Behind The Brand With Mason

Matt: Welcome to a
very special bonus episode of the e-Commerce podcast with me your host, Matt
Edmundson. The E-Commerce podcast is all about helping you deliver. E-commerce
wow. Now all of the links, notes, and transcript from today's episode are
available on our website at e-commerce podcast.net. Now in this very special
spotlight episode, we take a break from the usual deep dive into specific
e-commerce topics, and instead, shine a light on a company that's making waves
and doing some pretty impressive work.

In the world of e-commerce and today that company is Mason, who
are doing some insane stuff in the world of AI, which as we all know, is a bit
of a hot topic at the moment in the world of e-commerce. And our guest is, uh,
Kaus Manjita, who is the CEO and founder of Mason. Now Kaus is a celebrated
founder and expert product creator with over 16 years of experience in the
world of commerce enablement, with a passion for making technology accessible
and user friendly, she has devoted her career to ensuring that everyone can
reap the benefits of cutting edge innovations.

Now, Kaus is a natural people person. Which is a beautiful
thing on a podcast, let me tell you. Uh, she loves connecting with fellow
entrepreneurs and developers, marketeers, brand builders, designers, you name
it. Whether it's over a cup of coffee on a Zoom call through Instagram or of
course on a podcast.

Now, boasting an impressive background. Kaus has honed her
skills at industry giants such as IBM Commerce, Myntra, which is Walmart
fashion in India, uh, and Paytm, which is part of Alibaba. Working in diverse
locations, including Atlanta, San Francisco, and India. All very enviable, I
feel. And today she divides her time between Toronto and Bangalore leading an
international team of talented creators at Mason, which all sounds extremely
impressive if, if I'm honest with you, Kaus. So welcome to the show. Great to
have you here. How you doing?

Kaus Manjita: I'm
doing good. Extremely impressive, but also extremely tiring for some people.
But I think once you get over, once you get over that constant jet lag, you're
like, you know what? I can sleep anywhere. I can just take my break anywhere.
We're good.

Matt: So I, it's
interesting. So you must spend a lot of time on airplanes, right? Just traveling
all over the place.

Kaus Manjita: I do.
But I'm raking up a ton of miles. I'm trying to use them as much as I can too,
so.

Matt: So what's your
top tips for dealing with jet lag?

Kaus Manjita: I think
the most important thing is that you gotta, wherever you land, I mean, just.
Behave like that's your schedule now, right? Mm-hmm. It doesn't matter. And,
uh, it, it, it's much better. At least for me, it works out much better if I
land in the day, I'm gonna go through the day. I'm gonna sleep as much as I can
only at night.

And strangely enough I'm realizing that there's like this
little. You know, half an hour, around 5:30 to 6, uh, five to six every
evening, um, that I actually feel super sleepy and that works out whichever
time zone you're in. So I try to take a power nap if I can for 15 minutes.
Yeah, I think these are, these are probably the two things. You gotta find your
own rhythm.

Matt: Yeah,
absolutely. I mean, if I took a power nap at 5:30, my nap would last probably
until like 7:00 AM the following morning. I dunno if I could do a 15 minute
power nap that time of the day, but maybe two o'clock. But yeah, no, it's
interesting. So you are, um, you're traveling, you know, doing a lot of travel.

You've got teams, uh, halfway around the world from each other
in a lot of ways. Mm-hmm. And doing some great stuff for Mason. So tell me
about Mason. How did you get started? Uh, in Mason, you kind of, you've done
some impressive stuff, you know, like with IBM and all that sort of stuff, but
why Mason? How did you get involved in that?

Kaus Manjita: Yeah,
and, and I think it goes back to kind of like this. Um, very interesting
dichotomy and mix. And I've used that statement of like, over the years in, in
many, many different settings. But I've always been, uh, you know, a very
creative kid. Uh, love, love like painting, reading a ton of books, et cetera.
Uh, gardening, I don't know, just hanging out with like my dad and daydreaming
in the backyard.

But, uh, on the other hand, uh, you know, Science fiction reader
like Isaac Asimov was pretty much the first, you know, person I think. Well, I
was in 6th standard or something and I just couldn't let go all everything.
Whatever he is written, Arthur C. Clarke and, and then June series and stuff
like that. Mm-hmm. Um, so there's been this like very interesting dichotomy
that I, that I've always been in, and it continued I guess across this whole.

You know, work experience, I would say, um, always straddling
different regions, always straddling the world of technology and consumer
behavior. Uh, you know, um, and, uh, somewhere when I was, uh, you know,
working at Walmart's Myntra in India, uh, it, it suddenly struck me that, you
know what, uh, The world's shifting.

Uh, the enterprises are becoming, I would say, solo-preneurial.
Mm-hmm. Rather than just an enterprise. And, and every product, everything that
we do, every system that we use is just getting more and more geared towards
empowering that individual, right? And so people like me who love creating
great experiences, who love making technology simple, um, I don't code, I'm
terrible at it, but can I work with people who code and can I work with AI or
whatever else, you know, happens?

Um, and I can, can I continue to add value, uh, to someone's
life and to someone's goals? Something that they're trying to achieve every day
using technology, right? Yeah. So that's, that's, that's been I guess, the
connecting dots throughout my life. So when I was at Myntra, uh, uh, you know,
we were, me and my co-founder, coincidentally, were working on a bunch of
systems, uh, to power revenue on the and Walmart platform in India.

And so it was all about powering those. You know, um, uh,
millions, 500 million plus, uh, you know, consumers who are, uh, visitors who
are coming in empowering them to take, to discover beautiful products. Yeah.
Uh, enjoy the whole shopping experience. Um, nudge them with decision, with,
with, with things that help them take a decision to buy, right?

Mm-hmm. And, and, but enjoy the process more importantly,
right? What shopping, shopping is not, is a lot more than buying, right Matt?
It's, it's shopping is fun. It's buying plus fun, I guess. Yeah. Um, so, so
somewhere along that line, uh, we realized that we've been working in large
corporations for a while, uh, empowering large marketplaces, which are closed
systems end of the day and we felt like

why not kind take all our learning, simplify it. No matter how
powerful it is under the hood, but simplify it and take it to the rest of the
99% of retail, those solo-preneurs, the brands, the, you know, founders, the
entrepreneurs. Yeah. And actually help them, help them, you know, get more,
more orders, get more revenue, essentially win, right? So that's, that's where
I guess it all started.

Matt: Wow. So this desire
to bring the secrets of the big boys, uh, and get them accessible to everyone.
Yeah. Uh, I I like that. Absolutely. That's so great. So when was Mason
started? When did you take the leap from, uh, Myntra into Mason?

Kaus Manjita: Uh, it
was not a direct straight journey. It, it, it's never is. And uh, we, we
started, uh, we started something called Kubric first, and that was, I guess we
were very early in generative ai, so that was all Kubric was all about. We were
working in large marketplaces, remember? So a lot of our experiments, you know,
gave us learning that hey, visuals, creatives great, great looking products,
great looking, you know videos around products,

all of that really help shoppers engage and mm-hmm. You know,
they, they love it. Um, so, but, but it's a lot of work. We had like a hundred
member, sorry, it started with a 30 member team and then was moving towards a
hundred member team. Wow. To actually just power all that beautiful things that
you see on any platform, um, any shopping platform.

And, uh, we said that, hey, like. You know, generative AI is
interesting. Uh, this was 2018-19, and we said that hey, we both wanted to, uh,
you know, create this, uh, AI platform for generating all this shopping
content. Uh, visual content and, um, we were little early. Gen AI is not where
it's today. It was, it was, you know, a while back and, uh, at some point in
2019 we realized, hey, this is, you know, we are early.

Um, we, we'll need a lot more funding and a lot more research
and a lot more, you know, ammo to actually make a, make a difference, right?
So, yeah. Um, so yeah. So, but, but during that time we kind of chanced upon
this whole idea of empowering smaller brands, uh, to do better sales. So we
kinda pivoted and we stopped Kubric and then we moved on to do Mason. Uh, we
launched it first in 2020 in the middle of the Pandemic.

Matt: Good time to
launch a business. Yeah.

Kaus Manjita:
Perfect, isn't it? Yeah. Um, and about, uh, may to June and yeah. So we've been
what live for about two, two and a half years going, gonna be three years this
year.

Matt: Yep. Okay. So
in two and a half to three years in digital terms is actually a really long
time, isn't it? It's, um, it's, it's a yes. When you think about the
technological changes just in the last two to three years alone, I mean, it's,
it's quite astounding stuff that you guys must have witnessed just in your own
business, I would've thought.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah, I
think just the last couple of months itself, the whole world's gone tipsy.

Um, and I mean, you know, uh, prompt engineering mm-hmm. Was
given a domain and now everybody's like, Hey, how to be a prompt engineer,
right. So, so yes, thinking super fast. But what we realized, and I was
actually talking to someone today, um, uh, from the Signal Fire, nfx, you
would've. Seen that, uh, uh, nfx, uh, uh, online, and they do a ton of
interesting content, uh, around all this, you know, interesting trends that are
happening in the ecosystem, startups, technology and all of that backed by fund.

But nfx itself is a really amazing site to, uh, kind of find
out what's, what's happening. And, uh, uh, very interestingly, they said that,
you know what, uh, it, it's in the end, it's all about are you powering
something super fundamental. Like, what is it like you strip away all the
jargons and all the tech and everything else.

what is the fundamental problem that you're solving? Right. And
when you look at it, commerce is so fundamental. It's like so basic human
nature. Like there's always been trade. You always need things. Yeah. And
there's always someone out there who has that thing to offer. And uh, yeah. So,
so at the core of what we do is essentially, Um, we wanna power someone, uh, to
find something that they love and at the right price, at the right time, right?

And, and so we wanna also help the person who's selling it sell
better, right? So that's, that's the core of it. So I think, I think as long as
you are very true to that fundamental it, everything else just falls in place.
Yeah.

Matt: So how do you
guys. I mean, that's a great statement. It's almost like a mission statement,
isn't it? What you've just said. And how do you guys then fulfill that? How,
how do, what's the outworking of that, um, in Mason?

Kaus Manjita: Yeah,
and that's a great question because, you know, there, there's always tons and
tons. Retail is like red ocean, retail tech is an ocean, its as old as retail
itself. There's always been new technology. That's helping, you know?

Mm-hmm. Larger small teams do stuff and, uh, uh, you know,
when, when you step back and you think about it, uh, what's the problem in the,
in the whole ecosystem today and, uh, the first generation of commerce online
commerce. Was all about this marketplaces like Amazon, et cetera, right? And
nobody had a clue like, how do I sell?

How do I buy? Like both sides. Yeah. Clueless. And they said
that we'll give you this black box. You don't, just don't have to worry about
anything you wanna sell. Come here, we'll help you do everything else. You
wanna buy, just come here, you're fine. Right. And then the next generation
like, but that was a black box.

So the next generation of, I guess online commerce is like
Shopify or Yeah. WooCommerce or all of that. Right. They're saying that, Like,
why, why the seller? Like why are you stuck on, on that platform, right?
Mm-hmm. Like, you need to kinda talk about who you are beyond just being like a
Craigslist, right? Yes. Yes.

And, uh, uh, you, you should stand out and so why not create
your own personality and create your own presence? And so that is the next
generation of commerce, which is again, you know, your own store and stuff like
that. Mm-hmm. Right? Uh, but actually at the core of commerce is us, the
consumers. It's us like we are buying.

Right? It's, it's not, yes, definitely the brands who are
selling us stuff, but the core of it is we need something. That's why someone
can sell something to us, right? Yeah. If we didn't need it, it just wouldn't
matter. Even if we give stuff for free, people don't want it. If we don't need
it, so, The next generation of commerce, how we see it online commerce is,
moving already. If you see the TikTokification of commerce that we,

Matt: I love that
phrase. The TikTokification. I love that.

Kaus Manjita: Right?
That's all about like the discovery, the engagement. Getting to getting to
discover interesting things that maybe you are just super excited by and you
might just buy. So, so it's selling at the point of inspiration, selling at the
point of intent, right?

It's not forceful, it's not a search based commerce world,
right? It's, it's help. It's the whole new next generation is all about
discovering these beautiful, amazing things to that we might just wanna shop.
Shop. And so, What we are doing fundamentally is we wanna be that
infrastructure that helps with the consumer first comms work, right?

Like that, that we want. We want to eliminate the middle man
and help brands and you know, consumers connect on an open market like why
closed market. Right? So that's, that's our, I guess the epic calling or the
vision. And yeah, how we do it today is like we help you first understand your
consumers. So there's a lot of discovery, engagement related.

You know, modules. And then the next step towards is once you understand
the consumers right? Now, how can I help that consumer take a decision to buy?
That's what, so that's the next phase of what we do. Yeah. Which is essentially
just, you know, part one I guess is understanding and getting to know your
consumer and, uh, part two of our product is about now taking that knowledge
and then helping the consumer take a decision to buy in a very, in a very
simple way. That would, that would be what we do.

Matt: Yeah. I love
that. I love how you simplified it as well, because I, I, I, I appreciate under
the hood, it's probably a little bit more complex, uh, than that. But, um, I, I
love what you were saying there about how, um, at the core of commerce is the
consumer who wants something, who needs something.

Um, and the rest of it is, is, is is okay, but you've
fundamentally gotta have the demand from someone to buy Right. Demand and
supply. You've gotta have that demand there from the consumer. Um, yeah. And,
uh, I loved your phrase, the tictokification. I might use that. Uh, you should,
you should. Yeah. Yeah. The TikTokification, it's not actually an easy word to
say, but I get what you mean.

Uh, you know, you buy it where you're sparking this sort of
desire. Uh, in people and your, and you can shop you can, you know, talk to
that and shop around that. So you are, you are taking then people through this
process, which one helps 'em understand their customer. Yeah. Which for me is,
is, is one of the critical things to e-commerce now, isn't it?

Understanding who your customer is and then two, under taking
that understanding to then go, right, how can I best sell to them? How can I,
uh, best um, promote them. And so I'm assuming, given that, uh, Kubric was
involved in generative ai, that you've sort of snuck in a little bit of that AI
learning, uh, into Mason.

And, um, so how does, am I right, one, uh, in, in saying that,
is there, is there sort of some AI trickery involved in this whole process?
Trickery is the wrong word. Magic. We do the right word. AI magic involved in
this?

Kaus Manjita: Yeah.
And, and yeah, you, we can't run away from it. Like my, someone we know, like
one of our oldest, I guess. You know, backers and, and advisors and, uh, he, he
once, uh, you know, jokingly told us, uh, that, oh, the OGs in Generative AI
we're like, yeah, but, but jokes apart, I guess. Um, you, you can't run away
from it. I mean, there's definitely, see at the core of it, what we wanna do is
essentially as you, you know, we wanna connect the consumer and the.

The shopper rather. And, and the seller, right. In a way. And,
uh, um, but, you know, sellers are overwhelmed. Like, you know, your, your core
I. Uh, skill is that you can identify. Once you understand what consumers need,
you can find that thing and you can package it and you can give it to them,
right? But now why, why are you having to know what's a web hub?

What's an api? How do I set up this? How do I set up? So
there's like so much of like constant learning about things that are probably
not really required or you're just operating all the time, like multiple tools.
You know, so much tech, so much of like burning out. So, so, so AI definitely
helps in, because it brings that intelligent decision making mm-hmm.

As long as you can set the parameters right? Yeah. So example,
example being just, you know, how, how, what's, what sort of. Discounts can I
give to, you know, shoppers who are probably engaging with a product but not
buying that product at that point in time. Right. Would that shopper have a
propensity to just like be excited by a discount?

Would that shopper not be excited? So there are many different
signals that you can use to. Even as a, as a, as a person, that's what you'll
do. You'll say that, Hey, that guy was like looking at that product for a long
time, was hovering over the price, but then kinda not buying, maybe he's
worried about the price.

Maybe I'll tell him about, you know, the like dude I can give
you a 5% discount. Like, something of that sort, like that's, that's what you
would do in the real world too. So, so as long as you can set like these sort
of boundaries and objectives for the system, the system can then keep, you
know, running those.

Experiment, saturations, whatever, and then can actually
eventually figure out what sort of consumer, you know, behavior and insights
will, you know, lead to what sort of outcome, right? Yeah. And they learn super
fast and they can be like multi, you know, multi so they can do like millions
of consumers at the same time, like, which is not possible for you.

Uh, and, and they can take so many different signals, which
again, is super hard for people to process, right? Um, so, so that's how you
kind of sneak in, as you said, the power of ai, right? Because at the end of
the day, if you want to help, uh, each shopper connect with the right seller
and the right product that the seller is selling at the right time, then
there's a ton of different data signals, right?

Yeah. And you need to take quick, instant decisions to now do
something. Right, and that is decision making is what is simplified with ai,
right? Mm-hmm. Uh, but of course, just like data and insights and analytics is
a, a very important module too. Uh, you know, automation is an important module
that we have, uh, you know, vertical specific, which is like if you are in
beauty and personal care, how you have to sell.

Sort of changes than if you are in groceries. So we have like
vertical specific, category specific, uh, you know, uh, strategies and
playbooks and apps. So all of that are the different modules, but yet they're
powered by this smart decision making engine. And, uh, at a very simple way,
it's like a set of rules that you set, but the system's like smart because it's
an ai. So it's like learning as it's, you know, Successful or not successful.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. No,
fair. That's great. Sounds great. And I'm curious, uh, Kaus, when you talk
about, um, the ability to handle all of this data, um, if I'm listening to the
podcast and thinking, well, this all sounds great and, and interesting and
helpful, um, but I'm just starting out is, is, is what you do still helpful for
the startup or, or do I need like, A million lines of sales data before it starts
to get interesting.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah,
actually, uh, honestly speaking, forget about the data, like keeping the data
aside. If you are in, in your e-commerce journey, right, or in your brand
journey, you're a brand founder and you're still trying to figure out product
market fit. Like you're still figuring out what sort of products should I even,
you know, what sort of category should I exist in?

Yeah. Like what's my sweet spot, right? What is the kinda
customer like, am I selling to only Gen Z women or like, am I also kinda
branching out into millennials? Like where am I? Right? So if you are still in
that, you know what product market fit. You know, phase. Right? Then of course,
keeping a system in the middle that's helping you, your consumer shop better
mm-hmm.

Is, is essentially, I think, an overkill, right? Because you
have, you have product market fit, you have zero to one journey to cover.
Mm-hmm. And I think it's the same, even if I'm a, um, uh, you know, software
startup right before I, I find product market fit before I figure out what's
the problem and how I wanna solve it.

Like putting any sort of growth engines is like, Meaningless.
Right? So we usually, uh, you know, operate in the sweet spot of, you know,
once you're from product market fit, maybe at about, you know, one to 2 million
in gmv. Mm-hmm. Um, and, and then beyond. That's where you know your question
of what am I even selling? Like who am I that that's gone. And then now you're
trying to like figure out how do I continue to scale, scale, scale, and without
having to put like a ton of people, systems, all of that.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah. No,
that's great. That's great. And so is, is what you do, um, something that
connects, say with Shopify, is it its own standalone store? I mean, um, who, who's
your, who's your target market, I suppose, in, in with, uh, with Mason? Yeah.

Kaus Manjita: We, we
are, um, uh, we have. Out of the box, uh, apps and plugins for different
ecosystems. So on Shopify we have an app called Mode Magic, for example. Mm-hmm.
Um, so you can, you don't need to like integrate it to your store.

You can literally just install it from the app store and then
you get like all these different. You know, capabilities I was talking about
all these different apps, all of that, like connected through that. Right. Um,
so we definitely have like default, I would say single click integrations, uh,
in a, in a nerdy way, um, uh, available.

Um, but then as, as you sort of start becoming bigger, you
might use more customized platforms. Yeah. That we've seen for some of our, uh,
we primarily sell to SMB and mid-market. You know, brands? Mm-hmm. Uh, we do
happen to have some brands who are of course, in the larger part of mid-market,
kinda like getting into the enterprise space, so they start doing a lot of
customizations.

That's where we have open APIs where they can, uh, you know, do
integrations and stuff, but that's not like a large part of Google Service. So,
mm-hmm. Our goal is to, help everybody, as much as possible, as large a part of
retail as possible, get powerful, strategies and technology and systems.

but in a very simple and easy way. So, uh, having default
integrations, having like apps that are like one click. Easy for you to just
put on top of Shopify, for example. It's, it's very important. So we have, we
have, we're outta the box on Shopify. If you're on Shopify, you just have to go
to the app store find us install and you're done. Mm-hmm. Um, same for, uh,
BigCommerce. Uh. WooCommerce etc.

Matt: Yeah, but I, I,
I'm, it's good to hear that actually it's not, not just Shopify, because I, I
love Shopify as a platform. I do. And it mm-hmm. We, we always, we, we've had
people on the show who talk about, oh, we can do this with Shopify. We've got
this app, this integration. Um, and I, I do, I am a big fan of Shopify, but I'm
not on it.

Myself, uh, you know, I have my own custom site and so it's
nice to hear that there's an API function where I can just suck all the a, uh,
AI magic out of you guys and, and help my business with that. I love that.
That's great. So what kind of, I mean, I just talking about e-commerce
businesses then, uh, Kaus what sort of, um, what sort of success stories are
there of companies that have seen maybe great results with, with your tech,
with Mason's technology?

Kaus Manjita: Yeah,
we have like recently started actually being a little proactive about getting
all this success stories and you know, we're product founders and I think like
that's one, I think off topic line that I'm, I'm tugging at. But I, I think I keep,
like every time I meet a founder who's like a product founder and I am like,
you know what?

Just get out there and think about marketing or talking about
what you do. Like these are important things. Like you can't be like hacking
away in your, you know, in your garage forever. But, but you gotta, you gotta
have case like understand stories I think fundamentally have have about how do
you pull out those.

Case studies, but think of them as customer stories end of the
day. So yeah, we do, we are getting a little diligent about it. And we do have
a few customer stories, but interesting things that we're seeing is that, um,
uh, you know, uh, one of the interesting teams, and I love that, uh, cause that
was one of the first customer stories that we did, is sports, uh, uh, and, uh,
fitness, uh, express and, uh, you know, single founder adding this.

Uh, kind of like a sports and fitness, uh, you know, store
selling to, uh, us. Uh, you know, he's based out of us and selling to us
customers, and, uh, he was. How do I have so many different things to do? And
now I have like, he's on Shopify and Shopify app store, if you notice is crazy.
It's like what, eight thousand, nine thousand different apps?

Matt: No, the the
choice is overwhelming. Yeah. Yeah. No.

Kaus Manjita: And
other app, like, you know, I get you more conversions. And so he was thinking,
he was like, I need like this. Just like one thing where I don't have to worry
about like homepage or PDP or channel. I need like something for my browse to
buy journey. Like it's as simple as shoppers are coming

to my homepage, to my store, wherever, home pd, it doesn't
matter. And then they're dropping off. So I don't want him to drop off. I want
them to stay on my store and get to buy. Can I get a solution that sort of like
connects dots, right? Um, so I think over the first, just three to four weeks,
he got, uh, uh, $17,000 additional in sales.

It's a small store. Uh, but they were so excited and we were
like, I would be too. Yeah, and we were like, we gotta do more stories. Like,
like why weren't we, we're all looking at data all the time, you know, you're
like, yeah, we're adding 25% uplift and 25% more ATS and blah. And you're like,
man, like no stories.

Matt: Yeah. Like
that's stories where it's at. Right. People like a good story, don't they? Uh,
stories with good endings as well.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah.
And why does that, 17 came when you think about it, he, that was something that
was just lying on the table for him. Mm-hmm. And it's, it's a lot for a small
brand for a single founder. It's, it's, you know, it's, it's, um, it's the
power to be independent.

Matt: No, it's also,
I mean, I'm curious what did, so he installs the app on his, um, fitness store,
which is a Shopify site. Yes. Um, what sort of things did he use from your
technology that really helped him? Yeah. Yeah.

Kaus Manjita: A
couple of examples are, you know, very simple. You always think about like,
everybody does this cart recovery stuff, right? Yeah. Uh, but you tend to
forget that, you know, keep your store on, on their desktop or on their phone.
On their browsers and they keep come. They're like they chance upon it. They
come back to that tab at some point in time. So, you know, a simple, very
simple embed that's not like, not a popup, not interruptive, but an embed that
just shows up.

And then gives you, if you are a person who likes discounts
because you have done some stuff on the store mm-hmm. And you're kind like, you
know, there is the AI has figured out that Kaus you know loves bargains, you
discount, of course, keeping margins in mind. Um, We just saw such a big change
in how shoppers were reacting to that, right?

Yeah. People sometimes just need a reminder, but they don't
like if the reminders dropping in on email, it's too intrusive. Like, Hey, I, I
left store tab open for a reason. I'm not like, don't, you don't have to
remind, I get super. I personally get a little annoyed when I get, like, we're
missing you and here things left in the, I'm like, I left in the cart for a
reason, right?

I'm, I'm gonna go back if I want it. And, uh, and then, you
know, um, if I'm a discount hunter or, or a bargain hunter or just everybody
loves a deal, right? So if I see that something that was at, uh, you know, $50
is at $45, why? Like, and it's for five minutes. Why not? That's, that, that's
the tipping point. Yeah.

So that was one very simple example of, you know, how, um, a
very common strategy, like cart recovery reminders. Mm-hmm. But then you just
add this intelligence to it, make it way more palatable for the consumer intent
that you have, right? It's not a blanket popup or an email that's thrown at
everybody. Yeah. By just personalizing, you know, Hey Matt, or hey Kaus, no.

Right. It's, it's something that's kind of like looking at your
behavior and looking at you as a person and how you're thinking and how you
probably have interacted, and then depending on that, showing you different
versions of that match. And we, we saw, that's actually one of our, you know,
very, very high performing strategies.

Matt: Yeah. Yeah.
That's really interesting. So I, I guess one question which then comes into my
head Kaus as you're, as you're talking is, um, if, if you are using this
technology to make these intelligent sort of decisions, you know, the sort of
intelligent thinking. Yeah. So we're gonna give this, this particular Kaus is
on the site again, we know we need to give her this discount to get her
motivated to go to the next stage. We're not gonna send her a shed load of
emails, um, but we're gonna do X, Y, and Z. We're gonna give her the $5 off the
$50 purchase or whatever it is. Yeah. But we're gonna put a time restraint on
there of five minutes.

So you got five minutes. Okay. I'm gonna buy. The power behind
that, which is obviously what you guys do at Mason. Does that, cuz this has
come up, uh, in a conversation with several people recently, and I'm, I'm
curious to, to, to see how you respond. Does that affect my site speed? Does
that slow things down? Because Yeah, a computer somewhere is having to think of
a trillion different things at once to, to create an output. Um, or, or, or
have you sort of managed to get it to do all of this sort of stuff, uh, in a,
in a nanosecond.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah.
And a lot of this is actually something that needs to be constantly thinking,
right? Yeah. Um, so, so when Matt dropped off, right, why did he drop off,
right? Like, what do you think can, would be a best way to kind of engage him
when he comes back? Like, what would be the best kind of things I can do right
when he comes back? I think these sort of decisions have to. Are running, uh,
constantly.

Right? And uh, that's because you can't, like, you can't wait
for me to go there, do this computation, then probably come back and. Generate
that experience too, because that, that, that, let's say that widget or that,
you know, embed or that little carousel that comes up is actually generated on
the fly too, right?

Mm-hmm. Uh, so if you're waiting for all of that, of course it
would, uh, the, your side, your store wouldn't slow down. Your site wouldn't
slow down, but that nudge will not be there at on time. And, and you've got
like, three, to five seconds to grab someone's attention today. It's crazy. we
are all goldfish, so, so yes, we do a lot of these, these computations we kind
of constantly make, uh, the system is constantly looking at things that are
happening and, and of thinking through what can be done next and kind of
keeping that.

In a way in memory and ready if, but of course, like things
like generating that little thing. Nowadays they don't, it does, it just
doesn't take time. You've seen, you know, the ChatGPT and how it works, right?
So, oh yeah. Yeah. How, and by the way, like it's just showing to us that it's
typing, but actually that entire frikkin' answer has been ready since you

Matt: put it on the
screen already.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah.
It's giving you a feeling that it's a person and it's thinking it's typing. No,
it's, it's all there. Right? So, um, it, it, it was there the moment you asked
a question. So many of these systems are super, super, Uh, you know, fast to
generate something. But of course, like computing, what to generate is
something that you have to do as things are happening and you have to on
constantly kind of like refine your understanding of that person on the other
side. And that's what the system does.

Matt: Yeah. And
that's your system, isn't it? That all that computing power is on your end.
It's not on my end. Yeah.

Kaus Manjita: No,
it's not. It's, it's on the cloud. It's in our, you know, in our systems. Yeah.
That's, that's not, that's not at all operating on plant or anywhere else in
our store.

Matt: Yeah. Okay. Uh,
let me go back, uh, Kaus to something you said earlier, you use this phrase,
the no code, um, you, you didn't code, uh, you know, the no code thing. So
what's your take on the sort of the no code movement and how it's changing the,
well probably explain what no code is, um, and then, and then explain how you
think it's changing e-commerce and, um, you know, for brands and marketplaces.

Kaus Manjita: I like
to say, and I posted about that and I didn't get, like I, I post on Twitter
like once in a million years. I used to post on Twitter once in a million
years, and then I expect that tweet to go viral and it obviously doesn't.

Matt: I'm laughing
because I'm exactly the same. I genuinely am exactly the same. I can't remember
that. Yeah. Anyway, sorry.

Kaus Manjita: But,
but isn't it like, I'm like, why it was so smart. Why isn't anybody engaging
with it? But yeah, like once in a million years, 2009-2019, like, that's
literally the two tweets. But, uh, I, I love this example that just hit me one
day.

Was that, you know, um, the Quill was the OG of the no code,
right? Like before that you were like taking that hammer thing. You are in the
clay tablets and you're like ramming away and you're writing things, and then
the quill came and it changed everything because now anybody can write, right?
Mm-hmm. So that's, that's so no code is no codification essentially is actually
making something so simple that anybody, making a technology simple enough for
everybody to have access to it.

We just call it no-code. Happen to call it No-code today,
right? Yeah. And it's the same with, uh, when you think about it with
spreadsheets, right? Like databases, just like all complex things and
spreadsheets are so simple, like who's gonna go and when you think about like
having a database and having SQL queries and running and trying to compute, but
then a spreadsheet does a lot of smart and intelligent and very difficult
computing.

Uh, just a tiny function that you can, you know, you can just
see equal sum and then, wow, I can, I can like do summation across like hundred
different, you know, rows and columns. So, so that's what no-codification is
all about. It's making technology simple enough for anybody to have access to
it. If the printing press didn't happen, like we'll still be like printing
press is giving us the no-code version of knowledge, right?

Yeah. So, or gave us the no-code version of knowledge. So I
think that's, I think is, is what no-code is, right? Mm-hmm. Like we, we tend
to call it a no-code movement. Doesn't mean that, oh, whether coding or not
coding is important. I think that's not the question here. The question is, can
we give subject matter experts the power to create, right? Mm-hmm. And in this
case, in the online world, in the digital world, the tech world, it could be
create apps. So yeah.

Matt: Yeah, no, I,
that's a good explanation of no code. So, yeah. How is it? How is it? But it
didn't go viral, didn't that, that's didn't go. You can just, just, I'll tell
you what, I'll follow you on Twitter and then, uh, when I go on in 10 years
time, I'll like it and then maybe it'll go viral. Uh, I dunno. Um, so apart
from the tweet, obviously, um, and, you know, the, the, the. The sort of the
take thing you have on no-code, how does that, how does that change things for
the, for the e-commerce entrepreneur?

Kaus Manjita: And it
does, right? Because today we were talking about it. Why do I have to know
what's a web, what's an api? Like everybody does it. You have like an api,
you're fine. Right? Matt, you're one of, one of very few, but a large part of
eCommerce brand mm-hmm. Creators. Founders. Like, it's just a lot of things
that you have to learn, which they probably, your, your core skills are not,
that you call skill is probably curation of great products.

Like you look at something and you know that this will click
with this kinda shoppers for this sort of reasons, right? And, and, uh, so what
No-code gives us ability. It, it, it simplifies complex things and gives you
the ability to do things on your own. Um, Again, for example, like this whole
price drop thinking that I was talking about, right?

Like you wanna engage people who are, uh, or rather you wanna
power shoppers who are engaging with certain products, but you want to take a
decision to give them certain discount in, in some places, not in other, and
you want to also define probably the boundary of like, Hey, that nudge that you
give has to look like my brand colors. And, you know, you should, I, I, I want
it in this way and I don't want it as a pop-up.

I want it as an like, you know, this sort of like a embed or a
banner or whatever. These decisions. It's like, imagine today how people do it.
They're like, you have to work with developers or someone who at least knows
something or installing four, five different apps and know how all of that work
together. Like even that's, that's like hard, right?

Mm-hmm. So, so what No-code, any sort of, no-code systems do,
and there are so many now, right? Uh, it's just, it's just makes things
self-serve. Mm-hmm. Um, and gives you the power to run your business on your
own terms and go live with your ideas and your strategies and your decisions
fast. And it's so powerful because the fundamental construct of that is that
you can now test what works.

For your shoppers instantly, right? Yeah. If you wanna go from
launching like. If I'm a yogurt seller and I wanna move to like oat milk
yogurt, like is that something that shoppers will even engage with? Right? Like
before I even invest in creating oat milk yogurt, maybe I wanna like test that
out, right? Yeah, yeah.

If you had, if you had to wait like a million years to just run
a survey or just ask few people, like, you would never be able to do it. So it
empowers people to, to run their business much, you know, uh, much faster, I
guess, on their own. Yeah.

Matt: No, I like
that. Uh, uh, it sounds, as you were talking, I'm thinking, you know, this is
probably why chat gpt has captured everybody's imagination because they've,
boy, they've managed to take something so complicated and boil it down to.

I just feel like I'm chatting to, I can talk to you, like I
could talk to a normal human. And somehow you've made that, you've made that
work. Yeah. I know there's this big thing around prompt engineering, um, which
in effect is still the coded version of ai, isn't it? But it, it seems to be
that actually most people can get reasonably good stuff out of AI without
really knowing.

Crazy prompt engineering. They just need to know how to talk to
people or talk to the ai, right? And that, that simplification, I think is a
great idea.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah, I
agree. And and that's why I feel like what chat gpt, it's not like open AI
didn't exist. Mm-hmm. But ChatGPT made it No code to an extent. You'll see and
more, we should see more and more things like that happening. Right. Because it
just makes. Takes away the operational overheads of anything. Like if I wanted
to publish an e-book, it would be like, oh my god, research and writing and
this. Mm-hmm. You can get like the first version. Of course, it's, it's a GPT
version.

Mm-hmm. That's fine, but it's out there and now you can spend
your time doing things that are more important, like mm-hmm. When do you wanna,
what information you wanna put? How do you wanna engage your reader? Like what
is interviewing experts to put those quotes and case studies in there. Why
should you waste your time just researching, right? Yeah, so no code is super
powerful. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, no.
Incredible. Incredible. So where do you think it's all going? What does the
future look like? Um, with, with all of this stuff, you've got generative ai,
you've got no code, you've got Mason doing some funky stuff, you've got
e-commerce just exploding still. Um, where do you, where do you see it all
going?

Kaus Manjita: I think
more open markets, um, you know, where, uh, you know, if both sides. And it's
important for both sides. Right. As shoppers. Right. As as consumers. And, and
we kind of touched upon it, I think like the whole interesting part of, of
commerce is shopping and shopping is that shopping is so much more than buying.

Mm-hmm. There's. You know, in, in today, a lot of what we used
to do, think of shopping on the online world, uh, was so away from what, how we
used to shop in the offline world, right? Every day. It's not about search-based
shopping. It's not like you search for t-shirt, v-neck, X, Y, Z, and then you
get that exact thing and then you have.

You know, you 20 choices and you'll take it or leave it. Right.
So there's this very interesting video by Connie Shannon and I'm, I'll forward
that to you. You'll love it. It's where she talks about this like discovery
based thing, entertainment based shopping, like this whole world of commerce is
moving to something where, You can find things that you love that works for
you, right?

Mm-hmm. And so technology in AI will not just impact the
shopping and the buying experience, but also, you know, the, the creating of
the product experience, right? Like, can we create over time, like
manufacturing, et cetera, where, you know, if I like V-necks, but I like the
same color and you like what you like around neck, can we get the same t-shirt
in our own personalized ways?

But I get it at a discount cause I'm a discount hog. You are
not, so you get it how you like it. Right? So I think, I think stuff like that
is where you, you are gonna move to, because technology and AI and a lot of
things that we do in Mason is gonna impact the way shoppers are. You know,
discovering, yeah. Loving and finding the right products, and I'm sure there's
gonna be like this very interesting movement in your manufacturing and all of
that that's gonna get that personalized, incredible product to the shopper
back. Yeah. Right. So, so that's what I, I think is, is gonna be the future of
shoppers, super exciting.

Matt: Yeah, it is.
And I, I agree. I think this, this sort of. The ability to personalize, which
is more than just putting somebody's name on something, isn't it? You know,
it's, yeah. Yeah. Um, the ability to personalize is becoming more and more
interesting to me.

And, and, uh, whether it's print on demand, 3D printing, I
mean, you can even, you can get most things, like, I can get bespoke meals made
for me now and all kinds of stuff, can't you? And it's, it's, um, it's
interesting to see where. Where that's all going to that actually the, the ones
that are winning, well, it's winning long term. The ones where you can
certainly make better profits seems to be in this, this high level of
personalization. Right.

Kaus Manjita: Yeah.
And, and that all boils down to whether you understand the person on the other
side or not. Right. And so having, the power and the capability to understand
and constantly refine your understanding of that person and the shopper on the
other side becomes super powerful and very, very important. Without that, you,
can't personalize because you're, superficial.

Matt: Yeah, that's so
true. Very fascinating. Very fascinating. So, um, Kaus, what sort of things are
you guys working on at Mason at the moment? What sort of, what, what, what have
you got in your dev dev pipeline? What's some, what are some of the exciting
updates that maybe you can share that are coming up? I'm, I'm really curious.

Kaus Manjita: I think
the first, like it goes back to what we, I just mentioned about how can we
help, how can you understand your shoppers better and constantly refine that
understanding and a lot of it is not like first party third party data. We do,
we do operate in that world, but can we move to zero party day data? Like, can
we help you understand the consumer because the consumer or the shopper's
telling you what they want, right?

