DTC Podcast

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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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Charlie Cole watched FTD go from a $1.8 billion publicly traded company to a $60 million bankruptcy auction in eight months. His first day as CEO was March 23, 2020, the first day of national lockdown.

Before that he ran digital at Tumi, Samsonite, Lucky Brand, and Shift Nutrition. Today he's interim Chief Digital Officer at Thuma.

This episode is a tactical sit-down on what actually drives growth right now in a Meta + AI world.

In this episode:
Why "creative is the new targeting" is only half the answer
The exact death spiral most DTC brands follow on the way to margin collapse (no sale, semi-annual sale, sale page, sitewide 20%, Amazon, done)
How Charlie engineered personas at FTD across customer, consumer, and event
The florist's choice insight: highest NPS in the category, by 20-40%
The 2011 Dr. Oz campaign that nailed funnel congruency before anyone called it that
Why personalization was a misnomer until about two years ago
The three "swimsuit for vacation" shoppers who should never see the same page
Why YouTube is still massively underutilized, and why most brands run it wrong
The product question that decides whether any of this matters

Who it's for: DTC founders and operators scaling from $10M to $250M who want to grow without turning their brand into a discount machine.

What to steal:
Build acquisition around your highest-LTV segments, not your lowest CAC
Treat creative and landing pages as one system, not two teams
Stop letting platforms grade their own homework on attribution
Audit where you sit on the discount death spiral before it owns you

Timestamps:
0:00 Career Journey Into Ecommerce
2:48 Inside the FTD Turnaround
14:20 How Customer Behavior Changed During COVID
23:18 Creative Is The New Targeting
36:05 AI’s Biggest Ecommerce Unlock
43:02 Why Most Brands Test Creative Wrong

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Braydon's back on AKNF with the most tactical AI-for-agencies episode we've recorded.

Eric opens with a Jeff Shannon line worth the whole listen: AI right now is a giant stack of two-by-fours that everyone got handed for free. By itself, it's not a chair, it's not a house, it's not a sofa. The value shows up when someone actually builds something with it.

Then Braydon walks through what he's been building.

Inside: connecting Claude to Motion to audit ad-to-landing-page mismatches, then having Claude vibe-code a new PDP in HTML in 6 hours instead of a week in Instapage. The Microsoft Clarity connector that nobody's talking about (free heatmaps, free recordings, API access). The Higgsfield connector for generating raw 4K assets through Claude with Nano Banana Pro and Seedance. Why Claude Design is worth experimenting with for brand-sensitive clients. And a peek behind the curtain at Gary and Blanche, the AI media buyer and creative strategist Jeff is running on DTC's own Meta account.

Plus: why the em-dash is dead, the semicolon problem nobody's solved, and the actual reason Claude reads cleaner than ChatGPT for enterprise work.

If you've been "playing with AI" and want to actually build something with it, this is the episode.

Catch the DTC and Pilothouse crew at The Whalies May 19 in LA.

Timestamps:
00:00 AI Is Raw Material
02:36 Why AI Needs Human Builders
04:18 Claude Building Landing Pages
10:02 AI-Powered Heatmap Analysis
16:36 Higgsfield + Claude Creative Workflow

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