Tag: LLM
7 posts7 articles tagged “LLM” on the GEOly blog — insights, data and playbooks on LLM in the AI-search era, and how brands win visibility across ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. Explore more topics and authors below.
Intel's Heracles Chip and the 5,000x FHE Speedup: A Step Toward Private AI
Intel's Heracles chip claims up to a 5,000x FHE speedup and ~1,000x faster private queries than a Xeon, lowering a barrier to AI adoption that over time widens AI-mediated discovery.
The DeepSeek Effect: How the AI Price War Fragments Your GEO Strategy
DeepSeek-R1 cut inference costs 90%+ and fragmented AI search across many engines — ending the single-engine GEO playbook and forcing multi-model visibility.
Alibaba's Qwen Tech Lead Steps Down 24 Hours After Qwen3.5 Launch
Junyang Lin left Alibaba's Qwen team ~24 hours after Qwen3.5 shipped and drew Musk's praise. For GEO, the signal is engine diversity, not gossip.
The DeepSeek Effect: A Global AI Price War and Why It Makes GEO Bigger
DeepSeek V4 undercut rival API pricing by 90%+ and forced a global price war; cheaper inference means more AI surfaces, and more places your brand can be recommended or ignored.
MicroGPT: Karpathy's 200-Line GPT and Why Marketers Should Care How LLMs Work
Karpathy's MicroGPT builds a working GPT in 200 lines of Python, training a 4,192-parameter model — a clear window into next-token prediction and why AI recommends brands it has strong patterns for.
AMD Runs a Trillion-Parameter LLM on Consumer Hardware: The End of NVIDIA's Monopoly?
AMD ran the trillion-parameter Kimi K2.5 model on four Ryzen AI Max+ 395 desktops (480GB total) with no cloud — a sign that cheaper local AI is multiplying the engines where brands must stay visible.
Alibaba's Qwen3.5 Runs Frontier AI Locally — and Beats Claude Sonnet 4.5
Alibaba's open-source Qwen3.5-35B-A3B runs 1M+ tokens of context on a single 32GB consumer GPU and outperforms GPT-5-mini while surpassing Claude Sonnet 4.5 on MMMLU and MMMU-Pro — fragmenting where AI answers about your brand come from.
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Riven Gao is the founder of GEOly AI, building the GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) platform that helps Shopify and DTC brands get seen, cited and recommended by AI engines like ChatGPT, Gemini and Perplexity. He writes about AI search, agentic commerce and brand growth in the AI era.
Jake Ward is a UK growth entrepreneur behind Mentions.so (AI-visibility tracking), the SEO agency Contact.so, Byword.ai and Kleo. Famous for the 2023 viral 'SEO heist', he has since become one of the loudest voices on LLM SEO — 'get cited, not clicked' — sharing data-driven takes on how brands win visibility in ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google AI. Featured here as a guest expert; views are his own.
The GEOly editorial team covers GEO (Generative Engine Optimization), AI search and agentic commerce — insights, benchmarks and playbooks that help Shopify and DTC brands get seen, cited and recommended by AI engines.
GEOly News tracks the daily signals shaping AI search, agentic commerce and AI advertising — what OpenAI, Google, Meta, Shopify, Stripe and PayPal ship, and what it means for globalizing brands that want to be seen, cited and recommended by AI engines.
The GEOly Platform team publishes buyer guides and hands-on breakdowns of GEO/AEO tooling for e-commerce and DTC brands — how to pick a stack, what to measure (AIGVR, Share of Voice, Share-of-Card), and how to turn AI visibility into orders across Shopify, Wix, BigCommerce, WooCommerce and Squarespace.
One of the strongest technical voices on AI search, relevance engineering, query fan-out, vector retrieval, and the future of SEO.
Publishes practical investigations into Google AI Overviews, citation quality, algorithm updates, and spam risks.
Creates accessible checklists, videos, and interviews on AI search, ecommerce SERPs, and technical SEO.
Growth Memo is one of the strongest recurring research sources on AI visibility, SEO strategy, citations, and growth.
Early AEO thinker focused on how search and AI systems understand entities, brands, and knowledge graphs.
