Ecommerce: Going From Google to Founder to Early Employee & Now VP at Gorgias With Philippe Roireau

Hey guys, we're here for episode 16 of the e-commerce opportunity where I'm joined by Phil. Phil, how are you? Thanks so much Chase for having me today. Yeah, man, of course. By the way, what is your full name? I didn't want to butcher it. So I wasn't gonna say I called you Phil. What is your full name? Yeah, I feel it Well, amazing. Yeah, the last name can be a little bit of a tongue twister. And are you French or what? What are you French Canadian? There's such thing to be quiet. I love it, man. Well, thank you for being here Do you mind starting with kind of what you're currently working on? Yeah, absolutely. Well, yeah again once thanks. Thanks for having me today I'm a VP of business development and partnerships at gorgeous So that's taking out of my work week about 50 hours a week that I put on this project. It's a it's pretty big So we're the number one help desk for e-commerce and we're powering over 6,000 brands to provide exceptional customer service That's really what we're focusing on is to empower e-commerce entrepreneurs to level up when it comes to giving customer experiences that are outstanding We wonder customers to come back because they feel like they've been taken care of So yeah, I'm trying through my role to empower agencies to empower You know to empower brands also directly to to level up in that regard That's mostly what I'm working on. And also I have a brand on the side that I'm also practicing what I'm preaching Amazing and I can't wait to dive into that in a little bit. I'm taking one step back though So I've kind of some research for this podcast and I know you a little bit in person Your background really is not typical for the type of person I've had on the podcast thus far and that's not a bad thing I actually I'm glad that you're here and I want to talk about this We dive a bit like into your corporate background and maybe how that's shaped some of the things that you're doing, you know today Sure. Yeah, so I I always wanted to Experiment like both end of the spectrum like being like a solopreneur starting like really small hustles and trying to grow them into businesses, but also when I graduated from university, like I I thought I'd give a shot at working at large companies and I ended up Working at both Microsoft and Google for for quite some time so I went from being like super Entrepreneur focused in my early days and then moving into moving into large corporate IT tech and Then finding my path back into like more the startup world and now we're transforming This startup where I'm at today from like a very small grinding startup into something. That's like much more Like you have a bigger corporation. I Don't know if that's a good or a bad thing, but that's where things are are heading today. But yeah, they it's interesting like this the the really big enterprise corporate like Day-to-day job really formats you to think in a certain way that it's all about like building processes that are repeatable And so how can you like incorporate those repeatable available? Processes in your daily job, and I think that's what That's what really helped me then like making the transition back into startups and helping this startup gorgeous become more and more organized and Yeah, and grow to where we're now today like over 150 people That's crazy, man. That's awesome And then after you left Google which I think was like your last kind of main Corporate job it looks like you started like a food and beverage business What inspired you to start that, you know, what was it? How did it go? Yeah, so at Google actually they were serving us every day I was working in Poland back in the days and it would serve it serve us this thing called compote Which is like a water with fresh fruits and them and it's really refreshing with a little bit of sugar It's really really good and every lunch I would have this compote water and then I was like, oh, well, let me like bottle this up and like resell it North American style and Yeah, a bunch of business of like fruits and water bottles and it seemed like a good idea at the time I was like, yeah, I'll quit my job I'll move like to Canada back to Canada like but to Toronto where I had never really been and I'll just start this business and Yeah, that's when I was still young and stupid The beverage industry is a really bad industry in general. It's low margins. There's a lot of competition But I was a little bit oblivious to that. I was like, yeah, I'll make the first Beverage that has real piece real chunks of fruits in them so yeah, it was it was quite difficult because just like they the biggest part that had the biggest challenge the first challenge that we Had to overcome was the production process We're like, how do you put at scale into like tens of thousands of bottles like fresh or like? pasteurized pieces of fruits on a production line that's not equipped for that So we tried building robots and things like that to put the fruits in the bottle But the robots were never accurate enough to like put only two pieces so like for years we tried to crack the code unlike putting fruits and bottles at scale and we never got through like Getting rid of the human part of that process and I was really thankful production That's like we had this issue there that was like cutting a little bit in our margins and then on the other side There's just like coke and Pepsi that are looking down Everything and really like driving the market down