#217 – USPS & DOGE, Meta’s Streisand Effect, and Small Dollar Loans

by Shopifreaks | Mar 17, 2025 | Recent Newsletters

Hi Shopifreaks

What are you working on nowadays? If you've never previously done so (or if you're working on something new), please hit reply and introduce yourself.

I appreciate knowing who's on the other end of these e-mails, and it's been my pleasure to connect with you all and learn more about your projects over the past four years.

Ready for another jam-packed edition about espionage, whistleblowing, and bribery? LOL, these editions are beginning to feel like James Bond movies! (Maybe I'll license one to Amazon.)

In this week's edition I cover:

USPS cuts 10k jobs & $3.5B from its budget
Meta's unsuccessful attempt at squashing a whistleblower
Ulta Beauty & Shein go curated
Wix's new automation builder
Block wants to lend more money
How is Amazon's RTO going?
Meta Community notes go live
Flexport sues Freightmate for IP theft
A weeklong Amazon boycott
Best Buy loves influencers
Shopify's latest acquisition
Executives are saying “tariffs” a lot

All this and more in this week's 217th Edition of Shopifreaks. FYI – you can always click that link to read the full edition online if Gmail clips our e-mails.

Stat of the Week

Mentions of “tariff” have occurred in 683 earnings calls from S&P1500 companies so far this year, compared to 49 times last year. The New York Times writes that “not knowing, for example, what products might be subject to tariffs, and at what rate, makes it harder to plan, invest and hire effectively.” Hear what Scott Galloway has to say about it.

1. USPS agrees to work with DOGE and cut 10,000 jobs

Postmaster General Louis DeJoy plans to cut 10,000 USPS jobs in the next 30 days through a voluntary retirement program in collaboration with Elon Musk's Department of Government Efficiency, according to a letter sent to members of Congress.

The agency's plan was announced during the final days of the Biden administration in January, but at the time didn't include the number of workers. USPS currently employs over 640,000 workers tasked with making deliveries to the most rural and hard to reach areas in the country. In 2021, the agency cut 30,000 workers.

USPS also announced plans to cut its $78B operating costs by more than $3.5B annually, as part of a broader effort to address financial challenges and streamline operations within the agency.

USPS listed issues in the letter that include mismanagement of the agency's retirement assets and Workers' Compensation Program and various regulatory requirements that Dejoy described as “restricting normal business practice.”

Dejoy wrote that he is “happy to have others to assist us in our worthwhile cause.”

Strong words from a man with one foot out the door. DeJoy was appointed to lead USPS during Trump's first term in 2020, but in February, informed the USPS Board of Governors that he plans to step down after they find a successor.

Leaders of two USPS employee unions told NPR that DeJoy assured them that there are provisions in the agreement that prevent members of DOGE from having unfettered access to information in the records of the Postal Service's more than half-million employees, however, NPR has not reviewed the actual agreement.

The USPS has operated as an independent entity since 1970 and has fought calls from President Trump and others to be privatized. Last month, Trump said he may put the agency under the control of the Commerce Department in what would be an executive branch takeover.

2. Meta tries to squash a whistleblower's new memoir

Remember last week when I reported that former Meta employee Sarah Wynn-Williams was releasing a tell-all memoir that blows the whistle on the extreme lengths Meta took to bring Facebook to China and other unscrupulous activities that happened at the company during her tenure from 2011 to 2017?

Well, much to the dismay of Meta, the book launched, and now the company is doing everything it can to make sure no-one reads it — efforts that might be doing more harm than good in terms of publicity.

Last week Meta won a ruling in arbitration that said Wynn-Williams could no longer promote the book because of a non-disparagement clause in a contract she signed years ago as an employee. The ruling was granted on an emergency basis and is temporary pending the completion of the full arbitration process. In the meantime, she can't directly promote the book, but that's not stopping everyone from talking about it… including Meta!

