Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic

CEO and co-founder of GP at TweenerFund, Podcast host on Just launched substack and pod

[signüll @signulll]

happy birthday america.

the greatest place ever invented.

i’ll spare the cliche immigrant story or whatever but one thing i think about a lot is when i moved to london ppl would basically always tell me to tone it down (cuz i used words like awesome all the time) or ppl told me i was too optimistic or that would always be enthusiastic about something working. i had hard time doing this cuz i never learned any of this behavior, it was sorta just built into me. i found that to be strange & it took me a long time to realize they they were correcting all of my priors instead of simply correcting my vocab.

that’s kinda the thing that is hard to explain until you leave. what makes this place so damn unique is ppl here are unusually willing to have an absurd dream & then attempt to make it real. it’s the greatest concentration of individuals on the planet who actually try to make stuff *real*. that instinct feels almost pre programmed into americans. “why not me?” is prolly the macro that separates this country from anywhere else.

ppl love comparing here to other places using metrics like healthcare, trains, safety, etc. those things matter. but they are the outputs not inputs. the inputs matter way more. kinda like sports leagues trying to create the next generation of stars by investing in little league. the macro inputs of america are the belief that the future is not something that happens to you, but something you are allowed to build or change.

& here, far more than anywhere else on earth requires almost zero permission to attempt it all.. without asking for any sort of cultural consent. that’s why all of the shit you see around the world is basically invented in america.

what an astonishingly ridiculous beautiful country.

[harrypark @harrypark]

@scotwingo thanks for the @TweenerFund Q2 meeting, great chance to connect with #rdu startups. made some great connections with investors too

[Alexander Ringsdorff @ringsdorff]

This week, @kaithomaskrause and I stepped onto the K5 - Future Retail stage for the first time to tell the story behind @ShopAgentic , at a conference that brought together more than 5,000 retail leaders and innovators.

Before our session, @jkrisch interviewed us about how we got here, from building together more than 15 years ago, to CouchCommerce, NewStore, and why we believe agentic commerce is the next major shift in retail.

It was special to finally share our thinking with so many people from the industry we've been part of for so long.
A huge thank you to everyone who joined the session and continued the conversations afterward. And congrats to Paul for running such a well received retail AI track.

If you're curious about the longer story behind ShopAgentic and why we're building it, we recently shared it on the @retailgentic podcast with @scotwingo. Our K5 interview and keynote will be available as video soon.

Excited for what's ahead 🚀

#INTOACTION #K5 #AgenticCommerce #Retail #Ecommerce

[ShopAgentic @ShopAgentic]

We have something for you to watch on the weekend. Our co-founders @ringsdorff and @kaithomaskrause were invited to join @scotwingo on @retailgentic for an exclusive talk about the founding story of ShopAgentic and our €1.9M pre-seed round by @greenfield_cap and May Ventures:

https://t.co/d8YxpU3GD3

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

💯

[Vivek Sen @Vivek4real_]

LARRY ELLISON: AI IS RAPIDLY COMMODITIZING BECAUSE MOST MODELS ARE TRAINED ON THE SAME PUBLIC INTERNET DATA.

THE REAL COMPETITIVE EDGE ISN’T THE MODEL ANYMORE — IT’S ACCESS TO EXCLUSIVE, PROPRIETARY DATASETS.

THAT MAY BE THE ONLY MOAT LEFT.

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Facts

[signüll @signulll]

believing in something early is effectively learning to tolerate being alone in a position long enough for the world to catch up, if it ever does.

if you do this over & over again, you can imagine why sustaining this is difficult as hell.