like by like the bottom So it's a race. It's a race to the bottom on pricing the beverage industry and there's really little margin So if anybody's listening right now, like if you're thinking about launching a beverage business or food in general Really find like a place a category where you have some margin To play with because it's hard it's a there are other industries where you might find a little bit more Gap to grow your business Yeah, no appreciate you sharing. That's definitely some great advice. So how did you end up from from all right corporate that? How did you end up at gorgeous and how long you've been there? I mean the second part of that question is no not everyone listens. It's gonna start their own business, right? Some people work for agencies some people work for brands Some people are freelancing not everyone has the aspiration to be like an entrepreneur So, how did you end up a gorgeous and like what advice do you have for someone that is working at a corporation? That wants to move up because you know, you're you're a VP now I think when you started right you might have been like a sales manager or some, you know Director type thing, right? So yeah, the the the gap between the beverage business and gorgeous is actually Quite interesting as well So as like my beverage business was like kind of plateauing and I was not finding the next level of growth in it My best buddy actually was like hey, look at this this thing called Shopify here So he shows me like his dashboard and everything I'm like, so he launched maybe like a month before like talking to me about it It was like I look at lunch a month ago doing $500 a day in sales already like drop shipping I was like, well you launched a month ago and like you've got some traction. That's pretty impressive Like also I'll like I'll join you I'll help you will grow this thing I had no idea like I had never done really covers like I've done like web stuff and IT a little bit of like Oh like and I was in CPG So like I I had like a good understanding of branding and things like this, but like I was like, hey Yeah, let's try drop shipping So and that was like in the good old days like four or five years ago and like things could scale really quickly So we went from zero to like 15 million dollar in sales and like about a year and a half So we're like, holy cow. Wait, this is amazing like it's crazy you can just like add zeros to your Facebook campaigns and it goes up and it's like and Someday it dies and then you launch another product and it just keeps going and it's pretty fantastic But drop shipping like is not necessarily the most sustainable thing and I was like There was already some signals like three years ago that like I'm like It's hard to keep doing that forever. Like you really need to go into that brand building into like owning this So we started having like some difference of vision and wanted to keep on doing drop shipping I wanted to build brands. So and we were the Gorgias's first large customer actually We're the first enterprise customer at Gorgias We didn't even know it at this time we're driving maybe 25% of their revenue of the Gorgias revenue with like our one license We were on Zendesk before and we wanted to improve so I met a Romain Gorgias CEO Through through that because he was the sales guy at that time And so he sold me on this platform. It was great. It was really like life-changing for us We like were able to do a lot more with a lot less people on the customer service side So I yeah, I decided to to come and run some growth tests with them find out some growth channels While they were like finally hitting product market fit So I joined Gorgias when we're about like six employees seven employees. There were like two engineers the two founders Two growth interns and like one sales executive and I came and we just like experimented and like One of the first thing that we did and actually which made me meet a lot of you guys As we went to an event. It was a BGS event and We went there and it was just like Tons of brands tons of like and we're just yeah here Look at this look at this thing and we're like buying a this huge like 70 inch T-screen and we're like setting up like Kind of like a theater room and we're like, hey sit here I'll like sit you through a demo gorgeous and we're just like getting leads by the dozen So I think like we figure out a way to grow this gorgeous business and let's go do events So then for the next year and a half like just got to travel the world like doing all the e-commerce events that we could Potentially find and still today Events is like a core Grow channel for gorgeous even during the pandemic. We're still like trying to pioneer some new stuff in that in that channel But yeah So went from like doing about six seven employees and and now we're crossing 150 like in two years and a half. So it's been like it's been quite You know, it's been quite a road That's awesome. So it sounds like right like you use gorgeous on the merchant side Like you actually use the platform you built the relationship with them No, you were early there and you've been pivotal to kind of growing and scaling with them as they've grown. So That's crazy. That's really cool. So you mentioned that throughout the past year year and a half that you guys have still grown Through events. Did you guys shift to online? Are you guys doing your own newsletters and podcasts? Like how do you guys maintain the pace even though when live events have really you know, kind of been a hindrance Yeah So fingers