Episode 30: Max Sinclair - The AI Visibility Revolution & Why Women Need To Shape It

AI isn’t coming for commerce—it’s already deciding what gets discovered, recommended, and purchased.

In this special episode created in partnership with WIAB—Women in Amazon Business, Cristina and Jacqui sit down with Max Sinclair, founder and CEO of Azoma, to unpack the AI visibility revolution and what it means for brands, retailers, founders, and women shaping the future of commerce.

Max spent six years at Amazon, including helping establish its search operations in Singapore. Now, he’s helping brands understand a very different kind of discovery landscape—one where shoppers may no longer scroll through pages of products because AI assistants are narrowing the options for them.

Think fewer search results. More personalized recommendations. And eventually? An AI agent choosing the product before the shopper ever sees the alternatives.

Convenient? Absolutely.

A little terrifying for brands still relying on yesterday’s SEO playbook? Also yes.

Max introduces Azoma’s Five C’s of agentic commerce optimization—completeness, context, citations, correctness, and customer acquisition—and explains why brands need to start thinking beyond keywords and product-page rankings.

The conversation also gets into the “SHe” in SHeCOMMERCE: why women cannot afford to sit politely on the sidelines while AI systems are being built, trained, and deployed.

Women influence enormous portions of household and consumer spending. They understand the customers, categories, and real-life decisions these systems will shape. Their voices, experiences, and leadership need to be embedded in the technology—not added as an afterthought.

Inside the episode:

• Why traditional search strategies are no longer enough
• How AI shopping agents are changing product discovery
• What brands need to know about AI visibility and accuracy
• Why curiosity—not technical expertise—is the first step into AI
• Max’s framework for finding your founder edge and spotting the next inflection point
• Why more women need to test, challenge, build, and lead in this space

The message? You don’t need to become an AI engineer overnight.

But you do need to lean in.

Because when algorithms influence what the world buys, representation isn’t a nice-to-have—it shapes who gets discovered, which products get recommended, and whose needs become the default.

🎧 Press play and join the AI visibility revolution.

Bold Brands. Fierce Women. One Sisterhood.
And a few very evolved men helping us build it.

SHeCOMMERCE: 

Website: https://shecommercepodcast.com/
LinkedIN:  https://www.linkedin.com/company/shecommercepodcast/ 
YouTube: www.youtube.com/@SHeCOMMERCEPodcast

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SHeCOMMERCE Podcast expressly disclaims any and all liability or responsibility for any direct, indirect, incidental, special, consequential or other damages arising out of any individual’s use of, reference to, or inability to use this podcast or the information we presented in this podcast. 

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:08

Welcome back to She Commerce where power, women, and real talk collide in the CPG world. I'm Christina.

SPEAKER_02 0:15

And I'm Jackie. And wow, do we have a guest that I'm genuinely so excited to have on today?

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Yep, hot take. The era of fake it till you make it founders. Yeah, Max and Claire did not get that memo. Because while some people are busy pitching energy, Max is busy delivering actual outcomes. And honestly, it's giving grown-up founder energy with a side of don't waste my time.

SPEAKER_02 0:44

And before founding Azoma, Max spent six years at Amazon across global leadership roles. And he also hosts his own podcast. Competition. So he lives and breathes this space. So there's no chaos cosplay here. No will pivot and pray energy. Just someone who's crystal clear on what he's building and backs it up with execution that actually hits. What makes Max different is that there's no fluff, there's a definite no fluff tolerance. If it doesn't drive growth, it's out. It's very much an operator brain, a founder ambition, which is a lethal combination. And there's a calm confidence. Not loud, not flashy, just very effective.

SPEAKER_01 1:35

And let's be real, in a sea of founders that are overexplaining their vision on LinkedIn, Max is the kind who just quietly builds something better than yours and lets you figure it out respectfully. There's also an energy here that feels very intentional, like every move has a point, every decision has weight, and nothing is being done for clout, which in today's market is borderline revolutionary. So hot take, the next wave of breakout brands won't be built by the loudest voices. They'll be built by the ones who make execution look effortless. And we all know it's not. So let's talk.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

Max Sinclair, founder and CEO of Azoma and pioneer of agentic commerce optimization. Welcome to She Commerce at Women in Amazon Business.

