, I think they've grown up with everything just kind of um like that price is right, you know, uh game where the guy just keeps kind of going up and up and up and up and up, and eventually he, you know, hopefully doesn't fall off the cliff. But um the way we sell things now and in the last you know five, six years in the space is very different than how they were sold and scoped years prior. And I think that is a uh massive disadvantage for younger people because everything moves so quickly now, the tech has gotten so good. You know, I I can't tell you how many times, I mean, look at COVID. I mean, people were buying stuff virtually, like that never would have happened back in the day, the trust and just the interactions cross-functionally amongst these groups. Because if you went into a brand manufacturer retailer to go, you know, in my days of scope and ATG as an example, that's probably a three-day on-site workshop gratis with myself, maybe two or three other senior folks from the business, and literally running cross-functional workshops soup to nuts, where we might spend half a day with the customer service group and understand like not only the technology that they're running, but the use cases, the requirements, the integrations, like the human capital element of this, like what the enablement path would be if we put you on this new tool. How would we train and enable you to make sure you could steal your job without a lack of uh customer experience or or or a fall and any sort of expectations? Same thing goes for supply chain and front office and merchandising and marketing and everybody else. Those sessions, each one of those is like a business school class in a jar and um win, lose, or draw the deal. You learned a ton from those experiences and what the heartburn was, what the pains were from these clients. Whether they were coming out and sharing it with you or not, you were learning it organically because you needed to extrapolate it to actually scope the deal and put forth a proposal. So not only were you extrapolating it, you've got the human consulting interaction of working cross-functionally. And then as you do it more and more and more, you're obviously applying it organically to the next one and the next one and the next one. And you start in your own head deciphering trends within specific industries or industry sizes or what have you. And you wake up and all of a sudden you're a freaking consultant. Um, that being said, you're also backing that in and chapter inversing a proposal that isn't just an allocation of staffing, it's the actual solution and the approach you're going to take by which the organization to digest such solution. That shit doesn't happen really that much anymore. Certainly in the in the in the world of SaaS and certainly like, you know, the shops and the big commerces and others, like it's a much faster sale where you're getting a fraction of that information. It's a much simpler process, if you will. And as a result, you've got younger people that didn't get to skin their knees maybe the same way that I and many others were able to. So it's hard to contextualize um the disadvantage there. So I think that is the that's the biggest challenge younger folks have is they just never got a chance, certainly smart enough to have evolved no differently than I have or others, they just haven't had the at bats and the medium by which to to get that sort of exposure. And and whether they they recognize it or not, I just I think they're at an innate disadvantage as well. And then I'll stop babbling. But I think the other aspect over the last five or six years, the the primary focus has been around the front end. And um, the front end has always been like the most straightforward side of this business, in my opinion. Others may disagree on the content and experience management side. I would argue nobody ever worried about the front end. Just make it look like the comps, dude. Like, come on, let's stop this bullshit. Um, I worry about the back end. I worry about integrations, I worry about data, I worry about security, I worry about stuff that goes bump of the night. I worry about order orchestration and management and reconciliation, fulfillment, call center, and all this shit that is very, very hard and very complicated. That, as we move into agentic, and um this is gonna come up more and more and more. I've talked about this openly order orchestration, inventory availability, proliferation of channels, data integrity, trust, all these things. This is going to serve up wildly complicated use cases that the simple have not had to deal with ever. And again, I would say advantage to the experienced over the inexperienced, and advantage to the open versus the closed, because this is gonna get like funky combed Dina really quickly. It already is. And um I think um, listen, it's a fascinating time to be in the space. It's the most interesting thing that's happened to it in a long time. I saw a lot of this coming in in many ways, uh, certainly not all the ways because it changes every week, but I think having spent time at Accenture and a lot of bright, capable people and big clients there, you started seeing early signs of this a couple years ago of kind of where this is going in many ways, and people trying to prepare for it. And I think um, listen, we'll see where it all shakes out, but I think um I think it's a fascinating time. I do think it's gonna be a lot of um, there'll be front-end stuff, certainly, but there's a lot of data and a lot of back office that needs to be reconciled, which is gonna come front and center that really hasn't been front and center uh for a long time, quite frankly. It's just been one of the underappreciated elements of this.

