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Elevator Talks
The CEO of Northbeam Sees $31B in Ad Spend - Here’s What Actually Grows a Brand
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Austin Harrison is the CEO of Northbeam, the marketing analytics platform that measures over $31 billion in ad spend across the top DTC brands in the world. He doesn't see what works for one brand. He sees what works across the entire industry.
In this episode he breaks down:
- What the brands that explode do to grow this fast
- The one metric most operators completely ignore (and why it predicts your next three months)
- How small founders can beat big ad budgets with authentic content
If you run or want to build an e-commerce brand, this is the closest you'll get to seeing the whole game from above.
Connect with Austin & Northbeam:
Northbeam: https://www.northbeam.io/
Austin on X: https://x.com/MAustinHarrison
Austin on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maustinharrison/
Follow Elevator:
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Elevatorgoods
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/elevatorgoods
X: https://x.com/elevatorgoods
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/1fCirPyNlzTxT4hOOH0tVC
Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/elevator-talks/
Website: https://elevatorgoods.com/
Chapters:
00:00 Intro
01:10 What Northbeam actually does
04:30 The origin story
06:08 Building with AI before ChatGPT
11:10 Has AI killed the moat?
16:46 The tailwind behind clean data
24:47 What winning brands do differently
29:31 How small brands can win too
31:28 Spending big on ads without going broke
35:44 The metric most operators ignore
43:00 Early signs of a slowdown
46:00 The new breed of founder
55:04 The most overrated metric in e-commerce
57:35 Why hiring fast is a trap
59:10 The channel everyone underrates
1:02:14 The truth about being a founder
1:03:58 The real job of a CEO
#ecommerce #elevatorgoods #dtc
Today I'm sitting down with Austin Harrison, the CEO of Northbeam. Northbeam is the marketing analytics platform that measures over 31 billion in ad spend across the top D2C brands around the world.
SPEAKER_02You have one of the coolest seats, in my opinion, in the industry. You've got the bird's eye view. What's going on? Is now an amazing time? Is it exciting? Are we in a bubble? What do you see?
SPEAKER_00I generally see two types of companies. I see companies that go, well, we're just scaling on one channel. That's one type. Then there's the companies. They're scaling everywhere. They're experimenting everywhere. The companies that do the best are the companies that do everything well. That may sound obvious, but let me let me double-click on.
SPEAKER_01If you run or want to run an e-commerce brand, this is the closest you'll get to hearing about the whole game from a bird's eye view.
SPEAKER_00You may be having a great month, but it's a lot of returning customer revenue. You're not bringing new eyeballs, your funnel's starting to die. And that is something that is dangerous because you may have a great month, but you may not be great next month or the month after. And you're on a dangerous pattern at that point.
SPEAKER_02Austin, first of all, I just want to say thank you for being here. Really appreciate the time. And, you know, as I as I mentioned to you in your office, I'm myself a big North Beam user. We've got a portfolio of brands, and it's always really fun talking to the CEO of a company, you know, that's so you know pervasive in your daily life. Like I'm on your dashboards all day. So I guess we'll just get right into it. And my first question is just for the audience, it'd be great if you could introduce yourself to who you are and what you're up to right now.
SPEAKER_00Sure, yeah. Well, thanks for your business. Really appreciate it. Great to be on. Uh heard great stuff about the podcast from Roman, obviously. Yeah. So my name is Austin Harrison. I'm the CEO of Northbeam. And North Beam measures your marketing. We're a marketing analytics company. So that's all we do. So if you're running ads on different social platforms or television, if you're e-commerce, but also on the channel, we measure the effectiveness of your marketing so you can grow your business uh in a profitable way. That's what we do.
SPEAKER_02And who were you before North Beam?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, before North Beam, I mean, I've done a few things, but the most relevant thing is I helped start a company called Net Ratings, which was acquired by Nielsen and it's around 2007-08. It was public for a while, and then you know, the market crashed, and then company rebounded and did well, and was acquired by Nielsen. And it was it was the first rating system for the internet. So, what were the most popular websites? How many people visited those sites? So I created an audience panel that was indicative of the internet uh using uh random sampling, which is a statistical method to create a panel, if you you're familiar with Nielsen. So I did that. I've done some other things, um, but that's probably the most relevant thing that people would call out.
SPEAKER_02So is it safe to say you've never really run an e-commerce brand yourself?
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. My co-founder Dan Wang has he has actually uh a company called MTAilor, which is uh used as really ahead of its time and used AI and and uh machine learning to use your phone to scan your body and send you custom fit clothing. So so he has some experience. I'm trying to think. I do have experience in the sense of I used to be a media buyer as well. So there were times where I would help scale e-commerce brands, right, as a media buyer. But I I wasn't the CEO or doing the the hard stuff of of you know inventory and all the other stuff, but I was not those customers, yeah.
SPEAKER_02I just love that because you've built probably one of the most successful e-commerce tools. Yeah, I I it it I like I joke, it's almost like a brand tax. Like if you have your own brand, you have to have you know some attribution tool. And if you're at a certain scale, pretty much North Beam is uh you could say at least the top, if not the top two, certainly. Yeah. It's almost like I said, like it's a brand tax. Like you have to have it, and you've built that.
SPEAKER_00Well, we you know, I appreciate that. I think our goal, and I was talking to uh a guy named David Herman. I don't know if you know David Herman. Um you don't know him. He he's a he's a marketing executive. I he he would laugh if I called him that. Some people call him a media buyer, but he's much more than that. He does strategy and he knows creative really well. He does a lot of, he really helps people scale their companies up. Anyway, he and I were talking, and you know, we really care about our customers. Like we care about helping folks like you, right? It's genuine. And we were talking about that yesterday. So yeah, we genuinely, I genuinely love, I make sure everyone at North Beam genuinely cares about you being successful. We really we're doing everything we can to help. So thank you.
SPEAKER_02So I just want to get in a little bit into the North Beam like origin story, and we'll get into so much more. So just maybe we'll touch on this briefly. But what was the problem you saw? And if you think about the mission that you were trying to solve, yeah, how far into that mission are you? Like zero and then ten being completion.
