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If you want to see where retail and e-commerce is headed, you ought to look outside of stores and e-commerce sites.
That’s the thinking behind “distributed commerce” — the idea that people will increasingly shop and conduct transactions on the social networks, media properties and other internet platforms where they already spend a lot of time.
The rise of this idea is one reason we invited Stripe co-founder and president John Collison, a big believer in distributed commerce, to speak at our next Code Commerce event on October 25 in Las Vegas during the Money20/20 conference. And it’s one of the topics we’ll dive into with our other two speakers, whom I’m very excited to announce today:
- Facebook has already had a huge impact on retail and e-commerce through its advertising engine, but now it’s trying to do something similar with commerce on its own platform. Mary Ku is the exec overseeing a large chunk of those efforts, including Facebook’s attempt to build a giant rival to Craigslist. As a four-year veteran of the social network, Ku has seen first-hand both Facebook’s early successes and stumbles in e-commerce. We’re going to discuss all of that and more.
- Before Kirsten Green secured the first fund for her venture capital firm Forerunner Ventures, she became intrigued with a yet-to-launch startup called Dollar Shave Club. So she borrowed $350,000 to invest in it before launch and the rest is history: The startup recently sold for $1 billion. Green’s firm also made a bet on Jet.com, the shopping site that Walmart plans to buy for $3.3 billion, making Forerunner the only VC firm to back both startups. We’ll talk to Green about what these deals say about where commerce is headed and what she’s learned from the successes and failures of an investment portfolio that also includes Warby Parker, Bonobos and Birchbox.
If you were at our first Code Commerce event in May, you know what to expect: Candid and unscripted conversations steered by me and my co-host, Kara Swisher, in an intimate, invite-only setting. We’ll start the evening with an hour of casual conversation between you and a group of your smartest peers over hors d'oeuvres and drinks. And later we’ll count on you to ask the smart questions we missed in the Q&A sessions that follow each interview.
Our first Code Commerce event sold out, and we expect the same for this October 25 event. So it would be wise to apply for an invitation now. T-minus 42 days.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
