Hyped to announce the Commerce Cup is coming to @shoptalk! We're teaming up with our friends at @PrescientAI to host eCom's favorite golf tournament at eCom’s biggest conference. Here's what you need to know: ⛳️ What: 32 Player Scramble 📅 When: March 24th (VIP Pickup @ 11 AM) 🌵 Where: Paiute Golf Resort (Las Vegas, NV) 🍗 What Else: BBQ, Drinks & Club Rentals Included We’ll be bringing together a killer crew of DTC leaders for an elite desert golf experience. The perfect way to tee off Shoptalk. Spots are extremely limited — RSVP here:

Hot take when hiring fractional talent: I don't care if they have multiple clients. Why? One reason: The best consultants have great frameworks that deliver outsized impact quickly. Consultants are fractional by design, so you don't have the luxury of their expertise and knowledge for 40 hours a week. But from my experience, a great consultant can deliver the same strategic value and output in a meaningfully lesser amount of time. The best-in-class consultants have developed repeatable processes and frameworks you can then get access to, so you don't need them fulltime. And I'll pay premium for that. The 2nd hot take to this hot take is top-tier consultants are actually less expensive in the end. Here's a simple example: Consultant #1: Top-tier, charges $200/hr and gives you 10x ROI Consultant #2: Middle-tier, charges $100/hr but only nets 3x ROI All of a sudden, the math becomes pretty clear. An expert can get the job done well and in less time, which gets you an exponentially higher ROI. So no, I don't care if the best consultants have multiple clients, as long as I get to be one of them.

@montyT25 @my_obvi @ProximaAI Great questions, you'll have to apply and get accepted for the efficiency guarantee at the link below. Otherwise, you can always test the technology on your own for 30 days (no efficiency guarantee) by creating an account.

Applications are open:

Full 2025 breakdown here:

We raised $12M in our Series A last year. But it made me a hypocrite. I often talk about how to hire correctly and the best qualities to look for in a candidate, but with the influx of capital and big ambitions, I started hiring in an area I didn't understand, and immediately felt the consequences. We did what we thought was right—hiring experts. But because we were pursuing new areas of opportunity, we were hiring people on aspirations like "This person COULD do X." We quickly learned that was the wrong move. Instead, we had to understand the role ourselves and then bring in experienced professionals to both help us hire the right team members and lead our execution. Again: lead it. Not teach it. So we engaged expert consultants and then brought them on with us full-time. We hired Steve Milton—the co-founder and former CTO of PlaceIQ—as our Chief Strategy Officer, and he immediately understood how to unlock more signal from our data and innovated our value proposition for our customers. The lesson: leverage professionals with deep expertise in whatever capacity you can get them initially. Once you find those A-players, get them on full-time. Their impact will show immediately. So don't be a hypocrite like me, fully understand the role, skills and strategy required FIRST, then bring on the experts to lead it.

Apply here:

The hysteria around @deepseek_ai is crazy, but I get it. It's an open-source solution that anyone can build into their workflow. And it's dangerous for @OpenAI. DeepSeek claims their LLM was built at a fraction of the cost ($5.6M) of industry leaders like OpenAI and @AnthropicAI. That's why we saw a meaningful price drop in the market. All because of its pricing model. DeepSeek's $0.014 per 1M cached input tokens is significantly less than Open AI's $1.25 per 1M cached input tokens. (Not to mention their claims of developing at a fraction of the training cost...) Here are the potential implications: 1. Investors may start to question the billions companies are funneling into building AI models. With DeepSeek's cost-effective training model, AI companies with heavy investments in compute are taking a hit. This could explain @nvidia's 17% ($600 billion) stock price drop. 2. @Meta's approach with their open-source Llama model is now under threat. They're losing their competitive edge in this space. (Keep in mind that DeepSeek's numbers aren't audited financials—just claims at this point.) But at @ProximaAI, we see this as an opportunity. As LLMs become commoditized—think buying AI models off the shelf like cloud storage—the real differentiator will be proprietary data sets. That's where we shine. The more competition and lower prices for AI model access, the better it is for companies like us with unique, valuable data to train these models. The future of AI isn't about who has the biggest model—it's about who has the best data to make those models truly powerful. Drop your DeepSeek thoughts below.

