Blog

Shegun Otulana is founder and CEO of Harmony Venture Labs, the studio behind Frase.io, an AI-driven content and answer-engine optimization platform. A serial SaaS entrepreneur, he previously built Therapy Brands before a 2021 exit. Through Frase he publishes on AI visibility—how brands get measured, tracked, and cited across AI search engines—and on where content optimization is heading.

Ethan Smith is founder and CEO of Graphite, a San Francisco SEO and growth-marketing agency whose clients have included MasterClass, Thumbtack, and Ticketmaster. He is a partner at Reforge and an adjunct marketing professor at IE Business School. Smith publishes data-backed research on AEO, GEO, and AI SEO, arguing that AI search is a far bigger channel than most marketers assume and pressing for clearer, evidence-driven terminology.

Tobias 'Tobi' Lütke is the founder and CEO of Shopify, the commerce platform powering millions of merchants worldwide. A programmer by background, he grew Shopify from an online snowboard shop into core commerce infrastructure, pushing the company toward open APIs, developer tooling, and increasingly AI-driven, agentic commerce. His posts on X shape how operators and builders think about the future of buying and selling online.

Harley Finkelstein is President of Shopify and one of the most visible voices in DTC commerce and entrepreneurship. A lawyer and serial entrepreneur, he champions independent merchants and frequently shares the trends reshaping ecommerce, retail, and AI-era commerce. He speaks widely and hosts conversations with founders and operators about building durable brands.

Kurt Elster is the founder of Ethercycle, a Shopify Plus agency, and host of The Unofficial Shopify Podcast, one of the longest-running shows for Shopify merchants with hundreds of episodes. He advises DTC brands on conversion rate optimization, store design, and growth tactics, translating technical Shopify know-how into practical, repeatable playbooks.

Kelly Vaughn is an engineering leader at Zapier working on AI orchestration, and the founder of The Taproom, a Shopify Plus development agency she built and later sold. She co-hosts Commerce Tea and is a widely followed voice on Shopify development, engineering leadership, and career growth. She frequently speaks and writes for developers and store operators.

Chase Clymer is co-founder of Electric Eye, a Shopify-focused ecommerce agency, and host of Honest Ecommerce, a weekly podcast offering online store owners candid, actionable growth advice. He works with DTC brands on design, development, and marketing built around Shopify, and shares tactics distilled from hundreds of merchant conversations.

Nick Trueman is the host of the Winning With Shopify podcast, which he launched in 2018 to help store owners start, grow and scale on Shopify. He runs a UK-based PPC and SEO agency and has worked in search since the late 2000s, focusing on organic revenue growth for Shopify brands. His weekly episodes interview founders, growth experts and top app makers.

Steve Hutt is the host of eCommerce Fastlane, a top-rated Shopify growth and marketing podcast with hundreds of episodes. Based in Canada, he is a longtime commerce veteran and former Senior Merchant Success Manager at Shopify Plus, and has founded DTC brands of his own. His show focuses on acquisition, conversion, retention and where AI efficiency meets human connection for merchants.

Ezra Firestone is the founder of Smart Marketer, an education brand teaching ecommerce operators to grow through an integrated mix of SEO, paid media, email and conversion optimization. He is a hands-on DTC operator himself, having built and scaled his own consumer brands and app businesses. Through Smart Marketer's courses and YouTube channel he shares full-funnel growth playbooks.

Luke Carthy is a UK-based ecommerce SEO and conversion consultant known for hands-on technical optimization of product pages, on-site search and faceted navigation. He has worked with brands including Caterpillar and Renault and speaks internationally on ecommerce SEO and CRO. On his blog and newsletter he shares real-world case studies and technical SEO insights.

Paul Rogers is the founder and managing director of Vervaunt, a UK ecommerce consultancy and performance-marketing agency focused on replatforming, technology selection and CX auditing for brands like GANNI, Dr Martens and Paul Smith. He has worked in digital commerce since 2008 and co-hosts the Inside Commerce podcast with James Gurd. His work centers on commerce architecture and platform decisions.

James Gurd is the founder of Digital Juggler, an independent ecommerce strategy and replatforming consultancy he launched in 2009. With more than 20 years' experience, he has advised B2C and B2B brands including FatFace, Victoria Beckham, Mars and The Wine Society on platform selection and digital transformation. He co-hosts the Inside Commerce podcast with Paul Rogers.

Steve Chou is the founder of MyWifeQuitHerJob.com and a widely followed ecommerce educator who teaches people how to start and grow online stores. He is also a hands-on operator, running an ecommerce business with his wife, and shares tutorials through his podcast and YouTube channel. His content spans store building, marketing and using new tools including AI for commerce.

Andrew Youderian is the founder of eCommerceFuel, a private community and podcast for established, six-to-eight-figure store owners. A former DTC operator who built and sold his own online businesses, he now runs the community's annual State of the Merchant research and interviews successful operators on his podcast. His work benchmarks what high-performing ecommerce founders are actually doing.

Eric Bandholz is the founder and CEO of Beardbrand, a men's grooming brand he launched in 2012 that grew out of the Urban Beardsman blog and YouTube channel. A former Merrill Lynch financial analyst who appeared on Shark Tank, he is a widely followed voice on building a founder-led, content-driven direct-to-consumer brand. He publishes and speaks candidly about brand storytelling, community, and running an ecommerce business.

Nik Sharma is the founder and CEO of Sharma Brands, a growth advisory known widely as 'The DTC Guy.' He previously led direct-to-consumer efforts at Hint Water and VaynerMedia, and hosts the Limited Supply podcast on ecommerce and brand building. He writes and speaks frequently about performance branding, media buying, and the mechanics of scaling modern consumer brands.

Moiz Ali is the founder of Native, the deodorant brand he scaled to roughly $100M in revenue and sold to Procter & Gamble in 2017. He co-hosts the Limited Supply podcast and is a candid operator voice on scaling consumer brands, unit economics, and exits. He shares scrappy, tactical stories about how he built and grew Native as a bootstrapped DTC brand.

Kristen LaFrance is a direct-to-consumer retention and community expert who previously led Resilient Retail at Shopify and served as Director of Community at Repeat. Known in DTC circles for championing customer retention, CX, and community-led growth, she now advises brands independently. She teaches that turning new buyers into loyal, repeat customers is one of the highest-leverage moves a brand can make.