SPEAKER_00No, it's a great question. Wow. Like I said, T before the camera started rolling, you guys asked good questions. Uh so it all started when I was studying machine learning. I took a class at Stanford, it was actually called Intro to Machine Learning AI, and was trying to figure out whether I thought I would dedicate the next chapter of my life to AI. And this is, you know, 2017, 18. Uh, so early days, right? Uh I mean it sounds funny to say early days. And around that time, I had met Sean, who's now the uh Sean Frank, the CEO of Ridge, and I'd met Connor McDonald, right? And the reason I met them is uh as a you know media buyer myself, I was help often would get tapped with trying to help e-commerce companies grow. And I was asked around who was really good at media buying, and like, you know, my cohort in LA, and it was Sean Frank and Connor McDonald, right? They popped up and they weren't even running rich yet. They were the agency. Okay. They were the agency helping Ridge scale. And at that time, I was also getting asked to invest in some e-commerce brands, and I was getting access to their data, their dashboards, their analytics. And it was really confusing, right? I didn't have a real good sense of how well the companies were scaling and operating, particularly with marketing with ads, right? I just I didn't trust the, I mean, it was too hard to understand. And so I thought, what if AI machine learning could A create a better data set and B, help answer questions more accurately about what was good, what was actually driving the business and what was profitable down to an ad level, right? So I got the idea for Northbeam at that time. And a funny story I've said a few times, not too often, is the first guy I went to when I had the idea in in San Francisco around who would be my technical co-founder, I went to a guy named Ben Mann. And I don't know if you know who he is, maybe a lot of people won't on this call. He's the co-founder of Anthropic. And he's the original author of GPT. He was at OpenAI. So he's one of the three people listed as the author of GPT at OpenAI. And then he obviously now he's the co-founder of Anthropic. And as far as I know it, he helped launch Cloud Code. Like, you know, he's technical, right? Um, and I met him and I pitched him on the idea for Nordbeam and he loved the idea. He's like, this is great. And I actually invested in Ben's other company before OpenAI Anthropic, which just got acquired, which is cool. And he goes, you know what? I want to do nonprofit work, which is why he joined OpenAI at that time, right? He's one of the first people there. But he goes, I know this incredible guy named Dan Wang, who did his honors thesis in AI at Stanford in 2012 and was a TA for Andrew Wang, who's the guy I was taking the class with at Stanford. And he's amazing. And he worked on e-commerce. He was building, he was the you know, leading technology at MTel, right? Which was using AI way back then. And Dan built a bot, an AI bot in 2016 that won at Pokebon. So, and my original vision was how do we use AI to like answer questions faster, get more accurate, use machine learning to get more accurate data, so cleanse data across all the different channels and touch points faster and more accurately. And Dan was like, wow, it's gonna be hard to build. And he said, no. He's like, I don't, I don't want to do this, it's gonna be too big of a too big of a lift, right? Uh and then he came back and changed his mind and said, let's do it. And that was, you know, 2019, right? And so to answer your question, the original vision was, and the reason I brought up Sean and Connor is I wanted them to be our first customer because I knew how smart they were. So we worked with them, not when they were at the ridge, but we they were our first four uh test case of like, would you use this analytics platform instead of all your other uh tools to measure marketing, your ads, right? And uh so they did, and it worked out. And Dan came on board, he said, yes, we built it. They were our first customer, we're off to the races, right? But I was solving a real problem, right? I was a media bar, I bought ads, I saw the problem, I saw the tools that were out there, I met Sean and Connor. I knew I needed a technical co-founder in AI machine learning that was better than me because I was just an amateur. Still on, but uh always learning. But uh, and the original vision to answer your question at the end here is eventually we do more uh more autonomous work, right? So more how do we get answers faster without you having to fish, like without you having to go and ask the question. And we're gonna be rolling that out over the coming months, like more information pushed to you as a polling information. Does that make sense?
SPEAKER_02It it totally does.
SPEAKER_00My original thesis, too, is like more accurate data, number one, using machine learning. So the data that you're looking at, that's number one, right? If you don't have accurate data, who cares? Right? That it doesn't, nothing matters. So that's where we invest most of our energy, right? Is the data because we could build a bunch of automation, we can build autonomous, you know, discovery and alert all alerts. And but if it's based on inaccurate data, it's gonna steer you the wrong direction. So always the focus on the is on the data.
SPEAKER_01Hey, I'm Anish. And I just want to quickly give you more context on the world of elevator. Elevator goods is where we build our brands from the ground up, owning the product, operations, and growth. Elevator Capital is where we invest in brands worth betting on, backing founders with capital, mentorship, and connections. Elevator Talks is where we document it all, sitting down with operators who've actually done it, going deep on their frameworks, their numbers, and the decisions they made to move the needle. Elevator Creators is where we help creators build brands, leveraging their audience and turning them into a real business. The studio is our private members' club with its first location in Hong Kong. Built for founders and operators who want to be around people building at the same level. If you're building a brand and you want the systems and the playbooks to do so, you're in the right place. Check the link in bio to learn more. So, last but not least, thank you so much. Please subscribe because that will help us a ton in getting you better guess and more wisdom and more value. We really appreciate it. And back to the show.
SPEAKER_02One thing I didn't realize, which I actually am now finding incredible, is you were on the very early days of AI before the world even knew what was going on, right? Like pre-GPT, pre-anthropic. You're saying 2017. I don't think most of the world woke up to like AI until 2023.
SPEAKER_00It's like GPT basically, right? That was basically.
SPEAKER_02And so actually, I was gonna ask you because I was gonna ask you this later, but now it's top of mind. You know, obviously in in 2026, we're all clawed code builders, like everyone can now, with a couple hours of time, build some mid-market SaaS tool on their own, which potentially could create some attribution tracking using the APIs that are available. I've certainly done it myself. I've got a Google, don't get me wrong, I of course I have Nork Bean, but I also have my own Google sheet that's you know plugged in with every single media channel that I can connect it to, and then I have my own form of you know daily tracking. Yeah. And I was gonna ask you like, how has AI disrupted or enabled what you're doing? Because actually now that I'm thinking about it, you built it with AI first in mind. So I'm curious how has it, you know, and maybe from the perspective of I'm asking from the perspective of you building the company, but also your clients, meaning the brand, yeah and their their needs as well. How has that helped or changed?
SPEAKER_00No, I know I I saw your question. I see what you're getting at. I mean, the front end of how you, like, you know, Manisha was a customer, like you can you can dive in a cloud code or whatever to generate a visualization of data, right? You do that in North Beam, you can do that on your own with our export API. Like you could export the data. There's ways you could visualize the way you want. The data itself, there's so much intricate work and human testing and careful orchestration with around attribution data, where and it's also evolving all the time, right? Because there are new things we add and inject into our data set to make it cleaner and more accurate. Don't want to go down that rabbit hole, but it's not a function of plug and play, if that makes sense. AI is great when it's plug and play. Like I pull this thing, pull that thing, visualize it a certain way. You can write the code, you can generate an output. But when you're dealing with sensitive data where you have to decide what you include, what you don't think. Sure, you could ask an LM for their advice, right? But a lot of times it's very intricate and depends on the kind of data you're getting from a third party, like whether it's MENA or TikTok or whoever else, right? So there's a lot of back and forth. There's laws you have to deal with, you know, it's it's complicated, right? So it's not that AI can't be really smart and figure things out, but there's a lot of tuning involved. Dan, our CTO, his original honors thesis at Stanford in 2012 in AI, he called he says machine learning, but which is AI, identified unique users by their typing on a keyboard to um, which ended up being adopted by Coursera. So super impressive he built something using AI in 2012 that was actually adopted. It's kind of crazy. Probably not, you know, a handful of people did that at that time, at least to my knowledge, if that I bring that up to say that's the business we're in, which is identifying the right data to choose to attribute to a particular channel or ad or organic post, like something you dispose. So there's a lot of fine, you know, you could build a system, but you have to fine-tune it. It's kind of like saying, you know, does anthropic need no humans at all at the company or open air, right? Yeah. They've got to fine-the-tune the models, fine-tune models with humans. Now, those models are getting smarter, they're getting better, just like ours are, but you still need some humans to kind of steer the ship. But what our C the reason I bring up our CTO and his honor's thesis is he said back then and when I met him when we first started that the way AI will evolve is imagine a steel cutter. You know, maybe you needed, you know, 10 people to manage a steel cutter, you know, line it up properly, figure out the coordinates, and you know, man the man the uh the apparatus. With AI, maybe that's one or two people, right? So you're able to AI helps humans be more effective. I know there's a lot of debate on like humans aren't needed anymore, you know, in the in the world. But his thought and my thought, I have a slightly different take, but similar take, which is that yes, you need less people, and it makes those competent people way more productive, too, right? But it's not to say you don't need the people, right? And difficult tasks like a steel cutting, steel cutting, you still need people that know it, right? Like you still need people at Northbeam that are experts in and you know mapping data, right? Yeah, and you still need experts at you know, anthropic that are fine-tuning models, humans, right? So you still need experts in your field that are overseeing development, but you know, conceivably over time you need less of them. And the ones you have are more powerful. But right now we're seeing you know, people are hiring, and you know, it's not like you're just evaporating humans and anyone can do every anything. Like that was what was the original hype, right? And now it's coming out is like I'll tell you like if I you know decide not to do Northbeam and someone handed me a billion dollars to compete with Northbeam and do it over, I'd be like, no way. Too hard, too much plumbing, so much work. I don't care about using a copilot. Like that, sure, that helps me get a couple of steps in, but there's so many difficult, tough decisions and nuanced details. It's like saying you could just build anthropic tomorrow, right? You just build, you know, it's like it's hard. This stuff's hard. So hopefully that answers your question.