SPEAKER_01 58:23

Well, I mean, I think we're talking about the proliferation of so many um order management systems as a result of this like oh we we we need to be able to serve this channel. How do we do that? And it needs to we need to be able to show it where all our stuff is and how long it's gonna be and how much it costs and all that. Like, okay, how many OMSs really do that well? Only a couple, yeah, only a couple, and if you don't have one, you gotta get one. Uh, you're not gonna be able to build that functionality. Um well, you know, let's let's talk a little bit about you. You know, let's just let's take a beak here. Now, when you were growing up in Connecticut, um, what did you want to be when you grew up?

SPEAKER_00 59:05

Ooh. Um, well, to be candid, I I think I initially wanted to be an architect. And um I don't know if that was like a Mike Brady thing from the Brady bunch. Uh, and then I took a drafting class in high school and I realized like the precision and level of detail required in drafting. I was like, I don't think this is for me. And um I became fascinated with advertising. I think um 30 something was on at the time, give or take. I wasn't it wasn't like watching it. And at the time I was like, holy shit, 30 is like really old. And and and I am obviously older than 30 and realizing, geez, that's really young what it would be like to be 30 again.

SPEAKER_01 59:51

I'm not as mature as most 30 year olds, but I'm old.

SPEAKER_00 59:54

No, emotionally I'm probably stuck at 27. But yeah, I think um uh that I think I had um, you know, you had kind of the Chiat Day, Apple sort of days in in um, you know, in uh college, uh I basically interned every summer at a different advertising agency in New York um across different departments. Like I was just fascinated with the entire industry. Uh, used to go to the library and research the old advertising Red Book, which was about a book like this thick that listed every agency in the world, all their billings, all their clients, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And, you know, it's spring break. Prior to spring break, I would go photocopy uh sheets out of that Red Book. I would come back to my word processor in my uh, you know, my dorm room or apartment wherever I was living at the time. I would write letters to agencies in HR looking for some internships. Word processors or letters?

SPEAKER_01 1:00:52

Letters, letters.

SPEAKER_00 1:00:53

Yeah, I used to like you know, still like lick a stamp and put back when stamps were like, you know, 25 cents or whatever they were now. I don't even know what they are. I just have a bunch of forever ones I've never used.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:02

Um filthy habit we had.

SPEAKER_00 1:01:04

It was just yeah, it was it was it was terrible. But but I like my friends were going down to like, you know, Panama City and and wherever else they were, they were parting for spring break. That was never really my thing. I went back to Connecticut. I'd set up internship interviews, I would go into the city, I would, I would interview and lock down an internship for the summer. And I did that every single summer um because I really wanted to be in in and around advertising. I appreciated the creativity, which I always uh had a creative side to my um my personality and just what I enjoyed and sort of an outlet for me, and it combined with business, and I like the theater of it. I like the storytelling nature of it, which has prepared me for what I do now, which is basically telling the same, you know, uh story around a dinner table over and over and over again, um, which is part of the job. And I'm thinking in the back of my head, holy shit, how many more times can people listen to this? And then you realize, oh, they haven't heard it before. So maybe it's except for the people that are maybe with me, they're probably thinking, like, good lord, can you just shut up and stop the same story and the same joke? Um, but that that was my that was my shtick. I really want to be in advertising, really want to be a copywriter. I was able to write and do things like that. And then that just evolved over time into biz dev in the space and as a pitch guy back in the day, even though there was PowerPoint, it was used less so as more storyboards, and just at a very early age, got a a vibe and an acumen to telling, you know, telling stories. People would ask me, like, how do you prepare for these things? And and I would have a story in my head independent of slides, and there's a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I would assume the power would go out in every pitch, and you would have to tell the story, and you'd have to understand the spirit of the story, and that might be slightly different every time because you're riffing, but to me, that's what worked well for me and the way that I present, the way that I talk. Um, and I've just whereas other people are like massively scripted, they've got notes and they're memorizing it, they've got stuff in the speaker notes and PowerPoint. I still don't know how people use any of that shit. How do you look at the speaker notes when you're actually presenting to a crowd? Because the slides aren't for you, they're for the audience. So, like to me, the best slide presentation is one with no words. Like they would just be images, and you're just telling a story. And um, again, I'm using like an intro pitch as an example, not as you get into the details, but that was my that was my spic. Want to go into advertising that evolved over the years, and and you know, 20 years or so ago, I I found myself in commerce almost accidentally.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:42

Well, you know, I'm disappointed that you didn't want to pitch for the Red Sox, but you know, that's that's fine.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:47

I was a Yankee fan, Red Sox. God, come on. Terrible.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:50

Yeah, that's about all we have time for today, Travis. Thanks for uh thanks for showing up.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:56

Uh no.