Kaleigh Moore is a freelance writer and content strategist who has spent over a decade reporting on ecommerce and retail for Forbes, Vogue Business, ADWEEK and others. She now positions herself as a human-led AEO (answer engine optimization) strategist for B2B SaaS, focused on building LLM visibility through subject-matter expertise and content. She writes and teaches about how brands can create content that AI answer engines cite and surface.

Taylor Holiday is the founder and CEO of Common Thread Collective, a remote ecommerce growth agency known for its data-backed approach to direct-to-consumer marketing. A former New York Yankees draft pick turned marketer, he is widely followed for his frameworks on CAC, contribution margin, and forecasting. He writes and speaks frequently about the economics of scaling DTC brands.

Cody Plofker is a direct-to-consumer growth and paid-media operator who scaled Jones Road Beauty as CMO and then CEO before stepping into a board role in 2026 to focus on building funnels and running ads. He is widely followed for practical takes on paid social creative, media buying, and full-funnel demand capture. He shares hands-on tactics for growing DTC brands profitably.

Web Smith is the founder of 2PM, a media company, advisory firm and seed investor that studies where media meets commerce, started as a newsletter in 2016 and now read by hundreds of thousands. He co-founded Mizzen+Main and has advised and invested in numerous DTC brands. He is influential for thrice-weekly essays that blend deep data with historical context to explain how and why people consume.

Matt Hertz is the founder and CEO of Third Person, a matchmaking platform that helps ecommerce brands find the right third-party logistics (3PL) partner. He was an early operations leader at Rent the Runway and Birchbox, and previously ran the fulfillment consultancy Second Marathon, advising brands such as Away, BarkBox, and Milk Bar. He writes and speaks widely about warehousing, fulfillment, and ecommerce supply-chain operations.

Kiri Masters founded the Amazon-focused agency Bobsled Marketing (acquired in 2022) and now leads retail marketplace strategy at Acadia. She is a Forbes contributor on retail marketplaces and co-author of "Amazon for CMOs," and hosts podcasts on the retail media industry. She covers how brands win visibility across Amazon and the fast-growing retail media landscape.

Jason Wong is a DTC entrepreneur and angel investor, founder of the beauty brand Doe Lashes and the holding/venture company Pughaus (Wonghaus Ventures). He has invested in and advised dozens of consumer and ecommerce-tech companies, including Triple Whale and Postscript, and is an active operator voice on social media. He shares hands-on lessons on launching and scaling DTC brands.

Jason Del Rey is a veteran commerce journalist and author of "Winner Sells All: Amazon, Walmart, and the Battle for Our Wallets." After a decade covering Amazon and retail at Recode and a stint at Fortune, he founded The Aisle, an independent publication on the AI era of commerce, and created the "Land of the Giants: The Rise of Amazon" podcast. He reports on the power shifts among Amazon, Walmart, and the retail giants.

Chase Dimond is a partner at the email-marketing agency Structured, which he co-founded after running Boundless Labs, and is credited with driving more than $200M in email-attributable revenue for ecommerce brands. He is a prolific creator and educator on retention, lifecycle, and email/SMS marketing. He publishes playbooks, courses, and newsletters for DTC operators.

Bill D'Alessandro founded and ran Elements Brands, one of the original ecommerce holding companies that bought and scaled digitally native consumer brands before it was acquired. He now leads corporate development at FoodScience and co-hosts the popular "Acquisitions Anonymous" podcast about buying and operating small businesses. He shares an operator's view on acquiring, financing, and scaling DTC and CPG brands.

Aaron Orendorff is a content strategist and founder of iconiContent, and the former Editor-in-Chief of Shopify Plus and VP of Marketing at Common Thread Collective. His writing on ecommerce and DTC has appeared in The New York Times, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, and Mashable. He specializes in long-form, editorial content strategy for commerce brands.

Alex (Alexandra) Greifeld is the ecommerce operator and writer behind No Best Practices, a widely read newsletter on DTC growth strategy, and the fashion-focused "DTC Fashion Decoded." With 15 years in fashion ecommerce at brands like Coach, Kate Spade, and Bonobos, she consults on acquisition and retention for brands including Jones Road Beauty and Larroudé. She writes candid, data-driven takes on channels, email, and revenue attribution.

Drew Sanocki is the founder and executive chairman of PostPilot, the direct-mail platform built for DTC and ecommerce brands, which he co-founded with Michael Epstein. A multi-exit operator and investor with 20+ years in ecommerce, he has long published practical retention marketing under the 'Nerd Marketing' banner. His work centers on lifecycle marketing, customer retention, and full-funnel discovery for online stores.

Rabah Rahil is a DTC marketing leader who served as CMO and then chief evangelist at ecommerce analytics platform Triple Whale, and later as CMO at FERMÀT. He is known as a leading voice on attribution, measurement, and profitable media buying for online brands, and remains an investor and partner in Triple Whale. He publishes widely on ecommerce data, analytics, and growth.

Eli Weiss is VP of Retention Advocacy at Yotpo, drawing on brand-side experience leading customer experience and retention at Jones Road Beauty and OLIPOP. He writes a weekly newsletter read by tens of thousands of operators on brand building, customer relationships, and sustainable growth. His focus is treating CX and post-purchase communication as core retention and LTV drivers.

Andrew Faris runs AJF Growth and hosts The Andrew Faris Podcast, sharing tactical, candid ecommerce growth strategy. He has grown DTC brands since 2014 as a media buyer, head of strategy at Common Thread Collective, and CEO of the DTC aggregator 4x400. His perspective centers on profitability and unit economics as the foundation of sustainable growth.

Carl Weische is the founder and CEO of ACCELERATED, a conversion-rate-optimization agency he bootstrapped to run CRO for 8-, 9-, and 10-figure DTC brands such as AG1, Huel, and The Oodie. He also built Conversion.io, spun out of the agency to run AI-powered conversion optimization at scale. He publishes actively on landing pages, AOV, and conversion strategy for ecommerce.

David Herrmann is the president and founder of Herrmann Digital, a paid-media agency specializing in social advertising across Meta, Pinterest, and Snapchat for DTC brands. Widely regarded as a media buyer's media buyer, he is known for candid takes on creative, CAC, and acquisition. He shares paid-media learnings that help brands understand where real demand comes from.

