Jake Aaron Villarreal: Welcome to our podcast, From the Ground Up, where we interview startup founders exploring their journeys, their successes, challenges, and lessons learned. We hope you be inspired in discovering what it takes to build a thriving startup. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, and here with us today we have Heather Marie Udo, founder and CEO of Shoppable. Heather, welcome to the show.
Heather Udo: Hey Jake, thank you so much for having me.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. So a little bit about Heather. She's a visionary entrepreneur, leader in e-commerce and media industry with over 15 years of experience in creating and scaling innovative digital solutions. She leads Shoppable, a technology company that enables media companies, brands, and retailers to bring the checkout experience to anywhere a consumer discovers or engages with their products. Before we dive in here, Heather, um where are you joining us from today?
Heather Udo: New York.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. And are you originally from there?
Heather Udo: No, I grew up in Wisconsin and came to New York by way of San Francisco and London.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Oh wow. Multicultural, distributed. Um well, we'll talk about Shoppable, we get into your story here. Um prior to that, you did have a successful exit at a startup. Uh that experience most employees and founders probably would love to have. What were a few lessons you learned from that experience and from your previous CEO as a leader?
Heather Udo: Oh my gosh. Um there's so many lessons when you can um, as you know, as a future entrepreneur I suppose, go through it with someone else first. And I would say one of the biggest, the biggest things that I learned is um, is essentially that if you have the right people um at your... you know, if you have the right people at your company, then it doesn't matter what problems and challenges come your way. Which as entrepreneurs, you know, or business leaders, we all know the problems are coming, they just vary. But one of the things that I learned is it doesn't matter what those problems are so long as you have the right people.
And I'll tell you one um quick story if I can. Um we were um, you know, we had a lead generation business. And anyway, we had a lot of uh we were selling, selling leads, and we had come back on a, you know, Monday from a long weekend or something to a massive mountain of fraud. All this fraud that had been sent through our systems. And you know, of course, everything's all automated. So we had... this is not at my current company, this is the last one... we had unintentionally sent a bunch of fraudulent leads to our clients at the time. And um you know, I think the company, I don't know if we had maybe six people at the time, it was really you know relatively early stage. But we managed to, to make some good progress. And anyway, when I saw the amount of fraud going through our system, I thought, "Oh my God, this is the end. Like, like all of our clients are going to hate us. Like I don't know how like I'm gonna have to tell them what happened. And you know, we're probably lose all the business." Anyway, I was just like thinking all the worst things. And you know, our CEO got, got all of the leaders together, got around the table and uh we figured out how we could build a custom solution to solve the problem. And not only that, when we ended up exiting the company later, it became one of the... the system that we built to solve that fraud problem became one of the, the major features and selling points for, for the company later, a few years later.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's amazing. Yeah, it's, as a leader you, you always try and see things for what they are. Never as bad as you think and never as good as you think. But that perspective in times like that is uh very, very helpful to say the least. Um that's, that's great so you learned a little bit about that. Um let's talk a little bit about what inspired you or led you to launch what you have today, which is Shoppable. You leave a company, you got acquired, you're in Silicon Valley, you're in a different place today. Walk us through what inspired you, what the problem was that you saw that you felt like you could help solve.
Heather Udo: Yeah, so at that point I had run into a problem over and over again that, that led me to starting this business. And the problem was, I... that as consumers (and 99% of people have this problem, so I'm sure the listeners have had this happen), but we come across great products um whether on TV, on mobile, on digital media sites, and you can't purchase them. And there's, you know, most of the content is not shoppable. And there's a huge disconnect and a lot of friction between discovering a great product and actually being able to purchase it. So I had a particular um experience where the "aha" moment kind of came as an entrepreneur, which I had moved into a new one-bedroom apartment, or one-bedroom apartment for the first time, and after this exit and had to figure out how to decorate it. So I was jumping from site to site and I needed to buy a lot of goods in a short period of time. So looking for convenience was really, really important. And the, the, the realization was that you know, obviously the only place that consumers could buy was either in a retail store or an e-commerce site. But most of the, the products that are in front of us all day throughout the day are not shoppable. But that's what we see, that's where the demand becomes created. So anyway, I realized there was a huge disconnect between that discovery process and actually being able to purchase.
