Name: Meet the Startup Founder Behind E-Commerce Company Cosmic
Uploaded: 2016-10-21
Duration: 15 min 39 s
Description: Alex Adelman has already built and sold his company to PopSugar Inc.

Hi Facebook, my name is Polina Marinova and I'm here with our guest Alex Adelman, the 27 year- old founder and CEO of a company called Cosmic. Alex joins us today to help us kick off our new series called Founder Friday. Hi Alex, how are you? Good, thanks for having me. Good, thank you for being here. So tell me, you're 27, who are you? What does your business do? So my name's Alex. I started a company called Cosmic about five years ago, and we sought to solve the problems of commerce. All of them. All of them? At the same time. And, what we saw is it's very difficult for people to buy and sell anywhere on the web You have people that are all over media channels watching video. And there is all these friction when you something you want, why can't you buy it? So, we saw to solve that problem. Okay, so, if I want to buy your shirt right now, how can I do that? Well, thank you. So Yeah, so Facebook viewers at home, right now Facebook has a very difficult time communicating with someone like an ASOS, a retailer. And so the retailer has to convey that this is a black shirt, size medium And that it's from ASOS and then how much inventory there is. And so there's all this information and it's unique to ASOS. Now if I'm Facebook I have a difficult time communicating with ASOS, Uniqlo, H & M, Target. But With our technology, it turns it all into one language and lets those two companies communicate easier. That's what's called an e- commerce gateway. But most people know it as a buy button. Okay, got it. So you've pitched to a lot of high- profile companies like PopSugar, Target Tell me what goes on inside of an amazing pitch. Okay, behind the scenes. [ LAUGH ] Well, not every pitch is amazing. [ LAUGH ] But the best ones typically include Really just conveying this idea that there's friction for these consumers. The consumer wants to buy and yet these you know as a company you're either not letting them buy, you're making it to difficult to buy and so you need a solution that makes it easier.. So really a lot of the retailers and the publishers agree that there's friction on both sides. And there needs to be a solution to that. But if you're pitching me, what things are you doing that any founder can do to have a great pitch? Okay. Yeah, specific things. I think it's to connect with the problems. I think that's what technology does, it solves problems. And everyone has different problems. And you have to just kind of fit that pitch for what that specific person or company's problem is. Okay, so you ended up selling your company in 2015 to Pop Sugar. Mm- hm. How has your company culture changed since the acquisition? So we've grown a lot, it's a fairly unique acquisition as far as like everything's gone really really well. So I know a lot of acquisitions fail, just the Percentage wise. But one of the unique things about it is Brian Sugar, the CEO of Pop Sugar, when we were first kind of courting each other, and getting to know each other, I remember he pulled me aside, had a one on one conversation with me. And he said, he pitched me my vision. And I really had only told my team, my crew, the people we had Been working so hard on, and he told me that vision he was like:" we see the future of commerce the same way, and we can enable that ". And we let's say happened about a year ago, and we announced about six months ago, and he's held true to everything that he said that he would do and then we've done everything we can do to make the acquisition successful, so... I think, yeah, a lot of it is just about being transparent about what you want. And then it's helpful because he's a serial entrepreneur. Yeah. He knows how I think, how I work. And he lets me do my thing And yeah, it's a lot of trust. But what about the culture, are you going, cuz I mean. You're a very early start up, right? Yeah. So are you going to more meetings, is it more corporate? How has it changed? Yeah, so Shop Stall has partnerships with about 1, 400 retailers. And when we were acquired, we did not have 1, 400 retailers. Right. I was going door to door trying to sell this idea of the future of commerce. And as a small company, as a six person company when we were acquired, that's very difficult to do. Especially working with the behemoths in retail and, And media, and also when I first started Cosmic I didn't know people in either. So I'm out there trying to unite these two disparate industries and bring them together. And that's very difficult to do, so one thing that Pop Sugar [ UNKNOWN ] has done is they've just brought us to the world. And validated us and given us this sense of Credibility in the space that we didn't have before. What shocks you about your competition in the space? What competition? Right. We definitely have competition. I think that the bigger players in the space have started to come after us, which is really positive. Okay, give me an example. Yeah, so when we first started, we had a handful of competitors. That came out all around the same time, trying to solve a similar problem. And everyone was kind of, no one really knew how native commerce was done. There was a lot of different ways, I could bore you with a lot of details but, basically there was a lot of ways to build what we have, and we Set out to build the safest and the best way for people to buy and sell everywhere. There was a lot of competition, we ended up landing Target. Target made an investment in us with their first and only investment at the time. And they believed in the future of commerce the same way we do In the way that we were building it. Then about two days after you know, we formed this partnership, the biggest credit card breach of all time happened. And we. [ LAUGH ] While you were at Target. While we were doing an on- prem integration at Target. So it was really interesting, I think that Did you have a moment like, Ohh God I did this? We thought [ LAUGH ] I turn the micro founder and CTO mat and I'll ask like do we do that? [ LAUGH ] and he was like I dont think so. Turns out we didn't do it Good and it end up like strengthen our technology and really Good. the way the we built it. And for this moment, we were kind of the only ones building it right, and we just took advantage of that opportunity. I moved to New York to keep growing faster, a lot of our clients started to pop up here and in the valley, so yeah, necessary changes were made. Okay so now I'm gonna ask you more entrepreneurship questions. So what has been the lowest moment in your career? So many low moments. Starting a company is hard, there is a lot that goes wrong. And whether it's integration doesn't work out, a client drops. The way that you built it doesn't play out how you thought it, Did, and it's just. I would say it's a lot of, a lot of building a company is like a lot of little pivots. You kind