Heather Marie. She’s the founder and CEO of Shoppable, a technology company that helps media companies, brands and retailers bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. While with Shoppable, she won the 2013 Women in Digital Award from L’Oreal, was named 1 of the 10 Most Powerful Millennials in Manhattan by Gotham Magazine, and 1 of the 11 Tech Gurus Changing the Luxury Game by Refinery29. The company was a 2014 Webby Award Honoree for Online Shopping, a 2016 Webby Honoree for Technical Achievement and named one of the 100 Brilliant Companies by Entrepreneur Magazine.

Famous Five:

• Favorite Book? – Never Eat Alone
• What CEO do you follow? – Jennifer Hyman
• Favorite online tool? — Boomerang for Gmail
• How many hours of sleep do you get?— 6
• If you could let your 20-year old self, know one thing, what would it be? – “Just how long everything takes”

 

Time Stamped Show Notes:

• 01:07 – Nathan introduces Heather to the show
• 02:07 – Shoppable creates a technology that helps people buy what they see online
• 02:37 – People see products in every place
• 02:50 – Shoppable created a patent pending technology that provides different locations to shop that is outside the traditional retail shop
• 03:20 – Heather started the company in 2011
• 03:36 – Heather pitched Shoppable to a number of different retailers
• 03:49 – Shoppable launched a technology with The Wall Street Journal
• 04:00 – The Wall Street Journal branding was able to bring in a bunch of retailers and advertisers
• 04:40 – Shoppable has grown to under 30M products across the whole platform
• 05:28 – Shoppable brings the technology to where the consumers already are
• 05:40 – com uses Shoppable on their website and customers can buy directly from the website
• 07:24 – Shoppable brings the technology to different types of companies
• 07:40 – Shoppable is also integrated with publications such as WSJ, Condé Nast and others
• 07:58 – Shoppable is a SaaS company and charges annually for licenses
• 08:20 – Average customer pay is 5 figures
• 09:11 – Prior to Shoppable, Heather was at post acquisition of com
• 09:26 – Heather was a founding member of Affinity Labs
• 10:21 – Heather got into Affinity right after college
• 10:39 – The exit with Monster was all cash with an additional incentive
• 10:49 – Heather made it for 2 years after the acquisition, doing research on Shoppable
• 11:45 – Heather had to make Shoppable work
• 12:01 – Heather knew that she would start her own company
• 12:21 – Heather had debt that she was able to pay off after the acquisition
• 12:55 – Heather kept a part of the money for Shoppable
• 13:40 – Heather also had to downsize her condo to keep her expenses low
• 15:13 – There are ways you can increase your buffer
• 15:33 – Heather had to change her habits
• 16:22 – Shoppable has raised $5M
• 16:33 – The last round was a year ago
• 16:43 – Heather isn’t selling to Shopify
• 16:55 – Shoppable is above breaking even
• 17:24 – Team size is 20 and they are all based in New York
• 17:53 – Heather went on a business trip to NY and on her second day, she thought that Shoppable was made for NY
• 18:31 – Shoppable has around 438 merchants and 2000 brands
• 18:38 – One merchant could have hundreds of brands
• 19:15 – Average ARR
• 21:13 – The Famous Five

 

3 Key Points:

1. As an entrepreneur, you need to know how to manage money well.
2. Building a company requires research and an action plan—especially if that company is your first and last shot at building one.
3. Be aware that things in business and in life may take longer that what you’re expecting.

 

Resources Mentioned:

• The Top Inbox – The site Nathan uses to schedule emails to be sent later, set reminders in inbox, track opens, and follow-up with email sequences
• Klipfolio – Track your business performance across all departments for FREE
• Hotjar – Nathan uses Hotjar to track what you’re doing on this site. He gets a video of each user visit like where they clicked and scrolled to make the site a better experience
• Acuity Scheduling – Nathan uses Acuity to schedule his podcast interviews and appointments
• Host Gator– The site Nathan uses to buy his domain names and hosting for the cheapest price possible
• Audible– Nathan uses Audible when he’s driving from Austin to San Antonio (1.5-hour drive) to listen to audio books
• Show Notes provided by Mallard Creatives