Founder/CEO @RivoCommerce. Powering retention programs for DTC brands like @HexClad, @kitsch, & @ridgewallet. Bootstrapping to $25M+ ARR in ecom SaaS
Rivo + HexClad case study 👉
Joined January 2023
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Stuart Chaney retweeted
every week someone tells me they’re going to vibe-code their own @beehiiv alternative over the weekend.
wishing them the best, here’s the backlog of things to make sure to include:
> 99.3% email delivery rate (industry-leading)
> team of deliverability experts with decades of experience
> infrastructure to send 3M+ emails per minute
> validating every single email submission (1st and 3rd party)
> automated bot-detection to prevent spam signups
> registering for every mailbox provider’s feedback program
> ingesting data from said feedback loops and building suppression lists
> tagging every email so gmail reports complaint rates per newsletter
> classifying every bounce (hard, soft, mailbox full, DNS failure) and knowing which ones mean “try again” vs. “never again”
> three layers of suppression: global, per-publication, and transactional
> temporary suppressions that expire on their own, and permanent ones that never do
> one-click unsubscribe, the way gmail and yahoo now require it
> warming new IPs and domains on a schedule
> watching blocklists around the clock, and pulling an IP from rotation the moment it’s listed
> retrying deferred mail for 24+ hours before calling it a bounce
> blocking disposable, invalid, and typo’d addresses before they ever reach the list
> rate limiting every signup endpoint a bot can find
> filtering bot clicks out of every report (something we pay an ungodly amount of money for)
> an acquisition source on every subscriber
> engagement history for every reader, across every post
> multiple sender addresses for different emails
> custom domain configuration that is aligned with DKIM, SPF, DMARC
> a true WYSIWYG editor: what you write is what lands in the inbox, with no HTML required
> turning that editor into table-based, inline-styled email HTML that holds up in outlook
> real-time collaborative editing, so the whole team can work on the same issue at once
> dynamic content: different sections for different readers, all in a single send
> separate email and web versions of every post, from one draft
> free and premium versions of the same post, split by a paywall break
> merge tags that personalize every email, and a simulated subscriber to preview them before you send
> templates with saved colors, fonts, and spacing, plus a default style for every post
> columns, tables, buttons, blockquotes, sections, file attachments, and a table of contents with anchor links
> native embeds for X, youtube, tiktok, instagram, bluesky, stocktwits, and podcast episodes
> polls, referral blocks, recommendations, and ad slots, built right into the post
> an AI writer, AI images, and a built-in AI agent one keyboard shortcut away
> images resized and optimized automatically, however they’re uploaded
> a live email-size gauge that warns you before gmail clips your newsletter
> custom HTML blocks, cleaned so a stray script tag can’t break your post
> automatically hiding anything an inbox can’t handle (video, iframes, audio) in the email version, while keeping it on the web
> links and embeds made clickable even in outlook, which ignores links wrapped around tables
> vertical alignment in columns, because a layout that looks off by 4px looks broken to readers
> converting your newsletter to audio versions for readers who prefer to listen
> random cohort sends to randomly split your list to test different content and conversion
> slash commands: type “/” and insert any block without touching a menu
> markdown and keyboard shortcuts for people who never want to touch a mouse
> pasting from google docs with the formatting intact
> search and replace across the whole post
> comment threads right in the draft, so editors and writers stop living in google docs
> footnotes and citations that work in the inbox and on the web
> code blocks, for the technical newsletters
> an AI writer that rewrites, translates, and fixes spelling and grammar in place
> autosave, so a closed tab never costs you a draft
> subject line A/B testing, built into the send flow
> drag-and-drop images, from your computer, your media library, or a URL
> rich-text image captions, plus image titles and alt text for accessibility
> audio files that play inline
> file attachments, so a PDF can ride along with the issue
> sections with their own backgrounds, borders, and spacing
> blockquotes with custom borders, colors, and styles
> content breaks and dividers that render cleanly in every inbox
> a REST API for subscribers, posts, segments, automations, and more
> a send API to create and send newsletters programmatically
> creating, updating, and deleting subscribers in real time
