Aidan Corbett: As a general rule, I would always say take on money as early as possible to give yourself the headspace and the room to actually grow and think long term. TikTok is having a huge impact at the moment. Where last year may have been, you know, less than 5% of total ad spend, this year it's 20%, 30% and growing. However, with Waveflower, if your sales are dropping, the remittances back to Waveflower are dropping too. And that just gives the merchants a lot of downside protection in the event that something goes wrong and things go wrong all the time.
[Voiceover]: Welcome to a very special bonus episode of Add to Cart, which we call the Explainer. This episode is brought to you by one of our partners who make Add to Cart possible. We're going to dive deep into an e commerce topic and unveil the secret tools that leading Australian retailers use to grow foreign
Nathan Bush: hello and welcome to another very special Explainer episode of Add to Cart. As always, my name is Nathan Bush, Director of E Suite and host of Add to Cart and this week our partner content is brought to you by WayFlyer. WayFlyer deliver E commerce funding which is built for growth and joining me today is their co founder and CEO Aidan Corbett and all the way from Ireland. In this episode we dive into how e commerce founders can get access to short term finance in order to fuel growth. And this is often in areas such as marketing and inventory which can and often do hold e commerce businesses back from being the businesses that they can be now. For those who haven't heard of Wayflyer, they were founded in 2019 and today have over 1000 e commerce customers all
Nathan Bush: all over the globe.
Nathan Bush: In this short amount of time they've delivered $700 million of funding for e commerce businesses. They now have a team and an office in Sydney and have helped unlock growth for Australian e commerce brands including Stacks, King Kong Apparel and Black Swallow. In this chat with Aidan, we walk through the process for founders to access Wayflyer funding and the most interesting part for me is is how they integrate with e commerce platforms and marketing networks to make qualified decisions on e commerce businesses. It's definitely not your old school bank manager approach here. Additionally, offers get made in quick time and can be as little as $20,000. But even if you're not a founder, you're going to get some great insights from today's app. Tapping into Aidan's global view across all of their clients, we dive into the types of customer acquisition costs that retailers are seeing across the board. Why he sees TikTok as still a developing opportunity and how having cash flow frees you up for long term thinking and experimentation. So let's get right into it. Here is our chat with Aidan Corbett, CEO and co founder of Wayflyer. Aidan, thank you for joining us on Add to cart.
Aidan Corbett: Thanks for having me, Nathan.
Nathan Bush: All right, straight into it. Waveflyer. For those who haven't heard of Waveflyer, can you explain what you do?
Aidan Corbett: Sure. Waveflyer essentially provides short term finance for E commerce companies. And e commerce companies have one of the more challenging kind of financing arrangements that any business have. And the main reason is because they have to pay for inventory and marketing upfront before they generate revenue. And in the case of inventory, they often have to pay for inventory far in advance of when that inventory generates revenue. What Wayflower does for e commerce merchants is we give you money to pay for inventory and to pay for marketing and you pay us back as a percentage of daily sales or daily revenue. And that's why it's called revenue based. Fly now.
Nathan Bush: Okay, makes sense. So that's the differentiator. And was it always the model from when you started Wayflyer to be E commerce centric?
Aidan Corbett: Yes, and we'll never change from that. So there are lots of other businesses who take short term finance, but E commerce for us we think is the best fit. First of all, the need, as I articulated earlier on, is very blatant. It's just a very challenging environment for e commerce, which means the need for our product is very strong. And then secondly, when e commerce companies do well, they can grow incredibly quickly, much faster than typical businesses. And as a result we can then grow with them. And that's why it's a very attractive space for us.
Nathan Bush: And are you finding the same challenge? Obviously you're in Europe, you've got a team here in Australia. Are you finding that there's similar challenges by founders all around the globe at the moment?