Steven Levy from WIRED reports that it was Meta itself who first told him about the new book attacking Mark Zuckerberg, Sheryl Sandberg, and the allegedly bankrupt morals of the company. Levy wrote:

“On March 7, a Meta PR person contacted me to ask if I’d heard about Careless People, a presumed takedown of the company that was due for release in a few days. I hadn’t. No one at Meta had read the book yet, but the comms department was already proactively debunking it, issuing a statement that the author was a former employee who had been “terminated” in 2017.”

Meta told Levy that Wynn-Williams' book “is a mix of old claims and false accusations about our executives,” while characterizing her firing as the result of “poor performance and toxic behavior.” They call her “a disgruntled activist trying to sell books.”

While some might argue that Wynn-Williams cherry picks stories to showcase Meta in a negative light, she also backs many of her claims with official documents that show Meta instructing the Chinese government on facial recognition and AI — behavior that she says was so outrageous, that the team pre-wrote headlines defending itself if their plans were to ever be leaked.

Careless People is now a #1 Best Seller on Amazon just a week after its release, and many say that Meta's arbitration is the reason they first learned about the book — a phenomenon known as the Streisand Effect.

3. Curated is the new king of cool

For a couple decades, building an “Everything Store” was the fastest way to grow market share online. Selection was king and variety caught consumers' attention. However allowing practically all products from every seller onto a marketplace also created a problem of choice overload. While reviews and product recommendations were designed to help drive customers towards the best products for their needs, selection still at times feels like a game of finding a needle in a haystack. This opened up the opportunity for competing retailers to differentiate themselves through curation.

Jumping on that curation bandwagon this week are Ulta Beauty and Shein.

Ulta Beauty's new CEO Kecia Steelman shared on a recent earnings call that the company plans to launch a new online marketplace later this year that will expand its e-commerce presence and allow it to offer a broader range of beauty and wellness products. The marketplace will be available to brands on an invitation-only basis so that Ulta Beauty can curate the selection. Customers will be able to earn points on their marketplace purchases as well as make returns to Ulta Beauty stores.

Shein, which has historically leaned towards selection variety over curation, also announced its plans to add curated fashion storefronts to its website, saying there’s one to match every style and help shoppers find the wardrobe they want. The first Trend Stores to launch include Serve Party, City Sleek, Resort Ready, Street Scene, and Effortless Ease.

In Shein's case, their curated fashion storefronts are more of a way to feature existing products from their inventory as opposed to curating which products reach their marketplace in the first place — but the goal is similar: to streamline product selection for customers.

I'm a big believer in curation. In fact, some might say I know a thing or two about (news) curation myself here at Shopifreaks…

4. Wix launches a new automation builder

Wix launched a new automation builder called Wix Automations, designed to support advanced business workflows via a visual drag-and-drop canvas. The product is comparable to Shopify's Flow app, which allows for similar automations, or a streamlined version of Zapier that only works within the Wix ecosystem.

Users can build automations from scratch or customize pre-built automations, which Wix customizes for each users based on the apps installed to their website or store.

Wix Automations has a native integration with Wix Services, allowing for advanced workflows such as one that rewards repeat customers with unique coupons based on their purchase behavior.

Wix Automations boasts four main benefits:

Intuitive Automation Design – to simplify the process of creating advanced automations
Advanced Customization – supporting if/then/and/or conditions and formulas
Centralized Automation Management – allowing users to track key metrics, adjust settings in real time, and manage all automations in one place
Email Automation Insights – provides reporting on email success rates and engagement

The automation builder is available on Wix and Wix Studio, offering free access to a limited quota of actions. Users can optionally purchase additional actions through premium upgrades.

Honestly it looks great! And I'm in favor of anything that can help businesses decrease their dependency on third party automation services like Zapier.

5. Block wants to issue more small-dollar loans through Cash App

Block secured approval from the FDIC to originate loans through its banking subsidiary, Square Financial Services, allowing it to offer low-value consumer loans directly, rather than relying on external banking partners. The move is an expansion of Cash App Borrow, the company's short-term lending product, which was introduced as a pilot program in 2022 to help users manage unexpected financial situations.

