entrepreneurship

Brent Peterson chats with FairPlay Co-Founder and COO Andrew Devlyn in this third episode of Talk Commerce! Fairplay is a financing and analytics platform for your eCommerce, which uses data processing to invest in your digital marketing campaigns and inventory. For fast-growing ecommerce businesses that generate consistent sales, Fairplay offers smart financing in exchange for a small portion of your revenue until the financed capital is repaid plus a fixed service fee. https://getfairplay.com/

Brent: Welcome Andrew to Talk Commerce, Andrew Devlyn. You can introduce yourself. 

[00:00:07] Andrew: Thank you, Brent, for inviting me to Talk Commerce. I’m very excited to be in this new effort you’re doing. I’m Andrew Devlyn. I’m the CEO of Fairplay. And was a partner of Summa Solutions for many years.

Before that, I was in a family business in Mexico that sold glasses, and I headed their e-digital transformation efforts, not only in e-commerce but also in their stores with omnichannel. We met many years ago. I think about six years now.

It’s been a while. Interesting. Thank you for inviting me. 

[00:00:55] Brent: Why don’t we start with your experience with E-commerce and how you got into it in Mexico. I think I got into it about the same time as you got into Magento in Mexico, but why don’t you walk us through how you got introduced to it with Devlyn Optical.

[00:01:14] Andrew: We go to the very beginning, starting with my actual partner now in Fairplay. We met in high school, and he went on to do a whole musician career. And when he was offered to join Groupon, he called me, and I was heading the LASIK surgery centers of the family business.

So he told me, no, we’re selling these coupons in Groupon for LASIK and really starting very well. I said, Man, that’s interesting. So we published some Groupons. We sold a lot, and then we started seeing the potential that we can have selling LASIK.

And literally, it took me to start selling LASIK online, and it did very well. That later took me to the family business to start developing an e-commerce platform for the optical business. And when we could, we started that. That was around 2012, around that date, 2011 probably, when we started evaluating platforms.

We literally fell upon Magento because one of the partners that we had, had already started developing it, and we had already paid him for a portion of the development.

So we were stuck there. We had to work with Magento, but then it was a very nice relationship, basically. That’s how it started. It started really with random situations that began with my friend and then going into LASIK. Honestly, even to this day, I said, man, that was an easier business than selling glasses.

[00:03:34] There was not so much variety of products, but that’s what brought me to e-commerce in my career because for most of my life before that, I was focused on medical services. I’ve been a paramedic and started selling medical equipment and, after that, services. But that was how I, little by little, started moving towards e-commerce.

[00:04:03] So that was, in a nutshell, how it started. 

[00:04:07] Brent: That’s really interesting because I know that one of my first Magento gigs was with a brewing supply company. And they started doing Groupon. This would be like 2010. Their business just exploded with Groupon. It was just crazy how many they did these like little brewing kits that they sold.  It was a fantastic way to supercharge things. That was back on Magento enterprise1.10  So way, way back, probably 12 years ago, now that we started doing that. So that’s a significant similarity. So then you developed your internal team at Devlyn that kind of built out your Magento stack. 

[00:04:55] Andrew: [00:04:55] Yeah. So after that, when we started, when we saw the development of the Magento store, we noticed that there were a lot of issues. First, they told us it was the enterprise version. And, of course, it wasn’t. It was Community. And, we struggled to work with an agency that used to be very strong in Mexico.

[00:05:15] And the relationship didn’t work out. And so I decided, look, if we’re going to do this. We need to learn how this works, and the only way is to do it ourselves. So I started hiring a whole internal team. So we hired the developers, frontend and backend. We got designers and the entire team, and we started developing our platform on Magento.

[00:05:46] We did the transition. Yes, we did with the help of the previous agency moving from the community version that had a lot of basic mistakes in how they did the development of it to the enterprise version to the present version. If I’m not mistaken, I think it was, is there a 1.13, the last one.

[00:06:08] Brent: [00:06:08] At 1.14 was the last one. 