SPEAKER_00 2:32

Thank you. I need you guys to do all my introductions or all my weekends. That was that was a lengthy one, but it was very flattering. Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 2:40

We are available for a price.

SPEAKER_01 2:42

You can record it and just play it as you enter rooms. It's fine.

SPEAKER_02 2:46

Okay. Max, let's start with let's start with you. Uh six year at uh six years at Amazon across some pretty significant global roles. What did that experience actually teach you? And what was the moment that made you decide to leave and build something yourself?

SPEAKER_00 3:02

Yeah, well, I think firstly it's very very generous to say uh kind of uh uh senior and and global roles, but it's certainly true. I was in helped set up Amazon in Singapore in search, and I kind of I mean that's a big yeah. That's a big yeah. I had six years at Amazon. I know some of the people in the room uh I worked with Amazon, so I had six years in Amazon. I thought it was an incredible place to learn. For me, what what I took away was the emphasis on culture that really kind of, at least pre-Andy Jassy coming in, was really drilled into everyone. So I really enjoyed kind of uh Jeff Bezos before he was the richest man in the world, before he was a controversial figure. You know, he was he was an unknown person to most of the world, and he would be delivering um all hands and kind of talking about the leadership principles and how he's employing that, and then all the different business units would kind of follow that same structure of talking about customer obsession and how they're thinking about that. Anafield is just an amazing uh place, and I'm sure every Amazonian in this room will be able to recite all 14 uh leadership principles long after they leave. And I think that's that's uh that's what I learned there, and I that's what I want to take into Azoma and ensure that we have a different culture, but also that kind of a strong culture like Amazon does.

SPEAKER_01 4:15

Max, for someone who's listening that might be a brand manager or works in e-commerce strategy or client success, how would you describe what Azoma does in the in the simplest possible terms? And what problem are you actually solving?

SPEAKER_00 4:30

So we help brands to drive revenue through AI shopping agents. So we obviously have in the Amazon world Rufus, now being called Alexa. We have uh Walmart Sparky, we have Tesco's, which is about to launch one in the UK, we have uh Target that has one. Of course, we have the um the LLM applications, as I would call them, so ChatGPT and Gemini. And then we also have the in-app experiences of Sephora in ChatGPT, Target in ChatGPT. So all of these are different shopping agents in their my mind, and we're we're helping our customers to drive revenue through them. And I see I foresee a world where we will all have a personal agent. So maybe we'll be using an anthropic or a perplexity or an Apple, you know, agent that will eventually talk to these retailer agents. And you know, we want to help our customers through all these different transitions that will happen in a genetic commerce. But today, you know, we want to drive, you know, it's all about, as you said in your introduction, there's a lot of, in my mind, kind of like misinformation about this this kind of GEO AEO space, and we're very clear, Desoma. We want to help our customers to drive revenue, and uh that's that's what we focus on.

SPEAKER_02 5:39

Okay, you talk about ACO or Agentic Commerce Optimization as different from SEO. Can you help us understand the difference and why it matters so urgently right now as opposed to uh two or three years' time?

