Ben
@jabbawy
Followers
10K
Following
24K
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557
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8K
Bringing commerce to recipe creators with https://t.co/gxQqHOBhJg. Founded + led https://t.co/HnbTuVR8ol from start through 9 figure exit.
Joined March 2009
Today I'm excited to unveil my new company: Grocers List. A commerce platform for food creators and the brands that sell through them. Tools that drive creator growth, and capture the insane intent behind recipe audiences. After Privy got acquired, I never thought I’d do it
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I couldn’t be more excited to share that @attentivemobile has acquired @privy . Two industry leaders. Better together. I literally can’t stop smiling because of what this means for YOU, our customers + partners.
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Today is a once in a life time day as a founder. I get to press “send” on 152, life changing wires. Investors that took a bet on us. Employees that invested years of their career with us. Family + friends who put in the first checks to Privy.
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Unfortunately, a family member of mine in Israel was at the festival working the event. He had been missing since October 7th. We got word that they found his body. 2 children. There are no words for this evil. I will not be silent as synagogues around the world get.
25 years AFTER the holocaust, on the 3rd night of Hanukkah, “militants” stormed into my dad's house, dragged him out in front of his parents and little sisters. They put him in prison and tortured him. Similar happened to another cousin of ours. She was five. 5 years old. For
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Pulling together an expansive list of angels + VCs who invest in commerce SAAS and infrastructure. Who ya got?.
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Over 10 years, we got 8 acquisition offers for Privy. Early on, we got offers from godaddy + hubspot. In the middle, we had a few PE deals on the table. Then we sold to a strategic. Today I share the early offers to demystify acquisitions structures for founders.
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Being a founder is like getting punched in the face every day for 10 years. Even when things are going great. You ready for that?.
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Last week marked the end of journey of a lifetime. 10+ years as founder + CEO of Privy now comes to a close. I'll continue supporting the Privy team + Attentive in an advisor capacity. 🙏 to everyone in the Shopify ecosystem for playing a role in making Privy what it is. 😢.
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I sold my company for $120M. There were many key people. Some positive forces. Others not so much. I still replay many moments. I'm launching a new type of podcast, exploring those moments w/ those key people. Season 1: Closure. Join my newsletter to be the first to know.
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Remember when we all used to commute for 2 hours a day to do work in the same, big, open room?.
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25 years AFTER the holocaust, on the 3rd night of Hanukkah, “militants” stormed into my dad's house, dragged him out in front of his parents and little sisters. They put him in prison and tortured him. Similar happened to another cousin of ours. She was five. 5 years old. For
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Shopify is creating an entirely new category of app dev opportunity w/ Shop Minis. We were early building into core APIs + got in front of 2M stores. You can be early building Shop Minis + get in front of 10s of millions of monthly users!. This is a massive opp for devs . 👏👏
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Trying to find ecommerce operators sharing their stories. Who do you know running an ecom store between $0 and $2M in sales?.
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A startup only ends when the founders stop. If you have a team of 4, over a hundred thousand in the bank, and some MRR, this is the greatest part of the journey. Just spend all your time talking to customers and revenue will grow. Don’t rush into hiring.
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Apres for a bit while I wait for my 6 year old to finish ski school. AMA.
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A glorious evening in WFH life. Got to watch my girl ride for the first time instead of commuting home.
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Congrats to our friends @Shopify on the launch of Shop. Seamlessly following small brands I’ve ordered from + easy to find more. A win for small brands looking to drive repeat orders + get additional distribution, free. No brainer to check the box to enable for your store.
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Excited to launch our SAAS for recipe creators. The market has exploded, but they're cobbling things together that weren't built for them. Jumping back into B2B with a freemium offering built exclusively for recipe creators. Grow, engage + monetize a recipe audience. Never
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“Hi Ben - we’ve lost executive sponsorship on the acquisition. Sorry, but we’re not going to buy the company.”. This was a call I got in November 2014. It was the darkest moment of my career.
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In ecommerce, it's mobile first. Not "mobile friendly". 7 Billion sessions for Privy merchants in 2020, 73% mobile.
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Founder-led sales. No CRM. Just this sheet that builds to 100 customers. 1 by 1. Progress every day. 100 this year. 1,000 next year.
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Best feeling as a founder is hitting $1m ARR. Be sure to celebrate that one with the team. Few moments more special in the journey.
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2019: We grew from $4M > $8M in ARR, so I set out to raise a round of funding. Every single firm passed. Every one. I truly don't hold it against any of them and learned a ton, it motivated me (+ worked out for the best). It'd be valuable for founders to understand why.
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Working out of my gym's cafe today. Guy next to me on a call talking about BFCM marketing plans for his Shopify store. Should I grab him for a few after the call?.
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Great play from @nomadgoods . Using a single product image to showcase "new" vs "100 days used". Saves support time, and may hook buyers purely for the "used" look.
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If you build it, they won't come. Building a product is the easy part. Distribution is everything. What's your plan for getting customers?.
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We saw an all-time high in Shopify orders last week. Wow. Ecommerce is booming despite all the craziness out there. We're seeing some verticals skyrocket, others struggle, but as a whole, the numbers are climbing.
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✅cofounder .✅funding.✅customer waitlist.⏹️ first revenue (targeting next week).
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Thankful to spend some time with @fatimayusf these last 2 weeks. We built @privy into the @Shopify app store in June 2015. That was the moment our trajectory changed. The opportunity remains endless in this ecosystem 🙌.
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It's funny - this scene is always what I imagined it to be when we got acquired. Instead I was alone in shorts and flip flops on docusign.