So what if I partnered with all the major retailers, all the D2C brands, created this universal shopping technology and then uh pushed it out through licenses and other means to everywhere else, so that whether you're watching TV, you're on social, you're reading a blog, didn't matter what kind of screen you're interacting with, everything could be shoppable. So that's really how, how I got started.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: God, it sounds daunting. It sounds like something that should have been solved a long time ago. Um and it's, you've got a, a solution, it's a technology company, um but you aren't an engineer by, by background, is that correct?
Heather Udo: I am not.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Okay. So here you go, you have an idea. You want to build a solution to solve a problem. It's a technical problem that you can solve with technology. Um you're in Silicon Valley, you decided to build this company on the East Coast. What led you to the East Coast?
Heather Udo: So yeah. So I, I started it from San Francisco, where I was originally. And in order to first, you know, build the proof of concept of uh being able to combine multiple retailers into a single database and then to a single retailer, I needed to have some retailer partnerships. So I was calling um every retailer I could think of. And, and um it's so hard to obviously get, get their attention, get them on phone calls. But when I finally did, they'd all say, "Oh, where are you based?" And uh, the second I said San Francisco... and this was a decade ago now, so it's a little different now... but the second I said San Francisco, there was a very clear change in um tone on the, on, on the calls. They're like, "Oh, okay. Well, you know, let us know if you ever come to New York and maybe we'll, we'll find a time to meet then." And it was just like, "Well, what about San Francisco was deterring these people?" It was like so funny. But it was so clear. I'm like, "I'm like, they want a company that is like selling to them or partnering with them, they wanted, they clearly wanted or expecting me to be in New York. And I was losing credibility by not being here." So I flew to New York on um you know, a business trip, booked as many of these meetings as I could to get in person. And I realized I'm like, "I'm able to get more done that actually moves the needle and moves the business forward by being based in New York, where all my potential partners and clients are, than like six months in San Francisco." So I moved there the next month, and I've been here ever since.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Talk a little bit about the, the problem it solves. Give us a use case of say a brand that you're working with today. And when you went to them, what were they doing? And what are they doing now that they're benefiting from your pro-, from your product?
Heather Udo: Yeah, so there's, there's a lot of different use cases for the technology. But I'll say like one, um one example is Revlon cosmetics. So they um, brand that everybody knows, um but for, for them they have a lot of advertisements, whether it's on social or um you know uh commercials and, and everywhere in between. But for, for... and I can't speak specific to, to, to um anyone's data, but for a lot of consumer packaged good companies, without Shoppable technology, not only would they have to redirect or send traffic to various retailer experiences, um but they don't have the ability to capture the consumer data and understand who's actually purchasing their products. So for, for the use case for them where any CPG, they often utilize Shoppable technology to transform either their um ads or their websites into shoppable experiences where they can um embed a checkout directly in that experience. And then on the back end, the orders get fulfilled through Shoppable retail partners, um you know, whether that be Walmart or Best Buy or whoever. Um but that allows the uh advertiser or shoppable company, or sorry, customer, the ability to create the shoppable experience without having to hold inventory, without having to be PCI compliant, without having to become merchant of record and pay transaction fees. All of those things go away with a partnership with Shoppable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, sounds amazing. Sounds almost too good to be true, but it actually is very true. And you are a growing company, you're profitable, you've run a great organization. Um you went through an accelerator, um 500 Startups. Uh maybe in the early days going through that experience, what were some of the benefits you took out of that before you really went to, to market to launch and build your company?