[00:06:11] Andrew: [00:06:11] Okay. So I think I did 1.13, and we launched that one, and that was the first time that I launched a whole site from almost scratch, but it was a different time because at that point, just getting the images of the product was such an ordeal.

[00:06:35] None of our suppliers had the images of the product. So we had to go and bring them in from the stores, photograph them, and they send them back. And around, I’m not lying, about 5% would get broken, just going and coming. And so we had a lot of loss of inventory just moving around products.

[00:07:00] And so it was such an ordeal doing that. But we were able to get. I think in my first launch, I think we had about 800 SKUs, varied between all brands. And then when we launched at the start, you think, it’s so easy you just connect the payment processor and this. But in Mexico, even that was so unprepared, and we got very low authorizations.

[00:07:39] If I’m not joking. I think when I started the tunnel authorization with about 10%. 10% of all the authorization attempts went through. So there was nothing. So you made all your effort, you put up a lever, and they didn’t have the ecosystem that generally supports e-commerce. Now, I see all these people trying to launch e-commerce.

[00:08:06] I said, man, how easy they have it. Now the simplicity of different platforms that exist gets vendors to connect and make it possible for e-commerce to thrive. It didn’t exist in that day in age, especially in Latin America. The US had suitable suppliers and authorization and delivery.

[00:08:36] Probably not Amazon level, but it was good enough. And in Latin America, everything was such an ordeal. And especially in that industry, which was super traditional. That is the optical industry. 

[00:08:50] Brent: [00:08:50] I can, remember. We started, I think we started in Mexico in 2014, and I remember thinking that, Hey Mexico, maybe they’re five, ten years behind the US, but they’re going to catch up quickly, and they have, and it has been such a growth experience going through…

[00:09:11] just going through the whole process of all the different payment gateways that are available now, the shipping methods, and then how they’re working with some of these platforms like Magento and Shopify now BigCommerce and VTEX. The experience for the customer has accelerated.

[00:09:32] And especially for the vendors who are building out these stores, you’re right. It has gotten so much easier in Mexico. And I feel that we could, you and I could probably make another whole conversation about both partners and experiences for customers in Mexico and then customer expectations.

[00:09:49] I feel like we could have a whole “let’s get some realism in the e-commerce market” and what a merchant should expect. And then, especially from our side, what should an American agency expect when entering the Mexican market for the first time?

[00:10:08] Andrew: [00:10:08] Of course. One of the things that, when I started my venture, and in competing with you or with SUMMA in the market is how much time it takes to get to their vision. It’s not only us developing the technology. There’s a lot of effort they have to do internally to change the way they operate to be able to internalize e-commerce as something that can and will help.

[00:10:43] accelerate their growth as a company, but it’s not only the technology.  The general idea was, we just need a good platform. We need Magento. We need whatever Hybris or whatever. And that is only part of the vision. There’s a lot of internal processes they have to change.

[00:11:02] I remember a merchant at Summa was going to use, for example, BBDA bank commerce which is a big bank and operator. It connects to them before they let you connect through OpenPay, which is a FinTech company. They bought this processor. And they are very low authorizations, but they decided to do that because that’s what they use for their stores.

[00:11:31] but it doesn’t work the same. I imagine you have a lot of stories like that. Just the expectation of the merchants that everything should be just resolved by the partner developing the technology. And that’s not the case. 

[00:11:51] Brent: Yeah, we launched the first Magento 2 enterprise store in Mexico in 2015, which I think we were a little bit ahead of ourselves because M2 was launched in 2015.

[00:12:05] I think we started the project when Magento 2 came out, and we finished the project in February of 2016, but I know that PayPal was significantly behind the curve on making sure that their product worked in Mexico. There were a lot of challenges in that, and especially being on a 2.0 project instead of a 2.1 or 2.2. I think inherently, with new software, there’s going to be some bugs.