SPEAKER_02It it totally does. I think one thing I would just I want to double click on is are you seeing tailwinds right now as far as like operators flocking to Northbeam? Because obviously as e-commerce becomes more sophisticated, more channels, you know, more more data sets, yeah, more ways to look at the data itself. Like at least for me, I'm like eager to look at my North Beam dashboard versus trying to figure out online. So is that are you seeing that tailwind?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, we're we're doing well. Uh we had a record Q1 and like we're uh Q2 is is is also similar pattern. Yeah, I think one of the things that's exciting that I think maybe I didn't anticipate is that when you have better data, clean data, that you really worked super hard to coalesce and stitch and cleanse and attribute like we have with the advent of AI. This is the one thing I kind of missed a little bit. Because I knew that we could create a cleaner data set and output it. Um but the part I didn't see coming as much is that really smart folks like you, operators like you, would go, wow, I can do a lot with this data, and I would start building and you know, creating my own dashboards and processes with the data. I guess maybe I didn't think about it because people weren't doing that as much then. Now with with these AI tools, people are building way faster and creating visualizations like you are, and they're doing more stuff. I guess that was the part I kind of didn't see as much. I thought, but it's exciting though.
SPEAKER_02So I think that's funny though, because it's funny though, because a lot of the data I export, let's say, to like a Google Sheet, just so I can sort of like manipulate the numbers on my own side with formulas and whatnot, it's it's using the North Beam API to export those. It's it's not that I'm just fetching that data directly. I'm I'm still going through North Beam.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that's as much. But like, you know what I mean? Like that of course folks like you like building all sorts of systems, you know.
SPEAKER_02And and again, you know, last kind of questions on the product itself, and I want to get to e-commerce a little bit more macro, but on the product, so in your journey of like what you set out to build, how and obviously it's evolving, and and there's no like end, so to speak. It's gonna, it's the it's just gonna be ongoing. But at least the original thesis, the original mission, do you feel like you're over the halfway point and like establishing that infrastructure?
SPEAKER_00That's yeah, it's funny. You you I feel like you read my mind. I feel like we're slightly over the halfway point, right? Yeah, yeah. Uh because part of the maintaining a system with clean data for you so you can do what you need to do is really hard. Really hard at scale, right? Because we've seen you know, 31.5 billion in marketing spend across, you know, we're looking at a lot of data, right? We process petabytes per day, right? It's insane. That's hard. Like what we do is really hard, honestly. Like, not to be, I mean, hopefully it doesn't sound like bragging or anything, but like what we do really is is brutal. It's not not easy at all. And uh that's just the data. Forget, you know, alerting you and and doing things that are proactively helping you be better. That's the next part of the journey that we're on now, which is like, how do we help you do things better proactively? That's all coming in the next, you know, next month. Part of it is coming. I can't say now more will come, but uh, yeah, some really exciting stuff in the next month or two that it that we're finally rolling out. That was part of the original vision. It's not new stuff, right? It was exactly what we talked about in in uh 2019 or 18 in my mind. But uh yeah, Dan and I, all the stuff we we did a all hands uh with our engineering and product, and we we presented the old deck from back then, like our you know what we and they were like, when'd you write that? They're like, I was like, that was a while back, and they kind of laughed.
SPEAKER_02Super cool. Yeah, it's neat. So Are you able to share how many brands you have in your portfolio right now? So to speak?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We I mean just roughly thousands. Thousands. It's funny because the number was like really high, like growing in terms of volume, and what's happening now is we're working with larger customers. So even though so if you look at our amount of ad spend is massively growing, and not in a lit in a in a in the same pattern as like the volume of brands, because we're bringing on bigger companies, right? So like does that make sense? Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It it it it's exactly the way I see it too, just in my purview. And you know, we have a portfolio of brands, and some are different, they're all they're all different stages. The way I kind of see it, and I think it's consensus in the industry, but it's like if you're just getting started, let's say you're sub 1 million, you're probably gonna go for like a free attribution tool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02If you're sort of just getting in like one to ten or early eight figures, you're like triple whale might be a a a cheaper solution. And then to me, it's like once you cross like mid eight figures and growing North Dean is the premier solution, sort of like top of the market in in in that sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I've heard that's the that's the same synopsis I've heard. Um yeah, we we do so much more data cleansing than other folks that it just costs us more money. We're not trying to be difficult. It's just like we do so much cleansing and stitching in our system that we just can't afford right now to sell it for as cheap as other people.
