Founder of Schmidt's Naturals, a natural personal care brand that she scaled from her kitchen in 2011 to exit to Unilever in 2017. Since then, she’s started an inclusive VC firm, Color Capital, investing directly in emerging founders, primarily women and people of color. The portfolio is impressive and includes the likes of Seed, Judy and Italic.

The woman behind the billion dollar wellness and supplements brand: Athletic Greens. Kat Cole is electric. She’s always tweeting about the world of eCommerce and often about it intersecting with crypto. She’s constantly sharing stories on podcasts - passing on as much wisdom as she possibly can to the entrepreneurs in the room.

“The DTC guy” - Nik is plugged into it all via his agency, Sharma Brands. Think of Sharma brands like a DTC doctor. They work with brands like Hydrant, Haus and Brightland across paid media, conversion optimization and retention. Nik shares all his insights in a popular newsletter and on Twitter.

Eva started her career as one of the first employees at Everlane in 2012. 6 years later, she started her own brand with Maude: A modern sexual wellness company. Maude’s challenging a legacy industry, paving the path for many new companies in the space. Eva’s one of only 10 Latinas in consumer goods to have raised +$10m in venture funding.

Paul’s the founder of Prose, the VC-backed customized haircare products business: One of the darlings of DTC. He’s super switched on when it comes to the ecosystem around D2C so you’ll be able to learn from the micro-interactions he puts out into the world. Paul also likes to chat about Web3 and Crypto!

Kristens’ DTC community royalty. She recently joined the great team at Repeat, but she’s most famous for running a popular eCommerce Slack channel: DTC Fam. With all that + a podcast, she’s able to stay on top of trends at lightning speed and also knows a whole lot of people in the space. Follow for some of that magic to rub off.

President of Shopify and one of the most charismatic faces of eCommerce. Harley’s genuinely into “arming the rebels”. He’s a fun follow because you’ll see him interact with anyone from the young, hungry Shopify brand founder to people like Pharell, Kevin Durant and Ronnie Fieg. Get business insights, product updates and inspiration all from his feed.

Jing is the founder & CEO of Fly By Jing who sells a famous chili oil, dumplings and more. Jing is on a mission to bring uncensored Chinese flavors to the table - and she shares many of the day-to-day learnings in being a D2C and CPG founder.

Maxx runs Triple Whale, an analytics app for Shopify that’s grown incredibly fast in popularity over the past year. It’s a simple product, and that’s what makes it cut through the clutter - It’s loved by many of your favorite D2Cs. Maxx tweets about the founder journey, and the world of eCommerce. A great one to follow if you want to follow to keep up with how the tools on Shopify are built.

She’s the brilliant writer behind the Substack “Chips + Dip”, a newsletter living at the intersection of ecomm, tech and branding. The “Chips” represent snippets of information, and the “Dip” represents a deep dive into a specific topic such as “community in D2C”. Every rare newsletter (she only writes a handful of times a year) is a joy to read. She is active on twitter though ;)

Serial entrepreneur Jeremy Cai first came on our D2C radar with a CBD gummies brand that caught our attention: Not Pot. Not Pot’s aesthetic, storytelling and philanthropic initiatives all feel right on point. But that’s not it. Jeremy spends almost all his time building up Italic. Italic connects western consumers directly to the factories that produce goods for luxury brands like Le Creuset, Diptyque and more. He’s always 2 steps ahead. Keep up.

They call her the Snax Queen. And for good reason. She runs Snaxshot, a newsletter and community of 20,000 CPG obsessed individuals. With these entities, she covers the latest trends in the F&B market and also shares inspo on who’s crushing it from a packaging standpoint. 

Matthew’s flown a little radar - but he’s an absolute gem of a follow to level up on everything related to D2C operations. He’s the Ex-Head of Ops for businesses like Birchbox and Rent The Runway, he writes a newsletter solely dedicated to operations and runs his own agency: Second Marathon.

Amanda’s the founder & CEO at House of Wise: A popular luxury CBD brand empowering women to give more purposeful intention and take control of their lives. She’s an excellent follow if you want to keep up with the day in the life of a D2C founder. From mental wellness notes, to business insights - it’s all here.

