Ecom Executive, Parker Burr: We Left MILLIONS of Dollars on the Table (Here's Why)

Meet Parker Burr

Jared Ward: What's going on, guys? This is our most recent episode of Ops Unfiltered. Today I have a very special guest. This is Parker Burr.

Parker Burr: What's up, Jared?

Jared Ward: What's up, man. We just had a conversation a couple of weeks ago. Parker is the former co-founder of Feat Clothing. Where are you based right now?

Parker Burr: I'm in Connecticut. I just moved back here to grow up a little bit. I spent about 10 years out in Southern California chasing all the dreams, and now we've got a baby on the way, so we decided to move back near family.

Jared Ward: Amazing, man. For people who haven't heard of it, Feat is actually a well-known brand in LA. For a time you were kind of the sweetheart brand of LA, and you were big in the ecommerce scene. For the people who don't know Feat, what did you build?

The origin of Feat: $300 and a heat press

Parker Burr: To paint the whole picture, I'm 31 now and I started Feat in 2014, so I must have been 19 or 20. I was in college, and I saw this crazy trend where guys like you and me started wearing crazy socks for the first time. Before that, we just wore white socks and didn't think about it for two seconds. I was like, why are dudes wearing socks with bananas and monkeys on them? What's going on here?

So I won a pitch competition in a class at UMass. The professor, Bob Lowry, ran a pitch competition, and out of his personal checkbook the winner got 300 bucks. I won, took the $300, bought a heat press, watched a bunch of YouTube videos, learned how to print patterns on socks, and Feat was born. I went after it for 10 years. I blinked and 10 years went by. That was really the origin story.

Jared Ward: I'm always curious with ecommerce founders. Did you ever think this was going to be a 10-year thing? Did you know what you wanted to do when you started to get traction?

Parker Burr: No way, man. All I could see was the next step. I couldn't see step number 10, but I could see the next step, and I just did that over and over. With every little bit of progress, I felt more confident taking the next step. That doesn't mean there weren't missteps, but I was making just enough progress to stay hooked. I had no idea I'd be running after it for 10 years. These things are marathons, not sprints. They're built over the long haul.

Direct-to-consumer was really young. We didn't start as a direct-to-consumer business. In 2014 we were selling socks to our friends on campus. That's not a sexy business. It doesn't even sound like a good idea in the first place.

Jared Ward: How were you printing the socks? Did you find a local screen printer?

Parker Burr: I literally searched, "How do I print on socks?" I bought a bunch of socks at TJ Maxx and Marshalls and watched YouTube videos to figure out how to press a pattern onto them. It was kind of new technology at the time. They were really vibrant, fun, catchy socks. It was a really fun time.

Discovering Shopify and direct-to-consumer

Jared Ward: So why did you branch out to basics? I think the next product was a hoodie, the softest hoodie in the world.

Parker Burr: A lot of years of experience led me there. It was probably a three- or four-year journey of trying to figure out how to sell socks at scale. I met the co-founders of Chubbies, who are really the OGs of the space, and they said, "You've got to check out this thing called Shopify. That's how you sell online." So we built a Shopify store and thought, all right, now what? Little by little, it opened our eyes to direct-to-consumer as a business model and the power of paid social, at a time when it wasn't really known. The playbook is known today. It was not known back then.

Jared Ward: It's almost impossible to fathom now. Of course you go to Shopify, of course you try Amazon. Back in 2014, 2015, how did you think the business was supposed to grow? Just slowly expand physical distribution?

Parker Burr: Totally. I thought you sell your socks to surf shops and sports shops, and that's how you build a business. That was the norm. One of our earliest investors, a Western Mass guy, said, "You guys should really check out selling online." I remember saying, "Dude, no one buys socks online. What are you talking about?" I wrote him off for about two years. Then I came back like, "I've got this crazy idea. We're going to sell online and be a direct-to-consumer business." Looking back, you think, how did you not see that? But that wasn't normal behavior. We didn't buy online in 2014 like we do today. It was so not obvious at the time.

Jared Ward: It's incredible how much ecommerce has changed over the past 10 years.

Parker Burr: I just watched a clip of Steve Jobs unveiling the iPhone. He says, "Watch this, how are we going to scroll?" and he scrolls with his finger, and the crowd can't sit in their seats. That was 2007. That's not that long ago.

