Jun 6, 2026 · 49 min · 15 segments
Ryan Babenzien sold Greats, the first D2C footwear brand, to Steve Madden. Then he built Jolie into the #1 filtering shower brand in the world. $50M in revenue, profitable for 15 of 17 quarters, with…
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Ryan BabenzienGuest
Monish SabnaniHost
I think the biggest difference, I would say, is sort of h- how, um, the access to build an e-commerce business.
Like, there are just so many tools available off the shelf that can get you sort of up and running in building a proper e-commerce business.
You know, when I started Greats in two thousand and... well, it was end of '13, Shopify was brand new.
It was sort of like a-- You were making it-- It was this new thing, and people are like: "Oh, you should still go..." I can't even remember what the other-- the prevailing service provider was.
And most people at the time were still saying you should build this on Magento.
And it's stuff like that, that, you know, it's not even a consideration anymore.
Like, nobody would even [chuckles] start, uh, an e-commerce business without Shopify.
So, so the speed of which-- the speed and the, um, efficiency you can get an e-commerce up and running and just a smaller need of capital, right? This is sort of you don't need millions of dollars to, to start a, a website.
And in the early days of the internet, and I remember 'cause I was there, it was like, you know, people were charging hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even a million to build a website.
So, you know, as the network has been built out, everything is-- you know, prices have come down for everything, for access to it, and that's sort of the biggest difference.
I think the e-commerce world has normalized and is not as explosive as it was in the beginning.
A-And I'm talking about the US very specifically, so, so this might not apply every market around the world, but it's, it's a norm.
I think the biggest difference, I would say, is sort of h- how, um, the access to build an e-commerce business.
Like, there are just so many tools available off the shelf that can get you sort of up and running in building a proper e-commerce business.
You know, when I started Greats in two thousand and... well, it was end of '13, Shopify was brand new.
It was sort of like a-- You were making it-- It was this new thing, and people are like: "Oh, you should still go..." I can't even remember what the other-- the prevailing service provider was.
And most people at the time were still saying you should build this on Magento.
And it's stuff like that, that, you know, it's not even a consideration anymore.
Like, nobody would even [chuckles] start, uh, an e-commerce business without Shopify.
So, so the speed of which-- the speed and the, um, efficiency you can get an e-commerce up and running and just a smaller need of capital, right? This is sort of you don't need millions of dollars to, to start a, a website.
And in the early days of the internet, and I remember 'cause I was there, it was like, you know, people were charging hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe even a million to build a website.
So, you know, as the network has been built out, everything is-- you know, prices have come down for everything, for access to it, and that's sort of the biggest difference.
I think the e-commerce world has normalized and is not as explosive as it was in the beginning.
A-And I'm talking about the US very specifically, so, so this might not apply every market around the world, but it's, it's a norm.
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