After 8 years of being a founder, I've learned the one trait that sets good and bad leaders apart: Ego. Leadership isn't about being right. It's about getting the most effective outcome for your organization. But so many leaders put their ego above all, and refuse to accept defeat. If you want to succeed in the startup world, it's time to face the facts: you’re wrong most of the time. This isn't like finance or hedge funds. It'll shock you how often the right decision comes from someone else. You're constantly testing and iterating to optimize every part of the business. And a huge part of testing is failing—AKA the whole point. You're not the focus, your startup is. So if you want to be a leader who actually makes a difference, think about your style of approach and be honest with yourself. Are you trying to be right, or effective?

Application are open:

My team doesn't agree with me on this—but maybe you will: Full transparency in startups is the only way to have alignment on company goals. This has been a hot topic in my team for some time now. And I get it... Founders worry about oversharing information with everyone, like financial details. But IMO, I want to treat my team like adults. And if they can't handle the reality of the company, they shouldn't be here. There is a caveat though... You have to be transparent with tact. If you're not explaining the exact implications and next steps tied to the information shared, it'll cause more problems than solutions. Transparency needs context. My advice: Ignorance has no place at startups. Share information about decisions, challenges, or financials to create full alignment on company goals. And let those who can’t handle it, leave. Agree/disagree?

Meta, Google, Reels, YouTube Shorts—everyone's saying to invest in them all, but they're not created equal. Here are the ACTUAL 3 digital marketing trends to invest in: 1. Connected Television (CTV) 2. AppLovin 3. Meta (3 updates no one's talking about) But, every channel has its pros and cons. So if you have 60 seconds, hear me out. With TikTok's ban still looming (not the topic of this post, I promise), channel diversification and testing has been a hot topic and will be the focus for 2025. Since everyone's trying to experiment with new channels, here's my two cents on the pros and cons of my top 3. 1️⃣ Connected Television (CTV) ✅ Pro: CTV is 40% of paid TV advertising. It combines the personalization of digital marketing & the TV format. While around since the 2010s, 2025 is the year of renewed attention. ❌ Con: notorious for the spray-and-pray. BUT there are tools for dialing in your targeting and placements. (like @ProximaAI 👋—we just helped one of the largest flower delivery companies in the US profitably scale their CTV spend.) 2️⃣ AppLovin ✅ Pro: The average consumer spends 4 hours/day on mobile apps. AKA 1.5 more hours a day than social media, so more brands are turning to app-based marketing to reach new audiences. ❌ While I recommend AppLovin, there's 3 cons: → It's unknown with ambiguous ROI → It primarily caters to impulse buyers → Primarily for bigger brands selling low to mid-AOV products If you're a data person like me, be cautious with your $600K monthly ads budget requirement until there’s more on refund & repurchase rates—especially on user LTV. But there's 100% massive opportunity here. 3️⃣ Meta ✅ Pro: Incredibly scalable ❌ Con: Not as profitable or reliable as before BUT these 3 latest updates give marketers a better chance at success: → 3P analytics integrations Sync platforms like Google Analytics and Northbeam with Meta’s ad system to compare campaign performance across channels and give Meta more data to train its AI models. More data = stronger signal + efficient campaigns → Incremental attribution opt-in Out: optimizing campaigns for volume In: prioritizing incremental conversions Now you can highlight the true impact of ads beyond standard attribution models. → Conversion value rules Adjust your bid value for different customers within a campaign. Bid more for high-LTV customers and less for lower-value customers without targeting them separately. While these updates could materially improve your Meta performance, don't rely on them alone. Diversify your Meta ads strategy and enrich your data feedback loop with a tool (like Proxima) to avoid concentration risk and maximize ROAS. -- There's so many platforms out there that marketers are turning to (whether panic or data-driven). No matter where you go, weigh the pros and cons and don't hop on because everyone else is. (P.S. DM me to scale spend on any of the above platforms. Let's start the year with some quick marketing wins.)

Secure your spot for the webinar here:

Secure your spot here: