The Cheese #88 🧀 - Silicon Y'all, Braintree Round Two, and Whatnot Record Watch

Back from Birmingham, and Silicon Y’all was great. I didn't go in with major expectations, just an open mind, and I really, really enjoyed it.

There were about 100 companies there, mostly B2B tech. A few consumer brands were sprinkled in, but I don't think I ran into anyone as e-commerce-focused as us. On the other side were about 50 firms from private equity, venture, growth capital, wealth management, etc.

The whole thing was at a hotel outside of Birmingham. The food was absolutely spectacular, and the speakers were really well curated. Not all of them applied to me since a lot of the focus was B2B tech, but plenty did. It was a tight group of about 150 people, which made for some great conversations. It was cool to hear the investment arms of both Koch and Chick-fil-A talk about what they look for in investments and acquisitions.

Great time with Matt too. We hung out a good bit at the event, plus we had a 3-hour drive each way. I use "drive" loosely, since my Model X did the driving. It was Matt's first FSD experience, which was fun to watch lol. Got back late Wednesday night and have been playing catch-up since.

I wish I could tell you Braintree was resolved. It's not. After more digging, it looks like a step got skipped when their risk team reinstated our account. Braintree turned everything back on, but nobody told their banking partner to do the same, which is why we haven't been able to process anything in that account since.

They admitted all of this yesterday and escalated it to the banking partner. Fingers crossed it's back to normal by the end of the day, which would be just in time for next week's renewal on the 15th.

We still haven't solved for the roughly 150 customers who couldn't renew back on September 15th. They went straight into dunning purgatory because the only path through was for them to log in and enter a new card, which would have run them through Shopify Payments instead.

With the deadline creeping up, we started looking at moving the tokens over to Shopify Payments as a backup plan. There's still a world where we have to do it if the 15th isn't looking good. Here's the part that got me. Shopify wants $16,000 to move about 2,000 tokens.

It runs through their professional services, and you have no choice but to go through them since it's their processor (technically Stripe, but branded as theirs). If anyone else quoted me $16,000 to move 2,000 tokens, I'd laugh. That's nowhere near market rate for the job.

On the BattlGames side, Richard, Shay, Seele, and I did our Season 3 postmortem, going through everything we did well and everything we learned that we can carry into future seasons. Now we have to figure out what Season 4 looks like. There are real decisions ahead on what a realistic budget is and what a realistic sponsorship take is, and we'll be working through that over the next few days and weeks.

Cameron is in town next week. Monday and possibly Tuesday, we'll be touring commercial warehouse space for what could be an additional warehouse focused on live shopping. If it all makes sense, we might also get a new neighbor, with Cam moving down from Michigan to Georgia.

That's exciting, but it's a big decision and not one I take lightly. We want to look at it through every lens and make sure it's right for BattlBox and equally right for Cam.

Speaking of Whatnot, October has been cooking. We're already over $100k for the month, and the forecasting tool has us ending at $441k. There's no reason to think we won't get there, and that would be only $6k off the record we set in August.

Membership had a nice uptick last week as we scaled on Meta, but we've hit some choppy waters again and are working to get it back on track.

Not much craziness on the agent front this week. Chuck rebuilt his lead engine into several smaller agents that work together to accomplish the same goal, so when something breaks, it's a lot easier to troubleshoot. He named them all after the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, which is freaking awesome lol. Let's get into the rest!

Olivier Bernhard: How On Running Turned a Garden Hose Prototype Into a Global Sportswear Brand

Lhea’s latest. Olivier Bernhard’s first prototype for On, the Swiss running shoe brand, was literally pieces of garden hose attached to a shoe sole. That idea became the cushioning the brand is known for, and On did more than $3 billion in sales in 2025, up 30% from the year before.

Delta's Starlink Snub: Why Elon Musk Says Its CEO Will Lose His Job

Delta picked Amazon Leo over Starlink, and Musk went after Ed Bastian publicly. The feud is loud, but the real risk for Delta is the timeline. United flyers are already streaming on Starlink while Delta's rollout doesn't start until 2028.

We Picked Whatnot Over TikTok Shop. It Wasn't Close.

I joined Kurt Elster on The Unofficial Shopify Podcast to talk through why we bet on Whatnot over TikTok Shop, how we went from under $25k in our first month to $447k in August with no ad spend, and the mistakes we made along the way.

How Jennifer Aniston’s LolaVie brand grew sales 40% with CTV ads

For its first CTV campaign, Jennifer Aniston’s DTC haircare brand LolaVie had a few non-negotiables. The campaign had to be simple. It had to demonstrate measurable impact. And it had to be full-funnel.

LolaVie used Roku Ads Manager to test and optimize creatives — reaching millions of potential customers at all stages of their purchase journeys. Roku Ads Manager helped the brand convey LolaVie’s playful voice while helping drive omnichannel sales across both ecommerce and retail touchpoints.

The campaign included an Action Ad overlay that let viewers shop directly from their TVs by clicking OK on their Roku remote. This guided them to the website to buy LolaVie products.

Discover how Roku Ads Manager helped LolaVie drive big sales and customer growth with self-serve TV ads.

The DTC beauty category is crowded. To break through, Jennifer Aniston’s brand LolaVie, worked with Roku Ads Manager to easily set up, test, and optimize CTV ad creatives. The campaign helped drive a big lift in sales and customer growth, helping LolaVie break through in the crowded beauty category.

Learn more.

That’s a Wrap on This Week’s Cheesy Delight! 🧀

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Stay cheesy, and see you next week!

Warmest queso wishes,
Team Online Queso