Behind The Brand With Mason | Kaus Manjita

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.