[00:12:31] So there were many, extremely many bugs when two came out. Not to get into the weeds too much, but 2.0 to 2.1 was just a vast upheaval, just so much work. We don’t have to go into those sorts of details. 

[00:12:52] Andrew: [00:12:52] And it’s fantastic after that, it stabilized a lot.

[00:12:57] It’s a lot more stable after 2.2. It’s a lot more manageable now. They were different because if you remember correctly, I think we spoke about this when we met. You launched yours in February.

[00:13:19] I started developing mine when we moved from that 1.13 to 2.0. Our experience also internally was challenging. 

[00:13:31] Brent: Yeah. And on a side note, I know I talked to Aaron Grego quite a bit, and he’s such a great guy. He’s at Spacebar now. I think he still owns Pengo, but I think one thing that’s unique about Mexico, and you can correct me if I’m wrong,

[00:13:48] but the relationships among agencies are a little bit different. From my experience, I think that I’ve had a good relationship with Pengo and with, even with Marco and, Aaron and we continue to talk. Even employees that have left Wagento, we’ve been able to continue to speak, and it’s some. In some ways, I feel like it’s a little bit more open.

[00:14:16] Maybe it’s more of a personal relationship that I’ve made. Still, it’s been an exciting experience to see the differences and how businesses work and Mexico compared to how we work in the US. 

[00:14:32] Andrew: I do believe that’s something we need to learn from the US. We need to know how to be more.

[00:14:41] open and friendly to support the ecosystem, not certain players. And, I think that’s something we try to do so many times very sporadically. I remember the first Magento event in Mexico. I forget the name that they placed on those Magento events here in Mexico. And I said we need to do them as a team because it will be a lot easier for us to spread the weight of that effort to grow together.

[00:15:26] But that’s a little bit of a Latin America methodology because, of course, we’re a much smaller market. So competition is a lot more fierce than in the US, which is such a large market. You’re not going to fight for one account as much. At the end of the day, you’re always friendly.

[00:15:50] I believe that I had a pretty good relationship with most players in the market because I always try to speak my ideas openly. 

[00:16:00] Brent: That’s good. Why don’t you tell us a bit of what you’re doing now? I’m interested in Fairplay. I’ve read some of it on your website.

[00:16:08] It’s in Spanish. So I am continuing to learn Spanish and trying to get better, but give us the elevator pitch and then give us some insights on how you’re helping businesses. 

[00:16:23] Andrew: [00:16:23] So basically, we are a revenue-based financing firm for ecommerce or the digital economy in Latin America.

[00:16:33] Right now, we’re only in Mexico. And what makes us different from other financing and ours is that our customers repay their funding based on a percentage of their sales until they finish paying the principle and our commission because there’s no interest. That makes our model very friendly to an ecosystem that has seasonality that retail in general has, and especially ecommerce that is super intensive on certain days during the year. So when they sell more, they’re able to pay more. When they sell less, they pay less. It can even go down to zero if necessary.

[00:17:18] That’s what I got into after being a merchant and then being a partner. I heard about this model personified by Clear Bank. They’re the largest player there in Toronto. It’s not a US Company. It’s a Canadian company based out of Toronto. They started growing and said, man, this is a great model.

[00:17:42] So we brought it to Latin America, And right now we’re in Mexico, and we’ll be launching in other countries in Latin America by the end of this year. So We are venture-backed by a fund in Mexico and a fund in Virginia, and QED investors in Monta Nexca.

[00:18:04] So that’s what we’re doing. It’s an entirely different pace than I was so used to internally. You’re working with customers for them to achieve their dreams. It’s a little bit different, but I love it. I love being part of that ecosystem that supports e-commerce.

[00:18:28] I think it’s super. If I could give anybody feedback regarding this system is to find a way to support the whole ecosystem. You’re going to have a lot of opportunities. At the end of the day, it’s growing leaps and bounds, it’s going fast, and by supporting it, you’ll indeed find a lot of opportunities to grow. 

[00:19:00] Brent: So, just to explain, this is for merchants that want to help fund the development of a store or fund some products in their store. Is that what this does? 