Blanket Blend and product-market fit

Jared Ward: So when did you expand to hoodies?

Parker Burr: Pretty late. I started in 2014, and by 2018 I really understood the direct-to-consumer model. I understood the power of paid social, CACs and AOVs, and the math behind the business. And that math told me socks were not the best item to take advantage of this opportunity. So I asked, what could I expand into that isn't too far of a reach, but where I could have a competitive edge?

I was on a plane to Japan with a bunch of friends, and we looked at every piece of clothing. There are a lot of hat companies and a lot of T-shirt companies. Even socks had a lot of players.

Jared Ward: I was going to say Stance.

Parker Burr: Stance, Richer Poorer, a bunch of guys were making them. But no one was known for the hoodie, and all my friends and I were wearing hoodies every single day. It was the most worn item among my peers, but no one owned it. So I said, okay, let's make the best hoodie ever. It had to be incredibly soft and comfy, because that's why you wear a hoodie. And it had to be visually striking to pick up eyeballs online, because if it doesn't stand out, it's really hard. So I flipped the fabric inside out, so it was fuzzy on the outside and smooth on the inside. That was pretty revolutionary.

On that plane to Japan, a friend and I were trying to come up with a name. We like alliteration, and we landed on Blanket Blend. Releasing Blanket Blend was a pivotal moment in the business. We tripled the business that year.

Jared Ward: What revenue were you guys at?

Parker Burr: Probably 2019, we were almost $10 million in revenue.

Jared Ward: So you went from three-ish to 10-ish?

Parker Burr: Exactly. We were doing two to three million in the sock business, and then we were pushing toward 10 when we came out with the hoodie, and we couldn't keep them in stock. It was like, oh, this actually works. Looking back, it made me appreciate product-market fit. When we were selling socks, it felt like pushing a boulder up a hill. When we released the hoodie, it just took off. When the market really wants what you have, you don't have to be that convincing.

Navigating tech and inventory management

Jared Ward: You said you couldn't keep it in stock. I think ecommerce founders underestimate inventory troubles big time, and your cash turns on inventory. You probably were still an inventory rookie on how to forecast and demand plan. What mistakes did you make in 2018, 2019, 2020, when the hoodie was popping off?

Parker Burr: Every mistake. In that era it was really popular for founders to focus their time and energy on marketing, and we all underestimated the back end. Because of that, you leave a lot of money on the table. When things take off and you sell through, that's great. But when things don't sell and you have the wrong inventory, that's the other side. These businesses live and die by how efficient they are with their inventory and their cash. To me, inventory and cash are one and the same. Inventory is just a different form of cash. Poor management probably left millions of dollars on the table, for sure.

Jared Ward: Obviously, at Luminous we're in the software business. What was your tech stack in 2018, when this was popping off?

Parker Burr: Oh my gosh. On the back end, our tech stack was a contractor we paid a couple thousand dollars a month to tell us what to order.

Jared Ward: He'd just send you a Google Sheet. "Oh baby, let's go."

Parker Burr: "These signals are looking good, buy this much of this." And we'd say, all right, sounds good.

Jared Ward: And then it sells out and you're like, what the f***?

Parker Burr: Yeah. One of the best in the business at this is my friend who started Cuts, Steven Borelli. Something brilliant he did early on was the Friday project. They had a core line that sold well, and every Friday they dropped a limited-edition item. It's a simple idea, but it's the most efficient way to expand your product line while de-risking it, and it pushes LTV to the max because customers have another reason to come back every week.

Lean and mean: tech stacks and headcount

Jared Ward: So many people are going through what you went through. I'm assuming Feat outsourced fulfillment to a 3PL really early, and you stayed in marketing and product while things were exploding. You hired someone to tell you how much to order, but you didn't really value tech, like something that plugs into your 3PL, writes all your POs, and keeps everything in one spot. What do you wish you would have done back then?

Parker Burr: I wish we had kept it lean and mean. In that era a lot of these companies got bloated on both the back end and the front end, with big, heavy marketing teams and big, heavy operations teams. Businesses that are primarily direct-to-consumer need to be lean and mean. Money needs to go into product and marketing, and then the operations to make sure you're meeting all those expectations. We got out in front of our skis time and time again. I built this business probably three times. We built it as a sock business, grew quickly, took a couple million bucks, fell flat on our face, rebuilt it from scratch as the Feat you saw a couple of years ago, then it fell flat, and now it's being built up again.