4 years ago today, when I pulled an all-nighter negotiating the acquisition deal with Unilever. Putting that pen to paper was the most surreal moment of my life.
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Gut wrenching moments as a founder kill or accelerate motivation. When our first M&A deal was pulled in 2015, we had $1k in the bank. Today we’re worth 10X more. When Covid struck we had a second deal pull out. I’m thankful it didn’t go through. We’ll grow 10X again.
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Has your CEO said anything yet?. I know it’s hard to denounce terrorism, rape and pillaging. Hopefully soon your ceo will muster up the courage.
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Are you working on a DTC business?. 2021 is all about story. 1. Drop in your brand URL.2. Let us know *why* you started.
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Wrapping up a 3 month 🌍 adventure and back to the US this weekend. Lucky. Grateful. Ready to plan the next set of dreams. Taking meetings. (Full pics on IG)
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A close friend in ecom. Sold his company. 3 kids. Called to defend his people. This is not that far from any of us. חזק וברוך
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The most humbling part of being a founder is that we all start at $0 in January. All of us. Every year. Go get it!.
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One of the fastest growing companies I invested in is looking for a first marketing hire. Grew from $500K to $2M ARR in 2023. Work directly with founder. Jumpstart the basics: case studies, nice looking content from canva, notify customer base of new feature launches, some.
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That feeling when your vision begins to come together 8 years later. Worth the wait.
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I’ve learned a lot these 10 years, but the last few weeks have really boiled it all down for me. The the most important currencies in business are *integrity*, + building trust with everyone around you.
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✅ Successful kickstarter launch. ✅ Raised $1M in funding. ✅ Selling Zoe on ✅ Multiple viral hits. So I had to ask @TheYelitsa in today's episode of Ecommerce marketing school:. Do you ever do regular marketing like popups + email + stuff?
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I'm launching a daily segment for the ecommerce marketing show. Taking all the data + tactics from the last 5 years, distilling things down for founders new to ecommerce. Less than 5 minutes a day, plays and tips you can steal.
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Updating our monthly numbers and crossing another major milestone in May. Realizing it took 5 years to reach $1M ARR. and only 1 year later crossing $3M ARR. Amazing what happens when you finally get over that $1M hump in SaaS.
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My daughter wrote me a bday card, and gifted me $1 of the $10 she has in her piggy bank and now I’m ready to melt.
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If you are sub $5M + growth slows from 100% to like 30%, it may be hard to stomach but here’s the truth. You are off the venture path. Completely. So shed all venture path leaders+ expenses. Get to breakeven tomorrow. Keep a team of doers. Survive first, then grow.
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Lots of over capitalized apps without enough momentum in Shopify ecosystem right now. Expect things to get ugly next few months. Be ruthless about rallying the team to profitability (even if your investors disagree). Still the greatest ecosystem. Just different.
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This weekend I am coaching my 4 year old daughters pre-k soccer team and I’ve never been more nervous in my life.
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Having fun building again. Here's the first breadcrumb. It's super fun. A free consumer service that turns IG recipe posts into shoppable ingredient lists. Expanding into more tools specific to recipe creators. Give it a go by signing up (free) through the link in our IG
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Proud of the team for launching today. We're doing everything we can to support our customers in this chaotic time. Get listed on the world's first marketplace for small ecommerce brands like yours. Submit your store today: .
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As a shopify app dev, how you price and package your offering can drive tremendous upside. Today's post is the full history of our pricing efforts, and a ton of what I learned a long the way.
The power of pricing and packaging for your shopify app. Here's the full evolution of our app's pricing and what we learned along the way.
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Are you even a founder until an acquisition term sheet gets pulled? . Sadly, Just got this text from a friend. Market is hot, but this is the 5th TS I’ve seen get pulled this year. I remember every word of my phone call when this happened to me in 2014. Always will.
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Firing. One thing every founder needs to get comfortable with. The sooner you understand that, the better. Every minute you wait puts your team and business and cash at risk. Just handle it as swiftly and generously as you can.
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From $6M to $100M @ridgewallet, I caught up with CMO @couuor . - experimentation and the ability to fail.- growth levers for Ridge.- his love of post purchase real estate and @disconetwork .
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Launching something new. Audience is founders + app developers building in commerce. Room for a single, presenting sponsor across all assets (content, newsletter, podcast). Last podcast I did got to 40K monthlys. DMS open.
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Chargebacks. At one point we had 10K monthly charges on stripe, + tons of chargebacks. Nightmare. Manually gather evidence, screenshots, write up responses + still lost most of them. Which is why I'm excited to participate in the seed round of @ChargeflowHQ 💳. Fully
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Ramping up investments in the next generation of founders building SAAS for commerce. If you're interested in coming in along side me, slide into DM and I will add you to my syndication email list. Most recent investments below:.
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Booth is prepped and ready for shoptalk. Figured it would be fun to offer camel rides to anyone who signs up for a demo!. LMK if you’ll be in town.
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Most importantly I'm chillin with my wife + 2 daughters, planning some major travel for 2023. Morocco > Egypt > Israel > Greece > Italy > Portugal. Don't be shy - I can't sit still for long, and happy to help in any way I can.
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Genuine question - is anyone buying DTC brands at healthy multiples?. Seeing people making investments (I'm one of them). But unlike SAAS, haven't seen a ton of M&A activity btw $50-$250M. At least, not like SAAS. Curious what happens or if cashflow is the optimal path.
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Religious persecution and prison couldn’t hold this guy back from immigrating and crushing the American dream. Forever grateful for this guy.
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