[00:19:10] Andrew: Yeah, we primarily focused on working capital. So we are financing inventory, marketing, and logistics needs. We are thinking of starting to invest also the development of their platform if it’s short-term development. Not if it’s something that’s going to be launched in a year and a half, but it’s something that is a time frame of six or eight months or four months. We are thinking of doing that. We haven’t done it yet, but we will be piloting some trade credits probably in the near future. 

[00:19:49] Brent:  So theoretically, somebody could start up a BigCommerce store, and they could get some help from you in terms of marketing their business in Mexico, maybe getting some inventory and working through that process.

[00:20:08] Andrew: Exactly. They do need some history. We need to know that they are moving a product that is getting traction. We can’t start off on day zero with them. We’re not a venture capital fund, but we are in the early stages. Generally, we’ll start contemplating financing when they are eight months from the start. Then we’ll be willing to do some financing. So we generally connect to, for example, their BigCommerce account or to their Magento store or to Shopify, to their Google analytics and their Facebook ads and the Google ads and pulling their information and then make them an offer. And the good thing is because we do a lot of evaluation of their knowledge, we’re able to give them those data points. We analyze. We present them their CLV, the customer lifetime value, their TAC analysis, their marketing correlation analysis of their marketing efforts, and what campaigns correlate more for their growth. We don’t get into attribution. We also normalize growth trends. And we’re going to do benchmarking too, and some inventory analysis. So we give those analyses with the objective for them to get better insights into how their business is running. And this is done for free to any merchant acquiring financing or not from us. They can use it for free. 

[00:22:08] Brent: Okay. That’s great. And just to give you a heads up here. The sun came out overhead, and it started to freeze my computer. So I had to move. I didn’t expect that to happen. I’m trying my new outdoor home studio. It’ll be a good segment for what to do and what not to do when setting up an outdoor studio. Don’t set it up where the sun’s going to be in an hour. 

[00:22:42] Andrew: Yeah, exactly.

[00:22:46] Brent: Okay. I’m interested in how you’re helping merchants perform.

So it sounded like you’re helping them after their store launches or not after, but like during the process and allowing them to see how they can be more successful in doing that. And of course, that’s good for you, and it’s good for them. 

[00:23:16] Andrew: Yeah, but the initial hypothesis was that a lot of the venture backing funding are using their money, their resources in marketing, in buying in, and things that are not midterm based that’s generally what you should use your money for. What we find, what we’re trying to finance, is that part of their business that grows, that grows in demand. You need more money. The more you grow, it doesn’t stay static. So for them not to be worried about that amount of growth in the capital that they need. Now, if they don’t use that, we can give them insights into how they’re doing. So, for example, we analyzed their marketing things like cost per click CPM, ROI could bridge your weights by platform, things like that. We also see what their average revenue per user is and catch all of these different e-commerce indicators. And most of them will have [the data]. Some of them will have them very up-to-date, some will once you do them, but we think if we can help you with an immediacy without you having to exert effort to have them, then probably you’ll be able to review them and be more knowledgeable. You’ll see the trend and how the trend is moving along. Probably sometimes you’ll find good moments and say, Hey, we’re doing really well, and sometimes you say we have to watch out, we’ll go to dangerous territory. So that’s where we’re going. We were never gonna replace a specialized marketing vendor or that platform. No, we can’t do that, but we will be able to give you a broad sense of how your business is doing. If you would be evaluated by a VC or by a bank or by a financial institution to let you know you’re doing good or doing bad, but one that knows about e-commerce that I want to make that difference, not just a financial institution that doesn’t know anything about companies just cares about cash flow because we are going to do, for example, unit economics and cash analysis too. But we’ll have those lines later this year. Yeah. And I would say that’s even more important to the merchant, even than a marketing company. A marketing company is going to be necessary, but I think what you’re doing is helping them to see. How they’re, how they can maximize their ROI out of the investment and, giving them an opportunity to analyze some of the marketing efforts they’re doing in terms of how do they return.