Heather Udo: Oh wow. Um so with 500 Startups, I mean they really, for us, they really, they helped in a lot of ways because I think what's hard for, for uh first-time entrepreneurs is it looks a lot easier from the outside I think to start a company. Um and even for you know, you know executives on, on, on founding teams and things like that, it looks a lot easier than it actually is. And there's so many moving pieces, and it can be hard to know what's most important to focus on in what order. And um you know, I think they provided a lot of guidance on um, on some of those kind of early things that you know, I didn't really... some things that I didn't even realize I didn't know. Because even though I went through it with this other serial entrepreneur at the last company, um you know, I was not the founder myself, so there's a lot of stuff that just you know, was done that I hadn't, wasn't privy to, a lot of things that I had no idea about. So 500 Startups really helped a lot, lot with, with a lot of those, those things. They have an incredible mentor network with specialists in absolutely everything you can imagine. And you know, having you know those, those kind of advisors and mentors was really, really helpful as well.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, as a solopreneur too you, you want a sounding board that you could ask questions, get answers, save time really in your journey of trying to get to market and grow a company. Um like I mentioned earlier, you're not an engineer, but you're obviously a go-getter, you got ideas, and you can execute on those ideas. What was it like to build technology? Um and how did you go about finding your first engineer and really building an engineering team?
Heather Udo: Um, so it's, it's so funny because my um, you know, at the very, very beginning, um I you know, tried to find a co-founder and I could not find someone that was passionate about... they as they said, "coding about high heels until late in the night," which is um funny because we sell every... we sell every product imaginable. But that's what I, I heard a couple times um in various formats. But um, but yeah, so I ended up finding our f- very first engineer on Craigslist.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Nice.
Heather Udo: Which is Craigslist, everyone's always like, "What? Oh my gosh." Um yeah, and um female entrepreneur or female engineer as well. Um and you know, we connected and she was really excited about the idea and helped kind of build the initial proof of concept uh and the initial versions of, of the technology. So that, that was, that was really helpful.
Then I would say the other piece was like from a product standpoint, um you know, kind of going back to the, the first story I shared about building out this fraud system at the other startup, I, I was really like the internal user of that system at that company. And I uh worked really, really closely with the Head of Engineering in building out that system and, and kind of figuring out what's the best user experience for it. And then improving it during the years that we were there. And that experience helped me really understand product and uh user experience, and being able to understand engineers and talk to engineers. So that experience essentially helped me be able to plan out what was needed, and then being able to communicate with um that uh first engineer. And I mean even still, even still today really, was super, super valuable in kind of laying that foundation that, that you need as a non-technical CEO.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great to hear. Yeah, I think having a product person in the room and an engineer uh is great. But you don't always have that when you're starting a company. You start with the idea, and then you find out if there is some demand, and you have to build a prototype. And there's um you know, a process to it. So uh it's not always easy to understand. Going through an accelerator can help that, but there's many that do it without that as well. And just good to kind of hear your story there. Um so let's talk a little bit about um the, the, the kind of going about building a startup. Some start with just going out and getting funding and you want to build and grow and, and, and at some point get to profitability. You did a little bit differently. Um you kind of bucked the trend of raising a bunch of money and then growing, and then eventually coming up with an idea of you know what your burn rate could look like and getting profitable. What... walk us through your process. What led you to buck the trend of doing it that way, which is the typical startup Silicon Valley way, and doing it your way?
Heather Udo: Yeah, I mean there were a few things and, and I will say at first you know, I had started having um uh early conversation with, with, early conversations with venture capitalists and it you know, wasn't going very well, you know. So I, I, I had some of those early conversations and it was, it was very you know, it was, it was very tough. And um you know, and then I realized I'm like, "Look, I can, I'm you know, pretty good salesperson. I'm like, I can, I could sell better to customers than apparently I could to, to, to VCs too." But I um you know, in the early days there's a lot, especially in Silicon Valley about you know, everyone kind of to some extent follows a lot of the same processes. And like "this is how you do it, you know, you find your co-founder, you get venture capital, you, you know, you go through this process." That to the point where I didn't even in the early days think about you know, "oh, could you launch a company without a co-founder? Could you launch a company without venture capital?" And these other alternative routes that are, that are possible. And essentially I have um you know had to find you know, found my own way along, um along the way.
