Ania Smith

Dayna Grayson is a leading VC who has “sat in every chair” at a young age. She founded Construct Capital with Rachel Holt, an early leader at Uber. Together, they are tackling the digitization of industry. Dayna will discuss macro trends, what it takes to be a founder, and the potential for AI. She is one of the few who have successfully blended a career of operations and investing.  Check out our discussion at: https://lnkd.in/eYBUGjbW #leadershipdevelopment

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One of my agentic commerce predictions for 2026 in this recent Forbes piece: Matt Nichols, General Partner at Commerce Ventures, notes that the mechanics are already in motion. Looking ahead, he predicts that this year, "Agentic commerce transaction volume reaches meaningful levels as consumers advance from research to buying on AI platforms. 2026 will be the year that transactions are completed in these platforms." To this prediction, Nichols adds another: retailers will be forced to build "super-feeds" specifically for AI platforms. “These data feeds may involve monetary transactions that could include payments to AI platforms or payments to the retailer/brand (depending on balance of power).” https://lnkd.in/g65RAerA

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Fulfil, led by Mir Aamir, and Amazon are redesigning the future of grocery. With automation, nutritious and affordable food can be available to consumers wherever they live. 🚀

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CEO of Walmart just confirmed what our data already had been telling us. It’s going to be a SLOB tsunami. While media typically only discuss this from a US lens, for Asia the fall out from what’s happening now will be even more of an issue if immediate actions to prepare for this aren’t made soon. 1- Brands in Asia as I recently posted already lose out from cross border marketplace arbitrage. There is no unified Asian dollar store for the consumers Walmart is referring too- the bottom earners either won’t buy brands at all or get the supply from the lowest floor - parallel importers and unauthorized resellers 2- wholesale and distributors will feel the pinch - we already are seeing this uptick now 3- the inventory that isn’t getting purchased by those feeling the pinch will eventually get funneled into the decentralised lowest price floor set not by brands - like in the US and Japan with outlets and discounter specific SKUs - but by the resellers and parallel importers and the cycle repeats . 4- oh and yes - none of this is good for the environment - there’s a reason Asia landfills are growing rapidly and there isn’t a day that I work stop thinking how we must curtail that . ““They're trading down from brands, and they're buying less, and it's changing their buying habits, and that kind of thing. ” Excerpt From “Retail giant Walmart issues economic warning” Daniel Kline, Celine Provini TheStreet https://lnkd.in/gezseXK2 This material may be protected by copyright.

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Excited to share some work our DoorDash New Verticals ML/AI team just presented at RecSys 2025. 🚀 As DoorDash expands beyond restaurants into grocery, retail, and convenience, we’ve been grappling with a familiar problem in multi-vertical marketplaces: behavioral silos. Many customers have rich history in one category (like restaurants) but are essentially “cold start” in others (like grocery or retail). That gap hurts personalization and overexposes a small set of popular items. In our new framework, we use LLMs as semantic feature generators to bridge those silos. We translate noisy behavioral logs — restaurant orders, searches, session activity — into structured, taxonomy-aligned affinities (e.g., “Hard Cheeses → Cheddar”, “Specialty Breads → Naan”), then feed those features into our production multi-task ranking models. A few highlights: - Hierarchical RAG pipeline that infers user affinities across a 4-level product taxonomy, focusing on the most informative levels. - Careful prompt and inference design (chronological histories, explicit taxonomy, confidence scores, low temperature) to keep LLM outputs stable and high-signal. - Cost-aware model choice (GPT-4o mini + caching + just-in-time feature updates), cutting compute costs by ~80% while preserving quality. For practitioners, the big takeaway: you don’t have to replace your recommenders with an LLM. You can use LLMs as a semantic bridge – turning behavior into portable signals that plug directly into existing retrieval and ranking systems, especially where data is sparse. With Nimesh Sinha, Raghav Saboo, and Martin Wang If you’re excited about the intersection of LLMs, large-scale recommender systems, and multi-vertical marketplaces, we’re hiring and would love to talk. 🔗 Full blog + paper recap: “Mind the Gap: Using LLMs to Bridge Behavioral Silos in Multi-Vertical Recommendations” on the DoorDash Engineering Blog. https://lnkd.in/gdxhkyHn

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Tony Xu didn't build a food delivery company. He built a logistics empire. Pejman Nozad recalls the early pitch from DoorDash. The lesson? Your initial product is just the first step in a much larger roadmap. Great founders don't just fill a market gap, they create new markets entirely. Pear VC #DoorDash #BusinessStrategy #VentureCapital #MarketCreation

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$6B invested in technology to drive growth at Target. That’s roughly $3M per store across the business - a huge commitment. But what stood out most in the article were Prat Vemana’s comments about the importance of bringing the organisation with you during change. Target fulfils around c. 95% of digital orders through its store network — which makes the scale of the transformation even more interesting. In large retailers the strategy is often clear: the real challenge is helping thousands of teams move quickly enough to turn those ideas into live customer experiences. Technology transformations rarely fail because the architecture is wrong. They struggle when organisations cannot move at the same speed as the ambition. $6B is ambitious.

