DTC Podcast

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Most founders want to be first in a category. Justin Soleimani and Zach Dannett did the opposite, and built Tumble into one of the standout washable rug brands without raising a dollar.

In this episode, the Tumble co-founders and Co-CEOs break down how they entered a category Ruggable created, fixed the product complaints they found buried in thousands of reviews, and validated the whole thing on Indiegogo before opening a Shopify store. Then they get into the part most founders never have to survive: moving their entire supply chain out of China in 30 days when tariffs went from 25% to 175%.

What's covered:
Why they launched with 120 SKUs and used crowdfunding as a demand-forecasting tool, not just a fundraiser
The lot-number QC system that let them kill 90%+ of product defects within two years
How pre-orders and Shopify payouts gave them a negative cash conversion cycle while bootstrapping
Why they didn't hire a single full-time employee until they were well past $20M in revenue
The China-to-Thailand pivot and accidental Canada launch during the tariff crisis
Their YouTube incrementality test that ran head-to-head against Meta, and tied
Justin's contrarian take on vibe coding: automate manual tasks, don't rip out your tech stack

Who this is for: Bootstrapped DTC founders, operators obsessed with margin and cash flow, and anyone building a physical-product brand in a competitive category.

What to steal: The crowdfunding-as-validation playbook, the lot-tracking QC system, and the asset-light structure that let them move a supply chain overnight.

Timestamps:
00:00 Why Great Competitors Make You Better
03:00 Launching 120 SKUs Through Crowdfunding
10:00 Product Feedback at Scale
18:00 Growing Past $20M With No Employees
23:00 Surviving Tariffs and Moving Manufacturing

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This Friday on AKNF we're handing over the feed for a special preview of The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast.

Your email account doesn't break all at once. It rots. Open rates slide, a quarter of your sends quietly route to spam, your list keeps growing while the people who actually click disappear. Jordan Gordon calls that a pooched account, and in this episode he lays out the full ten-step recovery his team runs when a brand hands them one.

If you own a DTC brand or run its email and retention, this is the playbook for the moment results go sluggish and your first instinct is to send more, the exact move that dug the hole.

What's inside:
How to tell whether you're in spam or your audience has simply checked out
Why opens are the weakest predictor of a future visit, and what to segment on instead
The rewarm vs. soft rewarm decision, and how 5,000 addresses beat 150,000
Why two campaigns a week plus real flows beats 22 sends a month
The email-only promotion that rebuilds engagement and deliverability at once
Treating SMS like a paid channel with a real cost per click
The stale-repeat-buyer metric that tells you recovery is working

Who this is for: DTC founders, operators, and email marketers inheriting or rescuing an underperforming Klaviyo account.

What to steal: the open-rate floor, the two-campaigns-a-week cadence, and the stale-repeat-buyer segment you can build in Klaviyo this afternoon.

Liked the preview? Subscribe to The World's Best Email and Retention Podcast.

Timestamps:
00:00 Fixing a Pooched Email Account
03:02 Set Realistic Expectations for Recovery
07:43 When to Rewarm Your Email List
11:47 Why Opens Are a Bad Metric
18:36 Email-Only Promotions to Boost Engagement
24:25 The Stale Repeat Buyer Metric

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Recorded live at True Classic HQ in Calabasas the day before the Whalies, this episode brings together two of the leaders most aggressively reshaping how ecommerce gets built.

Ben Diamond is the CEO and co-founder of True Classic, the apparel brand that went from zero to over a billion in revenue in seven years and now ships to 190 countries. Maxx Blank is the co-founder and COO of Triple Whale, the AI operating system for ecommerce that he started with co-founder AJ Orbach, now running parts of media buying, creative, and conversion testing for over 60,000 brands.

The conversation gets into the move that's reshaping the category: True Classic now runs 100 percent of its Meta spend through an autonomous media buyer, Moby 2, with AI agents acting as a CMO and creative strategist, reallocating budget daily based on whether the brand needs profit, inventory clearance, or launch defense.

