Mike Eli

on the road to $1m/mo

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@abdushodmonov @briannjho Only winners are the consumers paying $0 🥶

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@DavisPaipa How should we optimize for this?

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom @robj3d3 I can’t disagree. 😂 looking to visit HK soon.

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@frydwia Genuine question as a user of Viktor: what would you say the moat is when using Viktor vs. a business building their own Hermes agent within the context of Slack?

I’ve been enjoying the product - kudos to you and the team!

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom @robj3d3 Have you been to Singapore? How would you compare both Asian tigers?

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

Anyone's cracked static / native ads (on Meta) to VSLs?

[Startup Archive @StartupArchive_]

Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke explains Goodhart’s law and why he doesn’t like KPIs or OKRs

“Goodhart’s law is real. The moment a metric becomes a goal, it’s no longer a useful metric… No metric by itself is a complete heuristic for a complex business. There’s a million different tensions in a company, and you can’t keep all of them in harmony by optimizing for one thing.”

For this reason, Shopify doesn’t use KPIs or OKRs. But as Tobi explains, this doesn’t mean they don’t value data and metrics.

“We are extremely data informed. We have invested enormous amounts of money and time into systems that give us basically everything at our fingertips… But what Shopify attempts to do is just not over-fit for what’s quantifiable.”

People love optimizing for highly-quantifiable things because there’s immediate gratification that comes from seeing a number go up. But Tobi thinks that the most important aspects of a product are rarely quantifiable:

“The overlap of the most valuable things you can do with a product and the things that happen to be fully quantifiable are like maybe 20%. Which leaves 80% of a value space unaddressable by the people who only look at quantifiable things.”

He continues:

“Shopify is comfortable with unquantifiable things like taste, quality, passion, love, hate… The sort of deep satisfaction that a craftsperson feels when they’ve done a job well is actually a better proxy if you allow it to be.”

They then have robust analytics systems that tell the company if something’s wrong or a new rollout breaks something.

“We think about it as a cockpit for a pilot. The decisions are still made by pilots, and we think this leads to better results… I think there needs to be more acceptance in business of unquantifiable things… And then metrics take a support function.”

Source: @lennysan (Feb 2025)

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@niakjaw Hahahaha amazing 😂

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom @MentorPass Is he technical? What kind of dev does one look for here?

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@victorcardenas This ad is amazing.

Also love slash!

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@ecommilan Prompt

[Colin Dougherty @colindougherty]

"You're not winning a subscription box war with Butcher Box—they do $600M/yr."

So @chrisorzy did the opposite for ranchers:

Whole cow for $7,000.
Cold traffic on Facebook.
FREE freezer included.

"The CAC didn't scale with the cost of the product. I recognized this. No one else did."

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom Is ShopPay worth the incrementality?

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

CPG / D2C having its moment.

Late 2024 I was chatting with an advisor that this time would come, considering how disruptive AI is to software/tech.

AI makes running a consumer brand easier but at the same time can’t disrupt physical products…

Going to see more activity incoming. 👀

[CPG WIRE @cpgwire]

Unilever is acquiring fast-growing VMS brand Grüns for an undisclosed sum.

Founded in 2023 by Chad Janis, Grüns has become one of the largest brands in the U.S. Greens Supplement category. The company has also expanded into new categories like immunity, children’s nutrition, and pre-workout supplements. Grüns reached a $500M valuation 11 months ago.

Investors in Grüns include Headline, Selva Ventures, Vanterra Ventures, Sugar Capital, and others.

Unilever recently divested its massive food division in order to focus on beauty, wellness, and personal care.

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@samanizadiyar @RomanEcom What’s their price range? Looks decent if they can do real time accounting

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

Alpha in eCom is scrolling X and bookmarking posts 😂

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom Hey @RomanEcom - how do we apply to join?

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@niakjaw Over-index on learning creatives. Account structure is secondary.

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@RomanEcom @Peak21_ How do we get tickets? @RomanEcom

[Mike Eli @ItsMikeEli]

@larasupplychain Interested!