Guest feature: Ben Cogan
What Ben thinks of 'Deep Research' and why he believes his tennis game is unpredictable
Rolling back the years
OK, four years isn’t that long, but that’s how long I’ve known Ben. It was the summer of 2021 (this sounds like a romance movie) when Agora Brands, a DTC aggregator, approached our company about an acquisition after raising about $80M in debt and equity from investors. If you’ve read past newsletters, you’ll know that Ben and his partner in crime, Jesse, are in fact the founders of Agora.
Beyond Agora, Ben and Jesse also co-founded Hubble Contacts ($70M+ raised, $100M revenue at peak), best known for selling $1 contacts, as well as Mockingbird Strollers which you’ll see moseying around the Upper West Side. But beyond business, Ben has been a great voice in the e-commerce community for a few years. Whether he’s questioning venture psychology or breaking down the e-commerce landscape, his writing is pragmatic, insightful, and widely resonant.
He’s also one of the top five biggest tennis fans I know. On my last visit to NYC, he made me play points where I could only hit the ball into the front-left service box - the results of this experiment will not be publicly disclosed.
That said, I’m incredibly grateful that Ben is publishing his article on Dollar Commerce before it goes live on his LinkedIn. Over to Ben…
My attempt at Deep Research (on myself) and the future of AI in e-commerce
by Ben Cogan
Very soon, AI will let brands know all publicly available info about their customers. This is going to revolutionize ecommerce.
I caved and subscribed to ChatGPT Pro for access to “Deep Research.” This is the tool that scours the internet to write a 5-20 page pHd-level report on a topic of your choice.
As many have said, it’s great.
What I haven’t seen is someone using the tool for deep research about individual non-famous people. So I tried it out on myself. Here’s the report: https://chatgpt.com/share/67a39906-1c10-800b-bd73-6f1af64ef8f0
Honestly while it’s not exactly what I’d write about myself, it’s very good. It unearthed a couple of interviews with me about my first company, Hubble Contacts, which anyone could find on Google. But it also went back to a 2012 Princeton University article about me which I didn’t even know existed. Overall, I’d easily give it an A.
This got me thinking about what you could do with this tool. Because while Pro users are limited to 100 Deep Research searches a month, I’m sure very soon the cost of this will approach 0, effectively allowing for unlimited searches. What could you do with that?
There are some obvious use cases. For example, if you’re a sales representative getting on a call with a new lead, wouldn’t it be helpful to get a 500 word summary of who the lead is? Their work history, where they went to school, where they live, even their hobbies? Or what topics they’ve written about LinkedIn (this is getting meta)!
Of course, this has the potential to be really weird, so sales reps will probably be trained to not make what they know about someone *too* obvious. But I think this is going to happen.
How might this affect ecommerce?
Well, maybe the days of one size fits all email campaigns will soon be over. Talk about segmentation–in theory, you could write a personalized email to every single customer in your database. Do you run a sports goods store? Maybe one customer is skiing in their public Facebook profile picture, picked up by Deep Research 3. Boom, they get an email about new skis that just went up for sale.
You can take this even farther. With a tool like Retention.com, you can often identify a site visitor’s email address without them explicitly giving it to you. If Deep Research were fast enough, could you determine who the shopper is from their email and personalize your site itself based on their publicly searchable interests? Why not?
Again, the above techniques clearly have the potential to be creepy. And, if pushed too far, they could even violate data privacy laws (read: do not try in Europe). So once these tools become widely available, I’d recommend that brands start slow. For example, maybe a bag brand emails customers offering to customize their bag with their school logo. Risky? Maybe a little. But probably worth trying.
Deep Research heralds a brave new world where companies can immediately know almost all publicly-available information about their customers. Buckle up.
Ben’s Q&A
Q: If you had to compare yourself to one tennis player, who would it be and why?
A: Medvedev, because of his unconventional style of play. It doesn’t always look like he knows what he’s doing, but somehow, it works.
Q: What are some of the downsides of over-fundraising?
A: Over-fundraising raises the bar for what the business needs to sell for in order to deliver a good return for investors. If that number ends up being higher than what the business is realistically capable of reaching, you’re in trouble.
Q: Do you think now is a bad time to invest in DTC, or would you argue it’s the best time to find great DTC businesses?
A: I think it’s a great time to buy DTC businesses, assuming you can find a good one. Prices are low. The bigger challenge is finding capital. Equity investors are skittish on the space right now, and borrowing to buy is tough with high interest rates.
Q: Favorite stock pick for 2025?
A: I don’t believe in stock picking! But if I had to choose, I’d go with Klaviyo. Otherwise, I’d stick with the ETF: VT.
**This is not financial advice**
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