The investor behind your favorite eCommerce brands and D2C enablement platforms. As the founder of Forerunner, Kirsten has led  raised over $1B+ and invested in more than 100 companies from Glossier, to Prose, Hims, Faire and more. Kirsten is one of the greatest follows to learn about how to connect with consumers.

One of the brilliant D2C founders of our time. Olamide runs a beauty company called Topicals, and happens to be the youngest Black woman to ever raise over $2 million in funding. She’s not super active on twitter but her instagram is where it’s at!

Such a fun follow. Marty’s just a really creative guy. If you follow him, you’ll get to learn about his lifestyle brand: Poolside which sells sunscreen - but is also a “subsidiary” of sorts of an internet gem: Poolsuite: Music to jam to while you work. Everything Marty touches turns to gold. Go follow him.

Ju splits her time between Paris and New York in building Hero Cosmetics. Hero’s another best-in-class brand to take inspiration from and Ju is extremely open about how she’s building up that business. She most notably speaks on omnichannel and succeeding in retail.

One of the best case recent D2C case studies you can find on the internet is that of Doe Lashes and Jason Wong. Jason founded that business a few years back and has been building in public pretty much since day 1. He talks about acquisition, SEO, conversion rate optimization, shares insights on agencies and regularly speaks on podcasts and open platforms. A must follow.

One of the most crucial steps in D2C is the post-purchase experience. And few talk about it openly and share insights. But Jess does. She’s built an app called Wonderment that’s very popular in the space and has become a real thought-leader around CX and retention.

An incredible founder who’s seen many waves of eCommerce. He built Made.com the UK based furniture business (now public) and is now building up Typology: A modern skincare brand, based in Paris. Ning is friendly and generous with sharing his learnings.

The success of all DTC operations falls largely on the shoulders of an amazing operational / logistics and shipping setup. That part of the equation has historically been overlooked, but great leaders like Laura have taken on the challenge to make shipping an advantage in DTC. Laura founded Shippo in 2013 and they’re fresh off a $50m round in summer of 2021.

The man behind Madhappy, a lifestyle apparel brand centered around mental health. Peiman is the king of collaborations and his brand is full of hype. He shares insights and learnings via his social channels, but he’ll also brighten up your day with good vibes. After all, that’s what Madhappy is all about!

Sara’s connecting the apps and systems of eCommerce through Alloy Automation. She’s a highly regarded and admired founder who dropped out of Harvard to pursue her entrepreneurial ambitions. She’s one to watch.

Patrick, aka “PB+J” runs Progress Labs. One of the best shopify dev + design agencies in the world. Their portfolio of work is basically endless, from Haus to Andie, Casper, Olivers Apparel and many more. Patrick’s a developer so he’s the one behind those beautiful and highly functional websites.

Most eCommerce lists are incomplete without Rebecca. She’s been fueling the ecosystem with inspiration and brilliant work for many years, initially as a strategist at the great Gin Lane, and then notably as the head of product for Glossier, before launching her own brand Off Hours and most recently Soft Services. Soft Services is a rapidly expanding, meticulously curated skincare brand.

The Shopify ecosystem isn’t just all brands and growth hacks. It’s powered by a vibrant app ecosystem. And it’s app developers like Gil who make it a fun place to build a business. He runs a popular upsell app called “Checkout Promotions” and he regularly shares his learnings on growing that app.

One of the best Substack’s you’ll read on D2C. Aja doesn’t publish at a set cadence, instead she carefully curates content over weeks (sometimes months) to deliver a beautiful storyline around a given topic in eCommerce.

Eli joined beverage company OLIPOP in June of 2020 as Director of Customer Experience and that’s he got on the map. He 30x’d subscriptions while lowering churn, and now has joined the Jones Road Beauty team to lead on CX. He speaks openly and candidly about the inner workings of a D2C. A great follow. 

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Brian founded Popsugar the famous media outlet covering everything in pop culture. Brian now invests in eCommerce and eCommerce enablement via his fund: Sugar Capital. The portfolio includes the likes of Everlane, Judy and Tydo and is one of the most prolific in eCommerce.