I joined Nautical Commerce

and some other updates from the trenches of quiet, product career, and startup ruckus.

I recently joined Nautical Commerce's product team.

Nautical Commerce is not just a marketplace software - it’s an end-to-end platform that democratizes access to the technology required to launch, manage and scale your marketplace. They make it possible for anyone, especially niche specialists, to own a marketplace that brings together many sellers and buyers without requiring them to know how to code. Isn’t that great?

Niche experts are already building bold, revenue-generating marketplaces with Nautical Commerce. Here are some cool ideas that have been created by the vibrant community:

Full-Scale SaaS marketplaces

• Indie foods - A full-featured marketplace connecting local food makers directly to curious eaters

• Indie Wholesale - Ontario’s own wholesale farmers market

• GFM - wholesale marketplace for specialty food, fully integrated with in-house fulfillment.

Creator-marketplace

• Canvvs - empowering artists to tell stories through footwear

Investor-ready MVPs

• Love Sportie - connecting fashion-forward women who love sports with local fashionable activewear brands.

It’s no surprise that I joined Nautical Commerce, because wherever you have software that democratizes access to technology, I’m sat!

I’m a few months in Nautical Commerce - maybe more months in to consider myself new, but honestly, I always consider myself as onboarding until I hit the year 1 mark in any company. My recent urge to go back into writing and making videos about product management and my work typically means I have a lot of questions and thoughts I need to unpack. I think that’s a good sign.

Remember, writing is proof of work for thinking

I’ll be exploring a lot of those questions here. A few of them are:

• What qualifies as a marketplace, and why is it so hard to miss that several apps and services we engage with are marketplaces

• Why are so many people initially confused about what a marketplace is and how it is different from Shopify or an online store? (I have an analogy I use here that works pretty much every time I have to explain this to people)

• Why is user activation (set up, aha, habit building) tricky for a software that has a naturally long sales cycle

• Why team ownership and buy-in on the vision is still bae - any day, any time

• Why, sometimes, you need to build it and “they” will come

Other things top of mind for me outside of work, but career-wise, are

• Authenticity is the real flex when building a personal brand. In a loud, always-on, always-scripted, always-celebrating LinkedIn era, my voice and personality feel refreshingly rare.

• Startups are the bane of my existence — and somehow, also where I do my best work.

• Competence will always make you lovable (or maybe lovable :D )

For now, I still hope my writings will be primarily punchy and leave you with one thing - just 1 one thing is enough.

Speak soon!