A New Home, Best Friend, Resto-bar and Dream

A renowned investor pointed at the fact that I haven’t written anything here for a while, so this morning I decided to take a few minutes and put out an update! It’s been about 2 years since my last update so a lot has changed!

A New Home

I moved back to Waterloo, Ontario a couple of years ago (though kept some roots in Austin). I loved my home office in Austin so I designed a new home office here as well.

I call it the G.S.D. room because that’s what it’s all about – Getting *ahem* Stuff Done!

A New Best Friend

After moving back to Waterloo I felt I needed a someone who could grow to be the future Chief Dog Officer of my new company. He’s now almost 2 years old I’m proud to say he’s grown into becoming an amazingly gentle and loving Golden.

I couldn’t have asked for a better best friend.

A New Resto-bar

My friend Rami had the idea to launch a restaurant/bar/lounge into a retro-gaming bar so I offered to help with funding and take on co-ownership. It’s called Patent Social.

I’m proud to say that today it is one of the highest rated resto-bars in Kitchener-Waterloo today according to Google! It recently celebrated its 1-year anniversary.

Rami did all the heavy lifting while I have been focused on my own company, so I can’t take much of the credit for its success. He’s a great dude.

A New Dream

Data is the reason why Amazon is able to create better shopper experiences and outprice other retailers. The ability to report upon and segment shopper data is already out there today, but are independent retailers acting upon that data? Well, the answer is most aren’t.

Data is the new retail advantage.

That’s why I created Fera.ai (which I originally launched as Banana Stand). Fera makes it easy for independent eCommerce merchants to use the data in their store that result in better, higher converting shopper experiences. 

Fera does things as obvious as remembering your clothing size as you move from product to product, or showing you promotions only when it believes they’re relevant to YOU.

The future of retail sales is in A.I and data. Retail is moving online at a rapid pace and humans increasingly prefer to interact with digital devices rather than other humans.

I want Fera to be the last retail salesperson a store owner will ever need. We still have a lot to go before we hit that point, but we’re headed in the right direction!

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Starting Something New

I’ve moved back to Canada to work on my new business (announcement TBA!) and a few other things I’ve been investing my time (and money) into.

I will forever be grateful for the opportunity BigCommerce and the other wonderful people in Austin, Texas gave me over the years. Things I’ll be missing, in order are:

1. The amazing people of Austin that allowed me to have such a great time while I was there
2. The wonderful weather that let me wear shorts 11 months of the year
3. The delicious food that made eating out to places an easy decision every time

Completed MBA, Joining BigCommerce in Texas

I’ve completed my MBA and I’m moving to Austin, Texas to join BigCommerce. It was a difficult decision on whether to join Shopify or BigCommerce, but all I really care is to learn the ins and outs of a strong eCommerce platform and to contribute something to a bigger team. The beautiful Austin weather also helped make the decision.

Putting 20Alpha.com On Pause While I Complete My MBA

I’ve been running the store 20Alpha.com on the side for the last few weeks. I learned a lot from the experience, but as I’m starting my MBA at Ivey in London, Ontario, I know I wont be able to dedicate the time that the website needs to provide a great service to my customers. For that reason, I’m putting the store on hold and no longer taking any orders. For those who are curious, here were my key take-aways:

1. It’s easy to sell, hard to profit.

It didn’t take long before I got my first sale, and I didn’t even have to spam my friend base on Facebook or Twitter. The profit margins were thin, and I imagine, unless you’re making your own clothing, it’s pretty hard to get a higher than 60% profit margin. For $20 shirts, that’s not much profit per sale.

2. One-time sales are hard

Having built my previous company with a SaaS (Software as a Service) pricing model, I can see the immediate disadvantages of running a one-time sale operation. Not only do clothing need-not regular replenishment, but they’re typically not purchased more than once in a long while. Add that to my point #1, and it’s a very big problem. Maybe there’s a market for subscription clothing? So you’d pay like $2.5/mo for 12 months for a year…. who knows…

3. Branding is Boss

All it took was thinking ‘outside of the box’ for the branding. Look at what other sites do and do it differently, how you think it should be. This allowed me to make a lasting brand pretty quickly.

4. Cater to your market. Nobody else.

I focused my marketing around the ‘Bro’ demographic that I believe is being underserved. This I feel was the reason people purchased from 20Alpha. People want to buy things from their friends (or ‘bros’ in my case).

5. You can test the waters with very little funding, however funding is needed to grow.

I didn’t invest any money into marketing, but it really limited my growth. It did validate my hypothesis  that there is a very unservered market however. Given a few thousand in financing, I believe I could have made some decent Facebook marketing and business development.

6. First customers are awesome.

My first customers were so responsive over email that I actually felt like we were becoming friends quickly through our convos. They gave me honest feedback and asked me questions about my products that shaped the store to be better for them, and as a result, better for me.   Hope this info helps anyone out there hoping to launch their own store!

Stepping Down as CEO of Sweet Tooth

Sweet Tooth was my first company to make a significant impact in the world: used by 4,000 businesses across 15 different countries, rewarded millions of people, oversaw billions $$ in transactions, raised 2.3m in venture financing, built an all-star team and much more – all in less than 4 years. This made it an extremely difficult decision to step down as CEO of the company, but I believe it was the right one.

I will remain on the board of directors of the company and shareholder, and I will always be happy to connect to any merchants and partners any time to help. I will be spending my time in Toronto for the time being, but I’ll be in Waterloo every so often. None of my contact info has changed.

Sweet Tooth is Still Growing and Doing Well

The first thing you should know is that Sweet Tooth is still growing profitably. The #1 priority is still helping Sweet Tooth merchants succeed. Sweet Tooth will continue to grow and innovate, improve and adapt. Not much will change in the short term.

Why I Stepped Down

I love bringing in the energy, launching new products, helping people succeed and leading a team to the top. I’m a risk-taker, anyone who has worked with me will know that, but at this stage of growth Sweet Tooth needs someone who will carefully observe the fine details and build insightful conclusions out of the data over time. Mike is better suited to take over those responsibilities.

When I recruited Mike it was because I knew he was extremely intelligent, would/could learn any new skill in any field, he loved solving problems and was a fantastic leader. We were classmates and he was the first friend I made in the Engineering program I attended at UW. I’m glad I’ve been able to leave the company in the hands of someone so capable.

What’s Next for Me?

I’m still working with Sweet Tooth and I may continue doing so, but I recently launched websites for my two new projects: Coincart and Share To Give.

Coincart is an anonymous bitcoin eCommerce platform.

Share To Give is a social rewards app that helps merchants gain social referrals and sales by giving to charity. 

Feel free to reach out if you have any questions or just want to chat! I can usually be found at the new Google office building at 111 Richmond St West in Toronto.