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PODCAST

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast

Brian Walker & Bill Friend

Common sense for commerce tech, washed down with great cocktails. Hear from great guests from around the enterprise commerce tech landscape as they share nuggets of wisdom between sips, just like at the hotel bar... cocktailsand.substack.com

technology food

All Episodes

63:31

C&C Pod: Steve Papa, Commerce OG - Endeca, Toast, and...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2026/04/23

Another episode with a true Commerce OG. This week Steve Papa joins us to explore the founding and growth-path of Endeca — the commerce search and guided navigation platform that became the de facto standard for retail eCommerce discovery in the 2000s. Endeca climbed to powering roughly half of the top 100 eCommerce sites before being acquired by Oracle in 2011. If you were building a serious retail site in that era, you almost certainly had Endeca under the hood - and many still do.Beyond Endeca,

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62:38

C&C Pod: Steve Kramer, Founder & CEO of Workjam - and...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2026/04/14

Bill and I are both saddened and excited about this episode. This is the first of a series we are calling the “OG Series”, where C&C talks to a commerce OG about the early days, what they are up to now, and where the party is joining to be when the robots take over. First up: Remembering Jon PanellaBut before we get into the episode, we want to first acknowledge an OG our industry recently lost - Jon Panella. Jon was exactly the kind of person we had in mind when we first mapped out the OG Series —

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50:08

C&C Pod: Rob Garf, Head of Strategy, Cordial

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2026/04/06

Bill and I have been looking forward to this one. Rob Garf joins us to mix up a great riff on his beloved Espresso Martini and dig into the transformation happening at the intersection of marketing technology, agentic systems, and customer experience.Rob is Head of Strategy at Cordial, a cross-channel marketing platform that sits at the convergence of data, AI, and the activation layer. Cordial works with leading brands and retailers — Levi’s, Abercrombie, L.L.Bean, Boot Barn, and others — to

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59:14

C&C Pod: Nitin Mangtani, EVP of Agentforce Commerce &...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2026/03/27

This week Nitin Mangtani joins Bill and I to mix up a delicious C&C bespoke mocktail and give us an update on Salesforce Commerce Cloud, their recent acquisition of Cimulate, and share his point-of-view on agentic commerce, and what the rise of AI-driven agents means for the future of B2B and software as a whole.Nitin is Executive Vice President of Agentforce Commerce & Retail Cloud at Salesforce, one of the largest and most influential software companies on the planet. Nitin came to Salesforce by

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56:04

C&C Pod: John Williams, Founder, Co-CEO & CTO of...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2026/03/19

As we get the pod back up and rolling after a bit of a break, we are excited to bring you a great conversation. John Williams joins Bill & I to shake up a Dark & Stormy - which one is ‘dark’ and which one is stormy? - and dig into a topic we’ve been wanting to explore for a while: what AI is doing — and will do — to the commerce content supply chain.John is the Founder, Co-CEO & CTO of Amplience, a solution provider many of you will know well. Founded in 2008 and headquartered in London, Amplience

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66:30

C&C Pod - Bjarke Sejersen, Founder & CEO of Go...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/12/30

For the last episode of 2025 - or the first of 2026, depending on when you listen - Bill and I have a great episode and the perfect cocktail for you. Bjarke Sejersen joins the pod to mix up some Bloody Mary riffs and talk about the transformation AI is bringing to B2B Commerce - and perhaps most importantly, we are not just talking about the B2B eCommerce website.Bjarke is the founder and CEO of Go Autonomous, an interesting early stage company focused on B2B, and - as the name implies - one

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40:18

C&C Pod - Kailin Noivo, Co-Founder & President of Noibu

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/12/19

Bill and I are joined by Kailin Noivo to mix up a NA cocktail and talk about eCommerce analytics and what is happening ‘for realz’ with Answer Engine traffic and impact today.Kailin is the co-founder and President of Noibu, where he leads the company’s mission to help eCommerce businesses identify and eliminate both small and large problems that impact traffic, conversion and bounce rates. Since launching in 2017, Noibu has grown quickly into a trusted platform used by many leading global retailers

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52:10

C&C Pod - Jim Herbert, CEO of Patchworks

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/11/07

This episode Bill and I are joined by Jim Herbert, CEO of Patchworks to mix up a few too many Pisco Sours - complete with reverse dry shakes and a bit of history - and talk about the evolution of composability, integration, MACH architectures, and agentic commerce systems.Patchworks is a solution provider competing in the dynamic, rapidly evolving integration platform-as-a-service market (aka: iPaaS). Patchworks describes its mission as one to make integrations effortless.Prior to Patchworks, Jim

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61:42

C&C Pod - John Andrews, Founder & CEO of Cimulate

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/10/29

This episode Bill and I are joined by John Andrews to mix up a smoky, balsamic riff on an Old Fashioned and talk about the evolution of commerce product discovery, the rise of CommerceGPTs, and how agentic commerce will really work.John is CEO of Cimulate, a generative-AI native solution that covers many compelling use-cases - discovery, personalization, and more - focused on commerce, which he co-founded together with esteemed MIT Professor Vivek Farias. Prior to Cimulate, John and Vivek also

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47:32

C&C Pod - Jason Cottrell, CEO of Orium & President of...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/10/16

This episode Bill and I are joined by Jason Cottrell to mix up a great bespoke cocktail and talk about the evolution of commerce services, composability, the rise of agentic commerce ecosystems, and the future of the MACH Alliance.Jason is the founder & CEO of Orium, a leading consultancy for composable and adaptive commerce across the Americas. Orium is a services firm at the forefront of agentic commerce and the firm behind Composable.com, a great resource for agentic commerce education. Jason was