Aidan Corbett: Certainly in the markets that we operate in. So the markets that we operate in are North America, Western Europe and Australia. And everybody uses the same technology. We use Facebook, we use Shopify, Google Analytics, a lot of the same dynamics that are at play in the US Potentially on the advertising side, it might be a bit more competitive and a bit more expensive, but largely it's the same issues right now. Can I sort the supply chain? Can I find some new marketing channels outside of Facebook and Instagram? Can I launch additional products? Where do I source them from? It's the same set of problems in every single geo.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, one Thing that we're finding, and I want to test this with you, is that we've got a lot of founders who obviously struggled through the last, at least last 12 months with supply chain issues. Ordered big because they weren't sure and the growth was there and now the growth has kind of tapered off a little bit for some businesses in E Commerce. They're sitting on huge piles of inventory. Are you seeing that as a trend globally at the moment?
Aidan Corbett: It depends really on the vertical in question. So there are certain verticals right now where we see no change. And the main one of those would be kind of products related to pets. So pets are incredibly sticky and you don't stop buying dog food for your pet.
Nathan Bush: You're some sort of sicko if you do that.
Aidan Corbett: Right. Exactly, exactly. But there are other products that are struggling a little bit, especially products maybe kind of apparel at the lower price points. Is finding things difficult. But to be honest with you, it's holding up better than we expected. So in Shopify's results that came out last week, there is a drop on gmv, but it's a drop from like all time highs in Q1 2021. And that's a very unfair comparable for anybody else because that's probably the best time ever from a demand perspective in E commerce. So the one thing just worth bearing in mind is that we are coming off a Q1 last year, which was incredible. So it's just worth wearing that in mind. If you do see a small drop.
Nathan Bush: How are you finding that the businesses you're working with measuring success at the moment because exactly like you said, it's really hard to compare yourself to last year through that massive growth spike.
Aidan Corbett: Most of the time there's two components that they would look at. The first would be kind of cacked ltv so are our customers coming back in and how much does it cost me to acquire them? And then at a more granular level, the more sophisticated ones will probably be looking at these from a cash conversion cycle and how efficiently they're managing inventory. They're always the two things that we tend to look at the most when we're evaluating companies. And that's what the founders of the merchants are looking at as well. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: Great. And so you've mentioned that waveflyer is here to help E Commerce founders, especially with cash flow around inventory and marketing. Can you describe to us the typical founder that you are helping? A certain kind of stuff, scenario or profile that they fit into?
Aidan Corbett: Not really. They tend to be very different. Different profiles. So I'll give you two kind of classic profiles. So one profile might be somebody who's incredibly passionate about their product and about the space, and they've learned everything about that space and they've always wanted, always wanted to launch a product in that space. And they're that product led founder. And then there's another founder who is, I would say, more opportunistic. And, and that's a founder who's probably very good at online marketing, has great connections in the supply chain and is basically looking out for some product where they're like, okay, this is the one I go for. So I call one kind of a marketing led founder and the other more kind of a product led founder. They would be kind of the two profiles we would see quite a bit. The product led founder is a much higher proportion, but they're two kind of examples. But normally the companies that we back will only have less than 10 employees, if any. They'll normally have no financing in place, really funded from friends and family or from their own savings, are really just getting up and running. So the minimum amount of money that we would advance to a customer can be as low as 15 or $20,000. So even at the very early stages, once you've shown proof of something that's repeatable and that's growing, we're able to find you.
Nathan Bush: And what does that process look like for a founder who is looking for that kind of investment or cash injection when they pick up the conversation with yourself and the team?
Aidan Corbett: At Wayflyer, our goal is to be as fast as possible. So when you sign up for Wayflare, the first thing that we ask you to do is connect your Shopify store or your WooCommerce store, your stripe account. We then will also ask you to connect your marketing platform so we can see your performance and Facebook or on Google. And then you'll ultimately need to connect your bank account at the very end. But you can go through all of that process probably in about 10 minutes. We'll then want to get you your offers within the day. You'll probably want some time to chew over those offers, come back to us, maybe make a tweak to the terms, and the money can then flow next day or even same day in certain circumstances. And that's the process for companies who are looking for $20,000 are looking for $2 million.