[00:26:34] Andrew: How can we give you business metrics that help you understand how your e-commerce business is doing? Not only specifically in marketing. Also, how’s it doing in the long term acquisition of customers, because if the trend is going up consistently, that’s going to become very difficult to sustain in the midterm.

[00:27:00] How can we analyze different business-related metrics to help you understand if you’re on the right path or what decisions you can make to help you be more profitable? 

[00:27:16] Brent: What is the typical business you work with, the typical size business?

[00:27:23] Andrew: Now it’s a pretty diverse set. The majority are pretty early-stage organizations between six and eight months since launch; those are the youngest on average to, let’s say, a year and a half in operation, on average, between the one-half to the two-year mark of operation. They’ll be selling monthly for about $40, $50K. Some are going to be smaller. We do have a minor start as somebody that’s selling $7K. If they’re selling $7K a month, then we’re willing to evaluate financing. And so that would be the starting cohort. And then the average will be between $40K-$50K in sales a month. The other aspect that’s important is that they’re growing. They have to have a positive trending growth right now in e-commerce. If you’re not growing when the whole market is growing at such a fast pace, that’s not very tolerant of being able to get financing if you’re not growing.

[00:29:01] Brent: And do you look for some minimum amount of time that they’ve been in business, or do you take on entirely new startups?

[00:29:08]Andrew: No, it has to be at least eight months of total operation for us to start being willing to give them a loan. Most of the time, most of ours will be around the 18-month mark of the process for giving them loans.

[00:29:30] Brent: And I think you and I are both entrepreneurs. So you know, that’s very risky. Eight months is very risky. So that’s great that you’re doing that for vendors. Are you getting a lot of exciting new startups that have great ideas in the ecommerce space? And I guess I should back up. Is it only ecommerce businesses that you’re doing it for? Is it retail as well? 

[00:29:54] Andrew: Only e-commerce and marketplace vendors now. We do have some SaaS solutions and B2B tech that we’ve given loans as pilots. But we are seeing a lot of growth in marketplace vendors. It’s crazy how many people are going into selling on Amazon and selling on MercadoLibre. It’s such a diverse ecosystem that is growing because so many large retailers are launching their marketplaces without giving a lot of effort to bring in third-party sellers. So we’re working with them. And we’re also working with e-commerce in any type of industry B2B or B2C. Mostly, of course, it’s B2C that’s by far the largest market. And to answer your question. Yeah. Exciting models that people are coming out with. With a lot of offerings in this moment of COVID selling from oxygen concentrators to people that are bringing really good brands. So that’s one of the things that is giving me a lot of good feelings about where Latin America is going now. There are a lot of people developing their brands direct to consumer brands that they’re manufacturing and bringing to them. And, generally, that’s where I see the most growth in the people that create a brand that has a certain charm to it, a particular specific target market, and they’re bringing them to launch, and they’re getting traction. One guy that just started, for example, selling peanut butter, he created a brand, and he diversified into different kinds of butter, different types and is gaining traction. So it’s been fascinating. If I could recommend anybody, if you want to start e-commerce now, don’t start reselling somebody else’s brand. Develop your own brand. Think about it. It doesn’t have to be something super complex. Just give it your image. Your style of communication targeted the market and went to it. And because the feedback is so fast, you’ll be able to move quickly after that. If you’re, listening, 

[00:32:46] Brent: Do you work like Shark Tank where you have a panel and people come in, and you do some interviews, and then, you help them in their journey. 

[00:33:00] Andrew: Honestly, no. We do have a tremendous consulting-type selling process now that we understand their dream of what they’re doing. But at the end of the day, we are very data-driven, and if the breadth is there, we’re going to find it. But what we have noticed is in those first two years of operation, a lot of them need a lot of feedback on topics that probably are not their strong suit. Some are good in branding but not good in inventory management or marketing, or something else. And we can’t do it for them. That is the line. We can’t do it for you because it would be like your bank giving you a credit card and then spending the money for you. It would be a conflict of interest, but we are bringing in experts on certain topics. We’re bringing in marketing. We’re going to have one marketing expert, one inventory expert, and one branding expert, and these services will be available for our customers but not the free version users.