Publishes clear frameworks on GEO, content distribution, Reddit, and becoming a cited source in AI answers.
Publishes analysis on AI search volatility, citations, prompt testing, and answer-engine visibility.
Highly active with practical posts on GEO case studies, AI Overview scorecards, and new SEO metrics.
Long-time SEO leader now focused on entity-first AEO and tools for improving brand visibility in LLMs.
WordLift CEO, strong technical voice on knowledge graphs, structured data, semantic SEO, and LLM grounding.
Publishes sharp analysis on zero-click search, AI Overviews, brand memorability, and strategic SEO adaptation.
Known for hands-on reverse-engineering of how AI search systems discover, use, and cite information.
Publishes in-depth German and English work on LLMO, GEO, E-E-A-T, patents, and brand context optimization.
CMO of Peec AI, former Idealo/Searchmetrics leader, focused on enterprise-scale AI visibility and SEO operations.
Known for technical experiments, algorithm analysis, and data-driven SEO testing including AI visibility work.
Long-time Google quality and algorithm analyst now writing about SEO in the Gemini and AI Overview era.
Strong strategic voice on how AI changes discovery, metrics, and the SEO profession.
Blends practical SEO, question data, AI tooling, and podcast education for search marketers.
Known for deep semantic SEO and topical authority frameworks that map well to LLM retrieval and AI answers.
Active voice on brand, AI search, and how AI changes organic visibility.
Runs experiments around AI crawlers and hybrid engine optimization, useful for technical GEO operations.
Profound co-founder focused on Agent Experience and what happens after traditional SEO.
Active curator and commentator on generative AI, SEO news, LLM outputs, and relevance engineering.
Practical enterprise voice on unifying SEO, AEO, GEO, and search-everywhere strategies.
Technical SEO and IR-focused thinker whose work maps well to AI retrieval and entity understanding.
Strong technical voice on crawlability, rendering, web infrastructure, and LLM-accessible sites.
Advanced technical marketer with Shopify/Uber experience and strong conference presence on SEO engineering.
Publishes strong technical and enterprise SEO guides; important for fundamentals that still drive AI visibility.
Key voice on zero-click search, audience research, Google behavior, and the broader discovery shift.
Strategic SEO leader known for using data, AI, and search intelligence to connect organic work to business impact.
Known for evidence-led SEO experiments and practical updates on how brand, UX, and content affect visibility.
Publishes detailed posts and X threads on Google updates, AI Overviews, and site-level impacts.
Strong visual documentation of SERP and AI Overview feature changes, especially useful for ecommerce visibility.
Essential daily source for search updates, Google communications, and SEO community reactions.
Salsify co-founder and strong voice on product data, PXM, digital shelf, and agentic commerce readiness.
One of the best retail/ecommerce strategists covering AI-native consumers and agentic commerce disruption.
Forrester retail analyst frequently quoted on GenAI, retail media, and agentic shopping.
MIT IDE Digital Fellow quoted on trust, payments rules, liability, and governance in agentic commerce.
Chief AI Officer at enterprise AI firm SYRV.AI and author of The Chief AI Officer's Handbook, Jarrod writes about generative engine optimization from a strategic AI-leadership angle. He frames GEO as a boardroom-level shift rather than a channel tactic, showing how AI-first organizations rethink discovery.
A veteran strategy consultant who has advised The New York Times, Google, and Etsy, Tom now works at the intersection of AI and marketing at Alephic and runs the AI Search Leaders community and SEO MBA. His essays connect AI search to the bigger questions of web economics, consulting, and content strategy.
Head of Search Science at Moz and STAT, Tom is known for rigorous SERP and ranking-factor analysis and for turning messy data into clear conclusions. His recent work digs into AI Overviews, the 'Great Decoupling' of informational traffic, and what search data can — and can't — tell us about AI visibility.
Co-founder and CMO of Chicago agency Orbit Media and author of Content Chemistry, Andy has published 500+ articles and runs widely-cited original research on content and analytics. He argues the winning move in AI search is quality over quantity — original data that AI engines actually want to cite.