Cash App Borrow charges a flat fee of 5% for its loans. If the loan is not repaid within four weeks, there is an additional finance charge of 1.25% per week — which Block says is “a fraction of the cost of a payday loan or overdraft fee – and smaller and shorter-term than what a typical bank offers.”

Transaction losses in Block’s lending segment jumped 39% last quarter, but the company still claims its underwriting model is strong. Block says that small-dollar lending is inherently risky, but that it has a solid grasp on its lending. The company shared in a recent press release that the average Cash App Borrow loan was under $100 and paid back in about a month.

Cash App Borrow isn't Block's only lending product. As you might recall, the company acquired the BNPL provider Afterpay for $29B in early 2022 and has since integrated it into various products in its portfolio, including Cash App.

6. Amazon's return to office initiative — how's it going?

Starting January 2, 2025, Amazon employees have had to return to the office five days a week, in a move by the company to foster in-person team collaboration and maintain the company's culture. How's that been going?

Business Insider reached out to 70 employees to understand how the mandate was going 10 weeks into its rollout and heard back from 11 people — including some who reached out on their own accord, two who were supplied by Amazon, and two who quit their jobs over the mandate. Below are highlights from the report:

“Five-day RTO has impacted how I think about my future at Amazon. The simple fact is that the expectations have changed, and my job isn't as good as it was two months ago.” John Guballa, 40, lives in Seattle, and was irritated that Amazon changed the rules after being hired as a hybrid worker, initially only required to work 3-days a week in the office. Guballa said he doesn't work closely with people in the same city and gets little value in terms of collaboration by being in the office.
“With hybrid work three days a week, I had more flexibility to be a present parent AND a good employee; being in the office full-time, I sometimes have to prioritize being a present parent OR a good employee.” Grace Cleveland, 37, lives in Boston and leads global AI and privacy compliance at the company. One benefit she mentioned is being able to read more books during her one hour commute each day on public transportation. She also noted that it was harder to know what other teams were doing when working virtually, and that RTO has helped her team avoid doing duplicate work as other teams.
“I'm very introverted and have hyperhidrosis, which means I have the sweatiest hands on the planet, so any social interaction involving handshakes would make me very anxious. I'm a lot more productive at home, where I'm not being interrupted by spontaneous social interactions.” Jason Murray, 31, was a senior art director at Amazon in New York who worked entirely remote for three years before leaving the company in January after the RTO mandate came into effect. He previously thought Amazon could be a company he stayed at forever, but it no longer fits his preferred way to work.
“When I was previously at Amazon, it was really difficult to get the attention of my coworkers and managers via Slack and Zoom. It's really hard to connect with people when you can't see them… For me, RTO has been great. I've been able to form relationships with my teammates and with my manager, and I feel like I'm having a lot more visibility on issues that affect me.” This employee in his 30s previously worked at Amazon, and then returned after the five-day RTO announcement, citing it as a factor that encouraged him to apply at the company again. Hmmm, I wonder which person was supplied by Amazon for the interview. LOL.
“I never would've accepted this job if there was any possibility of it not being virtual. My commute takes well over two hours each way and involves driving, taking public transportation, and walking… I've been more irritable and my wife and I have had more tension in our relationship.” This Amazon employee in his 40s lives more than 50 miles away from his nearest Amazon office and has worked remotely for over 10 years. He says he has nothing against working in an office, but it simply doesn't make sense for his role, as the majority of the customer-facing work he does can't be performed in the office.

Read the full report for more insights into how Amazon's RTO is actually going.

7. Meta Community Notes begins testing on March 18th

Meta will soon begin testing its new Community Notes moderation feature across Facebook, Instagram, and Threads in the United States. The company wrote that it expects the moderation tool to be less biased than the third part fact checking program it replaces because it allows more people with more perspectives to add context to posts.

So far around 200,000 potential contributors have signed up in the US, and the waitlist remains open for those who wish to take part in the program. Initially notes won't appear on the content and will only be used for internal purposes, as the company plans on gradually testing the system before notes are published publicly.