SPEAKER_01 1:03:57

You had to bring that up.

SPEAKER_00 1:03:59

No, I can't know. Patriots Red Sox.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:03

I'll start building the pyre to burn you on here in a couple of minutes.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:07

But I'm a Dolphins fan, man.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:09

Come on, you can't I mean, you know, Dan Marino. Oh love the man.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:16

The best had three posters of him in my room to like five years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:20

Wow. Love the man. But uh, you know, you've been dis you've been described by others as being a deep introvert who has to be on all the time. How do you how do you how do you how do you recharge? I mean, do you are you lithium? Are you what what?

SPEAKER_00 1:04:39

Uh well I mean I I when I was running BVA, we had uh like an IO psych uh lead and they did like an analysis of personality types and things like that. I think technically I was diagnosed as an ambivert, I think that's what it's called. It's basically an extroverted introvert, um, meaning I have the ability to obviously act as if I'm an extrovert, where like people who don't know me well must think that, oh my gosh, that guy, you know, must be uh crazy uh energetic and extroverted on the weekends in my free time. And quite frankly, it's the opposite. I it is exhausting. I enjoy it, it gives me energy, but it also saps my energy and I need to recharge. So I I am um listen, I travel a lot for work. To me, that's very um relaxing. Quite frankly, going to different places, being in different environments, learning from uh different people in those travels is amazing and something that I'm fortunate enough to do through work. I I'm also a um a relentless homebody. Um there is a you know an element of tranquility of being home and just putzing around and doing stuff around the house and and um you know not not feeling this this this urge to go out and socialize all the time. And um, you know, I jokingly say I'm best enjoyed in small doses, which is is true. Um

SPEAKER_01 1:06:00

O Ding now. This is just like we've had a surfing. Somebody's gonna come up with some narcissing, oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:07

It's it's it's all it's all good. I mean, I think it's like listen, I like being around listen, I think this job is great in the sense that it does require you to um tell stories and it does require you to be out in public and engage with people, which I find fascinating and I enjoy it. Like if I never got to do that, I'd be miserable. Um, so like I need to do it. Um, it does require it at scale, which again, I've I've learned how to balance that over the years. I think it's it's tough. My kids are older now. I I, you know, to pretend that I was um like amazing at balancing that when I was younger, I think would be um irresponsible. It took me a while. And I and I, you know, I say the same thing about my people management capability. I think most people think they're amazing people managers. I think most people are innately bad. I think you have to work at it. There are some that are amazing naturally, and I've been fortunate enough to surround myself with many of them. I don't think I am naturally a great people manager. Um, I have to work at it. And even after working at it, I don't think that I'm amazing, um, which is fine. It is what it is. I cast certain types of skill sets around that because of my own maybe uh misgivings. But um, same thing, you know, business-wise, I think uh balancing work life and and understanding like what what is harmonious for you as a person is different for everybody. For me, it's taken me a while to get there. I think I'm at the point where I know my my balancing, where I maintain a full battery when I'm working, and at the same time I I carve out enough uh escape time to to kind of to recharge. I don't know if that's um modern recharging. I might be like old school uh like that. I'm just plugging myself into some weird-looking contraption in the garage. I'm certainly not solar, I'm not like laying out in the sun and stuff and recharging.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:51

I'm uh I'm I'm I'm well you've just alienated most of the green base there in Austin. So I I don't know if they're gonna remove your your cut your parking or something, or you know, show up in the front yard and say, you know, Travis, you should convert to solar. Yeah, you know. I should. I should a plug-in guy, you know. Sure. Well, how do you keep uh you know it's lonely at the top as a CEO, you know, you you're you're kind of you are in front of everybody all the time. How do you keep that from being isolating?