> reading and writing custom fields on any subscriber
> tagging subscribers from your own app
> enrolling subscribers into automations via API
> pulling opens, clicks, and engagement for every post
> fetching post HTML rendered for free vs. premium, email vs. web
> creating posts from a template, then appending or prepending content
> fetching segments and every subscriber in them
> managing tiers and premium subscriptions
> pulling referral program data and milestones
> reading poll and survey responses
> pagination that holds up across millions of records
> rate limits that protect the platform without blocking real integrations
> API keys you can create and revoke anytime
> an MCP server so claude, chatgpt, and other AI tools can work inside beehiiv
> drafting and editing posts from an AI chat
> asking for open rates, CTR, and revenue in plain english
> comparing performance across dozens of posts in one request
> looking up any subscriber's full history and engagement
> building segments by describing them
> creating and editing automations
> generating AI images straight into your media library
> managing website pages, redirects, and SEO
> reading and replying to community posts and DMs
> reviewing ad offers and ad revenue reports
> managing podcast shows and episodes
> creating digital products, coupons, and promo codes
> running subscriber growth and earnings reports
> setting up subject line A/B tests
> deliverability by mailbox provider for any post
> searching docs without leaving the chat
> inviting teammates by email
> admin, member, and contributor roles
> admins who control billing, exports, integrations, payments, and domains
> members with full access minus admin permissions
> contributors limited to drafting posts and automations
> roles at the workspace or publication level
> multiple publications under one workspace
> workspace grouping and search for people on multiple teams
> multiple authors per post, with bylines
> guest authors for one-off contributors
> author profiles with bios, avatars, and social links
> community roles mapped to workspace roles (admin, manager, moderator)
> real-time collaboration and comment threads on every draft
> removing access the moment someone leaves
> publication transfers between owners, with written consent
> secure, single-use magic links to log in from desktop
> a no-code website builder on your own custom domain
> an AI website builder that works from plain-english prompts or screenshots
> AI custom elements for live widgets
> drag-and-drop editing, plus HTML access for full control
> site-wide theme tokens for fonts, colors, borders, and shadows
> global navbar, footer, and signup and login modals
> saving sections, blocks, and pages as reusable templates
> version history with one-click restore
> custom pages with their own SEO settings and paywalls
> redirects, so old links never break
> custom robots.txt
> auto-generated meta titles and descriptions for every post
> google news schema
> pages up to 80% faster on largest contentful paint
> image carousels and grids
> youtube blocks that update when you post new videos
> an automatic page for every podcast episode
> pop-ups and gated content to turn visitors into subscribers
> a visual automation builder, no code required
> triggers based on signup source, behavior, purchases, and engagement
> welcome sequences that start the second someone subscribes
> delays and wait steps
> branching logic based on subscriber attributes
> reusable condition sets across automations
> email steps built in the same editor as your newsletter
> webhook steps that call your own systems, with automatic retries
> enrolling subscribers via API
> per-subscriber journey tracking
> opens and clicks for every email in every flow
> editing a draft version while the live automation keeps running
> comparing draft vs. live before you publish changes
> reordering steps in bulk
> segment conditions based on whether an automation started
> product delivery and follow-ups triggered by purchases
> selling files, links, guides, templates, and ebooks
> memberships and time-based products
> 1:1 coaching sessions and appointments
> 0% platform fees on every sale
> a storefront on your beehiiv website
> products sold inside emails and automations
> free products that double as lead magnets
> product variants
> discount codes and promotion codes
> product reviews, with moderation
> product tags for organizing your catalog
> orders dashboard with buyer details
> sales totals per product
> duplicating a product in one click
> automatic delivery the moment someone buys
> payouts through stripe
> live webinars with up to 10,000 attendees
> ticket sales in 10 currencies
> native streaming with video, screen sharing, and chat
> no zoom required
> up to 5 automated reminder emails
> calendar invites sent automatically
> a recording of every session
> selling the replay as its own product
> 0% platform fees on tickets
> free webinars that grow your list
> discount codes on tickets
> 1:1 coaching bookings
> buyers linked to their subscriber profile
> promoting events in your newsletter and on your site
> orders and revenue reporting for every event
> a community built into your newsletter: channels, posts, and comments
> channels that are free or gated to paid tiers
> syncing newsletter posts into the community
> direct messages between you and members
> threaded comments
> pinned posts
> a moderation queue for reported posts and comments
> banning and unbanning members
> admin, manager, and moderator roles
> inviting subscribers, segments, or specific emails
> surfacing your most engaged subscribers to invite first
> community metrics: new members, posts, and activity
> notification emails with your own from name
> channel ordering and a default channel
> luma calendar integration for events
> discord integration that syncs roles with subscription tiers
> native podcast hosting with zero platform fees
> distribution to apple podcasts, spotify, and youtube
> an automatic webpage for every episode
> automatic transcripts
> IAB-standard analytics by country, app, and device
> bot filtering on downloads
> downloads and unique listeners per episode and per show
> private feeds for paying subscribers
> bundling your podcast with your paid subscription
> importing from other hosts with episode GUIDs preserved
> RSS redirects so listeners follow you over
> scheduled episodes
> apple podcasts categories and metadata
> podcast players embedded in your posts
> a full episode library on your site
> webhooks for episode and private-feed events
> segments built on behavior, attributes, and engagement
> dynamic segments that update automatically
> static segments that stay fixed
> filtering by acquisition source, including magic links
> filtering by custom fields and tags
> filtering by subscription tier and paid trial status
> filtering by whether an automation started
> reusable condition sets
> recalculating a segment on demand
> sending to a segment, or excluding one
> segments that power dynamic content inside a single post
> segments as automation conditions
> adding a whole segment to a newsletter list
> multiple newsletter lists in one publication
> exporting any segment
> webhooks for new, confirmed, and deleted subscribers
> upgrade, downgrade, pause, and resume events
> tier created, deleted, paused, and resumed events
> newsletter list subscribe and unsubscribe events
> post sent, scheduled, and updated events
> survey response events
> podcast episode published, updated, archived, and deleted events
> private podcast feed access events
> choosing exactly which events each endpoint receives
> a signing secret on every endpoint
> automatic retries on failed deliveries
> a log of every delivery attempt
> manually retrying any failed message
> disabling an endpoint without deleting it
> versioned payloads
> webhook steps inside automations
> survey forms with multiple question types
> polls that readers answer with one click, right in the inbox
> every answer tied to a real subscriber
> live poll results
> per-question response breakdowns
> aggregate results across every survey
> individual responses you can browse one by one
> webhooks the moment a survey is submitted
> survey and poll data available via API
> polls on the web and in email
> signup flows that send new subscribers through a survey
> surveys that tell you what to write next
> polls for picking topics, products, and pricing
> response data you can turn into segments
> no third-party form tool required
> a library of professionally designed post templates
> custom colors, fonts, and spacing on every template
> a default style applied to every new post
> content outlines baked into templates
> separate email and web styling
> theme design tokens per template
> duplicating templates in one click
> a custom email footer applied to every post
> templates with sponsor slots, referral blocks, and recommendations built in
> creating posts from templates via API
> template changes picked up instantly by API-created posts
> website templates
> saved sections, blocks, and pages for your site
> welcome email templates
> templates your whole team shares
> the largest native ad network for newsletters
> brands like netflix, hubspot, notion, and nike (and 525+ others)
> ads available to claim for your upcoming posts
> dropping an ad into a post with one click
> earnings and payouts reported for every placement
> ad revenue reports post by post
> a history of every opportunity you accepted or declined
> bot-filtered clicks advertisers can trust
> custom link parameters for advertiser attribution
> brand safety review on every campaign
> payouts to your beehiiv wallet
> direct sponsorships: selling your own placements
> sponsorship products with your own formats and pricing