of are constantly make, you have this giant vision of what you wanna do, how to get there. But there's really no set path on the way to get there. And every time you change, you have to believe that the people that you brought on, that are building this vision with you, Believe in this bigger vision of what you're after. And that all the little changes that are made, you roll with the punches is the best way to say it. Did you have a really low moment you can put to. Where you were like I'm done. I'm not gonna do this. Yeah. We always had trouble fundraising. Fundraising is very difficult in our space. A lot of people are They have a hard time with commerce, especially commerce technology. This idea of like social commerce, the buy button, it's been conceptualized for you know since the beginning of the internet. yeah The idea of like buying you know from Mad Men or television show. The internet has always been this idea but no one's ever done it. And so there were so many times where it was like, how do you say we're the right ones, and we're different than all the competition? I would say Target, that was definitely a really hard day, but Target was incredible. They helped us through that time. They really lived up to everything they said they were gonna do. And then, the acquisition was interesting in the early days. We didn't build this company to sell it, we built it to solve these problems. And, parting ways with my baby, and getting over the fact that we really weren't parting ways, we were just growing. We were gonna grow faster. There was some really dark days there. [ LAUGH ] Yeah, So you're a 27 year old CEO. What is the hardest thing about being 27 and running a company? So when I started this, I was like 22, 23. Okay, even better. Yeah. And it's like, why is this kid the person to solve this age old problem of solving commerce? Native commerce. Yeah. In particular. And in trying to convey that- almost the naivety as being an asset and coming into a space where- I didn't know commerce as well as I thought I did, and we- kind of coming into the space and I've seen this problem with a clean slate was actually kind of an asset .>>> Really ?>>> But it is difficult to convey that to investors, to partners. How did you get people to take you seriously when you walked into a meeting as a 22- year old? I guess I took myself seriously. [ LAUGHS ]. And I look back, it's like, who was that kid, what was I thinking. But you kind of just keep going forward, keep moving, keep building and Yeah, just like never stop moving. I guess my question is, I'm sure it must be hard managing a company with people who are probably older than you. How do you deal with the management aspect of it? Yeah, I think people follow people with a vision, and everyone we brought on believed in that vision. So Everyone that we work with, even to this day, works autonomously. Yeah. They take ownership. That was the biggest thing. Or the people that I want to build this future with, are they self aware? Do they recognize when they've Done something wrong or right, and are they critical? And we have a kind of brutally honest culture. Everybody, starting with the founders, everyone keeps each other in check. They, like if I ever had a bad day or I did something wrong I mean, I started with one of my best friends. And then Matt, our CTO, is also brutally honest as well. So we always kind of kept each other in check and we still do. We're at 17 now, just direct under Cosmic, and everyone keeps each other honest. Good. So, okay, I want you to answer with whatever comes to your head, okay? Okay. What keeps you up at night? Still moving forward, still growing. Growing? I see we have a long way to go. I think we've done a lot of things right, we've learned very quickly, but there's more competition than ever in this space. And so seeing people with more money Come at the same problem, it keeps you up at night. Even with more resources, and more partners, and growing faster than ever, and more people to solve those problems, it's still difficult, because we're going up against these giant companies that are throwing ten times the amount of resources at the same problem. And it's always been the case .>> Yeah. It just keeps growing, just keep getting bigger. That's great. What are you reading right now? A lot of things, to many things, like. So I have a classic, Old Man and the Sea, Hemingway. You didn't read it in high school? No. Some guy like- he goes, I read that in middle school. And I was like, okay. I'm sure there's a lot of books I read that you didn't read. I'm reading that. Let's see, I'm reading a book I'm kind of struggling with obviously. Which one? So it's A Brief History of Time. Middle school. Yeah, so I've got an easy one, a hard one. That's great. And then a new series called [ UNKNOWN ] It fulfills my sci- fi nerdy side. Interesting, yeah cuz you being in Harry Potter and the watch Okay that is fine. So what is the best business advice you have ever received ?. << So it was from the founder of a company called Huddle. << Okay yes. << So I was in the Omaha, Nebraska and one of the part of our journey took us through Omaha, that we got our first investors. I remember the founder was saying, we built every feature. We raised all this money. We were building like every feature we thought like needed to be in it. And what is not working was one simple feature for that entire business and that is what took them to the next level. And we were busy like we were doing the same thing. We were being these delusional founders, we were like we need everything, people wanna buy everything, and we were just doing too much. And that night, I remember staying up to 2, just stripping everything and simplifying the business. And really focusing on what we did ten times better than anyone else in the world, and focusing on that. And when I look back, that was a giant turning point because we were able to really win because of that one feature that we built, and not the 100 other features that we were Kind of- That's interesting. Wasting a lot of time and resources with. Great, and my last question comes from Fortune's Pattie Sellers. This is her favorite question so I'm gonna ask you. What does power mean to you? Power. Yeah. Well that's a good question. [ LAUGH ] Power, I like doing I want to live in a world where I can build anything that I dream up. And there were so many limitations in starting my first company. And things I couldn't do because I didn't have power, I didn't have resources to build what I wanted. So you think power is resources? Yeah, I think power is being able to do whatever you want. And yeah, I guess I saw what not having power is, and now I feel empowered to build exactly what I dream up. Great, great, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Alex. Thank you, Facebook. And join us next time on Founder Friday. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

Alex Adelman has already built and sold his company to PopSugar Inc.