Maxx walks through what changed between Moby 1 and Moby 2, why the SaaS apocalypse doesn't touch infrastructure businesses, and the bigger industry shift from Software as a Service to Results as a Service. Ben talks about cutting millions in production costs by replacing in-office product photography with AI, the cultural mandate at True Classic to embrace AI, and where human judgment still belongs.

If you're an operator wondering how far to push agentic into your business, or a founder wondering what the next decade of ecommerce actually looks like, this is the conversation for you.

Find more about Triple Whale: https://www.triplewhale.com/?utm_source=dtc-newsletter&utm_medium=inf&utm_campaign=mkt-whaliesdtc-affiliate-426&utm_content=dtc

Timestamps:
00:00 AI Is Transforming Ecommerce Faster Than Ever
02:14 What Moby 2 Actually Does for Brands
11:20 Why True Classic Went All-In on AI
16:10 Cutting Millions in Creative Production Costs
24:38 The Future of One-to-One Marketing at Scale
43:20 Predictions for the Future of Ecommerce and AI

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Neuro didn't fight for checkout shelf space first. They built a nine-figure online business through TikTok Shop, creator marketing, Amazon, and DTC, then used that momentum to walk into Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven with demand already proven.

In this episode of the DTC Podcast, Eric talks with Brian Evangelista, Chief Commercial Officer at Neuro, about creating a category that didn't exist, running an affiliate program with tens of thousands of creators, and what actually changes when a digitally native brand wakes up as a real retail business.

Built for DTC founders scaling from $5M–$100M who are trying to turn ecom momentum into retail distribution.

We also get into:
Why TikTok Shop worked so well early on, and what changed when it got pay-to-play
How creator incentives shifted once GMV Max rolled out
The retail launch strategy behind Walmart, Costco, CVS, and 7-Eleven
Why retail completely reshapes your P&L, ops, and marketing stack
The hidden operational tax of moving from DTC into omnichannel
How Neuro frames category creation vs stealing share
The strategy behind the "Your Gum Is Dumb" sloth campaign
Why brand marketing started making sense only after retail expansion

Who this episode is for: DTC founders, retail operators, consumer brand marketers, TikTok Shop teams, and brands considering omnichannel expansion.

What to steal:
Build demand digitally before asking retail to believe in your category
Use creator momentum as proof for retail buyers
Treat retail launches like media moments, not inventory placement

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The consideration phase is collapsing thanks to LLM shopping.

Awareness still happens on Meta. Conversion still happens on a PDP. But the comparison and research middle, the part brands have spent a decade optimizing, is increasingly happening inside an LLM the customer already trusts.

20% of holiday shoppers used an LLM in their purchase path last Q4. Google I/O just demoed one-tap concert tickets from a photo. Amazon folded Rufus into Alexa for Shopping. The behavior is moving fast enough that operators need to start preparing for Q4 now.

Eric sits down with Aves and Daniel from Pilothouse to unpack what's actually happening and the work brands can start this quarter.

Inside the episode:
Why customers trust their LLM more than your ad
Daniel on why he stopped going to Amazon to compare vitamins
The persona mismatch that hurts brands more than it used to
Why reviews and earned media matter more than your landing page
What changes for abandon cart and retargeting
Two operator-tested audits to see if your brand shows up in ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini
For founders and operators who want to be recommended when the customer asks.

What to Steal:
Three things you can do this week.
Run the prompt audit. Take your top five Google queries, run them through ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. Track who gets recommended, who gets cited, and whether you show up at all. Daniel uses this as his baseline before any other AI-visibility work.
Pick one brand truth and repeat it everywhere. Scattershot positioning loses to consistent positioning. If every ad pitches a different angle to a different persona, an LLM has nothing coherent to summarize about you.
Add dates to your blog posts and PR pages. Recency factors into LLM citation. Old content gets de-prioritized even when it's accurate.

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