So at the very beginning um, yeah I had some of those early conversations and it wasn't you know, working you know, wasn't working out as fast as I wanted and, and in what I was looking for. And I moved to New York and then I you know, got, finally had progress from one VC who said, um, "We'll fund you, but we need you in our backyard because you're early stage." And I'm like, "I just got to New York," and I would have had to move back to San Francisco. Which some people would say, "Just move back, take the money, and then you can go back to New York when you, you know later." But um you know, ethic-, ethically didn't want to do that. But two, also realized I'm like if I felt like if I moved back to San Francisco, so the business would fail, because it needed to be in New York to be, because there's you know certain... this type of business is about the connections, about the relationships, it's about business development. So anyway, decided to decline that, stay in New York.
And then essentially at the very beginning, self you know, self-funded it a little bit until I could get the proof of concept together. And then went through AngelList eventually, um early with, with that. And raised through um primarily through AngelList and 500 Startups kind of on a rolling basis until we um you know, we raised um about uh two and a half million or so. And used that alongside with our revenues, but primarily focused on revenue so that we could get to profitability. And not be tied to needing that next you know round of, of funding along the way.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, really great. And that seems to be the playbook a lot of companies are doing now. You know, you did this you know, a few years back, prior to the trend of getting to profitability rather than taking a, taking the money and, and, and trying to build something that may or may not be profitable in the next 5, 10 years. Um when you look at your company today, uh you know, let's talk a little about some of the lessons that you've learned. You've had to go out and build a team. You've had to hire people. What are some of the things you can share about your experience there, and maybe some of the lessons around hiring as a sol-, as a founder?
Heather Udo: Yeah, I think so. I mean a lot, there's a lot of lessons in, in that space. I would say one around hiring would be you know, you need to hire an assistant earlier. Like early on. I just recently hired an assistant and I don't know if there's a little bit of like a mental you know, mental block around having an assistant or something and having someone you know... she's literally not just doing my calendar and things like that. She's reading my every single email, she files it, she coordinates it, she responds. And, and she reduces the number of emails that I actually need, me, need myself to look at and answer. Um but there was a little bit of a mental block that I had around hiring an assistant and like "do I need one?" Is that same, you know, I don't know, elitist or something? So I kind of avoided it for, for a while until um, um until I was eventually convinced recently. I'm like "that, that you have to have an assistant."
And it's been amazing! So it really having, you know, finally having an assistant has opened up probably like three hours in my schedule every single day. Um it's a shocking amount of time. So now you know, so that's one thing that I would say to anyone listening is, is you know, would really, really recommend that you do that if you don't. Um even if you have a shared assistant, you know, uh it really helps. But give them access to your email because it is a game changer. You don't have to sit there all day waiting for you know, for you feeling like you're in your inbox and you're just like living your life focused on "what's the next email that comes in."
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. I think part of the problem also is delegating what you want them to do. Uh you know, I have an assistant as well and sometimes you know, you want to sort of control the, the day, the week, the quarter, the month, whatever it is. And you know, you work much better as a team when you delegate and let others support and help what you're trying to get done. But you know, there's no one there to tell you what you should and shouldn't be doing, what you should let others do for you. What's worked for you?
Heather Udo: Oh my gosh, um yeah. I mean part of... there's a couple things. Part of it is yeah, you have to get used to not having control. Um I mean in like, my days are so much better scheduled because one person is like fitting them all together. Uh you know, that I'll have... and maybe some people don't want this... but on some days I'll have 10 meetings and but I'll be like, "Oh my gosh, I cannot believe how productive the day was," because of the way that she was able to schedule it in.
And then as far as like the other part of your, your question of um you know "what's, what's worked well" um, um... also before I hired her what I did was uh essentially just opened up a Word doc or a Notes thing on the side of my computer. And every time I did something for about a week, every time I did something that I felt like "Okay, the CEO of the company should not be doing this. Like this is not a good use of my time," I wrote it in that, that spread- or in that, that doc. So over like about a week, and I had so much stuff in there that I couldn't believe. And I'm like, "Okay, this, these are the things." So I used that to create a playbook for her for when she started, plus giving her email and calendar responsibilities. But um that really helped because it made me I think just a lot more aware of my, what I was spending time on.