[Follow RetailRazor🏷 on Bluesky @RetailRazor]

@scotwingo @ricardo_belmar @caseycgolden @ReFiBuyAI @retailgentic Listen or watch on Spotify → https://t.co/NEgL3GdjxP

@ReFiBuyAI @retailgentic #retail #agenticcommerce

[Jackson Blackledge @blvckledge]

this is genuinely one of the biggest shifts in google ads i've seen in 6 years

and a lot of accounts aren't going to be ready for it

sharing my opinions on how it’s going to affect ecom, how we’re planning for it, and what to do if you want to get ahead

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Google going all-in on Agentic Commerce @shoptalk - this is an e-billboard takeover in the walkway on way to show… 👀👇

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Don’t sleep on the power of @openclaw ! I had to go out of town and I saw there were two new podcasts recorded and my email backlog was cleared. We got a fun lobster inflatable for our first OpenClaw meetup in Raleigh and it basically took over my job…

Meetup details: https://t.co/Oy2bMhSifX

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Big amazon Agentic Commerce news today! https://t.co/QVykZNoQnp

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

🦞🦞Triangle people! @NCTweener and @ReFiBuyAI are co-hosting an OpenClaw Meetup!

Details->

https://t.co/qbjnBx7K09

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

💯

[signüll @signulll]

the most underrated hire right now is a great product person.

when i say product person i'm def not talking about a product manager. perhaps i think there has to be somewhat of a new role. i don't have a good name for it yet but maybe something like "product thinker".. someone with an intuitive grasp of the product as it exists, where it's soft, where it sings, & how to iterate it toward something even sharper. in some sense, this person has to cohesively hold in their head where this product should be 2 years from now & work backwards from that.

i say this cuz when building was hard, engineering was the bottleneck & the status hierarchy often reflected that. building is no longer hard. which means the variance in outcomes has shifted almost entirely to judgment on what to build, how to sequence it, & how to talk about it.

& the story matters as much as the thing. internally, it organizes the team around a shared model of why. externally, it shapes the interpretive frame users bring to their first experience. you can't retrofit narrative onto a product & expect it to land, it has to be load bearing from the start.

the rarest version of this person sits at the intersection of culture & deep technology. someone genuinely bilingual. they know what's technically possible & they know which cultural currents are real vs. ephemeral. that combo is what separates products that feel inevitable from products that feel assembled.

before ppl clap back with this person has always been valuable, i know.. i am just saying now they might be the most *important* person in the room. their value compounds like never before.

[🚨 AI News | TestingCatalog @testingcatalog]

BREAKING 🚨: Meta is testing AI shopping features internally in the US on Meta AI.

With this move, Meta will enter the AI-commerce competition with OpenAI & Microsoft, Google, and Perplexity.

[Practical Ecommerce @PracticalEcomm]

"Ask an Expert: Should Merchants Block AI Bots?" | #Ecommerce sellers face unprecedented traffic and acquisition challenges. ReFiBuy's @ScotWingo advises on bot access, product attributes, contextual info, more. https://t.co/W5mYeEwFL1 #genai

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Thanks again @BonnerGaylord !!

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

well @BonnerGaylord has done it again @ITBInsider - #ITBWeatherDomeUndefeated! Thanks Bonner, not all heroes wear capes!

[Scot Wingo, CEO ReFiBuy.ai, Poding at Retailgentic @scotwingo]

Microsoft's Agentic Commerce entry: Copilot Checkout is live today - we have a deep dive demo:

[Rihard Jarc @RihardJarc]

$GOOGL partnering with retailers $SHOP, $ETSY, $W, $TGT, and $WMT to create the Universal Commerce Protocol for AI agents.

$GOOGL also shared a chart of GCP Vertex AI token consumptions for Retail clients. It went from 8.3T a year ago to +90T (11x YoY) in December. But looking closely, the biggest accelerator of the curve is happening right NOW at the end of Q425.

$GOOGL Gemini 3 numbers about to crush it.

Also interesting looking at the 90T token consumption for December. If we assume most of it is Gemini 3 flash, revenue ranges from $90M to $270M. Meaning Gemini 3 API usage with Retail clients only is a $1B-$3B ARR business for GCP, growing at 11x YoY. Crazy.