Episode Transcript
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0:01
Hey everyone , thanks for tuning in to D2Z , a
0:03
podcast about using the Gen Z mindset to
0:05
grow your business . I'm Gen Z entrepreneur Brandon
0:07
Amoroso , the former founder of Electric
0:10
and now the co-founder of Scaless
0:12
, and today I'm talking with Julian
0:14
Timings , who's the co-founder and CEO at
0:16
Altron AI e-commerce
0:18
ad automation made easy with
0:20
AI . Thanks for coming on the show . Thanks
0:23
, brandon , excited to be here . Before
0:26
we dive into all
0:28
things advertising , can you give everybody
0:31
a quick background on yourself and how
0:34
you came to founding this business ?
0:37
Sure . So yeah , I'm originally from the UK
0:39
. I have a fairly
0:42
technical background . I
0:44
did a PhD at Cambridge
0:46
University in autonomous
0:49
vehicles a slightly different area
0:51
than what we're discussing today , but
0:53
I think that kind of like is
0:56
a bit of the fundamental grounding , I guess
0:58
, around some of the approaches that we
1:00
take . After that
1:02
I went in , actually worked
1:04
in F1 for a couple of years , a big
1:07
motorsport fan , and
1:09
then then I realized that , uh , you
1:12
know , entrepreneurship , I think , was for me . So
1:14
that was when I kind of founded my first business
1:16
, and again in a bit of a different space
1:18
, it was in the kind of cloud kitchen
1:21
space and
1:23
then after couple of years that
1:25
business got acquired and
1:30
then I went on to start actually an Amazon
1:32
business and I guess this was the first time that
1:34
I touched the world of Amazon and
1:36
I was selling products myself
1:39
on Amazon and feeling
1:41
the pain , I guess , around advertising
1:43
and also realizing the significance of
1:45
how important it is
1:47
to run
1:49
ads and how much Amazon
1:53
themselves index
1:55
that in terms of your performance . So
1:58
, feeling that pain on Amazon regarding
2:01
the ads , I kind of learned on my technical background
2:03
and actually built a solution to
2:05
run Amazon ads
2:08
for my business and it wasn't really
2:10
intended to necessarily be
2:12
a solution for everyone . But
2:15
I shared it with Sean
2:17
, who's now my co-founder at Ultron
2:19
and he was running separately . He
2:22
was running a
2:25
business that he
2:28
was running in the US and shared
2:31
the software with him and it started
2:33
to work really well for his business
2:36
too . And then we started to realize that
2:39
there's a bit more of a broader pain point here
2:41
, that other sellers could benefit
2:43
from this . So that's when we kind of turn the
2:45
software into a , into
2:47
an actual sas product , which we
2:49
could , um , you
2:51
know , approach a little bit differently . I would say
2:53
like we don't come at it from a traditional agency
2:55
point of view . We try to provide
2:58
like a self-service solution where
3:00
, but ultron is the thing doing all the heavy lifting
3:02
and , um
3:04
, yeah , we've been been running it for a couple
3:07
of years now , going really well . Obviously
3:10
, you know , it's underpinned by
3:12
pretty complicated optimization
3:15
and , more recently , you know the move
3:17
forward in AI . We've obviously been incorporating
3:20
those tactics and skills into
3:23
what Autron does . And
3:26
, yeah , that brings us to today .
3:30
What business was your Amazon business
3:32
?
3:33
So this was a product selling
3:36
predominantly eco-friendly
3:39
homework . A bit of a
3:41
random choice , but you find
3:43
the niche and saw the opportunity
3:45
and , yeah , that business
3:47
is still active today but also is used
3:50
somewhat as a testing ground for Autorama
3:52
. We try out all the new stuff and so forth
3:54
. So , yeah
3:56
, I think it was , you
4:00
know , an interesting , interesting
4:02
path . But now we're super focused on
4:04
the Amazon
4:07
store product
4:09
for the sellers and bringers .
4:12
I've heard time and time again of
4:14
companies that are started out of an existing
4:16
company because you're addressing some sort
4:18
of pain point or problem that you have with
4:20
the current business . I think that's
4:23
a model that works really well .
4:27
Yeah , I think , fundamentally right , you've got to address
4:30
the pain point of the customer right , and
4:33
not necessarily just come
4:35
up with an idea of , oh , you think this would work
4:37
. It's about , like , what are the customer's
4:39
needs , like , how can you address them
4:42
? And in our case , right , it's the
4:44
main point . Pain points are around um
4:47
, you know , typically
4:50
you know solopreneurs or
4:52
small smes , you know they don't necessarily
4:54
have the in-house expertise to
4:56
to run ads right and this , um
4:59
, this is where autron can handle that
5:01
. Um , you know they have limited
5:03
time . Again , autron is super
5:05
automated . That was one of the key
5:07
things . It's about setting high-level goals
5:09
and it goes off and does everything . It
5:12
creates all the campaigns , it manages all
5:14
the campaigns , does all the optimization . So
5:16
it gives you back , as a founder
5:20
or entrepreneur , a
5:24
lot of time , which is obviously important
5:26
, and you can put that into other other
5:28
areas of your business . And then
5:30
again , like , and a little bit on the pricing
5:32
side , what we do a little bit different is we try
5:34
to we we're highly
5:37
variable , I guess , which is different to
5:39
typical agencies where there's quite a high upfront
5:41
cost and what we
5:43
do is we start on a really
5:45
modest monthly fee as
5:49
you scale up , then our fees kind
5:51
of go up with your success . So
5:55
this is a little bit different . We try to align ourselves
5:57
as much as possible with success
5:59
and not
6:01
necessarily ad spend , which is typically
6:03
how
6:06
others
6:08
in this space , like charge brands
6:10
and sellers , what are
6:12
some of the biggest changes that you've seen
6:14
in the Amazon ecosystem since
6:17
starting the company to today
6:19
? Yeah , well , I would
6:21
say for sure , there's
6:23
a very strong move towards
6:26
automation and bots
6:28
, right , I think , like , at the end of the day
6:30
, a little quite similar to , to
6:32
some extent , to Google AdWords and the way
6:34
that when it did move in a direction
6:37
and we're seeing Amazon moving in a similar direction , where
6:40
algorithms are the ones that
6:42
are in the auctions a lot of the time , right
6:44
, and these are the you know obviously . You
6:47
know , as an Amazon seller , you
6:49
can manually run your ads , but increasingly
6:51
we're seeing automation . That's
6:53
Autron , that's others as well that are
6:55
in this space . I always like
6:57
to give the analogy towards , like , stock trading
6:59
, right , I think there was a point
7:02
in time where the
7:06
algos kind of took over and
7:08
saw all those opportunities
7:10
and could react instantly to the opportunity
7:12
in the market . And Amazon
7:15
Ads is kind of a little bit similar where obviously
7:17
the bots can be instant
7:19
. They have data flow with
7:21
almost real feedback of of
7:24
what's happening and to
7:26
adjust accordingly . So that's one
7:28
of the major trends that we're seeing right and I
7:30
think , generally speaking , you
7:32
know , in the next couple of years , I think
7:34
it's going to be , you know , 80
7:36
to 90 percent of the
7:39
auctions are going to be um competing
7:42
against other software solutions . I would say
7:44
so that's , I would say , one of the key things
7:46
. And then amazon themselves just
7:48
developing the ads platform right it's . It
7:50
started off relatively rudimentary
7:53
and they're plowing now a lot
7:55
of uh resource into building
7:57
the , the ad platform , up , making
8:00
, um , you
8:03
know , different video , different formats such as
8:05
video , different placements , different
8:08
other kind of like solutions
8:11
to help brands manage their data
8:13
. So a general maturity , I would
8:15
say , of the
8:17
advertising platform is probably
8:20
pretty significant . And then , of course
8:22
, just on the seller side , what we see is , of course
8:24
, increasing competition . Like
8:26
month cpc is cost
8:29
per clicks just on one
8:31
trajectory and that's going up right . So
8:33
you're constantly just fighting and
8:35
that's that's . As more people you know , amazon's
8:37
obviously trying to get more and more sellers
8:40
on board and and they all want to advertise
8:42
and that drives up cost per clicks
8:44
. So you kind of can't stand still
8:46
with the way you're operating your ads
8:49
as well , because it's
8:51
getting increasingly competitive .
8:54
Are there certain types of brands that
8:56
you're seeing work well now versus
8:59
others ?
9:01
um , I think , like um
9:04
, I
9:06
mean one of the kind of like key
9:08
things for being successful is . So
9:10
, I'd say , on the ad side , like there's
9:12
, there's two really important components . Right
9:15
, there's um , there's
9:18
the actual advertising , which is what , what
9:20
autron does , but that that that's very much in
9:23
partnership with , like , the
9:25
listing . If you like the actual
9:27
product , you're selling . Right , so
9:30
you know , because the actual
9:32
product itself is what determines
9:34
ultimately the conversion rate
9:38
for that sale . Right , the advertiser
9:40
can put the
9:42
right buyer on the page , but you've got to have
9:45
competitive products in terms of
9:47
price , reviews , ratings
9:49
. All the imagery used to be top-notch
9:51
. What we see in terms of people that have the most
9:53
success in general are those that still
9:57
have a good product . I think that you can't
9:59
just rely on ads
10:01
and expect an
10:04
average product to become a
10:06
bestseller . So I would say
10:08
, like that's a key factor for success
10:10
. And another
10:12
one is more you know , operationally , I guess
10:14
, like um , just stay
10:16
in stock . Those who can always be in
10:19
stock get rewarded by
10:21
the amazon the algorithm , for
10:23
you know always having , you know , a continuous
10:25
sales velocity and stocking
10:28
. So that's a really , really important
10:30
factor , which is always a struggle
10:32
, I think . Right , because
10:35
Amazon is not a great business for cash flow
10:38
, right ? You lay out a lot of money
10:40
to get inventory and then it takes
10:42
you I don't know a couple of months to get
10:45
that money back , etc . So you
10:47
know that's always a challenge . So , managing cash
10:49
, those who can manage cash flow better and
10:51
therefore like remaining stock and
10:53
time quality products generally
10:56
, are the ones that that um are
10:59
more successful got
11:01
it .
11:02
yeah , it seems like there's certain categories on Amazon
11:04
that are just so unbelievably
11:07
saturated and
11:10
commoditized and not
11:12
a great spot for potentially a newcomer
11:15
to play , but are there still
11:17
some that are out
11:19
there where you would get
11:21
excited about a new business coming to
11:23
market within that particular category ?
11:26
yeah , absolutely like um
11:28
, I think you've there's
11:31
. Of course there's always ones that ride like the
11:33
, the , the trends of the time , right
11:36
, still being able to kind of get
11:38
in early on a , on a , on a
11:40
trend for a product or type of product
11:42
or category is going to
11:45
be meaningful , at least in the short term . But
11:47
you know , there's something
11:50
I want off the top of my head in terms of the great opportunity
11:53
out there right now . But there's
11:55
definitely opportunities
11:58
and products and categories that are
12:02
less saturated and
12:04
are still wide open . In many
12:06
ways , I would say I think
12:09
it goes back to the kind of you
12:13
know how
12:15
you source the product is super important and who
12:17
you're competing against when you source
12:20
it . And obviously , what we see is a general
12:22
shift towards a lot more like manufacturers
12:25
, but based based in China and
12:27
Asia , selling
12:30
to consumers . Right so , like that's on
12:33
certain categories and products that's easier for them
12:36
to do versus not right . So
12:39
most of our business is in the US
12:41
and North America , but we also have size
12:44
one in Europe . Europe's an
12:46
interesting opportunity for Amazon
12:48
because , mainly through regulation
12:50
, it's a little bit more challenging , right , and
12:52
there's some good opportunities there . Obviously
12:55
, there's different languages you have to consider
12:57
. There's all
13:00
these new regulations around
13:04
which many European Amazon
13:06
sellers are struggling with at the moment , called GPSR , which
13:10
is basically highlighting
13:14
providing instruction manuals
13:16
and those sort of things with products
13:18
. So I
13:20
think , if you can get around
13:22
, that's a significant barrier
13:25
for others . And actually if you can get around , that's a significant
13:27
barrier for others and actually
13:30
if you manage to get around that
13:32
or have those things in place on
13:34
your business , then I guess you can have
13:36
good opportunities in those marketplaces
13:39
too . So always worth thinking
13:41
outside of North America too . Europe
13:43
is still a significant opportunity
13:45
as well .
13:47
Got it . Yeah , I think it
13:50
is interesting to see
13:53
sort of the mix between
13:55
sellers that are on Shopify
13:58
versus Amazon , versus both , depending on
14:00
the geographical region that
14:02
they're in , as it seems
14:04
there some some areas
14:06
over index on one more versus
14:09
the other yeah
14:12
, I think that's , that's .
14:13
I mean , it's um , I
14:15
what we what we see at least is
14:17
still like return on ad dollars is still
14:20
pretty strong on amazon versus
14:22
. You know , ultimately with shopify , you're
14:24
, you know you're going to Google or Meta or
14:26
TikTok or something for
14:28
advertising and certainly
14:32
some of those marketplaces are pretty
14:34
developed in terms of income , positive in
14:36
terms of the
14:39
deployment capital , and Amazon
14:41
, you still see good return . That's
14:44
generally what we see . We tend
14:46
to see people that kind of are either all in on Amazon you still see good returns . Generally , what
14:48
we see is we tend to see people that are either all in on Amazon , I guess , or
14:51
just don't know on the platform at all . I
14:55
think there's this idea that with Shopify
14:58
, of course , you
15:01
don't necessarily pay the sales commission . You
15:03
go to Amazon and there's a bunch of other benefits
15:05
, right , but then you
15:07
have to drive the traffic to your site yourself , which
15:10
can be challenging .
15:13
Yeah , the closed ecosystem that Amazon offers
15:16
pays off
15:18
in so many ways whether it's being
15:20
able to have that for the advertising
15:23
side , but also just the trust
15:25
that the customer has when they're already
15:27
on the marketplace , especially if
15:29
you have the reviews , if you have the
15:31
Amazon Prime badge . There's
15:34
a sort of a framework there that people
15:36
are already comfortable with using
15:38
and shopping from , whereas with Shopify
15:41
you're landing on a random website that
15:43
you may have never heard of before and there's
15:46
a higher barrier to purchase
15:48
for that person that you've gotten to your site versus
15:50
if they're already on Amazon , especially depending
15:52
on you know the advertising , you
15:54
know keywords that you're bidding on . If somebody is
15:57
at that sort of last step and
15:59
the intent is already really high , versus
16:01
you're catching them on Facebook or Instagram
16:03
or TikTok and more of a discovery
16:06
phase , it
16:08
makes sense why the conversion rates and the advertising
16:10
would be more effective on Amazon .
16:13
Yeah , I mean we're seeing quite interesting
16:15
people testing it
16:17
out , at least driving
16:19
traffic from Amazon , I mean
16:21
from Shopify , back to
16:23
their store on Amazon just because
16:25
of the conversion rate
16:27
. You know increasing conversion rate they're seeing
16:29
because you know people are just used to buying on Amazon
16:32
and they know they're going to get it super quick
16:34
with Prime and so forth . And
16:36
Amazon loves external traffic by
16:39
reducing those listings right
16:41
from things like Shopify . But then the downside
16:43
is you know you obviously pay the commission
16:46
to Amazon , et cetera , et cetera . You don't necessarily
16:48
get the customer details . So
16:50
it's a it's a tricky one , but I
16:52
think um worth
16:54
testing out those , those different paths
16:57
to to conversion and see what ultimately
16:59
makes sense Going into 2025
17:02
, what are some of the things that you're most excited
17:05
about ?
17:10
no-transcript .
17:31
Yeah , I mean , I think what we're most excited
17:33
we can , you
17:35
know , provide even better return on
17:37
investment by , you know , further
17:42
developing this technology ourselves and incorporating
17:44
some of the new technologies in so that's . You
17:47
know , that's often the number one concern
17:49
for sellers is how do I maximize my ad
17:51
spend , and
17:55
the other area is around um
17:58
, which we're
18:00
trying . We think there's an , there's an opportunity
18:03
and we think this this is where sellers would
18:05
benefit from a system
18:07
where , rather than you're interacting with
18:09
a typical kind of account manager , you're
18:12
actually interacting with an ai
18:14
that is highly informed
18:16
about your account . You
18:19
can have conversations with it around
18:21
if you want you
18:23
know specifics on
18:25
certain
18:28
data or trends , you
18:30
can ask it questions , you can instruct it to
18:32
do things . So this is kind of
18:34
like we see this kind of like personal assistant
18:36
account manager being digitized
18:40
and being highly performant
18:42
and ultimately yielding , you
18:44
know , better results for
18:46
the sellers as well as keeping them more informed
18:48
. So this is an area which
18:51
we're super excited for . This is what we're building
18:53
towards . I think , you know , this
18:55
is kind of agencies
18:57
2.0 in many
19:00
ways , and
19:04
I think , in general , amazon is just always
19:06
churning out also like new tooling
19:08
and new cool things and new ad placements
19:10
and all
19:13
those types of things which I think are
19:15
going to benefit sellers and we hope to be able to think are going to benefit sellers
19:17
and we hope to be able to offer those products to
19:19
sellers too . So
19:23
this is kind of like what we're building towards and what we're excited about in 2025 . In
19:26
terms of the challenges , I
19:31
think I mean , obviously
19:33
we're always just fighting this constant increase
19:36
in CPCs . I think it's getting more
19:38
competitive , so that's just something that's
19:40
part of being in this business
19:42
. I
19:45
would say diversification
19:48
is still quite important . I
19:52
think you
19:54
never want to be too reliant on a single platform , both
19:57
from a seller point of view and also a solutions
19:59
point of view . So this is where I
20:03
think it's always wise to make sure you
20:06
have some diversification of your sales channels
20:09
. Yeah
20:12
, I would say those
20:14
are the main considerations
20:16
. Yeah
20:20
, I would say those are the kind of main
20:22
considerations Overall . If you look at the kind of
20:24
in Amazon in particular , if
20:29
you just look at the quarterly earnings
20:31
and profits and growth , they're
20:34
still on a very positive year-on-year trajectory of like 20% growth , month-on-month
20:36
quarter-on-quarter right , or year-on-year trajectory of like 20% growth , quarter-on-quarter or
20:38
year-on-year quarters . So that just kind
20:40
of means that there's a wave that everyone
20:42
can benefit from , I think , as
20:45
more people adopt the platform and
20:49
ultimately more sales are going through
20:51
it and there's great opportunity . So
20:54
that's very positive , but also you need to
20:56
be so that that's very that's very positive , but also you know you need to be mindful that it's
20:58
like turning into market dominance , like
21:00
it's always a bit
21:02
risky yeah , definitely
21:04
.
21:05
Um , I got one last question for you
21:07
, a little bit less on the actual , like amazon
21:09
platform itself , but more on the on the business
21:12
side of things . How do you think about
21:14
balancing service
21:16
versus software and
21:19
?
21:19
the offering that you're giving your , your
21:21
clients um sure so
21:25
I think our thinking on this has
21:27
changed slightly in the last um
21:29
year or two . I would say
21:31
, um . Initially
21:33
we were like 95%
21:36
software , and I think
21:38
this was this is very good from our business
21:40
point of view in terms of like , you know , generally
21:43
speaking software businesses , you
21:46
know , lower fixed costs and better
21:48
margins and the economics
21:51
of it make a lot of sense and
21:55
we certainly have customers that love that
21:57
, that uh model
21:59
, I guess , the kind of self-service model . But
22:01
what we have seen is that there is a decent
22:04
chunk of people that want , you
22:06
know , closer to a white glove service right
22:09
, and they want to interact
22:12
with a human like and whether
22:14
that's like super robust conversation
22:17
or whether that's just knowing that you know they're
22:19
being taken care of . And
22:21
so we've naturally kind of um
22:23
expanded our offering to be educated
22:25
towards both types of of audience
22:28
. It's still biased towards software
22:30
, but I think there's all you know . You
22:33
know , agencies kind of exist for a reason
22:35
and they're very much like a people's
22:37
business , just as they're less results orientated
22:39
. It seems , as you know , I would say
22:41
, in more kind of like relational relationship
22:44
building and maintaining
22:46
type of business . So
22:49
, yeah , we we of course want
22:51
to want to cater for the different requirements
22:53
, um , but I guess our view
22:56
still on it is that now , with ai
22:58
kind of on the increase and its
23:00
ability to act
23:02
and speak and behave
23:06
with the human means , that we have
23:08
to move back into the software direction
23:10
. Um , but kind of
23:12
mimic that human behavior , I guess . Right
23:15
, and this is this is where we're trying to produce
23:17
a cutting-edge product in
23:19
terms of an AI
23:21
agency , if you like .
23:24
Got it ? No , that makes sense . Well
23:26
, I really appreciate you coming on and sharing
23:28
all of your insights , but before we hop here , can
23:30
you let everyone know where they can
23:32
find you online and connect with you if they want
23:34
to learn more ?
23:36
Cool , yeah , so probably LinkedIn
23:39
is probably the best place . So just hit me
23:41
up JunionTimings on LinkedIn
23:43
and then check out what's it , autronai
23:46
, start a
23:48
chat on there and
23:50
if you're asked to speak to me , I'll
23:52
jump on there and more than happy to jump on a call
23:54
with people and
23:57
answer their questions and guide them through what
24:00
we do and how we can be helpful . That's
24:04
about it .
24:05
Awesome . Well , again , thanks for coming on For everybody
24:07
listening . As always , this is Brandon Amoroso
24:10
. You can find me at brandonamorosocom
24:12
and scalistai . Thanks
24:14
for listening and we'll see you next time .
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