SPEAKER_00 5:54

So there's been a transformational technology shift that has happened. So when I used to work at Amazon, uh we used to we had the A9 algorithm, which I think many of the people in the room will be familiar with, and we'd basically stack rank uh keywords based on signals. So we'd have price, we'd have sales velocity, we'd have reviews, and for each keyword, let's say uh like a pen, we would figure out what are the uh what is the best product to show based on those signals. Today, we are not optimizing for keywords, we're optimizing for the world knowledge of a uh LLM or soon an agent. So the agents are trained on the entire data of the internet, uh, and then they kind of will uh understand the user, uh their their likes, their individual uh needs, and then they will generate a um, you ask it a prompt and it will generate an outcome. So the whole technology infrastructure has completely changed. We have a generative experience, we have a hyper-personalized experience, we're no longer using this deterministic kind of AI that we that used to be the case when you know when I was at Amazon. So this this is a massive change for for for brands in order to ensure that they are you know placed and they need to now be in the top five, right? Like an AI shopping assistant like uh Chat GPT or Rufus will recommend five to seven products, whereas in the old world, you just need to be in the top 50, right? And be on page one of Amazon. So it's a it's a changing technology, and it's even more critical to be winning. And as I said, eventually, I believe that our AI agents will just do the shopping for us and we will only have one product that's selected. And and the human may not even see it, they'll trust that AI intimately, and you know, it'll know our personal preferences and our gender and our ethnicity and and our price sensitivity, and we will ask it to do a big task, like plan a uh bot uh you know uh World Cup watch party, and it will just select the right products and will say thank you very much. So that's that's the shift that we're in, and what and what we're we're excited to help rents with.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Interesting. That's very interesting and very exciting shift indeed. Um, you're another exciting thing is you've recently launched something called the 5C's framework, and it felt like a significant moment in the industry. Can you tell us a bit about what AMP actually is and what gap it fills?

SPEAKER_00 8:12

Sure. So the the 5C framework is something we developed, which we want all to your your previous question, all brand managers, or anyone in e-commerce basically to be able to think about how to optimize for a shopping agent. So the 5C's are completeness, context, citations, correctness, and customer acquisition. So on the completeness side, you need to make sure that your attributes are kind of um filled in. Uh, you know, you have all of the, and this will be different in the different shopping agents. So on Amazon, we're talking about the flat files and all the browser nodes and all that kind of stuff. If I'm talking about Chat GPT, uh Gemini, I'm talking about UCP, Chat GPT is ACP, like they all have different ways to complete data, but essentially you need your data complete. Secondly, on context, you need to identify what questions your customers are asking the shopping agents and create content that answers those questions. So you need to be relevant basically uh for the agents. Citations, we need to understand where the AI agents are going in order to help uh what sources they're going to to help provide the answers. On on Chat GPT, this is Reddit. Uh on Walmart Sparky, this is typically the brand.com, this will vary, but basically getting into those citations. Correctness is about identifying potential hallucinations and the reasons for that and and adjusting. And then finally, customer acquisition. As I said before, all of this should come and and and be driving top line and ultimately bottom line for the for the business, right? So, how how are all the actions uh that uh brands are taking actually driving revenue and and you know uh acquiring more customers? So that's the framework that we've we've been helping our customers to to think about. And obviously, we built our software around that, but that I hope is is helpful for everyone really just to start to think about this space.

SPEAKER_02 10:01

I love that. So you've got a whole host of clients under your belt right now, the early adopters, the L'Oreal's and Unilever, Mars, Byrdstorf, Bayer, and Phillips are among some of them. These are companies with enormous brand equity at stake. What is it about this moment that made them move so quickly?

SPEAKER_00 10:23

I think they see the adoption shift that consumers are having. And you know, you we we, I mean, the previous panel we just had at the uh Women in Amazon Business Summit kind of touched upon AI, and I'm sure everyone listening and everyone in the room has used AI today to answer a question. But but broadly, you just have to listen to the the kind of leadership of these companies to hear the adoption. Andy Jassy says that uh Amazon Rufus is driving 12 billion in incremental revenue, that 300 million customers have used it. He said that at the uh Q4 earnings call. The Walmart CFO, I forget his name, said that Walmart uh Sparky has been used by 50% of app users and it's driving 35% higher or uh 35% higher basket sizes. And then so, you know, these these companies are testing this, they're seeing higher conversion, higher baskets, they're pushing it uh more and more. We're seeing kind of new experiences crop up every day, and therefore it's it's a mission critical, it's a board level discussion for these customers. And yeah, that's that's really how we've been able to uh move so quickly. And you know, well, it's been three and a half years, so we, you know, it's been a long time moving uh slowly and and hard work to kind of be overnight move very quickly, as as is life, I think. But um, but but yeah, that's that's kind of the foundation of which we've um we've been able to support customers through our framework and through the technology.

SPEAKER_02 11:45

So paint us a picture about this. You know, um, where does if if AgenTech is just getting started, yeah, what does it look like in about say five years' time? Uh, what does shopping look like in five years' time? And what does that mean for brands who aren't even haven't even started thinking about this or started the journey uh today?