And time gets away from all of us so quickly. Like you think "Oh, it's just going to take me one minute to do this." And even after I hired her, when I had that thought, like, "Oh, it'll just be easier if I do it," or "I can do this in 2 minutes," or "it's going to take me 15 to train." It's like "No, you need to teach the person to fish," right? So like "No, no, no, I have to stop myself every time, no matter how easy it is. If it's easier for me to do it than her, that's, that's fine. But I'm going to show her how to do it." So that works well. And then using something like Loom so that you can um basically record whatever it is you're doing for training, and then f- they file it in a playbook so they can come back and watch it anytime they need to relearn whatever a certain task was. That has worked really, really well too.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Yeah, we do the same and you know, it's the training the person to, to teach them what you want them to do and collaborate with you is sometimes yeah, you think "Is the investment worth the time now? I can just get this done really fast." And then those 30 things that only take a minute end up taking half your day. And there you go, there is the value you're not giving the other person. Um so that, that makes a ton of sense. Um you mentioned Revlon and you know look, that's a big company, it's a great company. Getting your foot in the door must have been tough and getting your foot in the door for many big companies is probably tough. What's a strategy you used um to get in the door that helped you maybe with them or other relationships that you can share?
Heather Udo: Yeah, one uh one strategy that worked really well for us was creating an advisory board um that had key you know, key individuals with, with different specialties. So at Shoppable we need to have a lot of large retail partners. We need to have publishers. We need the advertisers. There's a lot of kind of moving pieces. So as I mentioned, one of the reasons of moving to New York was we had to get all these partnerships in place. So I, you essentially established Shoppable's Advisory Board and reached out to key individuals that were influential, had great networks within the different spaces that I needed to, to get into. Um and was able to get in touch with them, pitch them on the idea, get them excited about it, and then obviously um get them involved.
And that has worked so well to set up meetings with you know all the major publishers. I mean we ended up launching the technology with the Wall Street Journal. So most people you know, would not, would not launch for the first time with, with a you know, a company of, of the caliber of the Wall Street Journal. But we were super lucky. And part of that was um you know, cool technology, but, but a lot of it is you know, being able to, to, to have those relationships with the right people that can make that introduction. And that warm int- introduction say like "Look, this is the technology that you need, this is worth your time." And then come and sit in those meetings and, and help. So that's a strategy that worked really, really well for, for us in getting these super important relationships.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. How big uh did you build the advisory board to, and then what's in it for the adviser?
Heather Udo: Yeah. Uh I think we had maybe up to eight people or so. Um kind of changed a little bit over um over time here and there. Um but usually, usually structured around equity. Um in some cases they're also investors or other things too, but um but yeah, typically equity based.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: And what was the experience for Wall Street Journal? What did you do specifically for them with your technology out of the gate?
Heather Udo: We launched a holiday gift guide. Uh so they uh they wanted to create a luxury gift guide with a variety of products coming from um various retailers. I think we had Neiman Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue and um some cool tech from Best Buy. But they curated uh this kind of luxury gift guide within WSJ.com based around who their readers were. And you could, could shop all those products and from a single checkout directly on WSJ.com.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. What's the business model? You have multiple different parts to the business. You got companies that are selling products, retailers, publishers. How does it work for Shoppable?
Heather Udo: Yeah, so on the retail, the retailer side, for retailers integrating into Shoppable and integrating their product catalog, we don't charge them anything. Um so completely free for them to integrate. Uh our model is SaaS with companies that want to license the technology. So software as a service for whether it's a consumer package good company or it's an ad tech platform or a publisher wanting to license the technology to make their site or app or platform shoppable, they tend to pay an annual um uh SaaS license fee to us. Um that's the, the typical structure.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: So uh let's take my company for example, Match Relevant. We're a services company, but say I wanted to sell this shirt. And uh we don't have a, you know, a Shopify account, we're not an e-commerce company, but you know what, look, we got listeners, we want to give stuff away, we want them to be able to buy stuff too. Could I take a buy button, a shoppable buy button, put it on our website and have someone click that? I don't have any inventory, I gotta actually make the shirts when people want to buy them. And once that happens, would I get an alert or something that would say "Look, this person is interested in that shirt in this size," and then from there I would go make the shirt, send it to them, I'd pay you a fee for the SaaS platform, but ultimately provide a solution for e-commerce for, for a brand.
