E-commerce Scaling Complexity
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Sean Frank discusses why he chose e-commerce despite its challenges, the value of being authentic online, and how he leveraged his niche expertise into a successful podcast business.
On E-commerce Business Challenges
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E-commerce is fundamentally harder than other business models:
- "Your problems get harder the bigger you get"
- Requires managing "bigger POs, more management, everything else"
- Unlike SaaS where "if it's 10 zeros or a thousand zeros being processed through your thing, who the fuck cares"
- "People squint and think it's SaaS and it's not"
- "E-com on top of a trend is the hard version of the hard version"
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Despite the challenges, Sean chose e-commerce because:
- "It's permissionless" - you can start without connections or approval
- "When I was 22 nobody would let me build fucking nvidia servers"
- "We sold on Shopify because nobody would give us a Nordstrom's PO"
- Requires capital for inventory, unlike agencies which are even more permissionless
On Being Authentic Online
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Being opinionated online has been beneficial:
- "My Twitter has sold like $300,000 worth of wallets"
- Led to creating valuable connections in a niche community
- "I got on Twitter and started talking about e-commerce... through that I made a bunch of great friends"
- "It's a very lonely thing running a big business"
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The only tangible downside:
- "If and when you get sued... they will read your tweets in depositions"
On Niche Content Creation
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Created a highly profitable niche podcast called "Operators":
- "It'll bill at least $2,000,000 to sponsors but it might bill like $4,000,000"
- Despite having "way less maybe one-one hundredth the listenership you guys get"
- Valuable because "it's so niche it's like way more of an actual community"
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Advice for content creators:
- "If you're an expert at something do an incredibly niche YouTube channel"
- "The sponsor integrations are just so much deeper"
- Sponsors will pay premium rates when "we're the only marketing channel for them"