Davie Fogarty is an Australian entrepreneur best known as the founder of DTC loungewear brand The Oodie, which he grew into a multi-hundred-million-dollar business, and of The Davie Group, which oversees several consumer brands. He appears as an investor on Shark Tank Australia and teaches ecommerce operators through Daily Mentor. His YouTube channel documents practical lessons on building and scaling online brands.

Sarah Levinger is a psychology-based creative strategist and Forbes-featured consumer behavior analyst who helps DTC brands like HexClad, True Classic, and Fabletics lift paid-advertising ROI through emotionally resonant creative. She heads Tether Insights, applying behavioral science and psychographic research to ad creative. Her work translates subconscious decision-making—anchoring, loss aversion, emotional resonance—into higher-performing campaigns.

Dara Denney is a performance-creative strategist and Chief Evangelist at Motion, where she teaches brands how to test and scale Meta and TikTok ad creative. She previously led performance marketing at Thesis, managing over $100M in ad spend, and now runs her own creative consultancy and a 100K-subscriber YouTube channel focused on DTC ad creative.

Savannah Sanchez is the founder of The Social Savannah, a paid-social creative agency that produces high-volume UGC ad creative for leading DTC brands. A badged TikTok Marketing Partner and Meta Business Partner, she is known for an industrial, checklist-driven approach to shipping hundreds of TikTok and Meta ads per week.

Gretta van Riel is a Melbourne-based serial entrepreneur and Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree who has built multiple seven-figure DTC brands, including SkinnyMe Tea and The 5th watches. She is known for influencer-led launch strategies and teaches ecommerce founders through Foundr's Start & Scale course.

Sujan Sarkar is the co-founder of OneLittleWeb, an SEO agency he launched in 2018 that has worked with over a thousand businesses on data-driven organic growth, digital PR, and authority link building. He specializes in SaaS and B2B SEO and increasingly publishes on AI-powered search visibility.

Jason Hennessey is the founder and CEO of Hennessey Digital, an agency specializing in SEO for law firms and service businesses, and author of the book "Law Firm SEO." He is a widely cited SEO educator and speaker with a strong focus on local and legal search.

AJ Ghergich is the Global VP of Consulting Services at Botify, where he leads senior search consultants helping enterprise brands adapt to the changing search and AI landscape. A 20-year SEO and content veteran who founded the Ghergich & Co agency, he is a frequent enterprise-SEO speaker and holds the @SEO handle on X.

Loren Baker is the founder of Search Engine Journal, which he started in 2003 and which became one of the industry's leading SEO news publications before its acquisition by Alpha Brand Media. He now serves as an advisor to SEJ and co-founded the digital strategy agency Foundation Digital.

Eric Siu is the CEO of digital marketing agency Single Grain and host of the Leveling Up podcast, as well as co-host of the Marketing School podcast with Neil Patel. He is a prominent growth-marketing voice with a large YouTube and podcast following covering SEO, content, and AI-driven marketing.

Nathan Gotch is a US-based SEO trainer, founder of Gotch SEO and Gotch SEO Academy, and co-founder and CEO of the SEO content tool Rankability. He teaches practical, fundamentals-first frameworks for content, topical authority, and increasingly AI search, and reaches a large audience through his YouTube channel and courses.

Kyle Roof is co-founder and lead SEO at the international agency High Voltage SEO and the inventor of the on-page tool PageOptimizer Pro. He is best known for scientific SEO testing, developing a patented method (US Patent 10,540,263 B1) for isolating single variables as ranking factors, and co-founds and teaches at Internet Marketing Gold.

Suganthan Mohanadasan is a technical SEO consultant with more than 20 years of experience, co-founder and technical SEO lead at the UK-based agency Snippet Digital, and co-creator of the AI content platform Keyword Insights. He specialises in structured data and scalable search architecture, writes for outlets like Search Engine Journal, and builds open-source MCP servers and tools that feed real SEO data into AI systems.

Glen Allsopp, long known online as ViperChill, is the founder of the SEO research publication Detailed, which was acquired by Ahrefs, where he now works on marketing and product. He is best known for in-depth research into how large brands and parent companies dominate Google's results, and for competitive SERP and authority-site analysis.

Kasra Dash is a UK-based SEO consultant, strategist, speaker and educator specialising in Google-update recovery, affiliate SEO, and topical authority. Through kasradash.com and his YouTube channel he publishes practitioner roundups and commentary on GEO, AI Overviews, and the wider SEO landscape.

Fery Kaszoni is the founder and CEO of Search Intelligence, a UK-based digital PR agency he started in 2014 and scaled into a global operation serving 150+ clients. A former full-stack developer, he is one of the UK's most visible voices in digital PR, known for data-driven, reactive, and expert-commentary campaigns that earn media coverage and authoritative links.

Leo Soulas is the founder of Keyword Cupid and co-founder of Signal Boy, SEO tools that apply data science to keyword clustering, topical mapping, and content planning. A serial entrepreneur across SaaS and SEO, he focuses on automating keyword strategy so agencies can build more consistent, scalable search systems.

Bastian Grimm is CEO, co-founder and director of organic search at Peak Ace, a Berlin-based performance marketing agency, with more than 20 years in technical and large-scale international SEO. A prolific keynote speaker named Search Personality of the Year at the 2019 European Search Awards, he has led search for clients including Airbnb, TUI and AutoScout24.

Barry Adams is the founder of Polemic Digital, a UK-based specialist SEO consultancy, and one of the industry's few dedicated experts in SEO for news publishers. Active in search since the late 1990s, he co-founded the News & Editorial SEO Summit and advises major media companies on technical and editorial SEO. He writes widely for outlets such as Search Engine Land and lectures on news SEO.

Fili Wiese is a former senior Google Search Quality engineer and co-founder of SearchBrothers, where he and Kaspar Szymanski deliver technical SEO audits and Google penalty recovery. He is known for deep expertise in crawling, indexing, webmaster policies and link risk, and has published on both Google's and Bing's official webmaster blogs. He is a frequent international conference speaker.

Pedro Dias is a London-based search findability architect and consultant, and founder of Visively. He spent nearly six years on Google's Search Quality team as a webspam analyst before leading SEO and growth for enterprises including eBay and Reach plc. He now focuses on technical SEO, product SEO and findability across AI-driven search.