It's weird that Meta directly mentions its competitor X's notes tool as inspiration for its new program. Meta wrote:

“Many of you will be familiar with X’s Community Notes system, in which users add context to posts. That’s the broad approach we are adopting. Meta won’t decide what gets rated or written – contributors from our community will. And to safeguard against bias, notes won’t be published unless contributors with a range of viewpoints broadly agree on them.”

Meta even said that it will be using X's open source algorithm as the basis for its rating system.

Here's what else we know about Community Notes:

Notes will have a limit of 500 characters and will need to include a link to support the note.
To start with, notes won't have author names attached to them so that there's no bias towards the information.
Once a Notes contributor has submitted a new note, it will be rated by other approved contributors before going live.
Eventually Meta plans to make the feature available in six languages commonly used in the US including English, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, French, and Portuguese, expanding to other languages in time if the experiment goes well.
Notes won’t have penalties (such as reduced distribution) associated with them the way fact checks did. They will provide extra context, but not impact who can see the content or how widely it can be shared.
Once Notes begin to appear publicly, no new fact check labels from third party fact checkers will appear in the United States, however Meta says that fact checkers are free to become Notes contributors (which is an unpaid position).

Meta says its goal is to ultimately roll out this new approach worldwide, but it will begin with the United States once it feels comfortable from the initial beta testing.

8. Flexport sues new competitor Freightmate for IP theft

Flexport is suing Freightmate Ai for “brazenly” stealing trade secrets and data, and using it to launch a competing product. The lawsuit comes just two months after Freightmate raised $5M.

The evidence is shocking, per The Loadstar:

One co-founder, Yingwei Yu (Zhao) left Flexport in May 2024. The other co-founder, Bryan Lacaillade, left the company in April 2024.
Flexport claims that Lacaillade left the company first, to startup Freightmate, while Zhao remained behind to download tens of thousands of files onto personal USB drives or cloud storage.
The domain freightmate-ai was registered on January 28, 2024, months before either co-founder left Flexport
Days before leaving, Zhao downloaded Flexport's the source code for Flexport's internally developed Flexport Platform, and then launched a competing product a few weeks later.
The co-founders admitted to taking confidential documents “to understand how generative AI digitises shipping documents.”
However Freightmate refused to allow any review of its source code to determine how much was original versus taken from Flexport.
Zhao and Lacaillade were original members of the team that developed Flexport Forwarding App and its automation tools.

I'll be curious to see how this case plays out! In the meantime, I have a feeling I know what a lot of that $5M investment will be going towards…

9. Other e-commerce news of interest

A weeklong Amazon boycott that started March 7th came to a close on Friday, led by John Schwarz, founder of The People's Union USA. The boycott was designed to “send a message loud enough to share up the system” in regards to Amazon stifling small businesses, exploiting workers, and opposing union efforts, but unfortunately it had little impact on Amazon sales or the price of the company's stock throughout the week, which ended higher than it started. Hey, you've got to start somewhere! Schwarz plans on hosting future boycotts against Nestle and Walmart in the coming weeks.

TikTok added new options for sellers including the ability to automate approval of aftersales requests such as returns, refunds, replacements, and cancellations, as well as the ability to exclude PO Box deliveries to avoid complications in sending. The platform also introduced the ability for fashion sellers to set specific items in their store as “final sale,” as well as for all sellers to set custom handling times to process orders.

Sezzle, a US-based BNPL provider, released a suite of features to its app and platform including deal discovery, auto-applied coupons, and price drop notifications. The company also launched Sezzle On-Demand, a product that allows users to generate a single-use virtual card for a set amount, enabling them to split payments without being limited to partnered merchants.

Best Buy is launching an influencer program to compete with Amazon and Walmart, according to its CEO Corie Barry. The company plans to allow influencers and creators to build their own branded digital storefronts on Best Buy's website, as well as expand video content to improve the shopping experience for customers.

In other Best Buy news… Best Buy Canada is opening its marketplace to international sellers via a partnership with cross-border payment service PingPong, which facilitates payouts in more than 100 currencies. Best Buy Canada has operated a third-party marketplace since 2016, the same year that Best Buy US shut down its own marketplace initiative (which it's relaunching later this year).