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Great conversations at our WillowTree Ventures dinner with leaders across fintech and AI. A few themes stood out strongly: enterprises are leaning into AI for real efficiency gains, product and engineering orgs still set the agenda, and the whitespace in “boring” industries is wider than most people assume. It’s clear that the next breakout companies in AI for financial services won’t come from the obvious places. Thanks to everyone who joined - excited to keep working alongside founders building in these non-obvious, high-impact wedges.

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The latest Talks at GS captures a conversation with poppi co-founders Allison Ellsworth and Stephen Ellsworth shared during our Builders + Innovators event. The Ellsworths have an incredible founders story scaling what is now the fastest-growing beverage brand in the US. Listen for more on their progression from their kitchen to Shark Tank, to Amazon and Costco, to being acquired recently by PepsiCo - and their insights on building the team that helped them grow.   Check out our On Talks at GS for the full conversation. https://click.gs.com/cri8

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🎙️ What does shipboard ops have to do with building AI for a Fortune 25 grocery chain? Everything—if you're Todd James. In the latest episode of Data Radicals, I sat down with Todd, former CDTO at 84.51˚ and Kroger Technology & Digital tech leader, to explore how his eclectic career—from military service to data science—shaped a unique leadership playbook for AI-driven transformation. Here are 3 big takeaways from our conversation 👇 🔑 Delegate to Innovate The best leaders know when to step back so others can step up. “You delegate everything that if it breaks, and you can put it together… those are opportunities for your team.” Todd learned this the hard way—and shares how it transformed his leadership style (and his team’s growth). 🔁 Context Switching is a Superpower From law enforcement to search and rescue, Todd’s early Coast Guard days taught him how to adapt fast. “There was a big focus on having to switch context... That stuck with me throughout my career. I enjoy the learning. It’s somewhat self-reinforcing,” he reveals. That same curiosity powered his success across consulting, finance, and retail. 🤖 AI Must Start with the Business Problem Todd’s team didn’t build models in a vacuum. They started in Kroger stores, working side by side with associates. “We weren’t going to do anything without getting intimate with the people that actually do the work,” he says. The result? Routing algorithms that cut pickup-order travel time by 10% and reduced truck route distance by 8.6%. Another key point? Todd believes the CDO role is transitional. As AI embeds deeper into every function, “the business will own the data”—not the other way around. This one’s a must-listen for AI builders, data leaders, and anyone navigating the future of work. 🎧 Tune in now: https://lnkd.in/ggQkB6Gn  #DataRadicals #AILeadership #CDO #GroceryTech #DataScience #DelegateToInnovate #AITransformation #PodcastClip #LeadershipTips #Alation #StayCuriousStayBold

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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By 2026, e-grocery is expected to account for 19% of all U.S. ecommerce sales, surpassing apparel and accessories as the largest ecommerce category.   What began during COVID with food delivery (and in-store pickup) has hit meaningful adoption. In 2028 U.S. grocery e-commerce is projected to reach $120B annually, representing over 12% of total grocery sales. Over the weekend I visited Alison Roman’s First Bloom pop-up in NYC. Perusing the shelves, I could only think, this place is a masterclass in influencer activation and extension of personal brand. At the same time, it had me nostalgic for the Whole Foods Market days of old. Amazon announced this week they'll integrate all WFM workers into its core business systems. A notice that puts the nail in the coffin around store experience, one that has been suffering since 2017. The store space now dedicated to picking and packing Amazon orders (formerly cafes and communal areas), and the stations for non-food Amazon returns has seriously diminished the interior.   With E-grocery gaining incredible momentum (Instacart has seen 11% increase in revenue YoY with $3.3B in 2024), it’s quietly rewriting what “going to the store” even means or should mean in a highly digitized world.   The good news is this has created an opening for concepts like Roman’s, independent markets like Luke's Local Grocery in San Francisco and Radius Butcher & Grocery in Austin, and brand-led pop up experiences like those we’ve seen from OLIPOP PBC, Fishwife, Flamingo Estate, and Heyday Canning Co..   So while I think fondly back to a different grocery era, I’m also on board with Amazon and others meeting consumer demand for convenience and speed.   As a nice byproduct, it’s creating ongoing opportunities for the small and specialized retailers, limited time, pop-up experiences to proliferate and connect with people in a very different and personalized way. Much more on this one at my Substack: https://lnkd.in/esjQS6tG. New Fare Hallie Bonnar Anne Chen Vivian McElroy Leland Carter

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Reposting this conversation with Tony Xu because it captures leadership traits that matter when building teams at scale. What stood out to me: • Deep customer empathy as a strategic advantage • Clear ownership and accountability in ambiguous environments • Strategy tightly coupled with execution, not PowerPoint • Resilient culture built for long-term compounding, not short-term wins DoorDash's success reflects leaders who consistently make high-quality decisions under pressure and align teams around outcomes. That operating mindset is increasingly rare and highly transferable. Worth the watch.

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Grocery and retail delivery: Who’s playing the smarter long game? DoorDash is doubling down on grocery, scaling partnerships which now include a mix of national chains, regional supermarkets, and specialty grocers supermarket chains and leaning into tech to deepen household engagement. These include Wegmans Food Markets, Haggen, Inc., H Mart and Save A Lot as examples. Over 25% of DoorDash’s monthly active users now order groceries — not just a shift from restaurant delivery, but a clear sign of growing basket depth and brand stickiness. On the other side, Uber is making a decisive move into retail. In Q1 2025, Uber saw double-digit growth in gross bookings, driven by retail partnerships with brands like DICK'S Sporting Goods and Golf Galaxy. This fits their broader strategy: expanding beyond food to higher-margin, non-restaurant categories and evolving into a diversified logistics platform. Our data highlights this divergence: in 2025, grocery makes up 11% of DoorDash trips, while retail represents 12% of Uber’s deliveries. These numbers make the strategies crystal clear. I always find it interesting to watch these bets play out in real time.

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The SMS interactions between brand & consumer contain incredibly rich context for 1:1 personalized commerce experiences. Postscript is the platform enabling such experiences. On this week's episode, Rishabh and I sat down with Adam Turner to explore how SMS evolved from an abandoned-cart afterthought to a 1:1 sales & marketing channel. We covered: - Category creation and the rise of the “SMS marketer” - Compliance and quality as product design principles - Moving from broadcast to conversational journeys - Building distribution in the Shopify ecosystem, then scaling a sales-led motion - Where AI has augmented vs reinvented both marketing products and teams Link in comments

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In an ecosystem flooded with service-first startups chasing scale through funding, Urban Company stands out by doing the hard (and right) thing—building a real business. Their recent shift from being a pure-play service marketplace to developing tangible, monetizable products is a playbook more entrepreneurs should study. Too many service startups stop at aggregation—thinking scale alone will drive defensibility. Urban Company went a step further: ✅ Leveraging deep consumer insights ✅ Creating integrated solutions ✅ Building new revenue lines rooted in real-world usage This is what scaling with purpose looks like. Instead of chasing round after round of capital to keep the engine running, they’re creating sustainable value by aligning product innovation with the trust and access they’ve already earned through services. For founders building in services: 💡 Don’t just deliver the service. Understand the gaps around it. Own the value chain. Monetize where others overlook. Urban Company is showing what it means to evolve with intent. A solid reminder that great businesses aren’t built on burn—they’re built on depth. #Entrepreneurship #Startups #Innovation #BusinessStrategy #ServiceBusiness https://lnkd.in/dzNHtpBS

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Restaurants like Lazy Dog and Starbird are using Loop AI's agents to grow ~10%, and we’re proud to announce today Anand T. and team have raised a $14M Series A to continue serving these brands and hundreds more. Loop is equipping restaurants with the essential back office tools they need to stay on top of growing demand for delivery and any future industry conditions. Thank you Anand for trusting Base10 Partners early and making us part of this journey with you—so much ahead! https://lnkd.in/gmPqwyfa

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RETAIL REPORT: Costco’s High-Growth Categories – Q4 FY25 Costco’s fourth quarter net sales increased 8 percent to $84.4 billion. The most striking development was the performance of specific categories, which highlight how the retailer is capturing discretionary and premium spend even in a value-driven format. Gold and Jewelry: This was the fastest-growing segment in the quarter. Members are showing a willingness to purchase premium discretionary items inside a warehouse club environment. Housewares, Apparel and Sporting Goods: These categories also posted strong gains. The combination of curated assortments, recognizable brands and value pricing is driving larger baskets. Small Electrics, Tires and Garden/Patio Products: Growth here demonstrates Costco’s ability to extend its appeal beyond staples into home and lifestyle needs. The data shows that trust and perceived quality encourage members to trade up. Jewelry, apparel and home goods are no longer just traffic drivers; they are strengthening loyalty and margin resilience for Costco in a challenging retail environment.

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