Vanessa Fox created Google's Webmaster Central and the first version of Google Search Console, shaping how site owners understand their search presence. She is the author of Marketing in the Age of Google and co-founder of the search analytics platform Keylime Toolbox. She has long focused on making search data actionable for businesses of all sizes.

Cindy Krum is the founder and CEO of MobileMoxie and a pioneer of mobile SEO, author of Mobile Marketing: Finding Your Customers No Matter Where They Are. She is known for forward-looking concepts such as Entity-First Indexing and 'Fraggles' for understanding SERP features. MobileMoxie builds mobile-focused SEO tools used to preview real mobile search results.

Darren Shaw is the founder of Whitespark, an Edmonton-based local SEO software and services company he started in 2005. He runs the widely cited annual Local Search Ranking Factors survey and is a leading educator on local citations, reviews and Google map-pack rankings. His research and tools support agencies and businesses worldwide.

Miriam Ellis is a veteran local search columnist who served as Moz's Local Search Scientist and subject-matter expert for over a decade, writing many of its most-read local SEO guides. She now runs Miriam Ellis Consulting, partnering with brands like Semrush, Whitespark and GatherUp on local content and strategy. She is a longtime advocate for small local businesses.

Greg Gifford is Chief Strategy Officer at SearchLab Digital and one of the most in-demand local SEO speakers, known for movie-themed, tactics-packed presentations. He specializes in local search for the automotive industry and other service businesses, with well over a decade of hands-on experience. He speaks at digital marketing conferences worldwide.

Claire Carlile is the Local Search Expert at BrightLocal and founder of Claire Carlile Marketing, with over 20 years in SEO and local search. A recognized Google Business Profile Product Expert, she builds and teaches practical local SEO courses through BrightLocal Academy and helps small and mid-sized businesses win local visibility.

Ben Fisher is co-founder of Steady Demand, a local SEO and Google Business Profile agency, and a Google Business Profile Diamond Product Expert hand-picked by Google. Working in SEO since the 1990s, he specializes in GBP management, reviews and reputation, and contributes to the Local Search Ranking Factors survey.

Ryan Jones is Senior Vice President of SEO at Razorfish, where he leads search strategy for Fortune 500 clients and an international team. A developer-turned-SEO, he builds tools like SERPrecon and the satirical WTFSEO blog, and speaks widely on analytics and enterprise search.

Dan Taylor is Head of Technical SEO at SALT.agency, a technical SEO consultancy with UK and US offices. He is credited with coining the term 'edge SEO' and won the inaugural TechSEO research competition for his work on CDN and edge-based SEO implementations. He writes regularly for Search Engine Journal.

Adam Gent is a senior SEO and technical consultant running Gent of Search, and co-founder of the indexing-monitoring tool Indexing Insight. A former product manager at DeepCrawl (now Lumar), he specializes in SEO product management and helping in-house teams ship technical fixes with engineering. He writes the SEO Sprint newsletter.

Orit Mutznik is an enterprise and international SEO leader who has worked in-house across e-commerce and regulated industries, including eToro, 888 and SilkFred. Trilingual and a frequent conference speaker, she specializes in technical, international and e-commerce SEO and now advises as an SEO/AEO consultant.

Ian Lurie founded the digital marketing agency Portent in 1995 and now works as an independent consultant advising brands on SEO, content, analytics and strategy. With three decades in the field, he teaches popular LinkedIn Learning courses and writes and speaks widely on marketing and search.

Kyle Risley is Senior SEO Lead at Shopify, where he shapes SEO strategy for the e-commerce platform and hosts community office hours for merchants. Before Shopify he worked in SEO at TripAdvisor and VistaPrint, spanning travel, SaaS and e-commerce.

Ryan Stewart is the founder and managing partner of WEBRIS, a search-marketing agency, and creator of The Blueprint Training, an education platform teaching agencies how to sell and deliver SEO. He has built and sold several businesses driven by search marketing and run performance campaigns for brands including Target and Shopify. His work blends SEO, paid media, and CRO to grow ecommerce and lead-gen businesses.

Ross Tavendale is the founder and managing director of Type A Media, a London-based SEO agency known for digital PR and link building. Working in SEO since 2010, he has delivered campaigns for clients such as Etihad Airways and Boots, and he hosts the Canonical Chronicle, a video series covering SEO news. He is a regular speaker at BrightonSEO and other industry events.

Nate Matherson is the co-founder and CEO of Positional, a content marketing and SEO platform, and a two-time Y Combinator alum who previously founded LendEDU and ContainIQ. He writes and podcasts about SEO operations, programmatic content, and emerging AI-visibility workflows. Positional joined Daydream in 2025.

Jeff Coyle is the co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of MarketMuse, an AI content-strategy platform acquired by Siteimprove in 2024. With more than 25 years in search, he helps teams build topical authority and turn semantic research into content plans. He is a frequent speaker on content quality, AI, and knowledge graphs.

Paul Roetzer is the founder and CEO of Marketing AI Institute and SmarterX, and co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence: AI, Marketing and the Future of Business. He hosts The Artificial Intelligence Show podcast and created the Marketing AI Conference (MAICON). A former agency founder, he focuses on making AI approachable and actionable for marketers.

Mike Kaput is the Chief Content Officer of SmarterX and Marketing AI Institute and co-author of Marketing Artificial Intelligence. He co-hosts The Artificial Intelligence Show, a weekly podcast breaking down AI news for marketers, and writes and speaks widely on how businesses adopt AI. His work centers on turning fast-moving AI developments into practical operating guidance.

Shuang Esther Shan is a senior content marketing manager at Shopify, where she hosts and produces Shopify Masters, the platform's flagship podcast interviewing founders and experts about building and scaling brands. A storyteller focused on commerce, she surfaces the operating lessons behind successful DTC businesses.

Adam Levinter is the CEO of Scriberbase and D2C Brands Group and a host of Shopify Masters, interviewing ecommerce founders about building and scaling their brands. He is the author of The Subscription Boom and a lecturer at the University of Toronto, focusing on DTC operations, subscription models, and customer loyalty.