SPEAKER_00 1:08:27

Um uh it it it is lonely. Um I think that just I think if you asked folks that have done this, I think they would say the same thing. Um, you're just it's just a result of the of the role. And I think um, you know, you uh, you know, I've always been able to compartmentalize things. I think everyone deals with adversity in in in life, and I think I've learned more from you know adversity than than I have from success, certainly. And I think because of that, all through my life, like most people, um, you know, I handle it, you know, probably very well. I I have um uh a few close personal friends, certainly, that um, you know, I like I like being around certainly. I can be myself, I don't need to think before I speak, and and they know me, you know, the good, the bad, and the ugly, um, and presumably love me for it, regardless as I do them. And and certainly I've got my kids and and I love animals. I've got two dogs that thankfully are not in the background right now. But um as mine is, but you know, we'll edit that out. Yeah, you just um you know, you you learn to you learn to cope with it and and understand that that's just part of the that's just part of the gig. And and again, it's not for everyone. Um, you know, maybe there's maybe there's something to unpack uh you know mentally from me as to why I I'm drawn to it. But um, yeah, you you compartmentalize it, you deal with it just like a lot of people do for different reasons, and um you manage it more than anything. Uh, and you talk about it. Like I'm not I'm not an insular person. I've got I've got no shame in in talking about you know my own bouts of of you know uh loneliness or adversity or challenge or or situational depression or um you know other things that have impacted my own life as they have many other people. And um I find that to be uh the healthiest way is to just talk to talk it out, you know. I'm not a yeller. Uh I'll yell like in a positive way. Like I get I get passionate about things that may be misconstrued as uh you know by my kids when I used to work from home at COVID. Like, why are you yelling at people all day? Um and they also realized when I worked from home at COVID how much I swore. Which I didn't I I didn't realize could be heard through the rest of uh comes with not having shame.

SPEAKER_01 1:10:49

You know, I I have no I have no shame, and I really should. I really should. Shame was invented for people like me, but you know, I just I've I've shunned I've shunned shame. So I'm shame. That's good good good for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:02

I mean, I don't listen, you did get I'm not at the age of like my parents where there's like no filter and they like can get away with it because they're like 81. Uh but it's fun approaching it.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:14

It's fun approaching it. I love where we're going with this.

SPEAKER_00 1:11:19

I would just love to say that out loud. I only say that stuff out loud when I'm in the car. Uh I am an angry driver. But yeah, in the restaurant. You just, I mean, listen, I I tell, I try to tell young people if they're interested and they ask me, like, I um listen, you just you just get to a stage in life where you just get comfortable with yourself, right? Of like your your your flaws, uh your adversity, your trauma, like all your shit. Like everybody has shit. Everybody is flawed, everybody, every family's dysfunctional, every human being is flawed, like all this, like as a kid. Some disappointment.

SPEAKER_01 1:11:56

As a kid, you're thinking, some disconcerting.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:00

A hundred percent.

SPEAKER_01 1:12:01

It's like authority, which is really disconcerting. It's even worse.

SPEAKER_00 1:12:06

Yeah, it it really, it's like I, you know, I told my kids and they were younger, I like life is complicated, man. It's just like you don't understand it until you experience it yourself. And then you have that, you know, aha moment, like, oh, that's why my parents said, because I said so. Um, like that was the ultimate, like, why do I have to do that? Because I said so in like 1986. That that flew. Like, no issue, no challenges. It's never flown in my house. Like, I could never get away with saying shit like that. But um, yeah, you just you just get comfortable in your own skin. You get comfortable. I think that's the authenticity too. Like, you just own it. Like, and I own my my positives as well as my negatives, and I try to work on the stuff that I need to work on that I can work on, and um know that I'm never gonna be perfect there either. Just give yourself a little a little grace and you know, um, like life is hard at times. And I think um acknowledging that as opposed to being surprised by it, I've found most successful people, regardless of how you define success, it doesn't necessarily mean money. Um, lots of people are are happy in different ways, are are those that that accept the fact that um there's going to be adversity and challenges, and um those that are able to push through them to the extent they're capable of um faster than maybe others is is really what has, in my opinion, and it's overly generalized because that's a much bigger subject that we could unpack politically that I don't believe is the case, but I'm saying in business, like most people that have risen have risen because bad shit's happened to them professionally, and they've been able to push through whatever that adversity is, getting fired, you know, um having you know professional challenges, whatever, whatever the whatever the variables are, I think have you been able to kind of push through that? Because I've I've experienced more than my fair share of of dysfunction and and adversity and in my professional life. This has not been like this steady rise to becoming a CEO. Uh, if it was shoots and ladders, I've hit that big slide at the top more than once and ended up with my ass all the way down to the bottom again. So and I rarely have hit the big ladder. I never land on the big ladder. Never landed on the ladder.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:23