Director of Content Marketing at Ahrefs and formerly CMO at Animalz, Ryan documents how content teams put AI to work — from custom GPT workflows to content engineering with Claude Code. He writes candidly about when AI-generated content helps or hurts visibility in an era of AI Overviews and zero-click search.
Former CEO of Animalz and author of B2B Content Marketing Strategy, Devin now advises leaders as a fractional Chief Growth Officer and hosts the Don't Say Content podcast. She argues traditional content playbooks are failing and pushes a human-centered, community-driven reset tied directly to revenue.
Co-founder of Manchester SEO agency Search Theory and formerly Director of SEO at Candidsky, Sara brings 13+ years across search and content. She frames AI search as long-tail SEO with new interfaces, urging teams to actively test Gemini and Google's AI Mode rather than wait and watch.
Independent analyst and former eMarketer principal analyst, Andrew is one of the sharpest data-backed voices on retail media and ecommerce, and writes the Media, Ads + Commerce newsletter. He brings a skeptic's rigor to agentic-commerce hype, pressing on how much autonomy actually reshapes product research and purchases.
Nine-year SEO veteran turned AEO/GEO practitioner who founded Cairrot, an answer-engine-optimization analytics tool for agencies and SMBs. He is known for publicly sharing monthly AEO/GEO campaign KPIs across SaaS, fintech, industrials, and professional-services verticals.
Google's long-standing Search Advocate, based in Switzerland, who bridges Google Search engineering and the web community. His guidance on indexing, structured data, and content quality remains foundational for keeping sites visible as AI features reshape search.
Former Senior SEO Scientist at Moz and marketing manager at Hugging Face, now an AI educator and international keynote speaker. She is known for translating machine-learning and LLM concepts into hands-on tactics that non-technical marketers and SEOs can actually apply.
Co-founder and Chief Data Scientist at Trust Insights and co-host of the Marketing Over Coffee podcast, prolific on generative AI, analytics, and marketing data science. He is a leading voice on measuring AI's real business impact—from generative search to dark-funnel influence.
Co-founder of Clearscope, the content-optimization platform for high-quality editorial teams, and a prominent voice on topical authority and semantic relevance. He argues that deep, well-structured topical coverage—not volume—is what gets content retrieved and cited by AI answers.
New York–based SEO consultant, viral video creator, and founder of Sturm Media, known for his 'Compact Keywords' methodology that targets low-competition, high-intent terms. A prominent build-in-public creator who teaches how YouTube and video become durable discovery and citation assets.
Senior SEO and organic-growth specialist at Grey (YC W22) and a Lumar contributor with detailed, practical recommendations on schema, query fan-out, evidence-rich content, and multimodal optimization for AI search. A frequent BrightonSEO speaker on making sites AI-citable.
Senior partner at McKinsey and a global leader of the firm's payments work, based in San Francisco. She is a leading voice on how agentic commerce reshapes authentication, fraud, subscriptions, and top-of-wallet dynamics as AI agents begin transacting on consumers' behalf.
Founder and managing partner of NYC agency Primary Position, with 20+ years in technical and enterprise SEO. A no-hype practitioner voice on LLM-powered search, AI Overview tracking, and GEO for B2B and cybersecurity brands.
Longtime Analyst on Google's Search Relations team and an official voice on crawling, indexing, and site quality. His guidance on how Googlebot discovers and renders pages underpins the technical basics of getting included in AI answers.
Independent technical SEO consultant and former Head of SEO at Yoast, known for sharp opinions on structured data, web performance, and web standards. A leading voice on the site architecture brands need to stay discoverable as search shifts to AI.
Co-founder of Smarty.Marketing and a two-decade SEO and content veteran with wide community reach. She publishes a weekly SEO & AI (GEO/AEO) newsletter and is a go-to voice on Reddit marketing and answer-ready content.
Growth advisor to top internet brands (SurveyMonkey, Shutterstock, Quora, Zendesk) and author of Product-Led SEO. He writes the widely-read "The Future of SEO & AEO" newsletter, arguing that AI search rewards product-led strategy and brand intent over keyword volume.