Jared Ward: How do you avoid that hamster wheel? There are so many brands where if you turn off Meta ads, the business dies, and that's not a brand. It's freaking hard to build a brand, but people walk around with a false sense of security, thinking they're a mini version of some big brand. If you turned off acquisition, it would probably die. How do you balance that?

Parker Burr: Someone is going to make money as you build your business. You're going to pay someone to grow, whether it's paid social or, if you're a retail business, a landlord. The idea of simply existing and selling isn't reality. Want to build a big retail business? You're going to pay rent. Want to build a big online business? You're going to pay for paid social. Sure, if you're one of the leading creators in the world, you have organic traffic built in. But a business propelled purely by organic awareness sounds great in theory, and I'd say for 95% of businesses or more, that doesn't apply. Someone is going to get paid for you to grow.

Jared Ward: Do you think the modern brand that's going to last has to do a true omnichannel mix and still keep it lean?

Parker Burr: Yeah. We're at an interesting time. Internally, I'd encourage brands to operate as lean and mean as possible and use their tech stack to replace headcount. Externally, you need to do more things than ever: be in more channels and work with more acquisition channels. Those two trends are going opposite ways, so it's a challenging time. But the most exciting thing is that I think you're going to see $10 million and $100 million brands built with just a couple of people. Native comes to mind, famously operated by around five people.

Jared Ward: There's a fine line between a bloated NetSuite tech stack, where you don't need NetSuite, and paying somebody a couple thousand a month to send you a Google Sheet. How do you walk that line?

Parker Burr: These tech stacks for direct-to-consumer businesses seem to grow out of nowhere. Every month we'd look and say, oh my gosh, what is all this tech we have? The more important question is, what are the most essential tech products this business needs? There's more tech and more vendors than ever. You need to dial in your operations. It's a non-negotiable. You can't just make it up.

I think that's why we're seeing companies like yours being built, because merchants need it. They can't afford an operations person who costs $300,000 a year. There are two ends of the spectrum. You can pay a random person a couple thousand dollars a month and hope they get it right. They're not as expensive, but you're probably not getting the most value. The other end is a big, expensive COO you realistically can't afford. What's in the middle? Software.

Jared Ward: A theme here is that in all of these topics, there's a fine line between too scrappy and really bloated. There's the NetSuite tech stack and the guy on a Google Sheet. There's a small ops team and a $300K COO. There's raising a little money and raising $10 million at a $100 million valuation.

Parker Burr: Yeah, and it's a toggle. As the founder or operator, you need to decide which things to spring for the big, expensive version of, because it's a competitive advantage, which things need a middle ground, and which things you need to be cheap with.

Entrepreneurial journey in Los Angeles

Jared Ward: I want to pivot a little. You're from the East Coast and moved out West for a big portion of your life. How did living in LA change you, for good or for bad?

Parker Burr: I could talk about this one for hours. I grew up in a small town in Connecticut with a great family and great friends, went to school in Western Mass, a middle-of-nowhere college town, and then I moved to LA. I'd never lived in a big city. First of all, there's shiny object syndrome everywhere. And I was shocked at how many people were willing to step on you to get ahead. That was the biggest eye-opener. I operate with the best intentions and open arms, and all of a sudden I felt like people were stepping on me to get past me. I don't know if it's specific to LA or just the real world, because at that point I was really just entering the real world.

Jared Ward: Do you remember a "welcome to LA" moment?

Parker Burr: Funny enough, I remember more good things than bad. The good things were when I met Jake, the founder of MVMT. These guys were pioneers of direct-to-consumer, and he took us into his office and said, "I'm going to help you." In my head I'm thinking, why? Jake changed my life in this business. He opened my eyes to direct-to-consumer more than anyone else, and he did it for no reason other than being a good guy. He didn't want equity, money, or consulting fees. He just saw what we were doing and thought he could help.

People like Jake make me think, that's incredible: wildly successful people willing to help the next guy. Jake, Brandon from Liquid I.V., Borelli from Cuts. That was my crew in LA. They're all wildly successful, and they were all willing to help each other. That camaraderie was really special, and I'm thankful for it.

