A great email debate took place today at @CommerceRound My takeaway was AG1 has incredible emails and the agency that works with them is incredible at retention.

Allbirds this morning

This has been the most fascinating thing to watch unfold

Allbirds? The AI compute infrastructure company?

Hey Cougs, in case you missed it Pullman Radio News featured the following OP- Ed several weeks ago. WSU alumni, friends, fans, parents, students and more all want to spend more time in Pullman: In the 45 years I’ve been attending Cougar football games, lodging availability in Pullman on major weekends has remained a major issue. Iowa State had a similar problem, which they addressed with huge results. As they noted at the time, “For a rural university like Iowa State, located in Ames, the primary barrier to game-day attendance and increased donor spend is not a lack of interest, but a lack of lodging. By recognizing that the ‘product’ is not a three-hour game but a 48-hour social experience, Iowa State transformed its football weekend experience to one of the best in the country” As WSU alumni, fans, parents and students, we understand that in the short term no hotels will be built and the use of campus housing on major weekends holds various hurdles. That leads us to the City of Pullman to help solve the problem. Following are some very simple and inexpensive options that will provide additional lodging options quickly: 1) Change the VRBO/Airbnb ordinance to encourage property owners to offer short term rentals in and around Pullman, this needs to change quickly as many are making their football plans now. 2) Update the Visit Pullman website, “Places to Stay,” to include dropdown links for all the RV/Camping and VRBO/Airbnb options in and around Pullman, Many people are not aware of the options. 3) Add additional RV/travel trailer overnight parking in and around Pullman. There are plenty of lots and land and we encourage property owners to consider renting space for overnight stays including a paid system at Walmart with security. On a related note, the Palouse summer series baseball tournament is extremely successful, and we suggest Pullman host additional tournaments and camps for men’s and women’s basketball, volleyball and more. These camps and tournaments not only drive commerce to Pullman, but they also are a great student recruiting opportunity for WSU.All of us want a thriving Pullman and WSU and would spend a lot more money if it was simply made easier.Thank you to all for your consideration. Go Cougs! Glenn Osterhout

UNILEVER TO ACQUIRE GRUNS FOR UNDISCLOSED SUM IN HUGE VMS SPLASH Grüns, one of the best stories in CPG of the last decade, has been punctuated with a massive deal to Unilever. The VMS M&A wave is in the early innings! Financial terms weren't disclosed, but given Gruns' disclosed revenue, growth rate, and Unilever's annual stated M&A budget - it was definitely a big one. The Numbers  - Founded: August 2023 by Chad Janis (confirmed a chad)  - $100M ARR: May 2025 (month 21)  - $300M ARR: August 2025 (month 24)  - Last valuation: $500M (April 2025 funding round led by Headline)  - Profitable within 14 months of launch Price undisclosed, but the $500M valuation set the floor 12 months ago. With $300M ARR at the time of deal announcement, rough benchmarks: - Huel acquired by Danone for ~3.4x revenue - 2026 - Liquid I.V. / Unilever - ~2.6x revenue - 2020  - Dr. Squatch / Unilever ~3x revenue - 2025 - poppi // PepsiCo ~3x revenue - 2025 Unilever has been making an all in effort into personal care and wellness, with brands like Liquid I.V. & Nutrafol set to pass $1B in sales, UL is putting together a formidable wellness portfolio. Plus, they spent $1.5B on Dr. Squatch last year. Early investors include Sugar Capital, Vanterra Capital, and more.

Shoptalk would be a great name for a conversational chatbot on Shopify

Oh you like Ecom? Name every brand.

Temu is absolutely printing fully AI ads right now

Looking for someone who’s got experience with mobile app development/reporting. More so reporting, looking for insights into install metrics and attribution data. Anyone have experience with this?

This is the most patriotic thing I’ve ever been a part of an I don’t think it’s very close

Happy F1 race week to all who celebrate :)

ten years ago, I was sleeping on the ground of a 1 bedroom apartment in koreatown roaches in the kitchen. a homeless man was living in a closet behind the stairs of the building. it was $1400. it was a MASSIVE step up. Because the month before this, I was renting a bunk bed in a house of 14 guys. 3 rooms, 2 bathrooms. bunkbeds wall to wall. the empty apartment with no parking was a castle compared to the bunk beds. and ten years later... I run a brand doing a million dollars a day. I own a house in LA with a pool. I married a wonderful woman with a kid coming very soon. America is still the land of opportunities. In ten years I went from roach filled apartment, sleeping on the floor, to multi millionaire. never scammed anyone. never sold a course. never rug pulled. you can make it in america. I fucking love it here.

I couldn't figure out why so many new stores were signing up today — until I saw this 😍 We do everything on the list. Slack/email reports are the one exception, but I'm working on it as we speak. We also have an MCP server, so you can talk to your data through Claude or ChatGPT. One plan. $29/mo. Same price whether you do $10k or $10M. 14-day free trial. 258 active stores with 23M orders and 50M line items processed. DMs are open if any questions 🙌🏻

Lent and Ramadan at the same time is beautiful

The correct way to calculate contribution margin for your brand Over the past couple years, contribution margin has gained significant popularity in the brand world as operators have shifted to focus more on profitability, but do they even know exactly why? At this point, basically everyone knows you should have a handle on your contribution margin by channel by SKU etc - but I sense that we haven't truly internalized the purpose of the calculation. Contribution Margin is a non-gaap, managerial accounting metric - the primary purpose of the calculation is to identify the variable profit per unit, so that you can understand how many units to sell to cover your fixed overhead. In other words, if it costs me $100 to run my business in fixed costs (rent, machinery, etc) and I make $10 in contribution margin for every unit I sell, I need to sell 10 units to break-even; this has been adequately dubbed by academia as the ~ break even point ~ So prior to the rise of digital marketing, it was a relatively straightforward concept, used in manufacturing and retailer models as a way to determine break even volume. What I sell my unit for - the cost of the unit, and whatever other variable fees it takes for me to get it to the retailer where it gets bought. Things like freight, broker fees, etc. Advertising, and OpEx would go below contribution margin, since they weren't really variable with sales. This is the way most college accounting courses teach you about contribution margin. In reality, the internet has changed the consumer business model more rapidly than accounting courses have kept up - and you might see people referencing contribution margin as something that does not include advertising expenses (as in the classical example above) They are wrong. By leaving direct response advertising out of your contribution margin target, you are implying that those dollars spent do not directly drive unit sales, and therefore don't need to be directly expensed at the unit economic level. This made sense before facebook and google basically turned advertising into complete direct costs of generating revenue. You can quite literally put a dollar in and get two dollars out, and ignoring that variable expense in your unit economic calculation is misguided. Now, where the classical model still makes sense is for a brand with zero digital ad spend or online sales; these cases are increasingly rare, and I very often see all kinds of folks taking the pre-internet methodology into brands that have some level of digital footprint.

this is false. source: running $150b company

Anyone have some insights into the new fulfilled by tiktok requirements on TTS? CC @NotZainAgain or @jackie_startok

THE UNBRIDLED GREATNESS OF TRAINS WILL ENDURE FOR A MILLION YEARS

My MacBook Pro is dying. Going on 4 years. Any recs for new computers?