> scheduled sponsor placements with advertiser details
> 0% platform fees on paid subscriptions
> multiple paid tiers
> monthly and annual plans
> free trials
> paid trials, like $1 for 30 days
> metered paywalls, new york times-style
> a paywall break inside any post
> discount offers
> gift subscriptions
> group subscriptions: one buyer, many seats
> custom group deals for teams and companies
> pausing and resuming subscriptions
> private podcast feeds and gated community channels as paid perks
> payouts through stripe connect
> recommendation network with 60K+ active newsletters
> getting recommended by thousands of other newsletters
> free, reciprocal recommendations
> paid recommendations: pay to grow, or get paid to recommend
> discovering newsletters to partner with
> AI-suggested recommendation partners
> applications for paid recommendations, with accept and reject
> engagement and spend insights for every partner
> pausing, resuming, or ending any partnership
> fraud detection on paid recommendations
> clawing back payouts for fake subscribers
> recommendations inside your newsletter, not just at signup
> attribution for every subscriber a partner sends you
> one-click subscribes powered by magic links
> one-click subscribe links, no form needed
> UTM parameters carried through on every link
> rate limiting on every request
> bot detection and honeypots
> a confirmation step only when a click looks suspicious
> double opt-in respected
> redirecting new subscribers straight to your site
> magic links as a filterable acquisition source
> links you can drop into other newsletters, socials, and ads
> login magic links so paid subscribers can read premium posts
> single-use tokens that expire in minutes
> rate limits on login requests
> protection against timing attacks
> logging in on desktop from a link sent to mobile
> faster logins across every beehiiv publication
> embeddable subscribe forms for any website
> full-width, fixed-width, and slim embeds
> an attribution script to track where signups come from
> custom colors, fonts, and styling
> theme design tokens per form
> a draft and publish workflow for form changes
> comparing draft vs. live before publishing
> multiple forms per publication
> custom success behavior: a message or a redirect
> pop-ups on your beehiiv site
> gating posts to subscribers only
> readers picking which newsletter lists to join
> signup flows that run right after subscribing
> bot protection on every submission
> forms that work on wordpress, webflow, and anywhere else
> a customizable link-in-bio page
> hosted on your own beehiiv site and domain
> a subscribe form built in
> your brand colors, fonts, and buttons
> social links for every platform
> links to your latest posts
> links to your products and paid tiers
> a linktree integration that captures newsletter signups
> every visitor a potential subscriber
> traffic from instagram, tiktok, and X turned into owned email subscribers
> visits tracked in your website analytics
> signups tagged with their acquisition source
> mobile-first design
> no third-party link tool required
> updated in seconds, from the same dashboard as everything else
> real-time website analytics, no third-party tools
> traffic by channel
> filters for location, device, OS, and referral source
> website and newsletter analytics in one place
> breakdowns by page, referrer, and more
> custom conditions to slice any report
> AI crawler and bot analytics: what was served vs. blocked
> control over which crawlers can index your site
> UTM tracking on every link
> custom link parameters at the publication level
> an acquisition source on every subscriber
> google analytics integration
> podcast analytics alongside your site
> trends over time
> website traffic connected to the subscribers it produced
> native integrations with linktree, hubspot, manychat, meta, and dozens of other apps
> human support team with a dozen experts ready to assist with whatever you need
oh, and besides having to manage all of this on your own indefinitely forever… your vibe-coded solution will still require paying for and stitching together a ton of software:
> email sending (sendgrid, amazon SES, postmark)
> web hosting (vercel, AWS, render)
> database + queue (supabase, neon, RDS)
> payments (stripe, memberful)
> auth (clerk, auth0, supabase auth)
> monitoring + alerting (sentry, datadog, pagerduty)
> workflow engine (inngest, temporal, upstash qstash)
> bot protection (cloudflare)
> email validation (zerobounce, kickbox)
> email rendering (litmus, email on acid)
> click verification (omnivery)
> media storage + CDN (S3, R2, vercel blob)
> product analytics (posthog, mixpanel)
…but at least you saved $59/mo not paying for @beehiiv anymore 🫡
Stuart Chaney retweeted
Alright got a bit more interest than I expected. Should have realized $500 is too cheap. Lets have fun with this.
Gonna auction it off, winner take all. Next 48 hours.