SPEAKER_02Is the I learned that hands-on when I first onboarded North Beam, and I wanted to refresh the data more often. And so I reached out to your support or our rep and I was like, hey, like I need I need to like refresh. And they're like, you don't understand, like we can't do that. Like it's it happens in increments of time, which I now understand why.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, people, you know, there are people, unfortunately, and I understand a lot of people that spread, you know, incorrect information and you know, attribution is a hard thing to do. Um people are converting at different times and different, you know, on different channels, and it's we don't want to tell you to do something if it's not accurate, right? That's that's scary. So we take the data very seriously. Like, would we spend a million dollars this hour or two million based on the data that we're sending you, right? So we have to be that confident. And so there's a lot of you know processing that has to happen to make sure that's true. It's getting better, we're getting faster. We will over time, but it's not the kind of thing we take lightly, obviously.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. I mean, that's makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So let's shift a little bit now. I want to talk macro. Sure. You have one of the coolest seats, in my opinion, in the industry. You sit on a ton of data, you know, a ton of brand founders like Sean, for example.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You see everything, you've got the bird's eye view.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm an operator in the sense where I'm sort of like in the ground, on the ground, like you know, digging. Yeah. And you sit in the sky and you're sort of like the the eagle and you see what's going on. And so I want to ask you, like, what's going on? You know, I would love to get a bird's eye POV from you of what you're seeing. Is now an amazing time? Is it exciting? Are we in a bubble? Yeah. I mean, I know you wouldn't say that directly, but like uh what do you see? Let's start with that macro.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, I mean, we see hundred, you know, over you know closing in a hundreds of billions of revenue, which is kind of crazy when I think about it. Uh and like I said, over, you know, 31 and a half billion in ad marketing spend. So it's it's it is kind of wild. I it's funny because when I hear the number from the team, like, really? Because I just focus on day-to-day work, you know, I don't. And so what do I see? Well, there's two things that I see. One is obviously different sectors are doing better than others. That's just, you know, that fluctuates, whether it's like beauty versus health and wellness, you know, supplements or or retail versus e-com, because we look at Omni channel, right? But I think for the for your audience, that's why I asked you before we started rolling, like what would what do I think would be useful for your audience? The people that the companies that do the best are the companies that do everything well. That may sound obvious, but let me let me double-click on it. What that means is there's I generally see two types of companies. I see companies that go, well, we're just scaling on one channel, and we're seeing good, really good growth, and and but we're not seeing great growth, but really good, and they're doing well, they're not doing horribly. That's one type, right? Then there's the companies, there are companies that they're scaling everywhere, they're experimenting everywhere, they're doing organic content, they're doing influencers, there's do, they're doing podcasts, they're doing testing channels all the time. They're now you could argue that's hard to do when you're small, and I get that. But if you look at companies that have exploded, like Grounds or Comfort or the Norpian customers that I've watched, they do everything well, right? They're hands on the keyboard, they're pushing, they're trying different things. They're not just looking at one channel saying that's all we're gonna do and scale, right? Not to say you can't do well scaling out one channel and pushing, you can. But the ones that really succeed are the ones that are like, and it's a lot of work and it's not easy. But like you could say they're rich. Like they were doing that pretty early on, too, because Connor and Sean, they're scrappy and they're trying different things and reaching out to YouTubers, and you know, they're trying a lot of things to build the brand and performance scaling. And it's not easy and it requires a lot of dexterity to be everywhere at once. It's not, especially when you're small. I'm not saying this is like easy, but if you ask me, what do I see out there? And of course, there's exceptions. You know, there's the one company that's only spending here and they're crushing. I mean, of course. But generally, if you ask me across hundreds of billions of revenue and tens of billions of marketing spend, and I just like zero in on the ones that are just like absolutely just doing same incredibly well, that's the common theme. They're just good at all those go-to-market marketing things. It's the same in North Theme. Like, everyone says we've been horrible at go to market. And I know a lot of my team would get really mad at me, but we're good now. We've only lost two or three months. We've been we've done pretty decent stuff. And it's because we're doing all that stuff. We're on YouTube, we're on Instagram, we're on X, we're we're pushing out our stuff and letting people we really haven't done a ton of that historically. We've been kind of a nerd tool that people like you, you know, get. But we a lot of people go, Well, we didn't even know about you. So we're finally doing all the scrappy things, which you could argue we should have done before, which would be totally fair. But that's the playbook, I think.
SPEAKER_02So what you're saying is you're the brands that are going full omni-channel, and I hate this term, but like the spray and pray, like do a little bit of Facebook, Google, Snapchat, TikTok, X, YouTube, T. Organic, organic, influencer, affiliate, uh, you know, and so forth and so forth. Like basically just be everywhere, you know, a little bit of retail, a little bit of marketplace, a little bit of Amazon. You know, just basically f swell the market. Yeah, of course, that's incredibly. But that is because a lot of people would say that you could get to a nine-figure business just on meta alone. Yeah, and I know it's possible, of course. Anything's possible. But what you're saying is the best operators are sort of but at what stage, I guess, is that's the key.
SPEAKER_00No, I I you can't you can't do everything at once. If you're like starting out, you can't do everything, because then you'll do nothing well. So then you probably should just one channel, right? Of course, like you can't, you just can't afford it, right? But in your mind, you're always thinking, like, how could I do influencer? Or how do I just myself as the founder record a lot more organic content on my own? Just like I'm at the gym, I'm out at the beach or the market or farmers market, and you know, I'm recording stuff, I'm pushing it just all the time. Because even if you're a small operator, you could do that. You could do that. You know, you could record content and push it out every day. You've got five minutes, right? So there's always something more you can do content-wise, even if you're small, even if you're on one channel, you could do more organic. You can maybe ask five of your friends to post about your product and their experience, right? Just info like mini influencer is always something you can do, right? More. And that is what I'm getting at. I think the world is gonna, and this is kind of my hot take, which is that, and really I should give Cody at Jones Road some credit, but with the advent of an AI, you're gonna have so much slop out there that if you can really push out authentic content, it'll resonate. So you're a small founder, you know, you you're you're not even seven figure yet, and you're just you're so passionate about your product and you know it's real and great. What can you do besides just say, I'm just gonna just only run ads on one channel? Well, you use a lot of things you could do. You could reach out to your friends and family and get record content. You record content every day while you're so passionate that you're missing out on this product. And it may cut through the AI-generated stuff out there because it's real and people are gonna resonate with it, right? So that's what I'm getting at is like there's ways to hack even early on.
SPEAKER_02What do you say, or what do you think, about brands that are putting 50% or more than 50% of their dollars in and on marketing? You know, like right now, I'm seeing a huge trend where it's like a race to the bottom in some sense. It's like, hey, I want to create a product or brand that can scale at a 1.4 MER row ass.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That that to me seems like a new trend. Are you seeing that on your end as well?
SPEAKER_00It is a trend. I think look, I'll give you the positive and negatives on it. If there's a company that does, you know, almost a billion in revenue that we work, we're working with now, their philosophy is like, look, we want to make a great product. We want to operate a low MER for everyone listening. That's like, you know, revenue divided by your spend, right? So, you know, they they want to operate a lower in that one-something range, right? You know, Sean of the Ridge famously will talk about how, you know, they'll run in a pretty low MER, not quite that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I listen to operators religiously.