Nathan Bush: Wow. And when you talk about offers, do you put a number of different scenarios to the founder?
Aidan Corbett: Absolutely. So the variables that determine revenue based finance is the fee that I charge you and then the percentage of daily sales that we will remit back. So if I want to, if you say to me I want a very low percentage of daily sales remittance, which means I want to pay you back over a longer period of time, I'll charge you a higher fee. If you're happy for me to take a very high percentage of daily sales, I'll charge you a lower fee. So it's really flexing it depending on what the founder would prefer. And that can change depending on the time of year. Often I can also change depending on the type of business you're running as well. Gotcha.
Nathan Bush: Am I right in saying that there's no equity play there?
Aidan Corbett: No.
Nathan Bush: And does the payback on that, for lack of a better word, advance, does the payback rely on that retailer growing their business or is it based on any volume of sales?
Aidan Corbett: Any volume of sales. So if the retailer does not grow or if the retailer gets into trouble, that's my problem. Because as long as you pay us the percentage of daily sales, even if those sales are dropping, then you're fine. And that's one of the biggest advantages of revenue based finance. It gives the retailer some downside protection. So unlike a fixed fee, a fixed repayment you would make to the bank, the bank doesn't care how your sales are doing as long as you are paying him back. However, with Wayflare, if your sales are dropping, the remittances back to Wafer are dropping too. And that gives the. That just gives the merchants a lot of downside protection in the event that something goes wrong and things go wrong all the time. There are so many things outside of an E commerce merchant's control that can happen, that these happen, and they can go up and down. So an inventory shipment might be late, a new Facebook campaign might not be working. Lots of different things can happen. And that's why revenue based finance, I think, is a great option for merchants, because it gives you that downside protection that you won't get from a kind of a traditional source of finance?
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. And do you have any examples of clients that you've worked with or stories that you've seen that Wavefly has really helped transform their business of a couple?
Aidan Corbett: There's a great company that I'm very fond of because they're one of our very first customers called Bionic Gym. And Bionic Gym is a product for people who want to lose weight or get more in shape. And it's essentially like one of those kind of electric pulses that you strap onto yourself to exercise your muscles. Bionic Gym, I think they started with us two months after we launched in May 2020, and their first advance was, I think, $40,000. And since then, I think they've taken maybe two and a half, $3 million from us. And their revenue is now at, like, probably, I would say between 5 and 10 million dollars. Whereas at the very beginning, they were a lot smaller. And it was a real example of how fast e commerce can grow once you've really kind of got the formula down. Because unlike Wayflare, where if I want to grow, I need to hire sales reps, in E commerce, once you've got the formula down, you turn the dial on the advertising. And if you know what you're doing, your ability to scale, even without actually hiring a lot of people is incredible.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, that's a great story. I could actually use that while I'm podcasting. Get a workout while I'm talking.
Aidan Corbett: Exactly.
Nathan Bush: And you mentioned before the technology that you use, so it sounds proprietary technology that you've created at Wayflower, is that right? Because I've never heard of integrating e commerce tools with financial models.
Aidan Corbett: Yeah, it makes a lot of sense when you think about it, because let's say you have a lot of money in your bank account, but your return on ad spend is very low. Your customers don't come back. You may not see problems today with that customer or that merchant. If I just looked at the bank account, but if I looked at the performance data, I would know that this business is not sustainable. So actually overlaying operating information or performance data with the kind of traditional checks that a bank would make is a very powerful underwriting engine. And that's where we really kind of earn our money as applications come in, making that right call. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: And if you're getting all this data from Shopify, Facebook, Insta, wherever people are spending their money and they've got their cash flowing, what are the typical red flags or what are the key metrics that you look at from. Is this at that stage where it is a gem of an idea that could explode? What do you look out for?
