Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Right. What else do you want to share with me?

Justin Grooms: I just want to share how excited I am for where I think commerce is going around identity. So much has changed in e-commerce over the last decade, but one of the things that hasn’t changed too much, unfortunately, is curated, specialized shopping experiences.

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Colors: Tranquility V

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Tranquility V

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. So, the customer, however, has to do the first sale for Bolt to kick in.

Justin Grooms: The customer needs to create a Bolt account somewhere in our network.

Sramana Mitra: The customer acquires the consumer. And then connects into the Bolt network and then Bolt provides additional identity data and more marketability to that customer. But the customer acquisition is happening at the retailer.

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Colors: Tranquility IV

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about art and culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of art – one of my paintings – and I request you to spend a minute or two deeply meditating on it. I urge you to watch your feelings, thoughts, reactions to the piece, and write what comes to you, what thoughts it triggers, in the dialog area. Let us see what stimulation this interaction yields. For today – Tranquility IV

Tranquility IV | Sramana Mitra, 2022 | Watercolor, Pastel, Ink | 8  x 8, On Paper

AI Unicorns: Scale AI Labels its Way to Unicorn Status

According to a recent report, the global AI market is estimated to grow at 36% CAGR from $214.6 billion in 2024 to $1.339 trillion by 2030. This has accelerated the growth of companies like Scale AI that are providing resources for development of AI solutions.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: Can you talk me through the business model evolution of the business? This is probably before your time, but when the company was selling the checkout software, were they charging on a Software as a Service basis?

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: So, Bolt started with a software product for online checkouts and sold it to small retailers. Small retailers came on board and used Bolt as their e-commerce checkout system. Then when consumers were buying through the Bolt checkout process, they were offered the opportunity to join the Bolt network.

This is how Bolt developed this network of consumers and then gradually went upmarket and got larger and larger retailers to come into this checkout system and also access the consumer base of Bolt. That’s the story that you’re telling.

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Bolt CEO Justin Grooms (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: What was the technology that were you bringing to market with Bolt? What were you looking for commercialization?

Justin Grooms: We had an initial all-in-one checkout product that we were selling to SMB merchants. Bolt had good success with that.

Sramana Mitra: A point-of-sale checkout product?