Book it here: dpp-auction-design.indigo-hq…
Stuart Chaney retweeted
It's so over: I don't even need to bother taking ui screenshots anymore, every pic in this changelog was generated from code by slopus
It was only a year ago that most saas cos had dedicated people writing feature announcements, same with docs
Latest update: you can now connect @RivoCommerce to Commslayer, AI agent is able to do line item refunds and more
commslayer.com/changelog/riv…
Stuart Chaney retweeted
Some employees are scared that ai will replace them or devalue their skills
If they are spreadsheet masters, and have spent two decades perfecting v lookups, then what are they suppose to do about this new robot that can one shot their workflows
The irony is, if they just leaned in and learned ai with the same passion they learned excel, they would be worth 5x to the org
They would make more money, they would be future proof, they would get promoted
I don’t need anymore people who know spreadsheets
I need 50 people who are passionate about agents
And the beauty is its brand new.
No one has more experience than anyone else
Amazing time for the curious and interested!
Stuart Chaney retweeted
OPERATORS PORTAL IS LIVE
AI-answers + searchable from …
- Every episode
- Every newsletter
- Every event
4.7m words. 3 yrs of content. 168 operators. With receipts: Direct citations, dates, and timestamps.
Link below. But if you want Cody’s playbooks … comment on his post.
What @AaronOrendorff has built is sick.
He built a portal that has EVERY single thing Operators has ever done, complete with transcripts, links to every episode, webinar, and past newsletter.
You can be the first thing I did when I saw it was gave it to claude and had it index them for conext.
I then built playbooks for the major concepts like diagnosing ad account issues, product development, GTM strategy, and more.
Does anyone wanna get access? Not sure if I'm allowed to send it or not. Comment and tag @AaronOrendorff if you wanna see this and I'll convince him to package it up.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
The meta trend in software is improving alignment with the end customer. Twenty years ago with client server software, you handed a customer a license key, they gave you a million dollars, and you didn’t care if they ever deployed it. Then SaaS came along, and you sold the customer seats at $100 a month. You did care about deployment because otherwise they would stop paying you.
AI takes it a step further. The customer doesn't want the seats deployed anymore, they want the business outcome, and they'll only pay if they get it. A lot of SaaS companies haven't got there yet. Intercom did and that’s what Salesforce is buying.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
Congratulations to @eoghan , @destraynor @ciaran_lee and @davebarrett Lots of hard work.. also crazy how things have changed in 15 years.
We’re excited to share that we just signed an agreement for @salesforce to acquire @fin_ai for ~$3.6B. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027.
Fin started as Intercom 15 years ago. We changed our name to cap our transformation just weeks ago. We were a darling of the SaaS era and invented so many of the patterns you see in software today. Nearly four years ago, in need of a reboot, we jumped on weeks-old modern LLMs to create and define the category we know as Customer Agents today.
Salesforce invented modern software and SaaS. And @benioff is like the final boss of tech founder CEOs. In seat for 27 years, he’s one of the last of his era. Still pushing, pivoting, placing big bets. It’s a privilege for @destraynor and I to get to partner with him and join forces with Salesforce upon close at this most fascinating time. And will be very fun to get their help bringing Fin to magnitudes more consumers.
To our customers: Over the past few years we’ve been shipping intensely. Including recently our groundbreaking model, Apex, and our paradigm-defining internal agent, Operator. With the resources of Salesforce this will only accelerate. And yet little will practically change. I’ll still be CEO, Des will still be running R&D, we’ll both still be committed to continuing to lead this category. Thank you very sincerely and deeply for your belief in us.
To all of our friends, our families, and our employees, past and present: While this is not the end, it is a major, pivotal, special, and emotional moment for us. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. For everything.
To my cofounders, my exec team: Look what we built. Four young lads with a dream and nothing to lose. And a home grown exec team who pulled off the greatest and arguably only late stage software company pivot to AI, and invented one of the most important categories in AI. Thank you for sticking through all of this with me.
And now, time to get back to work. See you at our next product launch in a couple weeks. (:
Stuart Chaney retweeted
We’re excited to share that we just signed an agreement for @salesforce to acquire @fin_ai for ~$3.6B. The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027.
Fin started as Intercom 15 years ago. We changed our name to cap our transformation just weeks ago. We were a darling of the SaaS era and invented so many of the patterns you see in software today. Nearly four years ago, in need of a reboot, we jumped on weeks-old modern LLMs to create and define the category we know as Customer Agents today.
