Startup interview: Nick Raushenbush, Co-founder and COO, Shogun
RTIH gets the lowdown on Shogun, an e-commerce experience platform startup which is fresh off a $35 million Series B funding round.
RTIH: Tell us about Shogun
NR: Our mission is to empower brands to deliver exceptional e-commerce experiences. We now have over 18,000 e-commerce brands across the world that use our products to help their customers.
Our customers include brands such as Leesa, Timbuk2, and Chubbies. They range from small businesses to very large global retailers.
We have two core products, Shogun Page Builder and Shogun Frontend. Shogun Page Builder is a drag-and-drop product that runs on top of leading platforms such as Shopify and BigCommerce.
Shogun Frontend delivers the benefits of headless commerce in a low-code environment. We are funded by leading investors such as Accel and Y Combinator.
RTIH: What was the inspiration behind setting the company up?
NR: When we first started Shogun, our vision was to bring the functionality of drag-and-drop website builders to any existing website.
After failing to get traction in the general website market, we decided to make the pivot to e-commerce. We saw a tremendous amount of growth in e-commerce and the potential of platforms like Shopify.
We integrated our Page Builder product into the Shopify App Store. That pivot worked very well for us as more and more brands started using our product.
As e-commerce was booming, we saw the potential for using a low-code approach to headless commerce. The goal was to give brands even a greater amount of flexibility and ownership of their end-customer experience while lowering the technology barriers.
We increasingly heard from brands that experience was the defining factor in driving higher revenues and loyalty. Our investment in building Shogun Frontend was a direct result of addressing this critical need.
While we are in the early days of headless commerce, we are seeing increasing adoption of Shogun Frontend with brands like Nomad.
RTIH: What has been the industry reaction thus far?
NR: We are fortunate to have received excellent reactions from the industry on many different fronts – feedback from customers using the products, the calibre of talent we are attracting, and the credibility of investors who are working with us.
Today, we have over 18,000 happy customers across the world using our products.
We have a 4.8 out of 5 rating from over 2,300 reviewers on the Shopify App store. Our products help brands improve experience leading them to increase conversions and revenue.
We have grown the company rapidly with a fully remote workplace. We have a diverse workforce that spans multiple countries and timezones.
We are attracting excellent talent that is not constrained by the bounds of location. Our management team includes experienced leaders from companies like Atlassian, Duo Security, and Splunk.
Our success and opportunity have also led us to attract investment from some of the best venture capital firms including Accel and Y Combinator.
We are a young company with a lot of work to do and are thankful for the reception that we have received to date.
RTIH: What has been your biggest challenge/setback?
NR: In general, the challenges Shogun faces are the same as any other rapidly scaling organisation.
We’ve gone from being about 30 people in 2019 to 100 at the end of 2020 – this means building more processes and infrastructure to support a growing workforce.
Additionally, we’ve released our new product, Shogun Frontend, and there’s always the fun product iteration loop to make sure our software is delighting our customers.
RTIH: What are the biggest challenges facing the ecommerce sector right now?
NR: The biggest challenge in e-commerce today is how brands create differentiated experiences online to drive purchases and loyalty.
Today, brands are quite constrained by the technology platforms they use in terms of the digital storefront where they engage with customers. They are often left with homogenous experiences that marketplaces like Amazon offer or are constrained by the capabilities of e-commerce platforms.
As more and more shopping moves online – speed, the flexibility of design, management of content and the self-sufficiency of marketing teams to own online experience –- will become the new battleground to win customers.
RTIH: What can we expect to see from you over the next 12 months?
NR: We will continue to build the best e-commerce experience platform.
It means we will invest heavily in our products, Shogun Frontend and Shogun Page Builder, to build capabilities that deliver value to our customers.
We will drive innovation in the headless commerce space and make that more accessible to brands by further packaging complex technology components in low-code software and tools.
We will see more and more customers adopting headless commerce with our products.
Our goal, at the end of the day, is to continue to lower the barriers for brands to build more unique storefronts, empower them to deliver exceptional experiences, and drive results through higher revenues and loyalty.