US Vice President JD Vance said he expects an agreement on TikTok's sale by the established April 5th deadline, however, ByteDance has yet to publicly confirm negotiations with any potential US buyer. Vance did not offer specific details about the negotiations or the potential buyers involved, while also suggesting that clerical issues could push finalization of an agreement past the deadline. The Information reported last week that Oracle has emerged as the leading contender to help run TikTok, but ByteDance declined to comment on the rumor.

Affirm unveiled its Capital Strategy 2.0, which it describes as an evolution to its approach to securing the capital necessary to fuel its growth “ahead of the need, and in the most sustainable and cost-efficient manner.” However Capital Strategy 2.0 just feels a lot like doing the same thing it was doing before. Affirm even wrote, “As we look to the future, we are doubling down on what has made us successful,” focusing on asset-backed securitizations, direct loan sales, and warehouse facilities to acquire its funding capital. Am I the only person that's waiting for this whole BNPL house of cards to fall?

Kroger launched a new e-commerce business unit that it says brings together the personnel “contributing to every aspect of the online customer experience” for the company, which has recently seen its online sales rise and its e-commerce profitability improve. Yael Cosset, who previously served as the company's chief digital officer before becoming senior VP and CIO of the company in 2018, will lead the e-commerce unit as executive VP and chief digital officer, while continuing to direct technology and data operations for the company as a whole. Kroger’s e-commerce sales were up 11% YoY during its latest quarter, and the company recorded $13B in e-commerce sales in fiscal 2024.

ByteDance uses eight category ratings to evaluate TikTok employees in performance reviews, which happen twice a year, according to a leaked document seen by Business Insider. The system measures employees on three main criteria: Output, Leadership Principles, and ByteStyles, which are a set of workplace values it uses to define company culture such as being candid, clear, courageous, and treating every day like it's “day 1.” LOL, does that last one mean “not having a clue what to do at your job?”

Dollar General is planning to close 96 stores, as well as 46 more of its pOpshelf locations, leaving 180 pOpshelf locations left in total, as it faces mounting pressure from discount websites like Shein, Temu, and now Amazon Haul. While it sounds like a lot of stores shutting down, Dollar General operates almost 20k stores across the US and Mexico, so 96 is just a drop in the bucket.

Meta claims that it acquired Instagram and WhatsApp in order to improve them, and that neither acquisition was anticompetitive in nature. The company's antitrust trial against the FTC is slated to begin April 14th, during which the FTC will argue that Meta acquired the two apps to avoid “competing on the merits,” and that the moves “harmed the competitive process, stifled competition, maintained and bolstered barriers to entry, and thereby harmed consumers.” Meta also plans to defend itself by arguing that the FTC has no direct evidence that it has the power to raise prices above the competitive level or reduce output or quality below a competitive level.

In other antitrust news… The FTC said it doesn't have any staffing issues that will impact its ability to face Amazon in trial, just hours after saying they needed a two-month delay due to losing employees in the agency. FTC attorney Jonathan Cohen wrote, “I was wrong. The Commission does not have resource constraints and we are fully prepared to litigate this case.” It's unclear what happened in the hours between Cohen's two opposing statements. Did he not see that Amazon Prime Video will be streaming the first seven seasons of “The Apprentice,” of which President Trump will receive royalties as the executive producer of the show? And that Amazon is paying $40M to license a documentary about Melania Trump? I'm not sure they're allowed to sue Amazon after that…

Media Matters, the progressive research organization dedicated to monitoring, analyzing, and correcting misinformation in the US media, is counter-suing X for breach of contract over Musk bringing suits against the nonprofit in a legal maneuver that it calls “a vendetta-driven campaign of libel tourism.” Lawyers for the advocacy group are challenging Musk on technical grounds, arguing that since X's terms of service required the complaints to be filed in San Francisco, the actions violate his own policies, which were changed months after the suits were brought. Media Matter says defending itself against Musk's suits have crushed the organization, costing millions of dollars and leading to the layoffs of more than a dozen employees, and its suit seeks damages for beach of contract and an order forcing Musk to drop his litigation in Ireland and Singapore.

