During the week of October 3rd, a few members of the ZaneRay team headed to Bozeman, MT to attend the first Mountains, Capital and Commerce event along with leaders from a select group of private equity firms and other leading ecommerce technology partners. The event was hosted by Tadpull and ZaneRay was one of the sponsors for the event alongside BigCommerce, Klaviyo, Bolt and Cannacord Genuity. This event was quite unique and one of the first of its kind created for private equity leaders and investment bankers who are focused on acquiring and exiting ecommerce businesses.
Jake Cook, Tadpull’s CEO, kicked off the event followed by Dr. Peter Fader of the Wharton School and co-founder of Theta. BigCommerce’s Dan Fertig, VP of Agency Partnerships and Robert Alvarez, the CFO for BigCommerce also spoke, sharing how a modern open SaaS ecommerce platform best enables private equity firms who are in acquisition mode, supporting rapid growth while providing maximum flexibility as firms are looking to scale and grow quickly.
"Headless commerce means PE investors can modernize and scale remarkable B2C and B2B ecommerce businesses faster and for much less than legacy proprietary systems, which is obviously good news to any investor," said Alvarez. "However, achieving this vision requires a diverse team of true ecommerce experts, and we're excited to see BigCommerce trusted partners like Tadpull and ZaneRay leading this conversation in the private equity space."
-Robert Alvarez, CFO, BigCommerce
ZaneRay’s Penny Porterfield, Vice President of Operations and Business Development also presented and shared an example of an active ecommerce model that supports private equity firms who are in acquisition mode and looking to leverage economies of scale by implementing shared systems that can be shared across multiple brands while lowering the overall costs for each by implementing this approach.
As ecommerce continues to grow and account for a greater slice of a brand’s overall revenue, it has become more important for private equity firms to understand not only the growth opportunities that it presents, but also recognize it as a valuable asset to be considered when looking at the overall valuation of a company, including the value of the customers. It was a great group of folks in attendance and a perfect balance of learning and networking. We look forward to doing it all again next year.
Thanks to the Tadpull team for inviting us to be a part of this wonderful event.