They’ll be able to get some guidance on look into this, look into that. You can focus on this. We see this missing and, at least they can point them in the direction as a coach, let’s say. No, you should be looking to go that way. Because these are the basics, you need to cover. I imagine you agree with me, Brent, that a lot of the problems at that early stage are basics, are not complicated issues, but it’s just basic steps that because it’s such a broad thing to do e-commerce, that the basic steps need to be covered to be able to be successful.

[00:35:12] Brent: I think some of the things that maybe you learn later in entrepreneurial life and it certainly, for me, it took me about 15, 20 years to figure some of these things out would be just the steps that are outlined in what we’ve learned in Entrepreneurs Organization, or EOS, or one of those other systems that help you run your business. Do you introduce customers into EOS Mexico, or anything like that, or even Accelerator, the Accelerator program inside the Entrepreneurs Organization, to help them get some guidance from other entrepreneurs? 

[00:35:47] Andrew: No, but that is a great idea, Brent, and I will be taking that and talking to EO Mexico City, and you’re around Latin America too. If they have Accelerator programs to see if somebody wants to be able to go into one of these programs for us to at least point them in, or you can look into this or that or this other program to be able to talk to them. What we will be doing, and we haven’t started yet, is having round tables, like power lunches. Like you remember the EO PowerLunch to be able to speak with other people that are knowledgeable to connect our customers to each other. At the end of the day, especially after COVID, there’s been a lot less networking inside of the industry, and we want to facilitate that integration. And now that digital integration has become more acceptable, and people are more open to it. I think we want to do exciting events to connect with each other. So people that know a lot about a subject can share with each other. 

[00:37:09] Brent: Yeah, as soon as we can start safely traveling again, I’ll be the first person down there to be at your English-speaking table and to talk to other entrepreneurs. I get a kick out of that. We have a local venture capital, a small venture capital company called Traction Capital. They are not doing what you’re doing, and it’s a very small scale. It’s more of an angel investors type thing. And they are specifically looking at The Entrepreneurs Accelerator program. To find vendors and to help vendors through that process. So I do think that there’s a lot of value that both sides could get out of it to help entrepreneurs. And I think one of the principles in EOS is that everybody has a number or there’s a number that’s assigned to things, and you start tracking those things. And the number-driven part of it is where many entrepreneurs miss out because if you don’t follow it, you don’t know. And if you don’t know, it could be anything. 

[00:38:17] Andrew: And to keep it there on your mind, and don’t get lost between all the issues you have because entrepreneurship has such an amount of work that falls on a few people in the organization things get lost. So being able to keep track of what is essential to the business is vital. And that’s what I told my partner. We are in the finance industry, but our customers are not, and they don’t want to talk about finance every day of the year. They want to be able to have a financing partner that can help from time to time, and they want to do it with that partner. They want to stop thinking about it and run their business, and we forget that. And I think sometimes I would forget that also when I was in Summa, I know you think about the technologies. Also important for the business because it helps the operation so much, but it’s not the only thing. There’s the brand, and there’s the marketing, and there are all these other aspects that need to be taken care of too. 

[00:39:38] Brent: We have about 10 minutes left. Let’s wrap things up around platforms. I would imagine that you are going to see a lot of different types of platforms, and I’m very interested in seeing which ones you see that are successful in Mexico. And then, at what point do people choose different types of platforms?