SPEAKER_00Sean Frank, the CEO of Ridge, talks about it. But here's the thing. What you want to do, I view this, and I I struggle with this all the time too, which is like historically, whether it's e-commerce or on the channel or technology, historically, folks have always said, let's raise as much money as we can, let's spend, you know, let's let's be fluffy, like let's hire a lot of people, let's, you know, let's create this big cost structure because money's cheap, or and it isn't for people in your world, they're bootstrapping and it's different. But there's this belief that you need a lot of people and you need a lot of you know resources to succeed. And I think what people are starting to realize is wait, what can I do to be more operationally efficient? What is a little bit I can squeeze out here and there to bring my MER down or my cost structure down so that I can make more money, right? I mean, and in the world, even for us, like for everyone else, anyone, you need people need to know about you. So you've got to do marketing. So if I can invest more in marketing by being more operationally efficient, that's a win. Now, my whole bone to pick there is not at the expense of quality, meaning you have to deliver quality product to the cons to the end consumer. So for me, like if I had the opportunity to cut corners and the data that I deliver to Moniche is like not as good, that's that's not good. I'm not okay with that. But if I can say, you know, I'm gonna cut, make our office slightly less fancy, which I've already done. We don't have like a super fancy office, because then I can save a little money and I can spend more on marketing, that's good. Right. So to me, I don't think it's a bad thing as long as you're investing in the product and you're not cutting corners on the product. If you're cutting corners on the product, I don't feel good about that. If you're cutting corners on anywhere else you can to spend more marketing, that's good because then you're more people know about you, your revenues can be higher. So that's my hot take, as long as you don't mess with the product.
SPEAKER_02I love that. That is honestly a take that I've not heard because I have asked this question to a few people, and I I think that's wisdom. And so I guess, you know, and I have to assume, but it it seems like you also meet in person with these companies and brands that like obviously your biggest clients, like that are spending. You you meet with them in person and and and you kind of understand, hey, what are you looking at? What's helpful in our platform? Is that safe to say?
SPEAKER_00It is, it is, yeah. I mean, I can explain why I do it, but I'll I'll I'll follow your line of reasoning first.
SPEAKER_02I was gonna ask you when you sit down and you talk to these super successful founders or or marketing teams, what are the metrics you see them latching onto or not maybe seeing enough of? Like what's overrated, what's underrated that you could share in terms of like what are the best operators looking at that maybe the like the mass majority of the industry are not so to speak.
SPEAKER_00That's a good question. Okay, uh first thing that comes to mind is new versus return customer traffic by channel, right? I'm sure you look at it, but you know, you can have generating new customer traffic, so not even conversion, it's just website traffic, right? I think assuming it's qualified traffic, right, which we are careful to. So Nortbeam now reports a new uh three three-prong traffic pattern, which is brand new people, people that visited your site but have still haven't bought from you yet. And then the third bucket is return customers, like people that have already bought from you. So Nortbeam now reports those three different groups. So for me, when I look at a customer's data and I don't see strong growth in new customer traffic coupled with drop in e-commerce and conversion rate, so like that's not good, right? So like as an operator, like these are what I call leading indicator metrics, right? Like if I log in a company and their new customer traffic is going down, even if the revenue is going up, by the way, even if the revenue is going up and their conversion rate is like flat and or maybe going down, that's not good. So you may be having a great month, but it's a lot of returning customer revenue. You're not bringing new eyeballs, your funnel is starting to die. And that is something that is dangerous because you may have a great month. Your MER may be great for that month, but you may not be great next month or the month after, and you're on a dangerous pattern at that point. So I think whether that's in an ad level, channel level, overall business level, how's my new customer traffic? Is it qualified traffic? Is it converting? Right? Because you may say you could log on and be like, oh, my new customer traffic is huge, but my conversion rate is like plummeting. Okay, is it bot traffic? We felt we work to filter that out. Or is it, I'm just outbringing qualified people, I'm making a lot of noise, and I'm blowing money. So to me, those are the things that like that's like kind of, and unfortunately, if you don't have an art beam, you're probably not getting you can get accurate e-commerce conversion rate, but you're not getting accurate traffic data. That's one of our things that we are very proud of, is that our traffic data. So unfortunately, you won't have that if you don't have an art beam world, you know. But are you, you know, but I there are other ways to maybe proc figure it out, but that's just something I look at. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03And then I think goods look at.
SPEAKER_02So would you say that metrics are returning customers per channel? Would you say that that's underrated? Like people are are not looking at that enough.
SPEAKER_00I see you're saying what is yeah, I think traffic patterns is something that I think needs to be looked at more than it is, than it. I mean, uh a lot of our smart, a lot of our customers do. I'm just saying it's something where I'll log on to a customer's site that's let's call it not multiple nine figures, and they're and they're having a good month, but their new customer traffic is like down a lot, and I get concerned. Because I'm hoping, okay, you may you may be doing well now. So I think like even smart people could sometimes miss that sometimes, which is are they building the funnel? Right? Are they building the funnel for the future? Right? You have a great month today or tomorrow next month, but that doesn't mean you're gonna do well for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, because maybe you haven't separate built and that's reach. If you look at you know reach metrics, yeah. Anyway, you get the idea.
SPEAKER_02What about a I I don't know the working term these days, but like the are are you seeing trends in AI, SEO, or AIO? Are are are the people you're speaking with, these operators, are they putting big focus on new customer top of funnel from Chat GPT or Cloud or Gemini or whatever?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, a little bit. I mean, it's growing. It's definitely growing. I wouldn't say it's like the majority of traffic, but like, you know, but it's growing for sure. It's definitely growing. Uh yeah, building the funnel, you know, having a tough month on a MVR basis, but you have incredible traffic growth and conversion rates decent. It's like that could bode well, could bode very well bode well for the future.
SPEAKER_02Okay. And are you seeing trends in because I sit in Hong Kong and but you know, I I I spent 10 years in the US and I sent I spent 10 years in New York, uh, and that's where I got started in in consumer and e-commerce. And one of the things I noticed is that brands operating in the States, like let's say you're sitting in New York and you run an e-commerce business, you're very chances are you're very focused on the US only. Are you seeing trends in internal international sales grow for American brands, or is it still kind of a big focus still on US only? Or is is there no real trend? Is it just kind of like brand to brand? Depends on the Brama category.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it's funny, I just got back from the UK, London, and there was yeah, there's a one of our customers that was there, nine figure. Uh there's to scale in the US. Their focus is the US, right?
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Even though they're there. Like they're barely focusing on the UK market at all, right? Uh a little bit, but uh, but really US, right? So I think it depends. And we do have customers are doing really well overseas, right? Germany, Japan, Australia. There's some good markets out there. But yeah, US is a good market, right?
SPEAKER_02That's still the focus. Yeah. One of the things, again, just my view, because when I when I moved out to Asia, when I moved back to Asia, I grew up in Hong Kong. I I moved to the States for you know 15 years. That's where I got my career started, and then I moved back. My my perspective totally warped, just like uh, or sort of like new realization. And the reason that I was that I've lately been very focused on international is for two reasons. One, just in general, new markets, right? But the second, which I want to talk to you about, is the diversification in the event that you see a market slowdown. So you were talking about like leading indicators, right? You were talking about in channel optimization, leading indicator is return customer. What are, when we look at D2C, what are like the leading indicators? Is it GDP growth? Is it inflation? Do you have any POB on?