crossed for live events to come back very soon because that was the best part of the job Was to go out talk about e-commerce, you know pitch gorgeous at some trade shows That was really where we had the most fun. But yeah, you're right so we have to pivot the beginning of kovat and one thing that we did is actually we We were really fast transition online and we tried to understand where there was actual pain and what we noticed In the agency's world and you might have like had that phase as well There was a lot of uncertainty around Like revenue like where then if it would get paid next month by their clients like arm all my friends going under with them Like the next like 60 days like at the beginning of kovat That's the kind of like mindset people had like the agency's were freaking out there like yeah I'm gonna lose a lot of revenue. So we we launched a couple of components to our program, which was like, yeah we're gonna do webinars for you the agency and We're gonna do for like micro webinars with like 40 50 people and like we're gonna ship lunch to everybody and we're gonna Preach conversational commerce. So it's like how do you make that switch from offline sales? Like break and mortar to online with live chat and really use live chat as a tool to drive sales And that's gonna be our topic for six months And at the same time we're gonna boost our rev share agreements and we're gonna give more money out to Agencies so that they can see the light in the new revenue stream and that they are much made to work with us So we did this like content plus like boosted rev share And so that really allowed us to engage with more agencies and help them, you know Have a little bit like of a path like through the pandemic sure enough like a month and a half after the beginning of kovat like all e-commerce was booming and it was like Completely crazy. So like a lot of that doubt like had subdued but yeah, that really helped us get positioned Announced it like we're running about 25 on average webinar per month And with anywhere between like 40 attendees to a thousand attendees per webinar So yeah webinar is like a huge is a youth growth channel for us as a SaaS company Wow, man, that's that's amazing It sounds like you guys really talk a gamble and we're willing to risk, you know at all for your partners, right? So when you kind of go out on a limb like that, you better believe when things are good They're gonna have your back So that's probably you know a huge part of the success and I'm really really respected. So that's cool So outside of gorgeous, you know You mentioned at the very beginning that you have an e-commerce brand and I also saw that you do some investing Can you share kind of some info on like what you're working on on the kind of ecom brand side and also some stuff you're Doing on the investing side. Yeah, absolutely. So the e-commerce is Recall, so actually before I started at gorgeous while I still had my e-comm Company with my buddy there. We have one of my best friend had invested a lot of money in a probiotics factory and So he's like, yeah, like Amy was only doing white label for other brands. We're like, well, let's launch a brand together Probiotics is a great product because it has good margins. You can really have an impact on how people feel. So like people like can really feel the positive impact on their health and then also it's like the It's very easy to forecast how much I provide is to take it's like one per day, right? So it's so it's perfect for a subscription business. So because it's so easily like Perfect. It's so predictable on like the frequency at which people will review so they don't feel like canceling every second day Just because like they didn't finish their toothpaste or the other and just like lasting a month more than it's supposed to So really that so that those aspects of the business model high margin high predictability and also I wanted something that had You didn't need to educate too much Like I was tired to educate people like new categories like beverage. Why is there like food in there the beverage? That's really complicated actually So we're like people know the benefits we just need to do it better and we're gonna do it like in fully sustainable like packaging Like by other Google pouch recycled material boxes by other Google like mailers and all that stuff We're gonna do like the whole super sustainable DTC experience with the highest quality product possible. I'd like a market consistent pricing and like super heavy on subscription and only once you and It took a it was like quite a like just to launch the brand took like two years Well, I mean at the same time like everybody's working like quite quite a bit It took about two years to launch from like the moment We had the idea to actually like getting the product out of the factory and launching a website And then after that it took about nine months to like break even after like hundreds of thousands of dollars in investment and now like yeah now like it to hit 1 million run rate took a ten months and a half about Yeah, and it's only like subscription once to you. So it's now we're at that point where it's like, okay now like there's traction and Now we can scale but like just optimizing that you know everything about it optimizing the funnel I'm like if you have your website I mean that doesn't mean anything and it's like the timer of your pop-up to capture emails and to step up for SMS all the Campaigns that need to run behind it like testing your creative finding your audience