I never landed on the big ladder. I always looked at the big ladder and you know, gave that to that. My son, my son was always hitting the big ladder. But uh, you know, what would you tell a you know, a 30-something CEO that's got their first job as a CEO? What advice would you give that person?

SPEAKER_00 1:14:42

Um good advice to give a 30-something CEO. I think um I trust trust your leadership team, or if you don't trust your leadership team, create a leadership team that you do trust. Like I I very much um philosophically, I I'm very into collaboration. I very much want to surround myself with people that um complement my own skill set as I do theirs. And I really um deeply appreciate and value their input. And I think it's a way more viable and powerful way to approach it. And that leadership team may be very small. Um, it may be, you know, much larger depending on the size of the organization. But I to try to do it all yourself, I think is is is a fool's errand. I think that's really hard. It doesn't scale. Um, it's very easy to have like this um this very targeted perspective from your own viewpoint that uh blocks out really valuable input from from other points of view. I love um open debate. Um, best idea wins. If I have food in my teeth or a shitty idea, tell me I've got food in my teeth or a shitty idea. That's okay. I don't I really do eat a lot of broccoli.

SPEAKER_01 1:15:51

I mean, no, no. I need to eat more broccoli. Probably because. Oh well.

SPEAKER_00 1:15:55

Yeah. But you know what I'm saying? It's like I don't, I don't, I don't think I would profess to have all of the answers um by any stretch. I think I have some, I think I have a lot in many cases, but I certainly don't have all of them. But all of those answers are oftentimes informed by others too. Like it's not me in a vacuum in deep thought coming up with stuff on my own. I don't think that's a I mean, there are probably savants out there that can do that. I I listen, I think I'm a smart guy. I think I'm a um very capable picker of kickball teams. I've used that analogy before too. Like I I um I just have a decent instinct.

SPEAKER_01 1:16:33

The big guy in the back. The big guy.

SPEAKER_00 1:16:35

Yeah, the big guy in the back. You know, the guy's gonna pop it over everybody's heads. Um, I just think that uh a lot of this is casting, right? It's it's it's talent acquisition and retention more than anything. So make sure you've got the right boat, the right folks on the boat, and they're aligned with whatever the vision is, and then go amplify that that culture and that vision. And I think that's the safest, you know, most pragmatic way to kind of approach it is to try and go it alone. I think a lot of people fall into this this victim uh this this this fate of I gotta do all this myself. I don't think that that's a sustainable or feasible model. You're just gonna end up beating yourself up over and over and over and over and over again. And and back to the conversation earlier, I think, I think the collaborative the collaboration uh is invaluable in those sorts of scenarios.

SPEAKER_01 1:17:25

Well I think there's a lot to be said for finding people that uh can tell you you're full of it to your face and for you to set take them seriously. And yeah, you uh I think there's that's all that's helpful. I don't care where you are. You don't have to be a CEO for that. I think being open is good for anybody, for anybody's humanity. I think it's important to be able to have some like really you think so? This doesn't look good on me. Oh my god. Um, I wasn't even thinking about that. Uh but seriously, I I I think it's you you hit on a a theme that I cover as early as I can when I first work with a a new founder. I'm like who uh do you have another great founder on your team? No. Okay. So do you trust the people that you have to tell you to change direction? No. Okay. Well, you need you need to. Yeah. Let's see how we can get there. Let's see how we can get there. Let's see how we get there. You know, you need you need somebody. It's rare for a company to have two great founders. It really is. Yeah, if they do, fantastic. It's amazing, but it's just rare.