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And to be clear, I was talking about new customer, not return customer, right? Like the new customer. Yeah, new customer. So you want to make sure you have good new customer traffic growth, right, as a leading indicator. Look, I think diversification is great. Our customers are selling uh globally, right? So it's a it's a great idea. Uh always good to be diversified. I guess when I when I answered that question about like where the big growth is, the US is just such a good market that there's a lot of growth there. And so now you're asking me, like, what are the leading indicators that the market in the US won't do well, like broadly speaking. You know, we've been on a good tear. I think. I mean, obviously, one would be like e-commerce conversion rate starts plummeting, right, across the board, right? That would be a leading indicator. We're like, you're calling all your friends and you call me, and we're like, people just aren't converting, right? Like people, and it's like nothing's changed, right? Like it's just less people are converting, which of course would lead to slightly low revenue, but that would be a leading indicator, right? Like for some reason, just all across the board, conversion rate just starts to be slipping for everyone. Yeah, I think so, right? Because then it's like maybe uh consumer sentiment is people are a little scared to convert, right? No, they could just be could be more consideration, and maybe, you know. I remember, I don't know if you one of the things is like. Leading up to Black Friday, Cyber Monday. I assume everyone on this podcast knows what that is.
SPEAKER_03I would assume it's safe to say.
SPEAKER_00Safe to say. I think leading up to that, everyone's watching revenue growth, e-commerce conversion rate up that period as like a leading indicator of how well BFCM would like. When will it start? Is it going to start early this year? Or is it people still waiting to buy, right? It's like it's kind of like you know, a leading indicator of like how big of a season it's going to be. Or maybe they're just waiting, right? Obviously, you've got things like stock market plummeting and you know uh inflation and things like that. But um so far, so good. The US economy, you know, people in buying.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I got I have I have one last question. I want to get into like a rapid fire segment with you. Um actually very interested and eager to hear your answers. But last like macro question is where is the next D2C business going to come from? And like how different is it gonna look to the last crop? You know, you spoke Comfort, Groons, IMA, like all the big names, I would say are like the most recent cohort, right? Like the I don't know, the post-COVID cohort, so to speak.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02What's the ne what's the following cohort gonna look like that might be different in your opinion?
SPEAKER_00That's a great question. So behind the scenes, this is actually the first time I've shared this. Uh behind the scenes, whenever I meet the really clever strategic uh operators uh in our space that do everything pretty well. They're very like meaning marketing, finance, they get business, they get you know, margins and um shipping and uh creative and influencer. They're like so skilled and strategic and and clever in all areas. Connor McDonald, the ridge is certainly like that. Everyone, everyone knows who, you know. Uh, but I always joke that those types of folks coming up today are gonna be able to run companies with less people, they'll grow faster, they they'll make fast decisions because they know how to do all the I mean, they know marketing, right? They're not like figuring out marketing, they know it, right? They're just gonna go, right? And some of those founders are popping up today. Like I see them in North Beam. Like we have some new people that have been on North Beam before, and they start a new company and they're moving faster. They're growing faster than they did before. And that's case in point, right? They're like, that's a new crop, but they're skilled, they know what they're doing, they're not figuring, like learning. They know they know exactly what they're doing, they know exactly how to spend money on media, they know how to use North Beam, they know margins and keeping my MER low. So I, you know, so I have a lot of free cash to invest in growth, and they're doing it today. I see it. And so that group is like highly skilled, very nimble. They're they know hands-on keyboard how to do all the stuff, and that is the new group. Right.
SPEAKER_03Awesome. Okay, so let's turn it into some it does.
SPEAKER_02It it it does, and and honestly, what from my pe from my purview, and I've gotten a lot more exposure recently in two ways. One, the podcast. I've met some really cool people, and then two, I don't know if you know this, but in Hong Kong we have something called the studio, which is it's essentially like a members club for e-commerce founders. Cool. And it's I think we've got now close to 20 members working out of one big space. Uh it's not that big, but medium space in in central in Hong Kong, and it's it's founders. And it's just it's blown my mind to see the way people are operating right now, and it's also blown my mind to see the the age of founders just like reducing with every passing year. Like now 21 year olds are walking in the door and they've already started something, and it's I'm I'm 33. I I didn't even I don't think I started taking my career seriously until I was like 24. You know, and I before 24, I was really just focused on doing I was just focused on having fun, you know, like going out, living in New York, whatever. I was an I was an investment banker, and it was just like you do your job, you know, you work hard. I'm not saying don't work hard, but it was it's fun was my priority. But now I'm seeing now I'm seeing 21-year-olds walk in the door and they're they couldn't care less about fun. They just want to be the they just they they don't drink, they they they work all weekend, they're entrepreneurial, they're AI savvy, they're fast, they're responsive, they're reliable, they're well educated, and um they're doing all the things that you just said they know. And it it freaks me out because I'm like, I you know, I am where I am now, still have a long way to go, like you said, always learning. I'm I'm 33 and I'm now working against these like 21-year-olds who have no girlfriends or boyfriends or family, you know, no, no commitments, right? No, no obligations in that sense. Like they they're just free to just build. And so that's what I'm seeing. And and that's crazy exciting and also a little bit intimidating, to be honest with you.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I think.
SPEAKER_02But that's where wisdom, I think, really plays an impact because they don't have experience, they don't have wisdom in that sense, right? They're they're still very young.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I mean, I think I mean this is a just my theory, but I think they're I think they're reacting to the macro environment. They're saying, hey, everyone's saying it's gonna be hard to get jobs because of AI and you know, whatever, you know, jobs are, I guess, in certain fields hard to get these days because people are like, oh, I'll just use a, you know, I'll use AI to answer date, you know, as a data analyst or whatever the case may be. I think a lot of these folks are like, I just gotta do it myself. Like my parents are telling me AI is gonna replace on jobs. I may not, you know, I don't know what my future is gonna be. So like people are telling me it's doom, you know, it's doom and gloom, which I don't agree with, but that's a different story. And they're like, I just gotta like figure this out. Like, I gotta survive, right? That you know, pressure creates diamonds, right? So they're just like, you know what? Okay, everyone's telling me I'm not gonna be able to do XYZ in the corporate world. They're not hiring analysts in i banking. Okay, fine. I'm just gonna go figure it out, right? I'm gonna survive. And that's the and that's a good thing, right? It's like that's it's natural selection. Instead of doing what maybe you and I did, because I did the same thing, I wasn't like, oh my god, a little bit I was. I remember when I was graduating college, I freaked out. I was like, oh my god, I gotta survive. But but not like those guys. I'm still having fun like you. I mean, yeah. So they're just like survival. They're hearing all this doom and gloom. They're like, I just gotta I gotta do something.
SPEAKER_02I mean, people don't even want to go to college anymore. They just want to, yeah, they just want to get their hands on Claude Code and get it, you know, get it moving. Like keep it moving, you know?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, because they're hearing the stories that like they're the things, the jobs they thought they were gonna get after college may not be there. They're hearing this in the press, in the media, and their parents, right? So like I I see it in my sister's son, like same thing. Like, what am I gonna do? I'm like, go study, you know, AI, like learn, just take free classes, like study physics, like work with tools, like just, but then that's scary to them, right? Because it used to be just like go get a job after college. Now it's like, well, you gotta learn how to do stuff.