Mm-hmm. Uh, so in the world of bpc, in the world of beauty and
personal care, it's about, you know, I, it's very personal, so I do care that
my skin is dry and I want. You know, uh, water-based or a serum based
moisturizer don't give me an oil-based one, right? Mm-hmm. I'm willing to give
you that information as a brand or a seller.

If I know that you'll, it'll help you find right product from
me. So giving more generative AI power to help you understand that consumer at
that zero party level, that's like a big leap that's coming up, uh, soon. I'm
very, very happy to give you a sneak peek before it goes out to the world.
You're on the list now. You're on the list. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Make sure
you do. Yeah, yeah, for sure. No, that'd be awesome. And I, I guess, um, my,
the question I've been saving up, um, Kaus for since the start of this
conversation, where did the name Mason come from?

Kaus Manjita: I, a
lot of people do ask me cause they're like, Mason sounds like something that's
like a builder and this, that actually it's a little bit more philosophical
than that.

And we think of, like, me and my co-founder were like, we were
like kind in the fag end of Kubric and just like thinking about starting this
and, and we were thinking like we kind of had this like, you know, A little
hazier version of this view. Uh mm-hmm. And a lot more clearer now, I'm sure
I'll be way clearer one year down the line, or two years down the line, but we
knew somewhere that shopping's changing fundamentally, uh, online shopping has
to become more and more like how shopping used to be.

Mm-hmm. Uh, very personal, very, you know, about me and who was
selling me. Right. And, um, and we knew it needed something very fundamentally
different in the kind of technology that will power you to reach that world.
Right. It's, it's a big shift. And for us, masons are the people who actually
build new worlds. And build new thing things, right?

So we, we were talking about like, hey, you know, when Mars,
the colony in Mars starts and Elon Musk gets there, you know, the first people
who are gonna be there are like the masons, they are gonna build, masons are
gonna build the first Mars colony. And then, you know, we were like, why not
call our, call ourselves Mason? Because it just feels like we are kind of
building that first. You know, that, that first building blocks and
infrastructure of this new world. So yeah, very philosophical. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, very
philosophical. Was that, um, I, it's one of those things that, uh, quite a lot
of people struggle with when they name their company, coming up with a new
name. Uh, was it something that instantly came to you guys, or was it like this
took months to just to figure out the name?

Kaus Manjita: I think
it just came, we weren't really like, Planning about it. Mm-hmm. Like
consciously, uh, thinking about what's the name gonna be. But both of us are
super obsessed with names. Like every time we launch a feature or a product or
a new app or an engine, we're constantly, what's the name, what do we call it?
Is your North star in some way ? Like when you define that you are, um, I guess
your DNA and your ethos sort of aligns with it in some way. Yeah, yeah. So
we're obsessed with naming, so I don't remember it being very conscious but I'm
sure it was like lots of beer and coffee and one

Matt: usually the
beer usually the, the sort of the social ingredients find a good company. Now.
Um, listen, Kaus. This has, uh, been a great conversation. Um, uh, genuinely
really enjoyed it. And if people wanna find out more, um, about Mason, if they
want to connect with you, what's the best way to do that?

Kaus Manjita:
GetMason.io is our site, we have, uh, you know, our, our e-commerce expert team,
they love helping and talking to people as, as much as I do. Uh, so we have
like this little form and you fill it up. Someone's call you, you know, have
great conversation with you, at least at the very least, or, you know, I love,
still love talking to everybody that I can, as much as my time permits. Mm-hmm.
And I, you know, get into customer calls as often as I can.

And so if you ever are on LinkedIn, I'm, as you can see, as you
already understood, I'm not on Twitter, once in a decade. So not on Twitter,
but if you're on Instagram or on LinkedIn, you're gonna finds Kaus Manjita
pretty easily and then you just DM me and yeah, we can catch up.

Matt: Fantastic.
Fantastic. So that website again is getmason.io and you can find out all the
information there. We will of course, link to the website and Kaus' LinkedIn
and Instagram profiles. And if we can dig it out, maybe the Twitter profile as
well, just so you can go have a look at the tweet she wrote 10 years ago. Uh,
we'll put all of that, uh, in the show notes. Of course. So Kaus, thank you so
much for coming on the show. It's been a real treat. Um, really enjoyed getting
to know a bit about, a bit more about Mason and what you guys are doing and
sounds fantastic.

So thank you for coming on.

Kaus Manjita: Thank
you for having me.

Matt: No problem.
It's been great, hasn't it? Great conversation. As I said, all of the links,
uh, the notes and the transcript will be available on our website,
ecommercepodcast.net. And if you sign up to our newsletter, they will be coming
straight to your inbox.

Huge thanks again to Kaus for joining me today. Now, be sure to
follow the e-commerce podcast wherever you get your podcast from because we've
got yet more great conversations lined up. I don't want you to miss any of
them. And in case no one has told you yet today, you are awesome. Yes, you are.
Created awesome. It's just a burden you have to bear. Kaus has to bear it. I
have to bear it. And you can bear it as well. We all have to bear it. That's
right. Uh, the E-Commerce podcast is produced by Aurion Media. You can find our
entire archive of episodes on your favorite podcast app. The team that makes
this show possible is Sadaf Beynon, Estella Robin and Tanya Hutsuliak.

Theme song was written by Josh Edmundson, and as I mentioned,
if you would like to read the transcript or show notes, head over to the
website, ecommercepodcast.net. They're all there waiting for you. Yes, they
are. So that's it from me. That's it from Kaus. Thank you so much for joining
us. Have a fantastic week wherever you are in the world. I'll see you next
time. Bye for now.