Founder and CMO of TrioSEO and a serial entrepreneur (prior exit: FreeUp). He publishes practical, repeatable SEO systems and AI-tool commentary aimed at founders and B2B operators looking to build predictable organic growth.
Berlin-based senior SEO strategist specializing in technical and international SEO for B2B SaaS. A Lumar contributor, she argues that brand authority, digital PR, and trust—not content alone—are what earn visibility and citations in AI search.
Senior partner at QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, and its global leader for generative AI and agentic services. Co-author of McKinsey's agentic-commerce research, he is a leading voice on agent-ready infrastructure, APIs, data interoperability, and governance for the AI-agent era.
CEO of EWR Digital and longtime host of The Best SEO Podcast, where he interviews search leaders. Creator of the LLM Visibility Stack, focused on measurement frameworks for brand presence in AI answers.
Google Search Relations developer advocate in Zurich and one of the most trusted voices on rendering, JavaScript, and how crawlers actually see a page — increasingly relevant as many AI crawlers render far less than Googlebot.
Founder of the 5,000+ member Women in Tech SEO community and technical SEO consultancy Crawlina; a leading community builder and go-to voice for technical SEO training, conferences, and expert roundups.
Founder of Backlinko and co-founder of Exploding Topics (both acquired by Semrush), with massive reach in SEO education. Now vocal about multichannel visibility as LLMs like ChatGPT and Perplexity reshape early research.
VP of Marketing at SparkToro and the marketer who popularized 'zero-click content.' Co-author of Zero Click Marketing with Rand Fishkin, and a leading voice on audience research and platform-native distribution.
Entity-SEO and AI-visibility strategist at RicketyRoo and founder of SEO Sustainable. Creator of the Mention Rate tool and a Topic Entity Schema generator, she argues brands should stop chasing prompts and start tracking entity presence.
Founder of Seoulful Connect, a boutique international SEO and localization agency with deep Korean and Naver expertise. Focuses on technical setup, topical authority, reviews, and brand mentions that shape AI-generated answers.
Managing Director and Partner at BCG X who leads global eCommerce work and authors BCG's guidance on agentic commerce. Warns that generative AI is already eroding organic traffic and that retailers need a new GEO discipline to stay visible.
Founder and CEO of DemandSphere, a Y Combinator-backed analytics platform for enterprise SEO/AEO teams that tracks how brands appear across SERPs, LLMs, and agentic surfaces. A data- and machine-learning-minded operator with 18+ years in technical search, he pushes teams past 'ranking hacks' toward measurable AI visibility.
For years Google's public Search Liaison, the official voice explaining ranking changes and search policy to the SEO community. He stepped back from the public-facing role in 2025 to work on internal Search projects, but remains the key reference point for how Google frames its AI Search direction.
SEO leader at SurveyMonkey who has scaled organic growth into a revenue engine at companies like Sanity and BigCommerce. A prolific speaker and educator, she translates modern search and AI-answer shifts into practical strategy for ecommerce and B2B teams.
Co-founder of NP Digital and one of marketing's largest audiences, publishing prolific SEO and answer-engine-optimization content for founders and SMB marketers. His reach makes him a useful bellwether for how AEO ideas go mainstream.
Director and Head of SEO at Chewy, leading enterprise organic search across a vast, competitive product catalog. With 20+ years running in-house and agency programs, he's a go-to voice on scaling AI-search visibility for large ecommerce and marketplace sites.
Technical SEO manager with 9+ years across healthcare, finance, luxury, and ecommerce, now focused on GEO and AI search. She emphasizes structured content, well-formed headings, real user questions, and first-party data as the foundation for multi-channel AI visibility.
Co-founder of AthenaHQ, a YC-backed GEO/AEO platform that tracks and improves how brands appear across ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, and Gemini. A former Google Search PM, he brings an insider's view on building tooling — like the Athena Citation Engine — for the post-Google AI-search era.
Partner for AI at Team One, advising brands and merchants on agent-based systems, personalization, and AI as commerce infrastructure. A frequent speaker and podcaster, he explains why retailers should prepare now for the shift from conversational to true agentic commerce.