SPEAKER_02Like, yeah, I mean survive. I mean, I'm we're we're like getting off subject now, but to me, college is like, you know, you're gonna spend, let's say you go to a good school in the states, you're gonna spend $200,000, you know, and you you might take out loans, or your chances are you will take out loans, and then all of a sudden it's it's it but but it it's it's it's it it's just interesting because the way I looked at college, the way I look at college, is it's also like a networking experience. It's also a a place where you uh develop social skills, right? Like and and you meet people from all around the world. But anyways, I digress.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Let's get into rapid fire. So I'm just gonna shoot them at you. I would love to get your take. So favorite brand right now.
SPEAKER_00Oh my gosh. Favorite brand? I guess I can't have one. The the truth is I don't have one because you know it's like asking a parent who's their favorite kid.
SPEAKER_02I think I had a feeling you were gonna say this.
SPEAKER_00And the truth is, I'm being honest too. I like a lot, I I like a lot of them. So I love them.
SPEAKER_02Okay, why don't we say, why don't we let's reframe one of the most impressive brands you're seeing right now? Well, like in terms of performance, you mean just how they're doing what you're seeing, how they've grown, uh, how they use North Beam, uh how they've interact, you know, yeah.
SPEAKER_00I mean, uh maybe I'll call it a few. I mean, obviously the Ridge, they're they're you know, best in class and executing. I think uh, you know, comfort is obviously one everyone's been talking about. They're executing really well. Hudson, you know, obviously IMA Danny, who you know, they're doing well. Now uh yeah, there's so many. Timex is doing well, and uh Reef and Hexclad, and yeah, there's just so many out there that come to mind. It's hard for me, you know, because there's a lot of our customers are doing really well. So it's uh it's hard to just say, you know, only these two. There's just so many that uh that I admire out there, you know. It's tough.
SPEAKER_02What is the most we we spoke about underrated, I think, but what is the most overrated metric in e-commerce?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so that in your note. Overrated is current, it's gonna sound funny because it's like current month MER. I'll explain. Connor, the Connor McDonald, the CMO of the Ridge, he and I have talked about this over the years, which is like sometimes like like let's just pick January. For if you're in health and wellness, it's different. But if you're not, January can end up being a super high MER month because you just blew it out on Black Friday, cyber Monday. You're kind of relaxing, you cut your marketing spend way down, but you still have really good revenue. So you may have like a really high MER in January. And so, with you know, true operators know, okay, they know why it's high, and that it's not necessarily a good thing, right? So sometimes when you have like too high of an MER, it's like, it's not bad per se, but you know, it doesn't mean that it's good because like Connor will tell you, he may have a really low MER in like September, October, because he's building the funnel. He's building new customer traffic, he's building wires, not just Connor, other folks too, that then pays off in November, December, and January, where all those people you built in the funnel convert later, right? And you know with Nortbeam, we do accrual accounting. So we're we're moving the revenue credit around, not just cash, which is what most competitors do. And so if a bunch of people convert in January, but you built them the funnel in September, Nortbeam will move revenue credit all the way back to September, right? But so I don't think MER is a really important thing to watch, obviously, but it can be overrated because you may get if it's low, it could be bad, but it could also be okay. And vice versa, if it's really high, it could be good, but just good because you've done a lot of stuff two or three months ago, right? So it's a really good metric to have, obviously, but you have to put it in context. Understand it.
SPEAKER_02Makes sense to understand it. Understand it. Yeah, hopefully. Makes perfect sense. Best investment North Beam has ever made. That's a great question.
SPEAKER_00Best investment. Being very careful about making sure we have the right people. People, you know, a company is just a collection of people, and now a bunch of AI tools, obviously, but like it's still people, right? And so if you've got the wrong people, I think you're gonna have a lot of problems. So the best investment is made we've made is getting the right people.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. What's one hire you wish you made a year earlier?
SPEAKER_00Um I have a weird answer to this question. It's not I I doubt you've gotten it. I saw this interview with the I think it was the CEO Stripe, and he brought up the point which is so excellent, which is take time to hire the right people. So you got to be careful with your hires. He was joking, like it could be like six months sometimes, at least or more, to find the right person. And he's right. So I always think to myself, it's not about hiring too slow. It's hiring too fast that could be the problem. Right. So I'm giving you a different answer than you probably expect other people give. It's more like you've got it's almost like be slow with hiring, be careful with hiring.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Exactly. And be careful because every single hire makes a big difference. I think with experience at something you learn. You're like, oh, this hires person, no big deal. It's like, no, no, no. It's like you got to be careful. So my answer to you is more like, man, I just want to be careful. Like, I don't I don't want to wish I did anything earlier because like I just want to be careful is the answer.
SPEAKER_02Make sense. What's a media channel that you think is quietly underrated right now?
SPEAKER_00I saw that question. I have a funny answer for you, which is email storytelling. So, what do I mean by that? I sign up for a lot of our customers' emails, right? So I just want to see what's going on, how they're marketing to me, right? I'm not gonna call on anyone positively or negative right now, but I'll say this. Everyone's always focusing on top of funnel and like, which is important, believe me. Like if you don't do that, you're you're in bad shape. But once you get someone to funnel, what is the story you're telling them over email or SMS that's so compelling, really compelling? And you ask yourself, am I doing the best thing there? Am I nurturing my audience the absolute best way I can to really get them to love and care about my product? And am I doing the best I possibly could there? Is there something else I could do? Because every time I talk to folks, they're smartly focusing on, you know, top of funnel and like how do we get cooked through the noise, which is super hard. But I think the people don't often think about like, what is a story I tell people once I get them in the funnel? And they just it's not easy, right? Telling a great, compelling story over a sequence of emails is not that easy to do, right?
SPEAKER_02All your answers actually so far, like just throughout the whole conversation, to be honest, because you you you give non-obvious answers. Like you're so right. Like, email is like like no, like someone would have easily said, oh, app love it or TikTok shop, like obviously. But I feel like some of these OG channels are overlooked. And the reason I love email, like to your point, nurturing your your your flows and your your customers that are now officially in your funnel. The reason I love that is because one incremental improvement can compound in a way that's like unfathomable. I think it was one of my favorite quotes of all time is like Warren Buffett says, compounding interest is the eighth wonder of the world or something to the tune. And it's it's this it's the same thing, right? It's like an email. If you just bump that one email's conversion rate, and all of a sudden over the year you look at the impact, like that is mind-blowing.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And that doesn't cost you as much, right? Like you don't have to spend another 10 million of marketing spend for the year. You could just manage it.
SPEAKER_02Arguably free.
SPEAKER_00Arguably free. Well, I mean, you gotta make the content. But if you're one of those scrappy people listening here and you're just recording those selfie videos about why your product is the best, and you're pushing those out over email in a sequence, I mean, it's just you and the and a send button, right? One way to get someone emotionally connected to your what you're building. And that's you know, that's not spending more. That's like you said, arguably free. Just time.
SPEAKER_02It's funny because like I'm myself writing down a note that I gotta go do that right after this conversation.
SPEAKER_00It's the obvious stuff, right? It's the obvious stuff we forget. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, and and last thing, just to wrap this up, what's one thing that you now know that you wish you knew when you were getting started with Northbean and your journey as the CEO?
