EP242 - Salsify Co-Founder and CMO Rob Gonzalez  Rob Gonzales is the Co-Founder and CMO of Salsify an e-commerce enablement SaaS company that has raised over $250m and focuses on helping brands sell online. Rob is also co-founder of the Digital Shelf Institute. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 242 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Wednesday, October 21st 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 242 being recorded on Wednesday October 21st 2020 I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason and Scot show listeners. Well when we’re not talking about ship a garden one of our other favorite topics here on the Jason Scott show is what we call branded remanufacturers going direct or direct to Consumer brands or just simply direct-to-consumer, and this is a big topic and we’re really excited to have a guest here that is going to be able to really help us dive in on this and shed a lot of light on the trend, so we are excited to Welcome to the Jason Scott show Rob Gonzales he is the co-founder and CMO a chief marketing officer which is one word short of Jason’s title I’ll just point that out of salsify, salsify is an e-commerce enablement software-as-a-service company that has raised over 250 million I’ll do a dramatic pause there, and focuses on helping Brands sell online Rob welcome to the show. Rob: [1:34] Thanks for having me glad to be here. Scot: [1:36] Yeah we know if listeners know this but we record late at night and you’re an early morning person so we really appreciate you staying up into the wee hours to do this with us. Rob: [1:45] Thank you yeah you guys are the party animals with e-commerce quit these hours. Scot: [1:49] That’s yeah that’s what we’re commonly referred to as the party animals of e-commerce. Jason: [1:55] You talk about sad states of Affair like what a lame industry this is if Scott and I are the party animals, Rob it’s awesome to have you on the show excited to dive into the latest stuff but before we do we always like to get a little bit of a feel for the guests can you tell us how you, got started and how you came to the e-commerce industry. Rob: [2:20] Yeah in 2006 I was working in an IBM research group and right across the street, was in Deka Technologies one of my best friend’s Jeremy is also by co-founder at salsify. [2:34] Got a job in Deca and loved it and convinced me to come over and in Deca Technologies for those who don’t know invented search navigation merchandising for e-commerce so if you were, building an Enterprise e-commerce site in the 2000s you weren’t just buying a single platform like you are today you’re not just buying Salesforce Commerce cloud and it sort of does everything, what you would do is you would buy a mix of different pieces of technology and Stitch them together to provide your whole Commerce platform so the search engine the navigation system all that stuff was typically bought separate from the core Commerce. And in Deco is the leader in that space you think about like in that period walmart.com target.com, homedepot.com most of the big e-commerce players about 60% of the internet retailer top, using Deca for their search navigation and Merchandising Amazon actually tried to acquire them at one point in the 2000s to to be what would have what would become the A9 algorithm, so really really great technology I was acquired by Oracle for a little over a billion dollars in 2011 and I like that number because, I mean in 2011 e-commerce is basically nothing so to be a billi