Creator of the open-source advertools Python package (3.5M+ downloads) and a leading voice on data science for SEO — crawling, log-file analysis, and SERP data, now applied to auditing AI crawler access and citation behavior at scale.
Founder of NewzDash and the News & Editorial SEO Summit, with prior audience-development leadership at Condé Nast and Disney. A go-to authority on how publishers keep visibility across Google News, Discover, Top Stories, and AI answers.
Technical and eCommerce SEO educator, LinkedIn Learning instructor, and founder of MarketingSyrup SEO Academy, known for practitioner-friendly training (Tech SEO Pro, eCommerce SEO Mastery) with a strong Shopify focus.
Ahrefs CMO who helped bootstrap the company past $100M ARR through content. A widely-followed voice on SEO strategy and the SEO-to-GEO shift, arguing the fundamentals — exhaustive first-party content plus credible third-party coverage — still win in AI search.
Leads IBM's Inbound organic-growth program — SEO, YouTube, newsletters, and podcasts — and argues that in an AI-disrupted world a diversified owned-media system is more durable than any single channel.
New York-based SEO and content strategist with ~20 years across agency and in-house teams, focused on AI-search optimization and using real user questions (Reddit, People-Also-Ask style) to earn AEO mentions and citations.
Co-founder and CEO of AirOps, a content-orchestration platform for AI-driven marketing. Advocates 'content engineering' — multi-step AI workflows with data and human review — as the way to produce content that gets cited and scales without slop.
Leads commerce and retail-media research at the IAB (previously a decade at Forrester) and a prominent voice on the 'agentic shelf' — catalog enrichment, GEO inside LLMs, and why AI first helps shoppers narrow choices and reduce evaluation effort.
Longtime SEO and web-analytics consultant known for making dense data accessible through clean dashboards and visualizations. A go-to voice for turning analytics into decisions, now focused on AI, data engineering, and measuring what actually matters.
Former International Digital Director at Ringier and 2022 SEO World Champion, now an independent consultant and keynote speaker on AI-first search, entity optimization, and smart content distribution. Regularly frames how retrieval-based LLM search reshapes classic SEO across every discovery surface.
SaaS and B2B content strategist known for building topic clusters and topical authority, now leading content at Moz. A strong voice on turning keyword-led content into citation-worthy expertise that AI answer engines can trust and cite.
The educator behind Ahrefs' YouTube channel, which he grew from roughly 10k to 600k+ subscribers with practical, step-by-step SEO tutorials. A natural fit for teaching GEO through tactical, video-first workflows that operators can actually follow.
Co-founder and CTO of crawler-and-log platform JetOctopus, drawing on billions of crawled pages and log lines to advise on enterprise technical SEO. Focused on how crawler data and AI-assisted internal linking keep large sites discoverable by search engines and LLMs.
SEO strategist and Lumar contributor who frames GEO/AEO around preference and trust rather than position—arguing brands win when AI chooses them because it can trust their content across Reddit, YouTube, Wikipedia, and social. A sharp source on cross-ecosystem discovery.
Serial ecommerce entrepreneur—founder of ChannelAdvisor, now CEO of ReFiBuy—and prolific podcaster behind the Jason & Scot Show and Retailgentic. A self-described agentic-commerce maximalist who interviews retail and AI-shopping leaders on how agents will reshape retail media and buying.
Founder and CEO of SearchPilot (spun out of Distilled), Will pioneered large-scale SEO A/B testing and brings hard experimental discipline to a field full of untested claims. Essential for teams that want to validate GEO changes rather than guess.
Head of AI Search & SEO Communications at Wix, Crystal translates schema, structured content, and AI search into accessible guidance for practitioners and small businesses. A prolific speaker at Google Search Central, BrightonSEO, and Moz on staying visible in generative search.
Director of Digital Strategy at local-SEO agency RicketyRoo and a frequent conference speaker, Amanda focuses on reviews, Google Business Profile, and entity consistency across surfaces — the groundwork for showing up in AI local recommendations.