getting your messaging, right? Like all of that took about like nine months To because it's super competitive, right? It's like if you're not doing it better than like the most performant ad buyer in the US on that category You're gonna be priced out of your ads You're never so you need to be the best in order to be able to acquire traffic or you need to be the most funded But we were not the most funded. There's like people that raised like tens of millions of dollars in this category So we're like we had to be better on the funnel so that we could like become profitable So, yeah, that was the experience on the brand it's pretty It's it was stressful for a while and now it's rewarding so so that's good and so my buddy is managing this business and Yeah, other than that, like always looking at some e-commerce tech you know the things that can really come in a little bit early where It's a little bit under the radar at certain moment and finding those gems Like so right now like I'm looking at a couple of video tools to just like essentially help a little bit and do some angel stuff in because The game has shifted again a little bit like say like 2020 was a year of the SMS You know 2018 was like a year of Facebook messenger Obviously email is always strong through that but there's always something new that comes up and that like gains a lot of steam and yeah right now I think like we're at the beginning to see like the rise of video and like having video and more experiences through your customer journey than just Like on your Facebook ads, right? Like where else can you use video? in an impactful manner and there's a couple of startups that are looking at this challenge right now and I find that pretty exciting and Obviously like that talks to us a gorgeous as well Like in the customer experience and the customer service space like how can you use video like the obvious way is like two-way talks Like just with customer service agent, but I guess there's actually other use cases That some startups are tackling today and that are pretty interesting Amazing. Well, first off congrats on the brand. It sounds like it was quite the journey and rollercoaster, but it probably feels good Side. Yeah, exactly like finally like I won't have to chip in again next month. That's great Yeah, like when the when the business sustains itself right and can invest in its own growth and doesn't require you or the other Partners to invest cash into it. That's it. That's a beautiful day. So congrats on that side on the investing side So are you specifically focused on like, you know B2B and SAS as opposed to like investing in you know Actually e-commerce brand is that kind of the emphasis that you're taking? Yeah, I think for the e-commerce breath like I'm not like by any mean like a big Big player or anything like it's very seldom and like a specific for the e-commerce brand I think like I maxed out my My contribution in my own brand. So I am just like so this is like So yeah for e-commerce brand this one is enough and then other than that like yeah I find like that there's more appetite for like a series a from the BC's Like in term of pure number of SAS like there's less size than brands, right? so and there's more investment in size like in general then and in brand so I find like if you can find them at seed round or like Pre-series a then there's like a good chance that you know if they find product market fit that they're gonna get picked up by more institutional investors and And in turn like that that helps your position as like an early investor Yeah, and look like obviously, you know the the e-commerce side, right? You've done it a couple times before you work with e-commerce brands day in and day out But you went from being employee six or seven and now there's a hundred fifty people there on the SAS size, right? You guys have raised lots of money. You guys have scaled to it I think you said like five or six thousand brands using the platform something crazy like that It's like you are now basically able to take the plain book that you learned over the past two three four five years and really Apply it here, right? Here's the ecosystem in which we do webinars, right? Here's the ecosystem which we build our partner program Like you're not having to start from scratch like you already know what makes sense, which is great You're not just gonna be money if people wanted money. They probably wouldn't go to you, right? They'd go to these people that have tens of billions of dollars They want to go to you because you have enough money and you have the strategic, right? Like I've been preaching this a lot about like strategic money and people that have distribution and you have those things So I think that makes a lot of sense Yeah, it's a slightly different playbook SAS from ecom But there's a lot of things that are like similar and that goes back to your question earlier It's like have what did you learn when you weren't corporate? It's like what are those key automation points where you can like add value and where it's gonna like compound Like so what's like and for you like specifically like what's that? Like what are those email flows like what type of a be testing on those flows? Can you do like what are the most impactful one? And then like how can you add like more like value touch points in those flows like for example Like adding a referral program and you're shipping them probation. So how can you incrementally like Improve the quality of your touch points with your clients at scale automatically and