Heather Udo: Yeah. We would... so we would be... Shoppable would be able to be the buy button and the checkout that you could embed directly on your current, your, your current site. And then we'd work with one of our, our partners that would handle the... we don't actually do the fulfillment ourselves, but we'd work with one of our partners that would, would handle that production or fulfillment.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. I love the business model. How big is the market?
Heather Udo: Uh the, the, the overall market, I mean we, we kind of consider... we essentially kind of consider the affiliate marketing space uh the, the market because in a lot of cases that's you know that's part of the starting point. But we're also, we're kind of in an interesting place because we have kind of started within that affiliate marketing space replacing a lot of kind of old affiliate type of technologies. Um and then you know now it's, it's so funny because I, the, the market is kind of coming together from a lot of different places because you also have um you know, you also have retail media and you have commerce media and you have um CTV. So we're, we're really kind of in the, the middle of a lot of different pieces. So it's kind of hard for us to have like... we don't really have one specific one and again that's, that's our vision, is to, to be the shoppable layer across any of these forms of digital content. So it's, it's a pretty, pretty big market.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. So I, I want to just go back to... you talked about Revlon. Um when you got your foot in the door with Revlon, who were you selling to? Who, who's the buyer on the side when you're trying to get into a CPG company?
Heather Udo: Yeah, well I could, it's, I couldn't remember specifically with Revlon who um you know, with that particular example, but yeah. We usually sell to um it can be uh like an uh innovation team. It can be uh usually the marketing team. Uh sometimes it's a brand manager. It, it kind of depends on the, the company, but we tend to send it directly to um you know, to the brand um versus you know through other agencies and things.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Got it. For the listeners, give us some big logos of companies you've worked with so they might not even know they're using your technology but you're embedded in these companies.
Heather Udo: Yeah. I mean we've, we've done experiences with... we mentioned the Wall Street Journal, with uh Walmart, with um Martha Stewart, with um Best Buy. A, a lot of, a lot of really big, big companies, big brand, big box companies.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow. I'm sure I'm somewhere in your database of purchasing something from Best Buy. Um great, so um okay, this has been really informative to kind of learn. Um you know we hear all the time that you know it's not always um the founder that makes the company, but it's the people around them that do. How do you filter for talent to ensure you get it right when you're, when you're hiring people not just locally but also remotely? How do we get it right?
Heather Udo: I mean I think it's, I think it's so important to get it, to, to, to get it right. I think you have to um, I think you have to spend, you have to spend enough time with the individuals. And I think it's important to, like in that, that time, um I think especially at the like the, the higher end kind of executive levels, of having um multiple meetings even with the executive team with, with that person that, that you're hiring. Because you can, different um... what am I trying to say? Can we ask this again?
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No problems. Um go ahead... Here, we hear all the time it's not just the founders that make a company great, but the people they decide to hire. How do you filter for talent to ensure you get it right?
Heather Udo: Yeah, I think the, the filtering process is really important and part of it is really uh involving in your team and creating the space for your team to give honest feedback on the candidates. And um you know, I'll give you, I'll, I'll give you a quick story if I can. Um one um... there's one individual I'm going to go back to the last company, the startup I was at. And um the, the founder there had told us that, um the founder there had told us that we should provide feedback on any of the candidates that they were interviewing. And at the time I was the most junior person at the company. So you know, take that with, with what, what you want for this story. Um and they hired someone who was going to be my boss. And I interviewed with, with him and I think I was one of the last people to interview him. And I asked him what, like I think I asked him what how he planned, like what he, how he planned to start the first week. Um and what he was most excited about, or something along those lines.