Rhian Beutler is the co-founder of venntov, the bootstrapped Shopify app company behind SEO Manager and Order Lookup, and co-host of the Commerce Tea podcast about succeeding on Shopify. She has spent over a decade building tools and content for Shopify merchants and is a recognized voice on the Shopify app ecosystem.

Molly Pittman is CEO and Managing Partner of Smart Marketer, where she leads education and agency services for ecommerce brands. A former VP at DigitalMarketer, she has certified thousands of marketers in paid traffic and customer acquisition and co-hosts the Perpetual Traffic podcast.

Ryan Deiss is the founder and CEO of DigitalMarketer, a leading provider of digital marketing training and certifications, and the founder of the Traffic & Conversion Summit. He is the creator of the Customer Value Optimization methodology and a widely followed voice on building repeatable marketing systems for growth-stage and DTC brands.

Richard Lazazzera is an ecommerce entrepreneur and former Shopify Growth Team strategist who founded A Better Lemonade Stand, an ecommerce education resource and community he grew to reach hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs monthly. He is known for approachable, beginner-friendly guides on building, launching, and growing online stores.

Tanner Larsson is the founder and CEO of Build Grow Scale, an ecommerce optimization agency working with 7-8 figure Shopify and DTC brands on what it calls revenue optimization, a variation on conversion rate optimization. He is the author of Ecommerce Evolved and has been building and scaling online stores since 2001.

Ilana Davis is a Shopify SEO and structured data specialist and the creator of JSON-LD for SEO, a Shopify app that generates structured data to win Google rich results and feed Merchant Center and AI search. Based in Portland, she is widely recognized for practical education on structured data and product entity readiness for Shopify stores.

Vinny O'Brien is an Ireland-based ecommerce strategist and consultant who advises global brands, platforms, and technology companies on digital commerce, marketplaces, and go-to-market growth. A former eBay enterprise manager and head of ecommerce at Arnotts, he runs the consultancy Vinny & Co and publishes The V Spot newsletter for retail and tech leaders.

Will Laurenson is a UK-based DTC conversion optimization consultant and founder of Monkey Blocks, and the host of the Customers Who Click podcast, where he interviews operators about DTC growth decisions, customer psychology, and CRO. He focuses on how ecommerce brands turn traffic into revenue as they scale.

Chloe Thomas is a UK ecommerce educator, author and keynote speaker, and the host of the long-running eCommerce MasterPlan and Keep Optimising podcasts. After nearly two decades in ecommerce—including running her own marketing agency for almost a decade—she now focuses full-time on helping ecommerce brands make better marketing decisions. Her shows have interviewed hundreds of ecommerce operators since 2015.

Kunle Campbell is a UK-based DTC ecommerce advisor and the host of the 2X eCommerce podcast, where he has interviewed hundreds of ecommerce founders and growth operators. His work covers customer acquisition, lifetime value, retention and the ecommerce tech stack from a cross-functional operator's perspective. He is also co-founder of consumer-brand platform Octillion Capital Partners.

Francois Marchand is the editor and podcast host of The Ecomm Manager, bringing more than 20 years in marketing, journalism and communications to the ecommerce beat. He moved into ecommerce and marketing after years as a reporter and editor, including a managing-editor role at Unbounce. At The Ecomm Manager he interviews ecommerce professionals and curates practical resources on tools and operations.

Brett Curry is the CEO and co-founder of OMG Commerce, an ecommerce marketing agency and Google Premier Partner that runs Google, YouTube and Amazon advertising for direct-to-consumer brands. He hosts the eCommerce Evolution podcast, interviewing merchants and experts about what's next in ecommerce. A veteran online marketer and speaker, he specializes in paid search and video advertising for growth-stage brands.

Austin Brawner is the founder and CEO of Brand Growth Experts, a coaching and consulting practice that helps ecommerce owners scale from six to seven figures with the right systems in place. He hosts the Ecommerce Influence podcast, featuring interviews with world-class operators on acquisition and retention strategy. His work centers on building repeatable, retention-led growth systems for DTC brands.

Patrick Coddou is the founder and CEO of Supply, a men's grooming and razor brand he launched in 2017 with his wife Jennifer and grew into a profitable, bootstrapped business before it was acquired by Foundry Brands. He is known for building in public and sharing candid lessons on profitability-first, founder-led DTC growth. His commentary is widely cited across ecommerce media on the realities facing DTC brands.

Marcia Kilgore is a serial entrepreneur who has founded multiple beauty and consumer brands, including Bliss, Soap & Glory, FitFlop and, since 2016, the members' club Beauty Pie. Beauty Pie sells beauty products direct to consumers at prices closer to their manufacturing cost, a model that reframes the economics of the category. Kilgore is widely profiled as one of the most influential builders in modern DTC beauty.

Michele Romanow is a Canadian tech entrepreneur, investor and co-founder of Clearco (formerly Clearbanc), which she grew into one of the world's largest ecommerce funding platforms, deploying billions across thousands of companies. She stepped down as CEO in 2023 and remains executive chairman, and is a longtime "Dragon" on CBC's Dragons' Den. Her perspective centers on capital, customer-acquisition cost and profitability in DTC growth.

Connie Cen is an ecommerce email and copywriting specialist who helps DTC brands grow revenue through lifecycle email and SMS marketing. She runs her own consultancy and publishes on conversion copy, and her work has been featured by Shopify, Klaviyo, Forbes and Entrepreneur.

Sara Du is co-founder and CEO of Alloy Automation, a platform that lets ecommerce brands and SaaS companies build and manage integrations and automated workflows across tools like Shopify. A Thiel Fellow who left Harvard to start the company, she has raised over $27M from investors including a16z and Bain Capital Ventures.

Joe Spisak is founder and CEO of Fulfill.com, a marketplace that matches ecommerce brands with the right third-party logistics (3PL) and fulfillment partners from a network of hundreds of providers. A multi-time founder who previously built and exited ShipDaddy, he was named a top ecommerce logistics voice to follow by Shopify.

Ashvin (Ash) Melwani is co-founder and CMO of Obvi, a bootstrapped collagen and health-supplement brand that scaled past $40M in sales and 250K+ customers. He is known in DTC circles for community-led product launches and performance marketing on Meta.

Ronak (Ron) Shah is co-founder and CEO of Obvi, a collagen-focused supplement brand he launched in 2019 and grew to eight figures in sales across 75+ countries. A former agency owner and EY Entrepreneur of the Year honoree, he is an active advisor and investor in consumer brands.