[00:40:05]Andrew: I’ll give you that now herein, FairPlay, I think what we’ve seen by a large amount is generally Shopify. Most people are starting with Shopify. I mean because I can understand why it’s so easy to start. I do see a lot of people also using WooCommerce, and honestly, I’m not wildly convinced with the people that use WooCommerce. I don’t know if it’s the best, most sound decision. But I do see that a lot of the mid-market enterprises are really fighting it off between platforms like Magento and VTEX.  I think VTEX has a lot of growth in the Latin American market. They are trying really hard to push in. And after this last round of financing, they got from SoftBank. I see them growing their teams and their support teams and the noise they’re making in the Latin American market. I used to be very partial to solutions like Magento, and I still have my heart fully with them, but I do believe that these are solutions are getting very competitive with how they’ve been able to support merchants and their needs, 

[00:41:55] Brent: Yeah. I would be interested in seeing why people would choose Shopify over VTEX. And I would imagine it’s probably a cost thing, like licensing. I think Shopify is reasonably cheap. 

[00:42:09] Andrew: Yeah. And at least Shopify, because it’s very self-service people generally don’t interact with anybody at Shopify to start the business. They do it in their home. It’s pretty easy to create. I think BigCommerce, for example, versus Shopify. My understanding is that they are also very self-service. If I’m not mistaken, they just don’t have that much branding in Mexico compared to Shopify. That is very top of mind in the customer’s mind. For VTEX, people don’t associate it with. I’m going to start my business with VTEX because it’s not as well known to be so self-service.

So I think, to answer the question, I think it’s just that self-service stage of Shopify that people really feel it’s so easy to start off with. 

[00:43:06] Brent: Yeah. So just full disclosure. We are now a VTEX partner and just closed our first VTEX deal in Mexico, and we’re a BigCommerce partner. So part of this is learning why people are choosing which platform. And I agree that Shopify does have much better branding in Mexico than BigCommerce. I think that the platforms are very similar and work very similarly. And we don’t have time to get into the specific differences between the two, but it will be interesting to watch and see what platform shines in Mexico. It is a different market than the US, and there are so many various aspects of the market. As a Mexican merchant, what do you expect out of your platform, and why is it that you chose this one or the other one? I think that’ll be interesting to see what happens.

And I wouldn’t even say over the next five years. It’s all going to happen very rapidly now. And I think the growth is going to happen exponentially. 

[00:44:19] Andrew: Yeah. I imagine you remember when Magento 2 came out. It was such a leap from where it was. And of course, with all the difficulties it brought, it was such a leap from there and then 2015 and 2016 a jump.

It’s 2021, and things have changed dramatically. It’s hard to see how Hybris and SalesForce, and Adobe Magento will be able to reconquer these tiny businesses, especially Magento, that they used to be the owners of. The owners of the “I’m starting my e-commerce from scratch” they would start it with Magento. Or am I mistaken with this historical thought? Now it’s so difficult for them to come into that small market, and if they give breathing room for them to grow and these self-services are able to continue servicing them, then what market is going to be left for them? Because replatforming is a nightmare. 

[00:45:45] Brent: Yeah. I think we’re just about out of time. I thank you for meeting with me and doing this. It’s been an exciting conversation. I believe that we could probably have some more topics that we could talk about. Specifically, that would be good. I always like to give a shameless plug at the end. So why don’t you give a shameless plug for FairPlay and how people can get in contact with you. And I will also add that we will, specifically, put the subtitles for this episode in Spanish, as well as English.

[00:46:23] Andrew: Thank you, Brent. It’s been a pleasure really to be with you in this podcast. I am very honored to know you and see you grow through all the years we’ve known each other. If anybody is looking for financing for their e-commerce or a marketplace vendor or SaaS or B2B tech and you want to finance for working capital, and you’re growing, you can come to our website and getfairplay.com. Hopefully, we can be your financing partners, so you can focus on your business and not worry about having the resources to do it. That is my shameless plug. 

[00:47:15] Brent: Great. Thank you, Andrew. It’s been a lot of fun. 

[00:47:19] Andrew: Thank you. Enjoy the paradise over there. 

[00:47:23] Brent: I’ll do my best to enjoy myself in Hawaii now that I’m out of the sun.

[00:47:27] Andrew: Okay. Take care. Thanks.