Swell is the most powerful headless e-commerce platform for modern brands, startups, and agencies.

Online commerce is still in a place where a little improvement goes a long way, but state-of-the-art platforms make it hard to improve customer experience beyond themes and templates. On the other hand, most of the progress in e-commerce standards has been made by startups pushing the boundaries with custom solutions, and we saw an opportunity to accelerate that with a new platform where everyone has an ideal foundation to build on, even if they're just getting started. If we're successful, we should see an explosion of ideas and the rate of progress in how we buy and sell online.

Learning when to trust your instinct. Early on, it's hard to gauge your intuition when there's a lot of startup advice that may be relevant in some areas and not others, but over time just by pushing the envelope, you accumulate these great experiences. It takes time and persistence, but constantly reflecting and adjusting your approach gives you confidence and allows you to move fast where it counts.

‍

Take action, even if you don't know where it's going. Everything big starts small.

Our first big marketing effort was a launch on ProductHunt in 2020, and the reception from users basically confirmed all of our hopes and assumptions up to that point. Launching a new eCommerce platform in the face of gigantic competition is no easy feat and we fully expected challenges in marketing and branding, but at that moment it felt like "we nailed it".

From the first conversation, we felt alignment with Bonfire on product vision and the opportunity ahead. Every interaction we had and every introduction they made from that point confirmed the feeling and added a ton of value along the way. Jim and the whole Bonfire team are incredibly smart and focused on helping us de-risk the biggest challenges we face at this stage of the company.

‍

Never underestimate the value of calm consistent guidance. During the seed stage, it’s quite common to feel like everything is on fire and moving so fast as you construct the pillars of the company. Jim’s understanding and steadiness allows us to slow down and lay a foundation of the company that feels solid for the future. A specific moment was during our Series A fundraise, where Jim hopped on at 4pm Friday to help us resolve the required minutia for us to accept term sheets and save us weeks of time, legal costs, and potential pitfalls. Jim and Tyler also helped us greatly in our VP of Sales hiring process where they helped us filter the candidate pool down and make an educated decision.

“The Hard Thing About Hard Things” by Ben Horowitz

‍