Head of Content at Ahrefs, Joshua turns SEO fundamentals into clear, widely-used guides, audits, and templates. A go-to reference for translating GEO basics into repeatable content checklists.
Organic growth leader (Hims & Hers, formerly HubSpot) known for her 'Heavy Hitter' framework that re-tiers pages by conversion value rather than traffic. A strong voice for prioritizing revenue over vanity metrics as zero-click AI search erodes clicks.
Award-winning SEO and content strategist (Wise) and co-founder of B-DigitalUK, Rejoice champions fact-based, semantically rich content built to be cited — not just ranked. A frequent Lumar and Wix contributor on structured, authoritative content.
Founder and CEO of RMW Commerce Consulting and host of The Watson Weekly, Rick is an independent ecommerce and marketplaces analyst read by tens of thousands of retail executives. Useful for commerce infrastructure, merchant strategy, and preparing for AI-mediated product discovery.
Evan Bailyn is the founder and CEO of First Page Sage, an SEO and content firm he started in 2009 and grew into one of the largest thought-leadership SEO agencies in the US. In 2023 his firm began offering Generative Engine Optimization (GEO), the practice of getting brands recommended by generative engines like ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Gemini, and he is frequently cited as an early popularizer of the term. He is a best-selling author and speaker who has lectured on SEO and AI search at universities including Stanford.
Craig Campbell is a Glasgow-based SEO consultant and trainer with over 20 years in search, running consultancy and training alongside his agency work. He is best known for his large YouTube channel, Craig Campbell SEO, where he publishes practical tutorials on SEO, link building, affiliate marketing, and website flipping. He is a frequent conference speaker at events such as Affiliate World and Chiang Mai SEO.
Stephan Spencer is co-author of the O'Reilly classic The Art of SEO, and author of Google Power Search and Social eCommerce. He founded the SEO agency Netconcepts in 1995 and grew it internationally before selling it in 2010, and now works as a consultant, speaker, and podcast host (Marketing Speak and Get Yourself Optimized). His work centers on durable, fundamentals-driven SEO strategy.
Eric Enge is President of Pilot Holding and the lead co-author of The Art of SEO, widely referred to as the industry's bible of search. He previously founded Stone Temple Consulting, an award-winning digital marketing agency acquired by Perficient in 2018, and is known for large-scale, data-driven studies on SEO and content quality. His recent work, including the book Using Generative AI for SEO, focuses on separating hype from what actually works in AI search.
Matt Diggity is an American SEO entrepreneur and affiliate marketer, founder of Diggity Marketing, LeadSpring, The Search Initiative, and the Chiang Mai SEO Conference. He is known for a testing-driven approach to search and created the Affiliate Lab course. He publishes widely on YouTube and offers public commentary on GEO/AEO relative to core SEO fundamentals.
Mike Blumenthal is a co-founder and analyst at Near Media, where he researches reputation, reviews, and local search, and has been a leading local SEO voice for nearly two decades. He previously co-founded LocalU and GatherUp (GetFiveStars), and writes a widely read tactical newsletter on Google Business Profile and local search. Much of his current work involves recorded consumer-behavior research into how people actually search locally.
Joy Hawkins is the owner of local SEO agency Sterling Sky, as well as the Local Search Forum and LocalU, and has worked in the industry since 2006. She is a recognized authority on Google Business Profile and local ranking factors, and has been a Google Product Expert since 2012. She writes for Search Engine Land and speaks regularly at conferences such as MozCon and Pubcon.
Martha van Berkel is the co-founder and CEO of Schema App, a semantic technology company that helps enterprise brands control how they are represented in search and AI by building a structured data layer. Before founding the company, she spent 14 years at Cisco leading global online support strategy. She is one of the industry's leading voices on structured data and Schema markup, and a frequent conference speaker and blogger.
Samy Ben Sadok is a senior SEO specialist focused on Shopify and ecommerce technical SEO, working on site architecture, indexing, and structured data for online stores. He publishes regularly on LinkedIn about SEO strategy, the tooling landscape, and how merchants can compete in crowded verticals. His practical, platform-specific take makes him a useful voice for store owners refining their technical foundations.
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.