Jared Ward: That's a crew of legends right there. You guys are like the ecom godfathers.

Parker Burr: Yeah, it's pretty cool.

Jared Ward: Do you think being in the LA ecommerce scene affected your decisions to take money and expand at all costs?

Parker Burr: For sure. You're surrounded by some of the most successful people in the industry, and any numbers you put up seem small compared to theirs. Social comparison was one of the biggest struggles I ever had. Look at the crew I was hanging out with: Brandon from Liquid I.V. bought a house next to LeBron, Jake had one of the most successful exits in direct-to-consumer, and Borelli built Cuts. I felt like a failure no matter what level of success I had.

The flip side is that they made me think really big. If I'd stayed in Western Mass or Connecticut, I don't know if I'd have had the exposure to think maybe I could sell something for $100 million one day, or in Brandon's case, $500 million or whatever they sold for. So it's a give and take. Social comparison is really hard, but they inspire you to dream bigger and realize your own thinking is your biggest limitation.

Co-founders and early fundraising

Jared Ward: You had a co-founder at Feat. I believe his name is Taylor. How did you meet?

Parker Burr: We were at UMass. I was running a different business at the time, which I started when I was 18. I was making lacrosse uniforms for teams, and it was really taking off. I had a couple of trucks and trailers we'd take to events to sell. Those customers wanted to buy socks, and that's what sparked my interest in the sock category.

We were in a class together, and there was this kid at the front talking about the fraternity T-shirt company he was building. He'd sold $25,000 of stuff and was talking up his game pretty big, and I thought, who is this guy? I'd sold over a million dollars. So I went up to him, we talked, and before we knew it we were working on Feat together. It was the synergy of, he's building, I'm building, we're loosely in the same space, maybe together we can go further.

Jared Ward: What was your dynamic like through the years? Was it all sunshine and rainbows?

Parker Burr: Yeah, all sunshine and rainbows all the way through. No, it changed over the years. In the early days we both knew very little, so we were trying to take in as much information as we could, meet people, and grow the business any way we could. How do you raise money? What tech do we need? We were so green, and we were able to hold hands and go through that together, which was really special.

At some point our thinking became so much the same that we weren't getting much growth out of each other as business partners. We grew up together through our 20s. If you and I worked together, Jared, we'd have complementary skill sets: you understand software and operations, I understand marketing, product, and the consumer. Taylor's and my skill sets were very much the same, and when that happens, no one is pushing your thinking a different way. That's when we both needed to find new growth elsewhere.

Jared Ward: That makes total sense. Y Combinator gives great advice about finding a co-founder, and one of their biggest points is having complementary skill sets. When did you decide to fundraise?

Parker Burr: We raised a little money pretty early, probably in the first year. Someone approached us and said, "I can invest $250,000." I thought, that's the most money I've ever seen. Sure, we'll take it. That was the level of thinking.

Jared Ward: What valuation, and what percentage did you give up?

Parker Burr: It was a standard seed round at probably a million-and-a-half valuation, where the valuation is kind of irrelevant. But back then we had to spend $20,000 on legal to secure $250,000. What a joke. Thank God Y Combinator came out with the SAFE note. Write a check and you're done in 30 minutes. We spent months securing that $250K, and I'm thankful for the guy who did it.

Here's a funny fundraising story. After we took that $250K, a woman in San Francisco, a single angel investor, approached us and asked if we were looking for money. I said, "We just got $250K. We don't need any money." A year later, we're out of money. So I figured out who she was, called her back, and said, "We talked a year ago. We're actually raising money." We raised a million dollars from her at about a $10 million valuation. Later we bought out the first investor. That million dollars let us pack up, move to LA, open our warehouse, and really give it a go. That's what unlocked it.

Navigating e-commerce investment risks

Jared Ward: Two regret questions. Do you regret raising so much money?

Parker Burr: I love working with the angels we brought in. They were individuals, not a venture fund, putting money in with the idea that if it works out, maybe one day they see a return.