Shaan Puri is a founder, angel investor and co-host of the My First Million podcast, which draws tens of millions of downloads a year. He previously sold his startup Bebo to Twitch and runs an early-stage rolling fund backing consumer and internet businesses.

Jake Kassan co-founded MVMT, the direct-to-consumer watch and accessories brand he bootstrapped to over $70M in annual revenue before its sale to Movado Group in 2018. He now works as an investor focused on consumer and AI-enabled platforms.

Chris Meade is co-founder and CMO of CROSSNET, the four-way volleyball game he helped build into an eight-figure DTC-and-retail sporting-goods brand now sold in thousands of stores. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, he also runs the Founders Forward newsletter and community for ecommerce entrepreneurs.

Molson Hart is the founder and CEO of Viahart, an educational toy company he built into a multi-million-dollar Amazon and DTC business. He is widely followed on X for candid, data-driven commentary on Amazon selling, manufacturing, tariffs, and the realities of running a product business.

Jonathan Snow, DMD is a dentist-turned-ecommerce operator who founded The Snow Agency, a Shopify-focused growth agency later acquired by Avenue Z, where he is now Chief Innovation Officer. He and his brother built DTC brands that generated tens of millions in revenue, and he shares weekly ecommerce and paid-acquisition lessons through his 'In the Snow' newsletter and social channels.

Jaime Schmidt is the founder of Schmidt's Naturals, a natural deodorant and personal-care brand she grew from a farmers-market startup to an acquisition by Unilever. She is the author of 'Supermaker' and co-founder of the investment firm Color and the Supermaker community, where she supports founder-led CPG and DTC brands.

Dave Gerhardt is the founder of Exit Five, a B2B marketing community, and a former marketing leader at Drift and Privy. He is the author of 'Founder Brand' and is widely followed for lessons on brand-building, content, and community-led distribution.

Ben Jabbawy is the founder of Privy, an email and SMS marketing platform built for small and mid-sized ecommerce merchants, which was acquired by Attentive. He is a recognized voice on helping SMB Shopify stores grow through owned channels, popups, and retention marketing.

Allen Walton is the founder of SpyGuy, a niche ecommerce store selling security and hidden cameras that he grew as a bootstrapped DTC operator. He writes and speaks openly about the realities of building a small, profitable ecommerce business.

Marco Marandiz is an Austin-based DTC operator and product marketer who founded the DTC marketing firm Petri Growth and has led product and marketing at consumer brands including Sugardoh and the commerce platform Elliot. He is a recognized voice on product marketing, positioning, and brand strategy for direct-to-consumer businesses.

Alex Garcia is the founder of Marketing Examined, a widely read marketing newsletter and education brand focused on growth experiments and content frameworks. Based in Austin, he breaks down how brands grow through repeatable content and distribution playbooks.

Nate Rosen is the founder of Express Checkout, a widely read newsletter and community covering CPG, DTC and retail trends, product launches, founder interviews and M&A. What began as a personal newsletter has grown into a trusted media voice for thousands of consumer-brand founders, operators and investors.

Harry Molyneux is co-founder and head of CRO at DTC Pages, a conversion-rate-optimization agency for Shopify brands built around A/B testing and high-converting landing pages. He publishes swipe files and landing-page frameworks — including an awareness-based, four-type landing page model — used by seven- and eight-figure ecommerce brands.

Neville Medhora is a copywriter and educator who runs Copywriting Course (formerly Kopywriting Kourse), teaching plain-spoken, persuasive writing frameworks to marketers and founders. He publishes prolifically across his site, X and YouTube on how to write copy that customers actually read and act on.

Patrick Campbell founded ProfitWell (formerly Price Intelligently), the subscription metrics and pricing-optimization software he bootstrapped to eight figures in ARR before its ~$200M acquisition by Paddle, where he then served as chief strategy officer. He is a widely followed voice on subscription pricing, retention and lifetime value.

Jason Portnoy is a Montreal-based entrepreneur and founder and CEO of JPORT Media, a digital marketing agency focused on paid media and retention for ecommerce brands. A former DTC apparel founder, he also hosts the Perfectly Mentored podcast and writes on growth and advertising.

Nick Shackelford is a partner at Structured, a performance-marketing agency, and co-founder of the DTC beverage brand BRĒZ. Having run paid media and creative for well over 100 direct-to-consumer brands across Meta, Snap and Pinterest, he is a widely cited voice on creative testing and paid growth for ecommerce.

Lauren Schwartz is the founder and CEO of The Loft 325, a creative studio she launched in 2020 to put creative at the front of performance marketing for DTC and ecommerce brands. She specializes in creative direction, creative testing and offer design, and has produced paid-social creative for beauty and wellness brands such as ColourPop and Love Wellness.

Cody Wittick is co-founder and co-CEO of Kynship, an influencer-marketing agency he built with Taylor Lagace around relationship-first creator partnerships for DTC brands. Before Kynship he built a 500-plus influencer program at ring brand QALO, and today he co-hosts a podcast on scaling ecommerce brands through influencer and UGC strategy.

Taylor Lagace is co-founder and co-CEO of Kynship, an influencer marketing agency built for direct-to-consumer brands. Before Kynship he built out the influencer department at Common Thread Collective and worked in sports marketing at Athletes First. He is known for a 'no strings attached' creator-seeding model that prioritizes organic UGC over pay-per-post deals.

Sarah Chrisp is the New Zealand-based founder and face of Wholesale Ted, one of the largest ecommerce education channels on YouTube with well over a million subscribers. She teaches print-on-demand, dropshipping and Shopify store-building, and runs the Ecomm Clubhouse membership. She is a Shopify-approved educator and official Shopify partner.

Travis Marziani is a US-based ecommerce entrepreneur and educator behind Effective Ecommerce and the Passion Product Formula. On his YouTube channel he teaches beginners how to launch Amazon FBA private-label and Shopify products built around personal interests. His courses emphasize product research, branding and crowdfunded launches.

Jody Edgar is a Canadian ecommerce educator who runs the 'How to Shopify' YouTube channel, sharing tutorials and case studies on building and scaling Shopify stores. He has worked with Shopify since 2010 and teaches store strategy, buyer psychology and conversion optimization. He also runs a Shopify masterclass for growing merchants.