SPEAKER_00 12:06

I think we're accelerating at a compounding pace, and it's quite hard for us as humans to like think about what compounding change really means. But if I was to cast my mind a few years into the future, I would imagine uh we we see Kylie Jenner, who's just launched the uh meta glasses or relaunched meta glasses or version of meta glasses, Google have just launched kind of fashionable meta glasses. Uh, I think wearable technology will be a massive thing. It'll be in our ears. Uh, I I mean, I think it could be a good thing, right? Like none of us like the screens and the endless scrolling. I think the next iteration of technology which frees us from this kind of mindless scrolling and just kind of assisting us in our ears and maybe visually, you know, it could be a good thing. But it will be we'll walk into a store and it'll be telling us, oh, you need to go to uh, you know, there's a discount over here on Pepsi or whatever else. I think we'll have uh fitness trackers, which are on our, you know, on our wrists, which are helping to us to order supplements and um sports equipment. We'll have mirrors that help us to order makeup and and beauty products uh and fashion. So I think we're gonna see AI and Q AI come into the real world, uh, you know, domestic robots that help us to order um kitchen staples and and uh you know uh kind of laundry detergent and this kind of stuff. So all sorts of really exciting uh developments I think are gonna come through kind of AI coming into the real world, into the physical world.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

I think Christina, you already have uh that uh robot on order, don't you? You know the one that that folds the agree? We saw it at CEX. She wants she wants it. She wants it very much.

SPEAKER_01 13:46

I want it, yes. I want it, yes, absolutely. Um, well, we're gonna pivot a little bit. We need to talk about the an important topic, right? The conversation that sits at the heart of she's e-commerce. So jumping. Will influence what billions of people eventually buy across beauty, food, home, health, fashion, all the categories. And these are categories where women are the dominant consumer and shopper. What does it mean that these systems are largely being shaped without enough women in the room?

SPEAKER_00 14:24

Yeah, I mean, as I said in my email before, and just to clarify to the room, I do not feel qualified to comment on this in any way. But you know, given that I am, you know, I'm very happy to talk about agenda commerce, but I think it is important to reflect that actually, unlike uh, you know, the uh kind of industrial revolution or the or the kind of agricultural revolution a thousand years before that, I think there are many, many impressive women leaders in this AI revolution. And to give you some examples, the OpenAI obviously CTO uh Mira Muratai. Uh OpenAI has two female co-founders in Anthropic. The co-founder and president is Daniela Amandi, who is obviously a woman, as is the CPO and based and I think Anthropic is one of the most women-led organizations and also one of the fastest-growing organizations. We also have uh Dr. Feife, who is uh the founder and CEO of World Labs. So I don't know if you are guys familiar with world labs, but this is a next frontier of world models. So be you know, large language models obviously is kind of the world of open AI anthropic, but beyond that is world models where the AI will generate entirely new worlds for people to kind of uh walk around and interact with, and it's super important for um self-driving cars and robotics. And and you know, the leading uh company here is uh CEO and founder is a woman. So I think it's um you know, like I'm not here to judge percentages or this or that, but just merely comment like this is actually a revolution, in my opinion, much more being driven by women than like if you take the you know what obviously what's happened in in agriculture, what's happened in electricity and and you know it's uh you know, credit to them.

SPEAKER_02 16:04

Yeah, yeah. No, that that is that is a very fair point, actually. Um, so Max, for for listening right now who works in e-commerce, right? Brand side or agency side or platform side, what is your practical advice for how she can get more involved with AI?

SPEAKER_00 16:22

I would say uh we're hiring it at Azoma. And at Azoma, you know, our our head of engineering is is uh you know, is a woman, as is our head of customer success, and we're hiring across a head of partnerships with hiring uh across the role. So that would be my practical advice to anyone in the room is to come and join Azoma and talk to me afterwards. Um yeah, so that honestly that's one of the main reasons I you know I I was really excited about coming today because I know there's so much talent in this in this broader kind of conference, and obviously in this room, that that uh you know, I think so. Yeah, but I also think as as Gandhi says, right, like be the change you want to see in the world. So if one believes that there should be more uh women founders, and yeah, like uh you know, I'm not gonna disagree with that point, then people should people should do that, right? And I think that's how we make uh you know we make change.