What I do regret is around 2021 or 2022, right about when I hit the biggest burnout of my life, my board and Taylor said, "Let's go raise real money and swing for the fences." So we raised another two or three million dollars, from venture this time. Once you go the venture route, it's a one-way door. You can't go back. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to keep it lean and mean and keep the business for the long term, without investors breathing down my neck for a return. Raising that venture money was my biggest misstep. The angel money, I'd do again in a heartbeat.

Jared Ward: So there's a difference between angel money and venture money. With a later venture round, you're committing to nine figures in revenue and valuation, and sometimes that's not the reality for the brand you're building.

Parker Burr: Exactly. A few months after we raised that venture money, direct-to-consumer collapsed as an industry. I think Allbirds, which is public, was down 98% from its high. Businesses were going bankrupt left and right, and valuations and multiples plummeted. We had just taken in fresh cash, and I'm doing the math and there's no scenario where it makes sense for me to keep working on this business, because I'd need to take no additional cash and sell for hundreds of millions of dollars to make real money.

Jared Ward: What was the fatal flaw in people's thinking during that collapse?

Parker Burr: That venture money should play in this industry. The multiples weren't there. These businesses were valued really high for 10 years, and when it came down to whether they were profitable businesses with real long-term value, the answer wasn't what we thought.

Jared Ward: Not yet, at least, for most Shopify and Amazon brands.

Parker Burr: When you look at this industry, it's built on a bidding system. All your channels are auctions, so it naturally becomes a race to the bottom. Allbirds comes in and has some success, other people see that and come in, and the cost to acquire a customer goes up. With all that venture money floating around, people spent more and more to get a customer. It created an unsustainable cycle where valuations were too high and people were willing to lose money to acquire customers. And for what? When are you going to actually realize the value of those customers?

Entrepreneurial vision and growth strategies

Jared Ward: Another regret question, something I think about a lot because I've started so many companies. I used to think I had to give up a ton of equity to bring on a co-founder. Looking back, was it a mistake to bring on a co-founder so early? Would you recommend it to other ecom founders?

Parker Burr: That answer depends on whether you know your desired outcome. If you know it early, you can answer the question. Most founders don't know what their true desired outcome is, in their soul. Is it to be a billionaire, or to build a lifestyle business forever? Those are different scenarios, and based on that you can decide whether to bring on a co-founder. Personally, I don't regret it at all. It was the right time and place, and what a journey I went on through my 20s.

But it's interesting now as I start different businesses. Shameless plug: I have an email marketing service for direct-to-consumer brands, and it's doing great. My whole vision was to have five to 10 clients, never more, and keep them forever. I opened it about a year and a half ago, I have seven clients right now, and I'll keep them forever. Maybe I'll add a couple more, but that's the whole business. It profits every month, my employees get paid, and our clients love the work. Bigger isn't always better. The vision for this business is to keep five to 10 clients happy, turn a profit, and get everyone paid.

Jared Ward: That's an amazing answer. "Should you bring on a co-founder?" is the wrong question. It's what do you want, and then what's required. But how do you get clear on that in your 20s? I can do it now, but back then I had no clue.

Parker Burr: That might be the answer. You might have to ride the whole roller coaster to understand it. When I was 20, I didn't have the perspective or experience to base my thinking on. The world romanticizes being a big entrepreneur making all this money, and that's attractive when you're 20. What you don't realize are the sacrifices. You go through the journey and get smarter as time goes on. The caveat is that some people get lucky and hit it just right, and that's totally fine. For me, it's a lifelong optimization where I try to get better every time.

Burnout and stepping away

Jared Ward: You mentioned your biggest burnout experience. Set the stage. When did you hit a wall?

Parker Burr: My timelines are a little blurry, but in round numbers: 2018 we released the hoodie, and 2019 the business was booming. In spring 2020, just before COVID, my main investor, the one who gave us the million dollars, said we probably needed to lean out because this could put us out of business. I thought, wow, after all these years, I'm going out of business.

Two weeks later the pandemic hits. Everyone's at home spending the money they're getting in the mailbox, and what are they buying? Alcohol and comfy clothes. Our business was booming. We were making headlines with Blanket Blend, everyone was wearing them, and celebrities were buying from us. A complete 180.