Lauren Kleinman is founder of Dreamday, a performance PR, affiliate and influencer agency for consumer brands, and co-founder of the commerce publication The Quality Edit. She previously helped build vitamin brand Ritual as VP of Marketing. She coined 'Performance PR' to tie earned press and publisher affiliate placements to measurable revenue for DTC brands.

Barry Hott is a growth and performance marketing consultant and founder of Hott Growth, based in Brooklyn, New York. He has managed hundreds of millions in paid social spend for brands from AT&T and Toyota to DTC names like Athletic Greens, Keeps and Hubble. He is widely known for championing 'ugly ads' — authentic, native-feeling creative that outperforms polished production.

Danavir Sarria is founder of CopyMonk, an ecommerce email marketing agency, and a longtime copywriter who started writing marketing email as a teenager. He works with 6-, 7- and 8-figure DTC brands on retention, promotional campaigns and lifecycle copy. He publishes 'The Upsell,' a newsletter of ecommerce growth tactics for founders, agencies and executives.

Matthew Kobach is a content and social media strategist known for building brand presence on platforms like Twitter/X. He was previously Director of Content Marketing at fintech startup Fast and managed digital and social media at the New York Stock Exchange. Adweek has named him among its most inspiring minds in marketing, and he is followed for concise, high-signal takes on brand voice and audience growth.

Clint Butler is the owner of Digitaleer, a US web design and SEO agency, and has worked in search since 2009. He hosts the long-running 'SEO This Week' show and educates practitioners on schema, on-page optimization, and hands-on SEO testing.

Charles Floate is a UK-based SEO entrepreneur known for affiliate SEO, aggressive link-building tactics, and his early 'God of SEO' blog. He runs an SEO agency and publishes courses and YouTube content covering the full spectrum of search tactics.

James Dooley is a UK SEO entrepreneur and investor, founder of FatRank and PromoSEO, who operates a no-win-no-fee lead-generation model across hundreds of ranked digital assets. He is an author and podcast host focused on scaling search, automation, and knowledge-graph visibility.

Gareth Hoyle is the founder and managing director of Marketing Signals, a UK agency delivering SEO, PPC, digital PR, and GEO/LLM visibility, with 15+ years in search. He is a frequent commentator on running and scaling SEO agencies.

Karl Hudson co-founded Searcharoo, a UK link-building and content agency he runs alongside James Dooley, managing outreach campaigns across roughly 2,000 sites monthly. He built his background in competitive iGaming SEO and scalable backlink operations.

Trifon Boyukliyski is an SEO and iGaming specialist with 15+ years running performance-driven campaigns in regulated markets, having led programs for 50+ global companies. He publishes on link building, SEO tooling, and measurable growth in highly competitive verticals.

Georgi Todorov is the founder of Create & Grow, a link-building and digital PR agency, and previously built and sold the ThriveMyWay blog. He was hired by Semrush in 2021 to develop their internal link-building processes and writes widely on SEO and content.

Nikola Baldikov is a Bulgaria-based SEO with over a decade of experience and founder of SERPsGrowth, a link-building and digital PR agency, as well as Inbound Blogging. He publishes influential SEO and GEO expert round-ups and writes on link strategy and search authority.

Miłosz Krasiński is the founder and managing director of Chilli Fruit Web Consulting, a London-based agency focused on off-page SEO, link building and digital PR. He works mainly with SaaS and B2B brands, and writes and speaks regularly about international SEO and authority building.

Szymon Słowik is a Polish SEO consultant and strategist and the founder of the boutique agency Takaoto (takaoto.pro). He is known for combining business strategy, brand positioning, semantic architecture and AI-driven search visibility, and speaks at conferences such as BrightonSEO while lecturing on internet marketing in Poland.

Viktoria Altman is the founder and CEO of BSPE Legal Marketing, a US digital agency that helps law firms grow visibility in both traditional and AI-driven search. Based in New York, she focuses on SEO for legal professionals and hosts the Law Firm Accelerator Podcast.

Kristján Már Ólafsson is an independent, Berlin-based SEO consultant specializing in international and multilingual search. He is known for merging on-page localization with entity-level optimization across markets and languages, and increasingly frames his work as a move from SEO to GEO.

Mark Slorance is a Glasgow-based SEO consultant and founder of Pixel Juice, focused on local and national SEO and mass-page strategies. He is known for transparent reporting and practical tactics that increase visibility and sales for local businesses.

Dean Signori is a UK-based SEO consultant and founder of UK Web Geekz, specializing in SEO and Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) for service and ecommerce businesses. He created the Signori Trust Signal Framework to help brands get understood and cited by AI search, and speaks regularly on GEO.

Ronan Walsh is the founder of Digital Trawler, a remote SaaS-focused SEO agency based on the west coast of Ireland. He has worked in SEO for around a decade and also lectures in web design and digital marketing, making him a useful voice on SaaS SEO for European audiences.

Kieran Daly is a European SEO practitioner named by Primary Position among the SEO influencers and educators to follow in 2026. He is tracked here as part of GEOly's European SEO watchlist.

Carrie Hill co-founded Ignitor Digital with Mary Bowling in 2013 to bring high-quality local search, SEO, and social media help to small and very small businesses. She has been working in SEO since 2006 and also serves as a Local SEO analyst at Sterling Sky, where she is known for solving real-world local ranking problems. Carrie is a long-time contributor to industry publications including Search Engine Land.

Chris Dreyer is the founder and CEO of Rankings.io, a search marketing agency specializing in SEO for personal injury and elite law firms, which has made the Inc. 5000 list for eight consecutive years. He is a Wall Street Journal and USA Today best-selling author of books including "Niching Up," and hosts the Personal Injury Mastermind podcast. Chris built Rankings.io from an earlier attorney-focused venture he launched in 2013.

Gerrid Smith is the founder and CEO of Fortress, a legal marketing agency he started in 2018, and has been in SEO since launching his first agency in 2008. He built one of the earliest law-firm-focused SEO agencies (later Black Fin), which worked with more than 100 firms before its 2020 sale. His work centers on authority-building through link operations, content strategy, technical audits, and AI-driven search optimization.