Naver, South Korea's top search engine and messaging app, launched a new shopping app called Naver Plus Store, which is powered by the company's self-developed AI model and aims to offer personalized shopping experiences to users. The launch signals Naver's intent to challenge Coupang, the country's largest e-commerce marketplace. This is the equivalent of Google launching a shopping app to compete with Amazon in the US.

Amazon Echo will send all voice recordings to the cloud, beginning March 28th, with users no longer having the option to process their Alexa requests locally. Amazon wrote, “As we continue to expand Alexa’s capabilities with generative AI features that rely on the processing power of Amazon’s secure cloud, we have decided to no longer support this feature.” Although a concern for privacy enthusiasts, it makes sense that Amazon can no longer process the requests on a device with the processing power similar to that of a smart clock, especially given the launch of advanced AI powered tasks through Alexa+.

India is ramping up enforcement against unsafe and non-certified products sold on e-commerce platforms, seizing thousands of products from warehouses linked to Amazon, Flipkart, and other online marketplaces. The crackdown comes as India and the US remain at odds over regulatory flexibility for online platforms, with Indian authorities pushing for stricter compliance measures to protect domestic consumers.

Amazon (14,783), Microsoft (5,695), Alphabet (5,537), Meta (4,844), Apple (3,880), and IBM (2,907) are among the H-1B program's heaviest users, with thousands of filings each year, according to a study by Business Insider of the top 40 tech companies that sponsor the most immigrant workers, with most positions being filled for software engineers and other technical roles. While interesting to see, is it that big of a surprise that the nation's largest tech companies who employ the most people are also the same ones to employ the most immigrant workers too? Were we expecting BigCommerce with less than a 1,000 total employees to make it onto that list?

100+ of Europe's top founders launched “Project Europe,” a new initiative to help build Europe's next €100B companies backed by founders from Klarna, Mistral, Delivery Hero, and more. The project, led by British podcaster-turned-VC Harry Stebbings of 20VC, will invest €200k into up to 20 aspiring homegrown entrepreneurs under the age of 25 every year, with each startup founder being established a veteran founder as a mentor. Fantastic initiative! I've often wondered why the EU is so dependent on US tech and projects like this can help end that dependency in the future.

Google is officially retiring its Assistant tool later this year and migrating mobile users to its AI-powered Gemini instead. Assistant will only remain on phones running Android 9 or earlier that don't have at least 2GB of RAM. Additionally, Google will be upgrading tablets, cars, TVs, headphones, and watches to Gemini. I migrated to Gemini quite some time ago on my Android phone and so far it's felt like a downgrade compared to Assistant, not even able to accomplish simple tasks like adding an event to my calendar. Other simple commands like “Hey Google, play music from one of my playlists on YouTube” lead to search results instead of action. Hopefully it will improve because right now the tool is embarrassing.

Squarespace launched a new “Human Powered” campaign to promote its Blueprint AI tool, which helps users create personalized websites through text prompts. Swing and a miss on this campaign in my opinion, which effectively says, “We took creativity from real human designers and shoved it into our AI product so that you don't have to pay creatives for their work,” a message which feels eerily similar to Apple's “Crush!” commercial that received a ton of backlash last year. Watch my video on LinkedIn for a comparison of the two commercials.

Chewy, an online retailer of pet food and other pet products, laid off 674 workers at its 663k square-foot fulfillment center in Dallas, which it opened in 2017. The company's last round of layoffs was in 2023, when it cut over 200 jobs across multiple locations, including at its Florida headquarters.

Reddit released a new feature that lets users hide unwanted ads from particular advertisers for at least a year, at which you can re-hide the ad after that period of time. Here's a question… why would Reddit re-show the hidden ad a year later to someone clearly not interested? Isn't that a waste of advertiser budget? Some users have already reported seeing a daily limit for how many ads they can hide to ensure that users don't abuse the system to artificially create an ad-free experience (which was my first thought too). Reddit said the ad blocks are a response to users wanting “more control over the ads they see,” which actually meant, “We want NO ads. We want Apollo and Reddit is Fun apps back!”