Salesforce invented modern software and SaaS. And @benioff is like the final boss of tech founder CEOs. In seat for 27 years, he’s one of the last of his era. Still pushing, pivoting, placing big bets. It’s a privilege for @destraynor and I to get to partner with him and join forces with Salesforce upon close at this most fascinating time. And will be very fun to get their help bringing Fin to magnitudes more consumers.
To our customers: Over the past few years we’ve been shipping intensely. Including recently our groundbreaking model, Apex, and our paradigm-defining internal agent, Operator. With the resources of Salesforce this will only accelerate. And yet little will practically change. I’ll still be CEO, Des will still be running R&D, we’ll both still be committed to continuing to lead this category. Thank you very sincerely and deeply for your belief in us.
To all of our friends, our families, and our employees, past and present: While this is not the end, it is a major, pivotal, special, and emotional moment for us. From the bottom of our hearts, thank you. For everything.
To my cofounders, my exec team: Look what we built. Four young lads with a dream and nothing to lose. And a home grown exec team who pulled off the greatest and arguably only late stage software company pivot to AI, and invented one of the most important categories in AI. Thank you for sticking through all of this with me.
And now, time to get back to work. See you at our next product launch in a couple weeks. (:
Stuart Chaney retweeted
our returning customer revenue was up 70% in may
if you know me, you know I have one kryptonite:
I can not get people to buy a second wallet
I have acquired over 10,000,000 wallet purchasers.
more americans own a ridge wallet than live in los angeles county
there are more ridge wallet owners than people in sweden
but I gotta BEG for them to buy another
so much so, people meme us sending emails
"bro I do not need two wallets- stop emailing me"
But that has been changing.
1- through new products.
now people can by stuff that isnt wallets
2- through new wallets.
we have limited collabs and colors
and 3- through new and exciting win backs
rivo is one of the vendors driving those winbacks
email is good. sms is better. but sometimes you gotta think outside of the box
rivi lit the box on fire
Limited time Store Credit Drop now live on @ridgewallet powered by Rivo.
We:
- Drop store credit into an entire Shopify Segment
- Expire the credit after X amount of time
In Ridge's case - existing customers get $20 in store credit to spend before June 12th.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
i'm going to give some free saas advice here
with analytics the data pipeline/sync/getting the numbers to be correct is not trivial. rest is just fancy js charts on top of a db
dealing with all the edge cases with the usual data sources takes 6 months to a year. getting it to 98% is relatively easy, but fixing the rest of it takes another year and then you're already hitting scaling issues with your first enterprise customer with million+ orders asking their metrics to not have one day lag while hundreds of🥦 hair dropshipper demons keep pinging you for that one order or metric not matching with shopify/fb/whatever other integrations you offer, as the whole brainrot generation has the same attention span as my 4 year old - they are simply incapable of waiting for a minute for the latest order to show up in the dashboard
most established providers are for sure overcharging but you will make a lot more $$$ by just focusing on agency work rather than shipping mediocre saas when no one is even acquiring analytics apps anymore, with klaviyo trading at sub 3x ARR.
the market is already saturated and dozens of analytics apps are being launched every month
good luck with the path you've chosen, i hope this rant saves someone else at least from the honeypot idea of building your own analytics app only because TW overcharges
I’m getting some pushback from software guys, telling me I am undervaluing the full feature set of pieces of software.
Let me say that the full feature set used to its maximum potential is a useless metric.
If 70% of your customers use 10% of your software’s capabilities, an AI replacement only needs to replace that bottom 10%, likely the most simple 10%, for it to cut your revenue by 70%.
Almost nobody uses your product fully. And the more complex the product the smaller the percentage of users who take full advantage.
I don’t need to replace everything triplewhale does to take a massive bite out of it. I just need to replace the 5 things that 50% of the user base uses it for.
Now this is something SaaS can work to prevent by more aggressively getting customers to use more of the tool.
But the fact remains, the actual value derived from average users is far below the theoretical maximum.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
Introducing HQ: the AI operating system for your company.
HQ lets your team share knowledge, skills, workflows and API access across the organization, so everyone works from the same foundation.
Team AI is still messy, and hard.
