C&C Pod - Maju Kuruvilla, Founder & CEO of Spangle

This week Bill and I are joined by Maju Kuruvilla - founder and CEO of commerce AI start-up, Spangle AI. Spangle is one of a number of early stage companies that have emerged over the past year leveraging advances in Generative-AI - large language models and transformers - to impact the commerce experience and lead down a new agentic commerce path transforming both the human experience and laying the foundation for agent experience. We talk to Maju about the ways in which Generative AI unlocks personalization potential, about Spangle’s ‘ProductGPT’ and where all this is headed.

Prior to Spangle, Maju has had an impressive career spanning a range of commerce domains, most recently as CEO of Bolt - the eCommerce payments company. Prior to that, and for many years, Maju was VP & GM at Amazon where he led much of the technology build out and operations in Amazon’s fulfillment and supply chain network - including leading early, key investments Amazon made in AI to ensure accuracy, quality and performance of the fulfillment network. Now with Spangle, Maju has turned his focus to commerce experience.

With that, please pour yourself something to sip along with us and enjoy our conversation with Maju!

Cheers!

Episode Chapters:

* Introducing our GingerGPT NA cocktail!

* Hey Kai, Understanding Spangle and the problem it solves

* The founding story of Spangle

* Why personalization has largely failed in the past & what’s different now

* The role of AI in eCommerce

* What is Spangle’s ProductGPT? How was it built & trained?

* The future of Agentic Commerce

* Asking for a friend… Could AI disrupt Amazon?

* The future of commerce tech stacks

* Bridging legacy systems with AI innovation

* Envisioning the future of consumer experience

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This week’s cocktail is a Mocktail - GingerGPT

This week’s non-alcoholic cocktail is a C&C original. As we describe at the top of the pod, we took some NA “bourbon” and mixed it in equal parts with some ginger-forward NA “botanicals” (think liqueur or bitters) from a maker called Tennysøn, added some simple syrup and boom! Add a bit of plain sparkling mineral water and you have something very refreshing if the bite of the ginger and spice of the NA bourbon is too much for the palette.

Tennysøn is something we would also suggest could be used in an alcoholic cocktail as well to bring some kick. We encourage you to check it out.

GingerGPT NA Cocktail Spec

1 oz - Free Spirits NA Bourbon

1 oz - Tennysøn Black Ginger NA “Liquid Botanicals”

½ oz - Simple syrup (1:1)

Garnish - Orange twist

Optional - Sparkling Mineral Water to taste

Steps

Add all ingredients to a cocktail mixing glass. Add ice and stir for 30 seconds. Serve up or in a rocks glass over a large ice cube/rock (or regular ice if not available). Express oils from the twist and garnish. Optional: add sparkling mineral water to taste.

Shout out to one of the best NA Bottle Shops! And they ship!

If you are in Seattle, check out NA Bottle Shop Cheeky & Dry in the Phinney Ridge neighborhood and tell them Cocktails & Commerce sent ya! Kristin is great about offering tastings and works hard to carry stuff you will not find easily as mass-market retailers. They also ship to most locations in the U.S.!

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Be well, be safe, and here is to good business! Cheers! - Brian & Bill

Cocktails & Commerce™ is a wholly owned subsidiary of StrategyēM, LLC.