SPEAKER_00 1:18:35

I think I think the hardest, I'll share this one other bit of color for folks coming up, uh, independent of being a CEO or or moving into a leadership role. I think the hardest thing, especially folks that come up as really strong individual contributors that end up going into management. And I see this in sales leadership a lot. What made you a great individual contributor may make you a terrible manager, right? Because it's like you you think everyone should be able to sell the same way you do, and and you try to coach. It's like why Michael Jordan never made a great, like never made the best coaches, are usually the ones that never were the star players. They sat on the bench and watched the great players. Not to take anything away from Michael Jordan and a debate with my son all the time because um I'm a big Jordan um fan as far as greatest of all time versus he's a big LeBron guy. But um regardless, I think the natural temptation is to assume everyone should do it the way you're doing it. And the other natural temptation is um to uh to try to do it for them. Like there's this control element of like, no, no, no, no, no, I could do it better than them, I'm gonna do it for them. And again, that's the hardest thing to let go coming up. Like you don't need to be the hero, you don't need to be the sun, the star, and the moon. And the reality of it is that's never going to scale. Like if it's only you, if it has to be you coming in every time and doing it, like you can't be three places at once. And so I find that to be the hardest barrier for folks to push through is just sort of um uh relinquishing control and knowing that you're Yes, it's delegation and it's um realizing you're playing a different role now than you were before. You're not the quarterback throwing the pass per se. You're the coach or the general manager or whatever level or role you're in. It's not about you being on the field, even though maybe you once did play on the field and you were the best quarterback. That's not your role anymore. And a lot of people, amazingly, is they come up, they think they want to be in management, they think it's more stable, they're gonna make more money, they want to be in leadership, things like that. They get into that environment and they quickly realize holy shit, this sucks. I hate managing people. I just listen to people complain and whine. I get to deal with personnel issues all the time. I just, I just wouldn't go carry a bag. And lots of really, really talented ICs that end up going back to carrying a bag and being an individual contributor, which I think is totally great. I think that's good for you. You should do that. You're gonna be, you're gonna wait way more money and you're gonna be way more fulfilled and happy as that role. And there's nothing wrong with it not going into the the management and leadership path. It doesn't make you any less valuable as an asset and more importantly, an asset to yourself because you're responsible for your own happiness, not a company. Um, so like go do you just recognize that in yourself. If you're in that role and you don't like it, there's probably a reason why you don't like it. And it's okay to go back to what once made you happy. That's not a failure, it's actually success. And it takes, you know, it takes a lot to be able to acknowledge that. And um I've seen a lot of people not do that fast enough.

SPEAKER_01 1:21:35

I it takes strength, it takes belief in oneself and unpacking that for someone for the first time and having that aha moment where their eyes go wide and they're like, wow, maybe I really shouldn't be responsible for other people. Maybe I should, maybe what I really enjoyed. Yeah, maybe you should be, you know, maybe you should be removed from responsibility from other people. I don't want to say that, but you know, maybe you should get closer to your customer because they don't mind. You know, it's the people that work for you, they're like, I really there should be, there's gonna be a palace coup here. I'm gonna lead it, and it's not gonna be pretty. But when you're in that chair, when you're in that CEO chair, it becomes even more important because you're you're working with people who are very accomplished, who have much more lofty aspirations for themselves in terms of self-actualization, which is a very big term that's difficult. We're not gonna go through that. But being able to accommodate that and really look them in the eye and say, where do you want to go with your world? And how can we align what you're doing and what this company needs to achieve with that? That is you know, my friend, is a fur ball. That's a fur ball. I wish you tons of luck and success. No, sincerely, sincerely, I I do. I wish you the absolute epitome of satisfaction and success. Travis, it has been beyond a pleasure speaking with you. I really appreciate you joining me today on Mark Talks.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:14

Yeah, of course, man. I listen, I appreciate the uh the the kind words and and yeah, I would love to be self-actualized. That would be um that would be amazing. Um I'm enjoying what I'm doing. I feel very fortunate to be to be where I am. And um, I'm certainly, you know, stopping to smell the roses. Maybe I don't stop as much as I did 10 years ago.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:36

But pull the frick over, dude. Pull over.

SPEAKER_00 1:23:41

I appreciate the time. I'm flattered you'd even have me on. And uh, yeah, always, man. I enjoy the conversation. This has been fun.

SPEAKER_01 1:23:49

And that's been our time with Travis Hess, CEO of BigCommerce. This is Daryl from our Talks Founding Out. Thanks for joining us.