SPEAKER_02 17:10

I love that. Um be the change that you want to be. Of course. We are, right? Manifesting. Yes, manifested. I'm manifesting the the jet.

SPEAKER_01 17:21

I am yes, I know, Jackie.

SPEAKER_02 17:23

I know. Um Max, you've hit multi-millions in revenue, reach profitability, you've raised four million dollars in pre-Series A funding, with potentially more funding um to be announced soon. What is the ambition from here for Azoma? Where are you going?

SPEAKER_00 17:42

At Azoma, we want to build a category-defining company. Uh, we want to, we believe that agentic commerce optimization is its its own category. We've seen uh unicorns in the G, you know, we you know, lots of people talk about GEO and uh we've seen unicorns in that space already. My ambition is to build a company that is in the same breath as 11 Labs and Revolute, it's like the leading UK AI companies. Uh, and um, you know, I'm I'm really excited that we've got the right team, you know, uh who are motivated by that as well. So that's our goal. And uh as I said, like we'd love people to join us, and that's uh, but yeah, we you know, I've come from this industry. Many of the people in the company are ex-Amazon, ex-agencies, that you know, so we we we really care deeply about this industry and this customer, and that's uh you know, that's our goal is to build a build our own category in this space.

SPEAKER_01 18:35

Fantastic. You know, one of the things we talk a lot about on G-Commerce is that making sure AI doesn't just entrench the incumbents, but that it creates space for newer and more diverse and obviously women founded brands being visible too. So, any advice that you have for female founders thinking about entering this space?

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Yeah, I think what is certainly true is that I don't know the percentage, but a very low percentage of venture capital goes to like female only founding teams. Four there, there we go. So very low percentage of you know, you know, solo, and obviously, like quite a you know, I'm like I'm a male co-founding team. So I I I mean I I don't know any it's hard for me to give like uh specific advice, but in general advice about how to start a company if if there is a woman listening who is interested. I I think there's two things to just to think about. The first one is like a framework for ideas, right? And how you should approach your um having an idea to start a company, in in my opinion, is firstly understand what edge you personally have, like something that you bring specifically that uh you understand the market deeper than anyone else, and it's not hard for anyone to replicate because there will be copycats, especially if you're successful. I've seen that. You'll have incumbents copy you, you'll have new uh startups copying you. So you need to understand the industry and have an edge. Secondly, on the ideation framework, you need to have a counterintuitive belief. So you need to know an industry and you need to have a view that nobody else in that industry has. And if I can if I can use my myself as an example here, like three and a half years ago, we believed that LLMs would be the default search on retailer websites like Amazon and Walmart. And at the time that was counterintuitive. And I remember speaking, uh, you know, eBay ventures of one of RVCs, and I went in to talk to the eBay team, and I and we I said to them, look, like LLMs are going to be the search, default search. And they said, no, it's not, it's gonna kill the ad business. No one's ever gonna do that. And you know, this three, I mean, now it's kind of very obvious, but you you know, if you're starting a company, you really need to have something that you believe that that is counterintuitive. And then the last thing in this framework is to test it, right? You need to build hypothesis and test, test, test. Uh, my second kind of meta piece of advice that I would have is thinking about inflection points. So you need to, you know, have an edge, have a counterintuitive belief, but then also identify a big change that is happening, which uh gives, you know, enables a new company to the right to exist, basically. So, you know, we live in a world where lots of changes are happening. For example, the Strait of Hormuz is an inflection point, right? Like global trade is never going to be the same now that Iran can just shut down this strait. And you know, that's that's a massive inflection point. Obviously, AI is an inflection point, but it needs to be specific. So, for example, when Dr. Fayfe, who we mentioned, figures out these world models, that's gonna completely transform commerce in ways we can't imagine. And if uh you know a founder was listening, I would look at that and and be thinking like, okay, what is this new what is this new technology enable that wasn't possible before because of this massive inflection point? And and then, yeah, as I said, like think about where they have the right to wing and then have some count, you know, somewhere that no one else is gonna go until you have like. one or two years to get ahead and then before it becomes obvious to the rest of the market. So that would be my my advice to to to folks listening.