like so this is like what this skill set I'd like transfers across like all types of businesses nowadays and I As I how do you use all the information tools that are at your fingertip to really start writing about your client in a repetitive manner Yeah, you figure this out. You're gonna be able to scale as long as you have broad marketing first Yeah Yeah, honestly could not agree more. That's great a couple other questions. I have for you So you have three entities three businesses three organizations that you run you're involved in how do you split time? Like what's your day-to-day or what does your week look like? Right? I think you mentioned you spend about 50 hours a week I'm gorgeous. I got enough you have a family and you have kids like how do you split your time across the businesses? And how do you maintain like a personal life? and that's a That's the good side of the bad side of being in a pandemic right now And I'm still I'm in Canada right now in Toronto, and we're still kind of in lockdown So whereas before there was a lot of traveling and so on all of this like spiritual halt last year So I've been like just the last 12 months I've just been like Let's focus like it's the time of your life to hyper focus There's like all the opportunities in your field right now that are right there So let's seize them and like we're gonna go up and party again Like in a couple of years because like right now it's like it's go time But there might not be another opportunity like like this. So yeah the last year I mean, I need to be honest like it's been like really Like yeah, it's been a lot of work it's been like 60 65 hours a week every week for the and there's a few times where like you need to like Set yourself barriers like yeah, let's phone time. Let's bring that like how do you like just disconnect a little bit to like not cross that threshold where you're like going into like Like potential depression and things like that. So it's like it's a fine line of like Working too much. I'm like crossing over. So just like okay, there's an opportunity now that same time like you needed to do it Not in a way that's compromising for your health So yeah, 50 hours a week on gorgeous more or less. I Have a I have a two-year-old son like 20 months. I am expecting a daughter in like two months now Yeah. Yeah, so expecting the second one coming around the corner and yeah, maybe like two three hours on the brand It's pretty like that's pretty cool about that BTC stuff is like and the tools like cloud you like gorgeous like you're setting up system in place That can really automate a lot of work So like there's a huge part of that business that's growing today that's like automated and then we have an agency doing like the ads and like Like asking for a little bit of guidance on emailing and then like it does like compounds over time It's just like how do we build more information that drives more value? So like that's where I spent like maybe two hours a week it's like really how do I like how to make more of that business yeah, and then the rest is Is more ad hoc like project-based and like maybe one hour a week Yeah, that's great. Thank you for sharing them and congrats again on the upcoming baby. That's that's really exciting Another challenge coming up that's gonna be fun. Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure you got this two or three more questions for you How have you guys that gorgeous attracted people to join the team like, you know talents obviously competitive What are some of the things that have allowed gorgeous to scale to 150 employees? How do you guys find people? What does that look like? It's hyper competitive. It's it's crazy so there is obviously like for one of the just like on the maybe like the package side of saying it's like we On the equity side, so everybody has equity and we're trying to come in like to be a little bit above like quite above market when it comes to incentivizing new team members with equity So we're like I think like in the 80th or 90th percentile of like companies like in terms of how much equity yet When you join that company So like we're trying to be really competitive there same thing for salaries Like we're like we're always benchmarking ourselves like on every position and then like we're hyper consistent though, but like We're at 60 efforts Percentiles or we're putting like actual benchmarks or like where compensation needs fall against like other companies that are a similar stage and we are so that's that's Just to make sure that every time that we come in and we're like We're competing at least Because they're the great candidates and that's that's something I've noticed like I hired maybe like 30 people Totally like in the last couple of years were gorgeous and The best candidates like they fly through the recruiting process like at any company so like if you have a very good candidates right now, like It it's as much as about you selling to them then then selling it to you, right? And you need to find that that match where it's like, yeah both feel it and you're like yeah, like this person like it really wants me at gorgeous and Like there is a really cool opportunity to make a difference and like I really want that job so I'll prove and then like both match together and this like this and then you expedited through the Process like you don't want any hurdles like you don't want like a recruiting manager that doesn't have time to talk to it And it's like a week and a half right now. That's like too long. You want like to keep