Anatolii Ulitovskyi is the founder of UNmiss, an organic-growth platform offering 45+ free SEO and GEO tools plus automated content and analytics, and previously founded the Ukrainian agency SEOquick. He has spent 15+ years in SEO, digital marketing, and PR after moving into the field in 2008. He publishes educational marketing content across YouTube, LinkedIn, and industry blogs.

Chris Deferio is the founder and host of Keys to the Shop, a podcast and training company for coffee retail professionals that has grown to more than 900 episodes and millions of downloads since launching in 2017. He has spent over 20 years in specialty coffee as a barista, trainer, manager, and consultant. Based in Louisville, Kentucky, he focuses on leadership, management, and customer experience in retail coffee.

Liran Hirschkorn is the founder and CEO of Incrementum Digital, an agency that manages advertising for Amazon, Walmart, and TikTok sellers. He built the firm on firsthand experience, having started and scaled multiple e-commerce brands to millions in Amazon sales after exiting an online insurance business in 2014. He is a widely followed speaker and thought leader on marketplace advertising and growth.

Michael Gonzalez is a direct-to-consumer operator best known as the founder and CEO of FitTea, a detox tea brand he grew to over $100 million in sales before exiting in 2021, with distribution reaching retailers from Walmart to GNC. An early adopter of Instagram influencer marketing starting in 2013, he later created the CBD-infused beverage brand HappyTea. He shares founder-led DTC commentary on X as @teaceoo.

Wiz of Ecom is Mubbu, a direct-to-consumer operator and creator who posts about ecommerce tactics on X (@wizofecom). He has built DTC brands, marketing agencies, and SaaS, and previously ran a large Instagram audience network. He also created The Presence Pillars, a course on building authority and audience for founders and operators.

Michael Patrón is an eight-figure Amazon seller who shares candid, anti-guru commentary on marketplace selling — covering Amazon fees, logistics, PPC and the platform's algorithm — with a sizable following on X. He is featured on Commerce Caffeine's list of ecommerce experts.

David Hoos is a DTC growth marketer who now advises technical agency founders ($1M+) on scaling their businesses. Listed among Commerce Caffeine's ecommerce voices, he shares practical tactics on ecommerce growth, retention and marketing operations across his X and LinkedIn presence.

Chris Cantino is co-founder and partner at Color Capital, a consumer venture fund he runs with Jaime Schmidt, investing across CPG, marketplaces, ecommerce and emerging media. He previously helped grow Schmidt's Naturals to its acquisition by Unilever and co-authored the book Supermaker.

Chad Ross is the founder and CEO of Dorsal Bracelets, an ocean-inspired DTC accessories brand built around ocean conservation. He shares hands-on paid-social and TikTok advertising tactics for ecommerce and is featured among ECORN's list of DTC creators.

Alexa Kilroy is a DTC and ecommerce marketing leader who has served as Head of Brand at Triple Whale, Director of Marketing at FERMÀT and Head of Marketing at Stay AI. She writes and speaks about creative strategy, consumer psychology and data-driven growth for consumer brands.

Helen Guo is co-founder of Schoolyard Snacks (formerly The Cereal School), a low-carb DTC snack brand she grew to eight figures, and a Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree. She now runs SMB Deal Hunter, acquiring and investing in small businesses, and shares ecommerce and entrepreneurship content.

Dan Vas is a Canadian ecommerce entrepreneur and YouTuber who has published Amazon FBA, Shopify and online-business content since 2017, reaching a large audience through his channel and his Ecom Freedom training program. He shares his journey building brands on Amazon and Shopify.

Lindey Glenn is a US reseller and ecommerce YouTuber who has built a channel of 100k+ subscribers around eBay and Poshmark reselling, liquidation sourcing and money-saving hauls. She runs her reselling business from rural Kansas while balancing family life.

Darrel Wilson is a US-based WordPress and web-design educator who runs one of YouTube's largest free tutorial channels for building websites with WordPress, Elementor, AI builders, and Shopify. A former freelance web designer, he now teaches beginners how to launch online stores and business sites, and also publishes paid courses on Udemy.

Nathan Nazareth is a Canadian (Vancouver) ecommerce entrepreneur and YouTuber with a large following who teaches Shopify dropshipping through free step-by-step walkthroughs and product-research content. He launched multiple six-figure dropshipping brands in his early twenties and now runs an ecommerce education platform and courses.

Mohammed Kamil Sattar, known as 'The Ecom King,' is a British ecommerce entrepreneur and founder/CEO of an e-commerce mentoring business with stakes across several brands. His YouTube channel offers 400+ free dropshipping and Shopify tutorials, including a multi-hour free course, alongside high-ticket mentorship programs.

Anton Kraly is the founder and CEO of Drop Ship Lifestyle, an ecommerce coaching program he created in 2013 that has trained thousands of students across dozens of countries. He opened his first dropshipping store in 2007 and now teaches a 7-step blueprint for building high-ticket, niche dropshipping stores through his YouTube channel and courses.

Tatiana James is a Canadian digital entrepreneur and investor who built a multi-million-dollar ecommerce brand starting on Amazon FBA before expanding to Shopify, later selling it. On her YouTube channel she teaches Amazon FBA, ecommerce, and online business strategy to a large audience.

Jordan Welch is a US ecommerce creator with over a million YouTube subscribers who documents his dropshipping journey and teaches store-building and paid-ad strategy. He scaled a winning product to seven figures, built the Viral Vault product-research tool (acquired by AutoDS in 2024), and now runs AI-focused ecommerce coaching.

Biaheza is a US-based ecommerce creator with over a million YouTube subscribers, known for documenting dropshipping experiments alongside broader online-business and lifestyle content. He built and scaled a Shopify dropshipping business as a teenager and sells a widely reviewed dropshipping course.

Chris Conrady is a US ecommerce creator who runs the YouTube channel 'InvolvingChris,' where he breaks down Shopify print-on-demand and personalization-store strategy and shares lessons from scaling multi-million-dollar stores. His content centers on product customization and building profitable POD businesses.

Chris Heckman is an e-commerce entrepreneur and educator with over seven years building Shopify print-on-demand brands that have collectively done more than $25 million in sales. He has scaled multiple brands past $1M and exited several of them, and now runs WeScale, a large Shopify print-on-demand community where he teaches sellers how to build acquisition-worthy DTC brands. He publishes practical store-building and scaling content on YouTube and through his Skool community.