B2B Vault: The Biz To Biz Podcast
Jul 24, 2026 · 33 min · 10 segments
What if you could prepare your e-commerce business for the future of AI without writing a single line of code? In this episode of **B2B Vault: The Biz2Biz Podcast**, Allen Kopelman sits down with…
Uh, before starting Firmly, I used to run samsung.com, and, uh, and we built a, you know, e-commerce platform for Samsung, rolled out to 20 countries and, you know, built the business from a $50 million to a billion dollar plus business.
And, uh, and w- and prior to that, I built a goods business for, uh, uh, Groupon, and prior to that I was at Microsoft, uh, launched Office 365 and Windows Azure, uh, uh, as a, as a part of the V1 team.
Right? [laughs] I was like, "Okay, I did few in- my share of integrations," and then I realized, man, I cannot integrate my way out of this.
New party, new channels, new, you know, destinations that they just keep coming, interesting ones.
Uh, and then I, I kept integrating, but then it became untenable, right? So as you integrate more and more, then it becomes burden of maintaining the integration.
Some integrations work because they produced orders, some just didn't produce anything.
So then once something didn't produce, next time you go ask the team saying, "Hey, can you do one more integration?" They look at you saying, "What?"
"What are you talking here?" [laughs] "So are you not learning, Kumar? What are you, what are you talking, man?" So, so it becomes a burden for, for the product leaders saying, "Okay, how do you, you know, try to innovate, uh, bring in new customers, new channels, but at the same time not, you know, uh, taking on this in- integration burden or integration tax?" That's where I start thinking, "Okay, this is not gonna be a Samsung problem.
How do we handle this? How do we tackle this?" So that's how we started the company.
I love engineers, but if I have to talk to any engineer in any company, then which means it's not going anywhere, because-
... always have a, you know, 18 months of roadmap and, and, and adding one more thing to the roadmap means it's just not gonna go anywhere.
So that's where we started with this, saying how can we come up with a tech that we don't have to ask the engineers to do anything on the merchant side, right? So that's how we started the journey, and true to that North Star, we're still being able-
Uh, before starting Firmly, I used to run samsung.com, and, uh, and we built a, you know, e-commerce platform for Samsung, rolled out to 20 countries and, you know, built the business from a $50 million to a billion dollar plus business.
And, uh, and w- and prior to that, I built a goods business for, uh, uh, Groupon, and prior to that I was at Microsoft, uh, launched Office 365 and Windows Azure, uh, uh, as a, as a part of the V1 team.
Right? [laughs] I was like, "Okay, I did few in- my share of integrations," and then I realized, man, I cannot integrate my way out of this.
New party, new channels, new, you know, destinations that they just keep coming, interesting ones.
Uh, and then I, I kept integrating, but then it became untenable, right? So as you integrate more and more, then it becomes burden of maintaining the integration.
Some integrations work because they produced orders, some just didn't produce anything.
So then once something didn't produce, next time you go ask the team saying, "Hey, can you do one more integration?" They look at you saying, "What?"
"What are you talking here?" [laughs] "So are you not learning, Kumar? What are you, what are you talking, man?" So, so it becomes a burden for, for the product leaders saying, "Okay, how do you, you know, try to innovate, uh, bring in new customers, new channels, but at the same time not, you know, uh, taking on this in- integration burden or integration tax?" That's where I start thinking, "Okay, this is not gonna be a Samsung problem.
How do we handle this? How do we tackle this?" So that's how we started the company.
I love engineers, but if I have to talk to any engineer in any company, then which means it's not going anywhere, because-
... always have a, you know, 18 months of roadmap and, and, and adding one more thing to the roadmap means it's just not gonna go anywhere.
So that's where we started with this, saying how can we come up with a tech that we don't have to ask the engineers to do anything on the merchant side, right? So that's how we started the journey, and true to that North Star, we're still being able-
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