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63:19

C&C Pod - Bryan House, CEO of Elastic Path

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/10/02

This episode Bill and I are joined by Bryan House to mix up a bespoke Manhattan riff, check in on Elastic Path, discuss the state of the commerce tech market, and look forward to the impact of agentic commerce.Bryan is now CEO of Elastic Path, having taken over the leadership role in May 2025. Bryan joined EP in December of 2020 to lead product and customer success, then became President in 2024. Prior to that Bryan was Chief Commercial Officer at Neural Magic, which was acquired by Red Hat, and

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55:53

C&C Pod - Eli Finkelshteyn, Founder & CEO of Constructor

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/09/12

This episode Bill and I are joined by Eli Finkelshteyn to mix up some Boulevardier riffs and talk about the evolution of commerce product discovery in the Gen-AI and agentic era, Agentic Commerce, and hear Eli’s perspective on where this market is headed.Eli is founder & CEO of Constructor, a leading enterprise commerce product discovery solution. Eli founded Constructor in 2015, but interestingly, they spent 4 years building the product before bringing it to market in 2019. We of course ask about

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38:31

C&C Pod - Scott Mager, CMO of Deloitte U.S. - The...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/08/15

This week Bill and I are joined by Scott Mager, CMO of Deloitte U.S. to mix something up - ostensibly some Margarita riffs, though Scott had his own ideas - and talk about the world of consulting and systems integration and how all that is evolving in the face of AI. Scott is now CMO of Deloitte U.S., but brings a deep background in commerce and digital experience to our conversation, having led these practices at Deloitte for many years before moving into marketing leadership in 2022.Bill and I

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71:22

C&C Pod - Dirk Hörig, Founder of Commercetools

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/08/08

This week Bill and I are joined by Dirk Hörig, founder and CEO of commercetools. We warned Dirk that we would ply him with drinks and ask him some tough questions, and that’s just what we did. We talked about what is happening with Commercetools, the state of the market, MACH Alliance, and the advent of Agentic Commerce and what that means for commerce tech.Dirk co-founded Commercetools in 2006, leading CT through its growth to become one of the world's leading enterprise commerce platforms. Dirk is

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61:24

C&C Pod - Scot Wingo, Founder & CEO of ReFiBuy &...

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/07/18

This week Bill and I are joined by Scot Wingo, founder and CEO of early-stage agentic commerce start-up, ReFiBuy and the podcast and Substack Retailgentic - where he focuses on Agentic Commerce. When we wanted to focus on the topic of Agentic Commerce, we could think of no one better than Scot to come on and talk about.Scot is a serial entrepreneur with an impressive and long background in commerce. Scot founded Channel Advisor in 2001, and later took it public in 2013. He later started Spiffy to

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61:22

C&C Pod - Maju Kuruvilla, Founder & CEO of Spangle

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/07/10

This week Bill and I are joined by Maju Kuruvilla - founder and CEO of commerce AI start-up, Spangle AI. Spangle is one of a number of early stage companies that have emerged over the past year leveraging advances in Generative-AI - large language models and transformers - to impact the commerce experience and lead down a new agentic commerce path transforming both the human experience and laying the foundation for agent experience. We talk to Maju about the ways in which Generative AI unlocks

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75:01

C&C Pod - Bobby Morrison, CRO at Shopify

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/05/23

This week Bill and I are joined by Bobby Morrison, Chief Revenue Officer at Shopify We invited Bobby on the show to respond to our recent article on Shopify, and talk about a number of things we shared there. Bobby goes deep, sharing insights into their momentum to the enterprise commerce platform market and their ambitions moving forward - in both product & GTM. If you partner with, work with, or compete against Shopify you are going to get a lot out of this conversation.Bobby has been Chief

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50:32

C&C Pod - Raj De Datta, Founder & CEO of Bloomreach

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/05/09

This week Bill and I are joined by Raj De Datta, Founder and CEO of Bloomreach to mix up a Kir Royale cocktail and talk about Raj’s perspective on the market, his many lessons from founding and leading Bloomreach, and AI’s impact on the future of commerce experiences, digital marketing, and how merchants and marketers work going forward.Many of you will know Raj, Co-Founder and CEO of Bloomreach, a significant player in commerce search, personalization, and marketing automation markets. What you may

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58:24

C&C Pod - Travis Hess, CEO of BigCommerce

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/04/18

This week Bill and I are joined by Travis Hess, CEO of BigCommerce to mix up a C&C original cocktail with us and talk about BigCommerce - his vision, where BigCommerce fits, contrasting BigCommerce & Shopify, and where the commerce platform and technology market is headed.Travis took the reins at BigCommerce this past September, rising from President to lead the company’s transformation. Travis has an extensive background in commerce, but much of it on the services side including leadership roles at

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37:44

C&C Pod - Talking Retail Media with Kiri Masters

Cocktails & Commerce Podcast ·

2025/03/28

Welcome everyone to another episode of Cocktails & Commerce. This week Kiri Masters joins us to mix up a ‘Walk in the Park’ mocktail and talk about the world of retail media and how it is poised to change quickly.Kiri was the founder of Bobsled Marketing, an agency focused on helping marketplace sellers with their strategy to compete and gain exposure. Bobsled was acquired in 2022, and Kiri is now host of the ‘Retail Media Breakfast Club’ - a daily podcast and newsletter focused on the retail media

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35 results

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