2021 was a little harder, and by 2022 there was an internal decision to really send it. I didn't know enough at the time to say I absolutely didn't want to do this. Only looking back can I see that I didn't intuitively want to. I trusted the vision of the people around me. We felt pressure to grow at all costs and made some really big bets on expensive headcount we couldn't afford, which led us to raise money. All of a sudden we were digging a hole. I think I hit burnout because I wasn't in touch with what I actually wanted, and what I wanted was the opposite of what we were doing. The deeper we dug, the more I crumbled. One day I couldn't even answer an email. All I wanted was to curl up and talk to no one for weeks until I could recharge.

So I called my first investor and top advisor, Charlotte, and said, "I'm toast. I don't know what's going on." She said, "You need a leave of absence." I didn't even know what that was, but it sounded good. I took 30 days off and did nothing, and it went by like that. At the end of 30 days, people were calling asking if I was ready to come back. I said, "Honestly, I'm just scratching the surface. This could be years. I've never had this before." They respected it, but I couldn't give them answers, so it drove them a little nuts.

We named my co-founder interim CEO, and I did nothing for months. I walked my dogs, started going to the gym, and focused on what I eat, all the basic stuff you hear about, but consciously for the first time. I recharged, and I think I'm still on that journey now in 2024. It's been a multi-year recovery from probably 10 years of neglecting myself. My life was awesome, but I wasn't in touch with myself. I was just doing what the business needed.

Jared Ward: That's really powerful. I feel very in touch with Luminous and our vision, but this idea of looking inward and asking, "What do I want to do?" is a question I haven't asked in 10 years. It's actually a topic in my therapy sessions.

Parker Burr: We're the same age, right? 31? This is a very predictable thing around this age. If you haven't read it, there's a book on the adult development of men that a friend recommended to me. I'm not even a big book person, and I listened to it, but it was incredible. Everything you think is unique to you, like suddenly being introspective, is predictable. It happens to men around 30, and something similar happens again around 50. I can't recommend it enough. Everyone I've recommended it to says it's awesome. You find comfort in knowing that this is just how it goes.

Leaving Feat

Jared Ward: So burnout happens, and I'm guessing you got bought out?

Parker Burr: Kind of. I was the biggest shareholder, with about 69% of the business, but I couldn't show up to work. That's an awkward situation. At the same time, direct-to-consumer valuations were plummeting, and we were burning our new capital at an accelerating pace. It was a storm. I took a bunch of time off, and then my co-founder and I had a falling out. He couldn't understand me taking the time, every problem became my fault, and there was no credit for any of the good. So I said, "Cool, I'm out. You can be the CEO. My mental health and my own sanity are more important to me than this business."

Over the next few years we negotiated the equity, and it was a brutal process. Long story short, the venture investors ended up with over 60% of the business for the money they'd already put in. My co-founder later published an article saying he was the founder and CEO and that the business was once valued at $70 million. That's not the full picture. The venture capitalists took over 60% of the business for money already put in, so no one actually took money off the table, and he was CEO for about 15 months before he also stepped down. Don't believe everything you read online. I just try to speak the truth.

Jared Ward: That must have been difficult to watch. I'd like to think there's something emotional there.

Parker Burr: For sure. The weirdest thing was waking up one day to find my email deleted. I bought those domains. This was my business. Things like that are weird. But the flip side is that it's kind of cool that it lives on without me. That's kind of the dream. The only part of the dream I didn't get was the big foam check on stage. But I built something that lives beyond me. Hundreds of thousands of customers bought our stuff, and you'll probably see someone wearing it. Objectively, that's not a bad outcome.

Jared Ward: Do you still talk with the Feat team or your co-founder?

Parker Burr: Yeah, I still talk with them, and I have a great relationship with the investors. Some of the team is all new. During my burnout we had a store in LA, and I went in and asked the staff questions, and they didn't know who I was. That's wild, but it's cool that it's bigger than me. I think I got most of the things I ever wanted out of it, and I'm thankful for that.

Jared Ward: I'm really happy to hear that, and that you've framed the outcome in such a healthy way.

Parker Burr: Don't get me wrong, of course you wish you got the big bag of money. But I made money all along the way. I never had a job that wasn't working for my own business through my whole 20s. I built this business, traveled the world, and had incredible highs and incredible lows.