SPEAKER_02 22:09

You heard it here, folks. This is your blueprint for how to start your own organization. It does not come with Max's big brain, but you know, start prepping now. Start prepping now.

SPEAKER_01 22:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:23

Okay. Rapid fire to close Max. Uh one recommendation for someone wanting to understand AI commerce better.

SPEAKER_00 22:31

Uh your podcast.

SPEAKER_02 22:34

Oh man.

SPEAKER_00 22:39

I actually am a listener as you know I I I didn't listen to the the the Fs that we discussed earlier but I've listened to some of them. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 22:46

Thank you very much. I love that. I love that we have Max a gentleman listening to our podcast. Yes absolute ally.

SPEAKER_01 22:55

All right Max a woman you think should be getting more credit in the AI space.

SPEAKER_00 23:01

I think I I'm I really am not a fan of the C I forget his name the CEO of uh Anthropic. I think he's done a I think it's an amazing organization. Obviously I use it every day but I think the way he's gone about his marketing which is like oh this is so dangerous but I'm going to build it anyway I just think it doesn't oh yeah it doesn't like it it doesn't make logical sense like if this is such a dangerous thing why why are you building it? And then obviously uh the US government kind of got involved and stopped them releasing Mythos yeah which I mean many of us tried and was basically just like an upgraded version of of you know as far as as far as my team's testing of it which we had the coders test and I tested like it was basically yeah it was better than than sonnet 4.6 but it's not like it's not like God has been you know created right yeah so I I I think I don't like him but his sister as I said who's also the founder and and actually his sister it manages the entire team. So his job is just to raise the money and be their face which I don't think he does a good job of and she is a person who's like managing the team and and is um you know you know building all these incredible products that that we all use every day so I think uh they should I don't know if they should swap but he he needs to you know this all kind of AI doomer thing I think is not he's he's not doing a good job and yet Anthropic is an incredible company so she deserves a lot more credit.

SPEAKER_02 24:21

Oh Anthropic is amazing. What Claude can do. Yeah. Wow. Okay one thing you'd say to a woman listening who finds AI a little bit intimidating and doesn't think it's for her well I would say try it.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

I don't know yeah I'd say try it I think I think it it's inevit it's an it's inevitable right it's like saying oh I find electricity intimidating so what you know what you're never gonna you know you're never gonna turn a light on or like you know watch TV or yeah it's just it is here it's it is gonna be the next uh rev it's already is a kind of revolution that we're we're living through right now so like whether you're intimidating or not you've got to get you've got to get used to it right basically suck it up suck it up yeah I wouldn't say that but yeah suck it up it's okay I did I did I did it for you Max just do it just lean up all right and my favorite question is what is your go-to hype song before you come on stage or you have an important meeting I am a big Oasis fan I'm in the top 0.2% of uh oasis listeners on on uh shop Spotify so there we go that's a fantastic resume yeah exactly my wrapped um so it would be it would be an Oasis song depending on my mood which one little by little is probably if I had to pick one is is uh is there a real ballad that you know oh I'd go to oh do you know yeah yeah yeah I'm not saying it I'm not singing it no no no no all right well Max and Claire CEO of Azoma this has been such a great conversation thank you for joining us here today thank you for having me it's been a pleasure and thank you guys for listening in the room well genuinely Max I mean we we we we will link your um Azoma and your podcast in our in our uh show notes but we we really admire what you've done you know we we've even been talking to Lauren Leva Gilbert um about about Azoma you know uh completely organically as well it you just come up in everybody's conversation it's fantastic so popular um max we asked we made him blush well max we ask everyone this um taking the pledge with us to commit to continuing to champion women and amplifying their voices in industry so Max will you join our community and our sisterhood I will take that pledge with us they're one of us now and now that all that's left for us to say is old brands first women and one sisterhood and a few very evolved men along the way absolutely thank you all right that's a wrap thank you Max thank you thank you very much