OPERATORS

Adrian Zhang, co-founder handling operations and strategy, and Justine Tiu, creative lead and UX designer turned craft educator. They recount turning crochet from therapy into a retail and licensing business. Topics include scaling from a Brooklyn apartment, product-first design and tutorials, channel pivots after iOS14, wholesale pitfalls, licensing wins, and balancing marriage, family, and company growth.

Amit RG, CEO of RichPanel — builder of CX tools for ecommerce — talks about AI agents upending traditional SaaS and why he’s betting on agent-based solutions. He discusses rapid AI diffusion, customer service automation, token vs per-ticket pricing, brand-driven distribution, and RichPanel’s new returns portal. Short, provocative, and focused on how teams and pricing models must adapt.

Matt Orlić, co-founder of Qure Skincare and founder of Ecomm Architects, scaled multiple consumer brands after rebuilding from a major financial loss. He talks about launching a clinical at-home LED mask, cracking high-AOV attribution with influencer strategies, bootstrapping globally from Australia, and building a creative “spherical scaling” system for ads and content.

Ryan Petersen, founder and CEO of Flexport, a leader in global freight and trade tech. He walks through checking and claiming tariff refunds, setting up ACE and ACH to receive money, and the emerging secondary market for refund claims. They then tackle how Iran-related disruptions reshape shipping and airfreight, and how AI is speeding customs audits and even generating a children’s book in an afternoon.

Hudson Leogrande, founder of Comfrt and serial bootstrapped e‑commerce builder, went from homeless at 16 to scaling a comfort-first apparel brand toward $1B. He discusses creator-driven UGC and affiliate flywheels, running 500 commission-based creators as mini-CMOs, dynamic pricing and pre-order strategies, and product innovations centered on mental‑health utility.

Krishna Poda, CEO of Saras Analytics and builder of data foundations and AI-backed query agents. He talks about why clean data warehouses are nonnegotiable. He explores agentic workflows that replace repetitive tasks and deliver 24/7 answers. He demos Saras IQ layering governance and vertical specialization on top of Claude for consistent, governed data queries.

Matt Kruer, CIO at Bissell who oversees finance and IT, and Craig Foldes, founder of ChatWalrus and former Global Head of AI at Crocs, discuss making AI practical in large companies. They talk about why most pilots fail, how to find and enable the 10% power users, simple rollout tactics like demos and prompt libraries, and where AI truly earns its keep in CX, marketing, and product.

Cassandra Thurswell, founder & CEO who grew Kitsch from handmade hair ties to a major beauty brand, and Jeremy Thurswell, COO who built finance, logistics, and scaling systems, tell their startup origin. They cover eight failed businesses before success. They recount catching manufacturing IP theft in China, a COVID pivot to 70M masks, building durable ops, and balancing marriage and parenting while scaling.

Kat Cole, CEO of AG1 and former restaurant executive who rose from hourly roles to senior leadership. She recalls crisis‑forged leadership, a weekly reflection practice she uses, and how AG1 spent years on ops and clinical science before a rapid wave of product, flavor, and retail launches including Costco.

Katy Mimari, founder and CEO of Caden Lane, an e-commerce brand operator focused on DTC and retail growth. Taylor Holiday, CEO of Common Thread Collective, an e-commerce agency leader advising on marketing and AI-driven creative. They discuss AI reshaping creative production. They debate channel shifts like TikTok Shop and distribution via Amazon and LLMs. They unpack the Four Peaks framework for planning conversion spikes.