One of the notable lows: I'm driving to a factory in downtown LA and I get a call from Amex. I'm the primary business card holder, and they say everything is frozen, I'm way overextended, and I haven't been paying. I look and I have zero dollars to my name and owe half a million dollars that I personally guaranteed. In this business you literally need to spend on ads to make money, and my spending vehicle was gone. I remember the exit I was at in LA, thinking, I don't know how I'm getting out of this one.

Jared Ward: How did you resolve that?

Parker Burr: I went back to our primary investor and said, "Here's the plan. I think I can do this." I was half confident, but she was more confident than me. She said, "You can do this," and gave me a $250K loan to get the vehicle working again. She believed in me more than I believed in myself. I repaid all the debt and her $250K within about a year. My back was against the wall, I explained the vision, what was working and what wasn't, and it worked. It still makes me sweat thinking about it.

Navigating the future of e-commerce

Jared Ward: Are you jaded toward ecommerce and product businesses now? You're such a wealth of knowledge, you could crush an ecom business.

Parker Burr: I'm definitely a bit jaded. But I've been working with Flagship for about a year and a half, and I've had exposure to over 500 direct-to-consumer brands at every level, from True Classic, doing a couple hundred million a year, to small mom-and-pops shipping out of their kitchen. I still love creating something, bringing it to life, and getting the feedback loop of a customer buying and enjoying it.

Does that mean I need to start my own direct-to-consumer brand right now? No. But maybe I can build tools that give these founders a better chance at success, because I know how hard it is. Everyone looks at direct-to-consumer founders as a great customer to sell to. I look at how I can help them become more profitable and build healthier businesses for the long haul. Between Flagship, working with creators and influencers for these brands, and the email marketing service, I'm still very much operating in this world.

Jared Ward: Why Flagship? After burnout, I bet that next move was very intentional.

Parker Burr: When I stood back up after burnout, I decided to work with a few companies in a fractional capacity to get the wheels turning and see what my calling really was. Then I met the founder of Flagship, Yusuf, and he was totally inspiring. It was one of the most exciting conversations I'd had in years. He said, "This is what I'm going to build, and we really need people to connect us with Shopify brands." That's my world. Most people in this space know Feat, know me, or know someone I know. Honestly, about 80% of it was that I believe in Yusuf. I'd have been the janitor for his office, because I respect and admire him so much. I started on a contract, and within two months he said I had to come on full time. I told him, "I don't really do jobs. I've never had one." But I did it anyway, and it's been a fun run.

Jared Ward: What does Flagship do?

Parker Burr: Flagship enables brands and creators to work together on a commission basis to find mutual success. Our big vision is to build the ads manager for the creator economy. Historically, a brand would negotiate a one-off deal with a creator or influencer, back and forth, and it was really hard to scale. This channel has lacked scalability, and we're building the infrastructure for creators and brands to scale together. In the same way you can go from spending $100K a month to a million a month on Facebook, imagine doing that with creators.

Jared Ward: Why was that such a pain for you at Feat?

Parker Burr: We worked with some of the biggest celebrities in the world. We did Logan Paul's first-ever merch: we built socks for him, he integrated them into his videos, and he sold half a million dollars of socks in the blink of an eye. We worked with Kristin Cavallari, who also sold half a million dollars of socks, and Brody Jenner and other incredible celebrities. But it's very spiky and hard to replicate. What if you could round up thousands of creators talking about you at different times, pay them on commission, and let the brand throttle it and stay in control? That's a big problem to solve, but if we crack it, it gets pretty interesting.

Jared Ward: What an amazing way to use your experience and network. But you've gone from founder and CEO, where you make the rules, to being a W-2 employee. How has that shift been?

Parker Burr: Big changes. As a founder, everyone's on your back and it gets really heavy at times, but you get so much pride and joy in the work. I joined Flagship as employee number three, with three co-founders, so there were six of us around the table. Very early stage. I wanted exposure to tech, I wanted to work with Yusuf, and I wanted to apply my skills and network.

It's also enabled me to do things I don't think I could have done running Feat, because when you're the founder, the business consumes 100% of you. Since joining Flagship, I got married, bought my first house, and we have a kid on the way. I've been able to lean into life outside of work while still adding real value to the organization. Getting a W-2 from someone else for the first time is definitely fascinating.

Jared Ward: Are we ever going to see Parker Burr launch a kick-ass D2C brand again, or are those days done?