And he you know looked at me and was like, "I, I, I don't you know, I don't know yet. I haven't really thought about it." And he was so like, and I think he just was so casual with me because, because I, I was going to be a, an indirect report. And um you know, and I was super junior so he didn't really think about it. So I shared you know, shared that back with the, with the executive team at the time and said, "I just don't think he's the right person. Like this is a big role and if he hasn't really thought about it..." And they you know took what I said and they considered and they said, "Oh, well we appreciate that but we disagree." They hired him and then I think 30 uh, about 30 days later they um let him go and it was, it was not a fit.
And they said that was their lesson learned, that they you know uh really needed to listen to everybody on the team and really consider that. And they said he just, he didn't have a plan. So it was exactly what I told them. So I took that you know, as another lesson learned with me for, for hiring. And making sure that I ask the, the whole team. Including... a lot of people will say this... but you know, including asking your assistant or someone that maybe might not officially be part of the interview process, but you want to know what kind of person you're working with and how they're treating everybody. And are they taking their direct reports seriously? You know, those types of things. So that was very val-, valuable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, that's great. I think it's always important to get different opinions uh in the interview process. You're going to get different answers and you know, you'll find out something that maybe one person won't know until you get together and huddle and, and, and kind of do a debrief. But I think that's great advice. You know, being an entrepreneur is um not always uh you know shared with many people around you. It can be a lonely journey. How do you continue to invest in your personal and professional development as you continue to build your company?
Heather Udo: Oh, I love this question. So for me, I have found um... co- like found a business coach that has really, really helped. Um and I think that as you know entrepreneurs, you know, you know, depending upon where you are in your career, but all entrepreneurs you're growing with your company. And as you are going from one stage to the next, you have new things that you need to learn. So I think it's really important that you invest in um your, your skills. So I've you know, I've worked, hired a, a business coach that specifically works with other entrepreneurs that are at our stage and have you know similar challenges, similar goals. And that really helps me be a better leader. It helps me understand how to um invest in um my team and in our leaders and helping them coach their team. And uh that's just really been super, super valuable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Yeah, I'm a huge believer in coaching too. And we, I have a coach and our, we just had a coaching session this morning for our whole team you know, about little things that make a big difference. And you don't always think about the tactical stuff when you're talking strategy, or if you're you know looking at tactical things, you have to think of you know, working on the business not in the business. And some of the things that we don't always know, so I think that's great. Um you know, personally are there any books, podcasts, or resources that have had a significant impact on you as an entrepreneur in your journey?
Heather Udo: Yeah, I would say early, there's, I mean there's so many. But if I just pull out two off the top of my head, I would say um, Never Eat Alone with, by Keith Ferrazzi was one I read many years ago. And um you know, just some really good kind of um ways to think about building relationships with, with people and helping other people, and how to uh create deeper connections with um uh with, with people. And that really has helped a lot um in the business. And then more recently um, uh Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell. Uh one of the best business books I've read in a long time. And really, really tactical advice including you know on the importance of getting an assistant. So part of the contributor to me finally deciding that I need to, to hire that position and, and move with that. But there's a lot of really, really great um tactical advice in that book too.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Really cool. Yeah and it's, I think also just learning in general. When you stop learning, you stop leading. And you know, having ideas that aren't always coming from yourself but others can be really beneficial, not just for you but for your team. So I think that's, that's great. Um I'm going to switch gears here. Now we're going to ask three questions. It's just simply that, three questions with three simple answers. Where do you go to think big or to brainstorm?
Heather Udo: In the summer I go up to our rooftop because it's like where I'm... in New York, so, so one place you can kind of see further away so it helps you to visually adjust your eyes and your mind. So that's kind of my, my, my favorite place I would say.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. I used to do the same out in New York and you know, there's nothing better than rooftops when you're there. You see so many things that you typically don't see walking on the streets there. What um... it's a different perspective for sure. No doubt, no doubt. What activity helps you come up with ideas um that make you maybe think differently or, or, or better when you're sitting in the office and kind of stuck on a topic?