Members of France's parliament rejected a controversial provision in the Drug Trafficking Act that would have forced encrypted messaging apps to create a backdoor for law enforcement. This decision aligns with ongoing global debates and resistance from tech companies and experts who argue that such backdoors compromise security and could be exploited by malicious actors. The UK could learn a thing or two from its neighbor to the east.

Meta is encouraging advertisers to integrate Google Analytics with its ad platform, offering early access to system updates that have shown a boost in conversions. Meta's aim is to gain additional data and traffic insights to improve its ad performance and provide advertisers with a better understanding of campaign performance.

Intel named Lip-Bu Tan as its new CEO, who previously served as the CEO of Cadence Design Systems, a company that makes software used by major chip designers. Tan replaces interim co-CEOs David Zinsner and MJ Holthaus, who took over in December when former CEO Patrick Gelsinger was ousted. Tan is also rejoining Intel's board, which he departed last year, citing other commitments.

TikTok updated its Family Pairing feature to allow parents to prevent their children from going on the app during specific times via a recurring schedule, as well as see who their teen is following, who follows them, and which accounts their kid has blocked. Additionally TikTok started reminding teens under 16 to “wind down” after 10pm with a full-screen takeover that plays calming music to help the teens relax.

🏆 This week's most ridiculous story… The CEO of data brokerage firm Publicis put out a video bragging about the degree to which his industry can collect and analyze data on the habits of billions of people. Arthur Sadoun broke down the kind of information his company claims to have its hands on and showcased the degree to which Publicis can predict the habits and behavior of individual consumers. He gave an example of a fictitious woman named Lola who Publicis could see what she watches and reads, who she lives with, what she buys, that she has two children who drink lots of premium fruit juice, and that the price of the juice she buys has been steadily rising on her local retailer's shelf. It can also see that Lola's income has not been keeping pace with inflation and that she has a high propensity to trade down to private label. And TikTok's the problem in America…

10. Seed rounds, IPOs, & acquisitions

Shopify acquired Vantage Discovery, a startup founded by two former Pinterest engineering leaders that builds AI-powered search functions for retailers, for an undisclosed amount. The platform, which launched in early 2023, uses LLMs to enhance retailers' search functions, allowing shoppers to see more personalized, relevant results when searching through a store's product catalog.

Intelligems, a platform that helps e-commerce merchants optimize their pricing and customer engagement strategies, raised $9M in a Series A round led by Stage 2 Capital. The company plans to use the funds to further develop its platform towards helping merchants make profit-maximizing decisions across every touch point, beginning with the launch of its Analytics 2.0 feature for enhanced visibility into statistical significant and custom event tracking, and building out its team. Congrats Drew and the Intelligems team!

Razor Group, a Berlin-based acquirer of Amazon FBA businesses, secured another loan of at least $15M from BlackRock, according to Bloomberg sources, helping the company to stave off a liquidity crunch. The capital raise is part of a turnaround effort that includes talks between Razor and fellow aggregator Infinite Commerce Inc for a potential merger.

ReFiBuy, an AI platform built by ChannelAdvisor founder, Scot Wingo, that aims to “solve e-commerce's hardest problems” that live within the research, find, buy cycle, raised $1.7M in pre-seed funding round led by G20 Ventures, which was an early investor in ChannelAdvisor back in 2004. Alongside the announcement of the funding round, the company came out of stealth mode with the launch of a closed, invite-only demo of its platform's early experience capabilities.

Klarna, the Sweden-based fintech that offers payment solutions and BNPL, filed paperwork for its long-awaited IPO with the SEC, seeking to raise more than $15B in the offering, which is more than double what the company was worth in 2022 but well below the $46B valuation it had achieved last year. In its IPO filing, the company disclosed that it has more than 675k merchants who have collectively processed payments for 93M customers and reached $105B in GMV last year.