Parker Burr: I'm not sure. I think working with creators and celebrities to help them develop brands is fascinating, and I know a lot of people doing that. But developing a brand out of the blue and bringing it to market, I probably wouldn't, because it lacks a competitive edge. The only caveat is if you have something truly proprietary, and that's really hard. I still believe there are massive businesses to be built in this space, and people are winning right now. But for now, I'm sticking with software and services that help these businesses be more successful.

Monetizing e-commerce traffic ideas

Jared Ward: I'm always tinkering with consumer products as a creative outlet. I want to share some prototypes and ideas I've had.

Parker Burr: Let's each give a freebie and see if anyone engages with it. I'll go first. I have a whole book of ideas in my notes app, and this one is only a couple of weeks old. What else could we do to monetize the traffic that direct-to-consumer brands are driving? All these Shopify brands get traffic, which has value, and the only way they really monetize it is by selling their own goods. Then software like Disco came out to let brands sell other brands' products, which is fascinating. But what else could they sell? Are there other ad placements?

If you aggregate all the traffic across all Shopify stores, there's a lot of value beyond buying a product. Could a post-checkout ad to sign up for Netflix be a thing? Could a country merchandise site serve a Morgan Wallen song ad after checkout? What could further monetize that traffic and prop up these brands with another revenue stream?

Jared Ward: That's so interesting. There's a big expansion in back-end tech right now, especially cart add-ons like Route shipping insurance and Loop. It would be so cool if somebody aggregated all that data and cross-sold advertisements and add-ons.

Parker Burr: There's something there. There's a lot of traffic, and traffic has value. I don't think it's selling other brands' products, because that's been done. What else? What if a brand's homepage had a bar for music, not banner ads, so shoppers discover new music, videos, or content? The idea needs more work, but that's a freebie for everyone. If you're technical, I'm down to build it with you.

Jared Ward: That's freaking awesome. My freebie is a baby gate. Baby gates are antiquated and look bad. Either you spend less than $100 and get prison-bar vibes that blow through your drywall, or even the expensive ones don't look great, so people end up buying custom gates on Etsy. That was actually my business for a while. I dropped out of college to build barn door hardware and baby gates, and everybody was buying rustic wooden baby gates.

What if I could sell a retail package that looked beautiful and was super easy to install? It comes out of the box, you set it in place, tighten it with a lever, and it's good to go. If you could manufacture it with high-quality materials, address all the problems, make it really sturdy, and retail it for less than 200 bucks, that's a huge idea.

Parker Burr: I love that one. I like the price point and the utility. You're not just competing on being cool, there's true utility. Then aesthetics is the area you'd have to figure out. And you can imagine the content selling this.

Jared Ward: I've gone pretty far down this route. I have a prototype that accounts for baseboards and chair rails, and an actual version that looks beautiful, like a barn-style gate.

Parker Burr: It's so good. My in-laws keep their dogs in the kitchen with three baby gates, all ugly, all ripping down the walls and in the way.

Jared Ward: Here are some pictures of the finished one. This is the stuff I do on the side for fun.

Parker Burr: So cool. It looks great, dude.

Jared Ward: I don't have the time or the money to launch it right now. Even at Series A with undeniable traction, you're still rich on paper.

Parker Burr: The best way to launch it is a pre-sale. Get it out there and gauge the excitement. Join some parenting groups, ask people to talk about it, and test the waters before you actually sell anything.

Jared Ward: I've thought about Kickstarter, but I've always heard you have to spend at least $100K.

Parker Burr: Either it spends profitably or it doesn't. I like it. I think it's the coolest gate I've ever seen. Future Jared, future Parker: baby gates and advertising embedded on websites.

Jared Ward: Exactly. Netflix is going to be advertising my baby gate to some random mom.

Where to find Parker

Jared Ward: That was a blast, man. I appreciate the time. Where can everybody find you?

Parker Burr: Definitely LinkedIn. That's where I have the most interesting conversations outside of podcasts like this. I post about things that are inspiring, interesting, even offensive, just things that spark conversation. I share my learnings and connect with other founders like Jared. I'd love to connect with everyone.

Jared Ward: Awesome. Thanks, Parker. We'll see you around, man.

Parker Burr: Thanks, Jared.