Hamish Gunasekara, CEO of Catalog, on Why Agentic Commerce Starts With Product Data

Consumer behavior doesn’t change overnight, even when the technology is obvious. In this episode of Retailgentic, Scot sits down with Hamish Gunasekara to unpack why agentic commerce is inevitable, why it’s moving slower than the hype suggests, and why product data infrastructure, not checkout, is the real unlock.

We cover:

• Why “fully autonomous shopping” is the wrong definition of agentic commerce
• Why consumer habits change slower than technology
• Why global mega-catalogs don’t work (and never really have)
• How vertical AI shopping experiences can thrive alongside ChatGPT
• The hidden trust and governance problem no one is talking about
• Why product catalogs are the hardest unsolved problem in commerce

If you’re a retailer, brand, agent builder, or investor trying to understand what actually matters in the agentic commerce stack, this episode is foundational.

Timestamps:
02:39 Meet Hamish & the origin of Catalog
04:55 From Afterpay to Cash App Commerce
11:30 The Naya experiment & lessons learned
14:24 How AI is changing discovery
16:08 Why catalog data is broken
18:30 Fundraising & early traction
20:48 Who Catalog is built for
23:20 Why global catalogs don’t work
28:30 The agentic commerce stack
33:40 Defining agentic commerce (correctly)
37:30 Why vertical agents will win
43:45 Trust, governance, and adoption
44:51 Where to learn more

👉 Connect with Hamish: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamish-gunasekara/
👉 Learn more about Catalog: https://getcatalog.ai/

🧠 Want to stay ahead in AI commerce? Subscribe and follow along:
📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai 
📺 Watch episodes on YouTube & Subscribe for updates 
🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc: https://retailgentic.transistor.fm