AMP, an Australian e-commerce software platform designed that provides merchants with tools for better customer engagement, streamlined sales processes, and data analysis, raised $20M AUD in a round led by Openspace Ventures and One Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $50M. Alongside the funding round, the company announced that it acquired Back In Stock, a Shopify app that has facilitated over 300M restock notifications, with plans to integrate the app's technology into its platform.

Bessemer Venture Partners, a US-based venture capital firm that invests in seed to growth-stage startups, announced its second dedicated India fund, closing at $350M to support early-stage startups in the country. The firm plans to focus the funds on early-stage investments across AI-enabled SaaS, fintech, digital health, D2C brands, and cybersecurity.

Playbook Partners, another US-based venture capital firm that invests in early-stage startups, announced plans to invest $20M in 12 to 15 Indian companies over the next two years, prioritizing SaaS, e-commerce, HealthTech, and ClimateTech. The firm is seeking to fund companies that have already established a solid revenue base and are in a scaling phase.

Wonder, a NY-based food delivery service that brings chef-prepared meals directly to customers' doors, acquired Tastemade, a Santa Monica-based independent media company focused on food, travel, and design content, for an undisclosed amount estimated to be around $90M. The goal of the acquisition was to create a retail media business on top of Wonder's retail and delivery operations to help the platform compete with Uber Eats, DoorDash, GoPuff, and other ad businesses run by delivery services.

Synctera, a San Francisco based platform that partners with community banks and fintech firms to facilitate and streamline the creation of banking services, raised $15M in a round led by Fin Capital and Diagram Ventures, bringing its total amount raised to $94M. The company will use the funds to support the acceleration of its growth and meet the more complex needs of its customers.

GlobalData, a UK-based company that provides data analysis, market research, and strategic planning to companies, acquired Ai Palette, a Singapore-based AI-powered consumer insights platform that analyzes global consumer trends to help brands develop faster and more accurately targeted products, for an undisclosed amount. The goal of the acquisition is to help GlobalData's CPG clients make smarter, data-driven decisions with speed and accuracy

Australia Post, the country's official postal service responsible for providing delivery services throughout Australia, acquired a 25% stake in Shiperoo, a Melbourne-based logistics and shipping platform. The postal service said that the investment is part of its focus on e-commerce services for Australian retailers and customers as competition grows.

UiPath, a New York-based enterprise technology company that specializes in robotic process automation software, acquired Peak, a Manchester-based AI platform that optimizes product inventory for merchants, for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition accelerates UiPath's mission to strengthen its vertical AI solutions strategy and enhances the company's ability to provide solutions that optimize industry specific use cases.

Bilt Rewards, a New York-based loyalty program and financial platform that allows tenants to earn points on rent payments, acquired Banyan, a San Francisco-based data platform that enables business to securely share and access checkout and transaction data, for an undisclosed amount. The deal enables Bilt Rewards to enhance its platform with item-level receipt data, enabling hyper-personalized rewards for users.

Pickle, a peer-to-peer clothing rental marketplace, raised $12M in a Series A round led by FirstMark and CraftVentures, bringing its total amount raised to $20M. The company, which is 100% peer-to-peer and holds no clothing inventory, plans to use the funds to become the Uber or Airbnb of clothing rental in terms of reach. Although currently available nationwide, Pickle is focused on New York, Los Angeles, and Miami, where lenders and renters can meet up or use courier services for immediate exchanges.

Blackwall, an Estonia-based cybersecurity firm that specializes in advanced threat detection and security solutions, raised €45M in a Series B round led by Dawn Capital. The funding will help the company further develop products beyond its flagship product, GateKeeper, a reverse proxy that inspects and analyzes traffic in real time to filter out malicious requests.

Salesforce announced plans to invest $1B in Singapore over the next five years to boost the country's digital transformation and adoption of its AI platform, Agentforce. Salesforce says that Agentforce can assist Singapore in swiftly increasing its workforce in crucial service and public sector positions, at a time when the country faces challenges from an aging populating and falling birth rates.