SPEAKER_00Well, everyone knows, and you know, starting a company, being an entrepreneur is brutal. It's so brutal. It's there's some days you're just like, I just don't know if I could, you know, you're just at the at the brink. You're just mentally shocked. Shot. Like I'll tell you, I'll give you an example. Like, I asked one of my friends, he's a customer, you know, TRX, the black and yellow workout straps. So the founder, he still speaks at Stanford Business School a lot about his story, but he was the lieutenant commander of the Navy SEALs. Like, brutal existence, you know, and mil in the military, right? And I asked him once, I go, is it harder being the entrepreneur founder of TRX or being in the SEAL teams? That's hilarious. And he said he did not hesitate at all. It was like way harder being an entrepreneur, not even close. So that tells you something, right? It it does.
SPEAKER_03It's that hard. It's that hard.
SPEAKER_02By the way, I have listened to his story on how I built this.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And and it also reminds me of another famous like Jensen Wong quote where he's like, I would never do this shit all over again. Like if I could if if you I mean, Jensen Wong, I how how much is the guy worth? Like hundreds of billions of dollars. And like when asked, would you do it all over again? He's like, Hell no. So bad. It's so bad. Actually, I'm sorry, I do have one more question. And I'm I I it wasn't on the sheet, but I'm excited about it now thinking about this.
SPEAKER_03What is the job of being a CEO? Because and let me let me frame it correctly.
SPEAKER_02You run a big company, you've got tons of people. You yourself are passionate about you know what you're building, and I and I'm sure you like to build yourself with your own two hands versus delegate work versus fly up with versus flying around the world to meet versus flying and meeting with clients versus you know having to do podcasts to like get your message out.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03You're tied up, but you also want to build with your own two hands.
SPEAKER_02So what what is the job of CEO from your POV?
SPEAKER_00Oh, that's a good question. And I know we didn't really answer. I'm gonna go back to the question really quickly and just say, I wish I knew how hard it was, because I feel like it's gotten harder. Like that was the thing I didn't you were saying, what do you what do I wish I knew? And I wish I knew how hard it was. But again, once you're in it, you're going. Because I think I would have prepared my life a little bit differently, but that's it, that's another rabbit hole. But uh the job of CEO depends. Here's why it depends. Depends who your co-founder is, right? Like it depends on the industry you're in. So there's a lot of factors. When people ask me, what does it take to be a good CEO? Depends on your team, right? So, like if you look at me and Dan, Dan's a world-class, incredible, incredible AI developer, right? Undisputed, unquestionably top of the you know, realm there. I focus on design and product and knowing the customer because I've been a media buyer, I've done the job. So like I I try to focus on are we building the right things at the right time? Are we servicing the customer? I'm liking customer service in a lot of ways, but I uh but I'm gathering data and learning to implement systems and strategies that will help customers. And so that's product design or data in data infrastructure uh ideas that will serve the customer, right? Better, that are brand new. Like they're not in an LLM, they're just like a brand new idea that I'm like, what if we connected these sources? Then Monish could do could learn something else, right? But that's our company. So my job is defined by what I have to do to serve our customer, you. And Dan has to be the brain, you know, that that intense engine around uh development and construction. And he's got his own ideas too that he adds to it. So that's our setup, right? But like, I don't know, you're a solo founder, you've got to do everything, right? You gotta be, I can't handle you, you can't hand, I mean, you can't hand much off. So it's even harder. Even harder. So it all depends. I think the CEO job depends on how much support you have, right? Like Elon is able to hire a lot of supports, you can do a lot of things. You're a solo founder, you can't hire someone. Or, you know, Jeff Bezos and Amazon has been able to, you know, he he really built a great, you know, he was able to build an infrastructure and team and and they kind of kept him in check. He talks about it. We can't do all this at once. We got to do these one things at a time, but one thing at a time here, or a multitude of things, but not a hundred, maybe ten. So everything depends on your team, your funding, your sets. That's why I can't just give you this like generic answer. This is a CEO's job. Depends on, you know, Steve Jobs was obviously great at design and product and marketing, right? And he had world-class engineers and designers that work with him to craft what he was building. But uh so you know, I think you have to look at your business. Like if you're asking me a question from to try to help founders listening, it's like if you're by yourself, well, you know, help. That's tough. But if you have, if you're going to build a team, fill in the gaps of the things that you're not best at, right? To support you. And I think where I've seen founders go wrong is where they don't have they don't fill their gaps and or they don't have enough experience to lead a company because they just have so many blind spots that they can't even manage those people. Because they just, like, let's say they don't understand finance at all, at all. And they're like really good in engineering. And they just, I mean, this is a founder I know who was a billion, you know, it's a little sad story, but I mean, I don't want to talk about it publicly, but I mean, people would know who he is. But I mean, billionaire, young guy, but just didn't know how to manage the finances. And company didn't work out. Okay. Because he just didn't have he hired a CFO, but like he had blind spots. He wasn't able to know enough and had enough experience. And he was in his 20s, but it's not the age, it's it's just where you're at. You study the finance, so you know, ERI banking. So it's just like if you don't fill your gaps and you don't learn fast enough, you can make some bad mistakes. Right. And that's where I think it all depends on the business. But like if you don't fill your blind spots, listen to podcasts, read books, learn, study, ask people that have more experience than you and learn as much as you can, that'll help you. But in the end of the day, I've seen really smart founders that have great engineering skills or the other direction, great finance skills, but no understanding of the customer and the product. They just want to make money. That's something I always look at that freaks me out is people that are like greedy. They just want to make money, but they don't know the problem. They're not passionate about the problem. They just want, you know, that's fine. But like I like I love it when people really care about what they're doing. For me, it's just a blast.
SPEAKER_02So many gems in there. Yeah. Like I I just speaking about going back to all these young 20-year-olds, they just don't they have a lot of blind spots, you know. Yeah, I I just my my last thought on that is like A, I think we both agree that being a solo founder is I I just would I don't I don't think I would ever do that, honestly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Like the stuff my business partner does, I'm just like in awe and thank God, honestly.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then the second is yeah, the blind spots.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02But anyways, Austin, thank you so much for your time. I I loved honestly every answer you gave. You you you like i ever every question I asked you, you're like, you're not you, you're not gonna like this answer. Like you haven't you haven't got this one before. And it's it's true, like you you really have a unique perspective, and that's because I think of where you sit. Like you literally, just to come back to this, you have a bird's eye view, you talk to so many people. You you you probably know the industry better than most because you're just seeing it all from your perspective, and that's why I was so excited to chat with you. So thank you for your time.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for you, you know, working with us as a Norpean customer. Very grateful and uh great questions, by the way.
SPEAKER_02So uh by the way, uh when you next make it out to Hong Kong, you gotta get you got I mean, I I know Roman's gonna drag you out, so I'm not worried.
SPEAKER_00I'm coming 100% next time.
SPEAKER_02I'm not worried about it. Um, but when you do, when you do make it out to show you the studio as well.
SPEAKER_00I love I'm there. I'm there. I'd love to meet the team and I'll I'll be there. So look forward to it.