Individuals work in silos. There is no consistent knowledge base. Teams end up with 10 versions of the same skill, all performing at different levels. One person becomes 10x more effective, while everyone else is left trying to catch up.
HQ makes this simple.
Built on top of Codex and Claude Code, HQ sits directly inside your existing workflow. It helps manage your company's context layer, share skills, standardize workflows and control access, so people only see what they need to see.
We built HQ internally to solve a real problem. We use it every day. It has been incredible for enabling our power users, but just as importantly, it has helped the least technical members of our team become incredibly effective AI users.
HQ turns one person's breakthrough into everyone's baseline.
It is a powerful, elegant tool, and we are incredibly excited to share it with the public.
Book a demo below.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
Agentic coding is a huge boon for software developers that want to get far more done, great for IT people to build vastly more custom systems internally, great for domain experts that want to automate workflows or wire systems together, and absolutely fantastic for anyone curious to learn how to start coding.
What it’s less great for is casually building complex software that you have to maintain on an ongoing basis and take on all the risk for. Upgrades, maintenance, keeping up to date with latest security issues, and so on, are taxes most knowledge workers aren’t familiar with or prepared for.
Net net: we’re going to get 100X more software and vastly more software developers in the future. But that’s different from *everyone* rolling their own.
This quoted post is unavailable.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
We're announcing the most significant new strategic development since the start of the Customer Agent category: Fin now has specialized roles. And starting today anyone can sign up for and deploy the Fin Sales Role in minutes.
Fin is now by far the very best sales agent on the market, and it's been live with some of the most innovative digital brands for months, conversing with thousands of prospects, aiding discovery, building pipeline, booking meetings and starting trials.
We started the Customer Agent category with a focus on service by launching Fin three months after the launch of ChatGPT. Since then Fin has continued to lead the space, today delivering over 2 million resolutions a week for over 8k customers, including Anthropic, DoorDash, Snowflake, Asana, Mercury, Polymarket and many more exceptional brands.
But our vision for Fin has always stretched far beyond service. And for the past 6 months we’ve been building Fin as a single Customer Agent, delivering a seamless experience across all stages of the customer lifecycle.
We do not believe customers or businesses will want multiple agents for different parts of the lifecycle—because the agents won’t have shared memory and goals, and will have to compete with each other, delivering a poor customer experience and sub-optimal business results.
We’ve more roles to come, including another dropping in two weeks. For now please watch our launch video or visit our launch page to learn more: fin DOT ai SLASH sales
Stuart Chaney retweeted
We wrapped up a banger Q1 at Ridge — our highest revenue non-Q4 quarter ever.
I did another share of budget YoY analysis. Here’s what changed and a few thoughts on performance & goals for the rest of the year:
1/ Meta as a % of budget shrank significantly, which I’ll call a win as we still spent 25% more at an improved ROAS.
I predicted that Meta would *increase* as a % of budget for brands this year with advertisers embracing creative volume, andromeda, new attribution models, etc.
While Ridge didn’t see that in Q1, I won’t at all be surprised if we’re not able to drive significantly more volume with Meta through eoy.
2/ YouTube continues to be a growth channel for us.
This has become essentially an always-on channel for us, and we continue to receive strong iROAS reports as we test into new content and strategies.
We’ve been able to reliably spend on both Shorts and in-stream ads.
3/ Overall, we continue to find smaller nominal wins on tertiary channels
— X Spend was up +362% YoY going from 1.6% to 5.4% of total budget as ROAS improved +27%.
The platform has performed well for us since October of last year, and there are more meaningful updates coming to the ad platform in Q2 that i’m excited about.
— TikTok Spend similarly grew +339% YoY (0.5% → 1.6% TTL).
ROAS is inflated with a large % of growth coming from GMV Max (we’re a tiktok shop brand now), but performance has continued to improve.
I mentioned this was one of our biggest opportunities at the end of Q4, and while we’re trending in the right direction its still a very small % of budget and an ongoing opportunity for us.
4/ Applovin is still a largely seasonal channel for us, and % of budget is down ~50% from Q4.
We have a goal of unlocking Applovin on an always-on basis, but regardless I imagine we’re back to 8%+ as we enter our Father’s Day gifting campaign.