Heather Udo: Yeah I would say there's, there's two that come to mind for that. One I would say going to um whether it's going to like a founder's lunch or a mastermind or something like that where you're surrounded by um other executives or entrepreneurs, and you know, especially if they're in, they have different business, businesses. Sometimes I find that's where you get, I get a lot of great ideas is by hearing how other businesses operate completely different from yours, and how they solve different problems. And I can think about how, "Okay, that starts kind of creating this like creative spiral about like, okay, that's interesting, maybe we wonder if we could do it this way." So that's really um one thing that helps. And then reading. I mean, there's um we talked a little bit about a couple different books, but um it just really changes your mindset and opens you know, opens up your um, um your vision and um creates space for obviously new information, new skills. But that, that always just uh, that's really helpful for, for, for me as well.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: That's great. Last one. What works for you in staying positive when the business is going through its ups and downs?
Heather Udo: I think staying um, I think staying focused on the vision and um staying focused on the larger goals. And that when you sp- especially when you have you know been in uh been an entrepreneur for, for a long time, you realize that a bad day or a bump is just that, it's a bad day, it's a bump. Some of them are really, really bad, some of them are you know, bad but not quite as bad, some of them are really high, right. You're going to have those, those levels. But I think having you know the ability to know that you can always get over it and that it is like when you zoom out, you know um, it's just like a speck and on, on the time, timeline of everything else that, that you're putting together. So try not to, to let anything um get you down.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: I love that. Well as we wrap up here um, we look into 2024, we're not too far away, what's on the road map for Shoppable? What are you excited about?
Heather Udo: Yeah we're really excited about a couple different things right now. First I would say our um new API suite. So um earlier this, this year we launched into beta Checkout API. And, and this is really cool because it is um first and foremost it finally allows the ability for um various ad tech companies and commerce media to enable in-ad shopping. So where you can actually complete a purchase directly within an ad, directly within content. And it can be done so in a truly white label experience for that advertiser. So this Checkout API is really cool, but what we're, we've launched, it's, it's kind of an extra special piece of it, is the ability for Shoppable to retain PCI compliance for our customers. Um so for anyone who, who's listening that doesn't, isn't familiar with, with PCI, it's essentially um you know the security um board and regulations um and um sets the regulations from the, the credit card industry. So anyway, so uh big companies that, that anyone that touches credit cards has to be PCI compliant and a lot of big companies want to avoid that. So Shoppable is PCI compliant. We have been for many, many years. But it allows uh this new API that we have allows us to keep that PCI compliance so that our customers don't have to, but they can still utilize the Checkout API. So that's really cool.
And then the second thing I'll just mention really quickly is that we um have started expanding globally. So now you know we can make anything shoppable anywhere in the world, and in 2024 we'll be doing a lot more international so you, you'll be seeing that come.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Wow, that is exciting. You can travel and use your platform and enjoy wherever, wherever you're at. Riviera Mexico, wherever. I love it, sounds fantastic. Great. Well if anybody wanted to find you or find Shoppable to learn more about it, where would they go?
Heather Udo: Yeah, Instagram is probably best. I'm um @heathermarieudo and Shoppable is @shoppable.
Jake Aaron Villarreal: Great. Well there you have it. Um Heather, thanks so much for coming on and joining us. Appreciate your time and to all of our listeners for listening, it means the world to us that you've chosen to be with us today. Um my name is Jake Aaron Villarreal and signing out for now, but can't wait to catch up with you all in the next episode. Until then, take care.
Before we wrap up, I want to give a big shout out to all the entrepreneurs that have joined to make this podcast possible. And for all the listeners for listening, it means the world to me that you chose to spend your time with us today. I'm your host, Jake Aaron Villarreal, signing off for now. We can't wait to connect with you all soon on the next episode. Take care.
This show is sponsored by Match Relevant, a company that helps venture-backed startups find the best people in the market. And they do it in three simple steps. First, they sit down with founders to understand their story. Second, they tell their story into multiple candidate channels. And third, they schedule interviews within 48 hours. Find us at matchrelevant.com to learn more about how we do it.
.jpg)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
.webp)