those like Actions between recruiting stage super quick because otherwise what happens is your candidate is gonna look somewhere else Like if you're sitting a lag, I'm not hearing back from a recruiting manager In time, it's only just gonna like yeah apply to another company the other company is gonna see that this person is potentially a great fit and they're gonna go faster and you were coming with So, yeah, it's just like to recruit it's really about like going fast But then like you see putting the right Mechanism in place to bet if it's a great fit and then like coming in with great offers And then like yeah, the culture is like we're Like we're like the culture and we're just it's pretty like we're preaching Internally what we are putting in place for a client. So like yeah Come in automation mindset and then like if you're on the BB team have that hustle mindset on top of it and and then it's just like yeah, like being able to demonstrate that people are accomplishing things like based on like those different characteristics depending on which team they're in and Displaying that success that they're having like on a regular basis is really much. I think the whole team forward So yeah, so like that feedback loop of like success Is really strong as well internally Yeah, that's no, it's great. That makes a lot of sense I could be think about right like gorgeous your tech on there as you are competing with the likes of Really small tech companies. You're competing with the likes of Microsoft and Google right where you used to work and Shopify Which is like hiring like crazy all the time Clavio has a hundred roll open right now So it's yeah, there's a lot of opportunities out there for people that are coming in with the right mindset and someone the right Yeah, no totally makes sense. And then last question I have for you because I know we're running long on time Knowing what you know, right? You've worked corporate you had, you know econ business You've probably done some consulting you've done some investing if you were to start again, or if you were someone starting out What path do you think you would take? Would you start working for someone like gorgeous? Would you start freelancing? Would you start working for a brand or starting a brand like where do you think you would start or recommend someone start? Well, it depends on like your personality. What are your goals are and so on but like if you're There is one thing that's undeniable. It's like starting at the company is extremely hard It's like I don't have it in me like there's no way I wouldn't be able to do it like being a CEO of a tech company like and really be able to perform and bring it to potentially like Like on the path of like series be seriously potentially an IPO one day and stuff like this You need to be like a different kind of Like mindset to be able to drive this and be that force behind it and like that's that's not me It might be you it might be somebody else. I don't know if you have it in you great Go for it if you don't have it in you, but you want to be part of of a journey like this definitely like on like Right now there's like that undeniable shift like toward like e-commerce and sass and so like this you can't just like avoid it It's gonna happen like sass is gonna grow 3x e-commerce is gonna go 3x over the next couple of years It's like you compound those two things together. It's like you're almost like finding Like a winning a horse like at every turn where you're looking but like joining one of those companies in their early stage like where you can really have the biggest impact and and super accelerate your career is really something that I Encourage a lot of people to take a hard look at and where do you find those companies? Well, so yeah You want to be sure that your position on industry that itself is growing and then like if there is another Another underlying trend that also accelerate the growth like yeah, we're talking e-commerce plus sass together Those are like two growing trends at the same time So I you're pretty sure that anything in there that if they have their act together, it's like it's gonna kind of work so you find like companies and then you find like things that like are starting just starting to hit product market and Where like their clients are like super sticky where people are really raping So like hey, it's really a tool that's making a difference really like as something a brand that's making a difference and Yeah, and that's when you like Okay this person is making a difference in their first pocket and they have like one or two of their aligning trend that are growing and This is a great place for you to go put yourself in order to grow your career and grow your wealth and grow your Grow yourself also as an individual by learning new skills and like that Amazing dude, great great way to end it. Thank you so much for being here. What's the best way for someone to you know? Use gorgeous. What's the best way for someone to work at gorgeous? What's the best way for someone to learn more about you best place for someone to connect if you want a deal on gorgeous? Just go and gorgeous calm get in the chat and say hey I heard about gorgeous on chases podcast mentioned the word podcast and we're gonna give you The second one free and a better on boarding So that's that's easy as that and if you want to contact me just a right to fill at gorgeous calm Amazing. You're the man. Thank you so much for being here. I appreciate you. Thank you Great chatting chase likewise. I Cheers