We spent tens of millions on ads in the last 60 days to end a record-setting Q4 at Ridge.
I did a quick exercise to look at share of budget changes YoY, and its a great synopsis of what we're seeing on the performance front.
Here's how things changed and a few of my takeaways and goals for next year.
to note: this is paid social platforms YoY for our EDC business. We spent significantly more YoY, so even % decreases are mostly net $ increases. It also does not include partnerships or TV budgets.
Here's the graph with 1DC ROAS layered in — we saw efficiency improvements on basically all fronts:
To get channel specific:
1/ Meta is always the elephant in the room.
It performed terribly in 2024, and at 42% TTL LY it was at its smallest share of budget for any November.
We saw a 30% increase in ROAS in 2025, including non-purchase optimized campaigns that we've validated drive low 1DC ROAS yet are highly incremental.
It's a huge win getting back to 50%+ TTL
2/ Interestingly, a consistent win across channels is an increase in CTR YoY, reducing cost of traffic while largely maintaining AOV/ECR
Some of these very dramatic shifts are explained by different placements — more search than shopping, more in-stream than YT Shorts, etc etc
3/ AppLovin was extremely underpriced last year and took up a huge % of budget
While its still a 7-figure channel for us, there was no way it would maintain its % of total spend.
I was surprised it essentially maintained ROAS YoY, after being an extremely efficient channel LY.
Overall it is still a seasonal channel for us and mostly activated during gifting periods, but we think we can unlock it on an evergreen basis in 2026.
4/ YouTube is potentially our most significant win YoY,
We came into this year with a focus on horizontal video — unlocking in-stream YouTube Ads & linear TV — and getting to 10%+ of budget well above target makes it a great alternative to Meta and I believe drives a lot of downstream value.
5/ Twitter has performed surprisingly well since October and ended up at 3.6% TTL budget.
They've very publicly improved a lot of the platform, and the ad performance seems to have come along with that.
6/ TikTok was flat YoY as a % TTL despite ROAS improving significantly. I think its probably one of our biggest opportunities for further paid social scale.
7/ Finally, the tiny bars are Reddit and Microsoft!
Stuart Chaney retweeted
This is an exciting one. We're hiring a first of its kind role at JRB.
A few months back I posted that i think AI will disrupt Ecom teams first and today that day is here. One person can do today what took 3 to 4 people last year. And do it better.
I've been vibe coding Shopify sections, landing pages, and built a Claude powered CRO roadmap in my "spare time". It's truly wild what I've been able to do with a few hours each night and weekend.
Now I'm going to hand it off to this person and have them run with it while training them.
We're looking for one highly ambitious, independent person with Ecom knowledge and the want to go all in with Claude. You don't need to be at my level; you need a baseline level and the right temperament to dive all in.
You'll still have design and dev support. The goal is not to remove them, but to able to test ten times faster and smarter and do as much as you can yourself.
I'll post the job description in the comments. If this is you, please slide in my DMs. If you know anyone or can share this, it's always appreciated.
Stuart Chaney retweeted
A lot of operators in consumer are building their own software right now (thanks Claude Code).
As someone who used to build software for people, here's what I'm starting to see.
There's a massive gap between building a quick and dirty prototype that "works" to something that scales and can be maintained within a company.
Maintaining production level software sucks.
Security.
Data loss (wait until you encounter this one)
Uptime
And all around "hey, this used to work and now it's not" issues.
I think a lot of brands are going to realize just how shitty maintaining software is.
Especially software they have no fucking clue how it actually works...
Stuart Chaney retweeted
To be blunt: Old SaaS is dying. Dying. No one wants to buy this stuff anymore. No one. Not unless they have to.
Customers want AI / AI Agents that do all the work for them. And more and more often, that's entirely possible.
Build that, and folks will line-up down the block to buy from you.
But new SaaS is better than ever. Replit, Lovable, Harvey, Legora, Sierra, Decagon, etc. are all New SaaS. And Databricks, OpenRouter, Supabase, Vercal, Elevenlabs, etc. in many ways are all products enabling and for B2B / SaaS.
They really are. And they are all growing at rates like we've never seen before.
You can do it, too. If you have the team, and the will.
But the window is closing.