Aidan Corbett: Big thing is cact ltv. So how much are you acquiring a customer for? And then typically within six months, how much, how much are you monetizing them? We would also look at a more base level at your margins to see that you're making enough margin for you to generate your own cash over time. And then the last thing that we would look at is obviously the cash balance and within your cash balance, then basically how long it takes you to take an inventory, how often you actually order inventory. All those components are on the supply chain. But the principal thing for us is the CAC to LTV ratio, because if that's positive, everything else can be sorted with some kind of a financing solution. And when you're looking at cac, you're often looking at what type of CAC is it and can it be taken away. So for example, if your CAC is very low and you're split across four different channels, and actually TikTok is the lowest cost customer acquisition and that's growing 30% month on month, that's much better than obviously being just reliant on Google search or something like that. So there's a little more granularity there around the nature of where you're acquiring customers. But really the CACTI LTV is a huge metric for us when evaluating your sustainability.
Nathan Bush: And for those who may not be familiar with the term customer acquisition cost.
Aidan Corbett: Sorry. And lifetime value.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, and lifetime value.
Aidan Corbett: Lifetime value.
Nathan Bush: Do you find that a lot of founders that you speak to are really paying attention to the CAC and the ltv?
Aidan Corbett: Definitely to the CAC with the ltv, maybe not always because it's a bit harder to calculate, but definitely to the cac. Yeah. And another metric they would look at, particularly if they don't have a lot of repeat customers, is return on ad spend. So how much revenue do I generate for every dollar of ad spend that I pay? The thing about return on ad spend is it does hide sometimes the repeat customers or the repeat sales that you generate.
Nathan Bush: Yeah, absolutely. Are you finding with CAC that that game is getting tougher and is it harder for your founders and your team to isolate that per channel?
Aidan Corbett: Yes. So it's actually quite easy for us to isolate per channel from a metrics perspective, but it's getting harder for merchants. I think every year. If you don't improve, your CAC will go up. Because the platforms, particularly Facebook right now, they're not on Snapchat and TikTok, their, you know, their cost per thousand impressions is never going to go down. So if you want to maintain the same level of performance, I think you need to improve every year, which is actually quite challenging. The good thing is that there are always new channels emerging that are trying to siphon users away or siphon merchants away from the traditional channels. And for us, in a small segment of our customer base, TikTok is having a huge impact at the moment, where last year it may have been less than 5% of total ad spend this year, it's 20%, 30% and growing. That's a huge boom for e commerce merchants to have another outlet and to have another outlet that really has the volume of users that can give you that really granular audience that Facebook, Instagram has been able to give you in the past because some of the other platforms like Twitter, for example, it's not suitable for direct to consumer marketing. TikTok is. And it's great to have our second really big outlet, I think, for merchants and they'll take off this year in 2022.
Nathan Bush: So it's not too late to jump on the TikTok bandwagon, if you haven't already.
Aidan Corbett: No way. No, not today at all. Brilliant.
Nathan Bush: And in terms of margin, do you have a benchmark that you look at from a GP perspective that you go and anything GP above this? We're in the ball game.
Aidan Corbett: We don't have a hard and fast ruler on that because it can vary depending on the product. But if it's your own product and you're not selling branded goods, we'd like to see the gross margin about 70% or above. That would be a good thing for us to see. But there's no hard and fast rule because it can depend on other aspects of the business. But typically around kind of 65, 70% would be something we wanted to be higher around that or higher would be ideal.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. Okay. So obviously with all this intelligence that you've got across a bunch of e commerce retailers, I would assume that you know a lot of the e commerce metrics and the benchmarks better than a lot of e commerce founders. Do you find that in this partnership? Obviously there's that quick application and funding process, but do you form longer term relationships with your retailers as well?
Aidan Corbett: We do, and it will depend on how much support they would need. But certainly for the earlier merchants, we would often arrange a call after the advance has been afforded to the merchant to say, would you like to call it our Facebook experts? Would you like to call our inventory experts? So we have three or four people in our team and their only job is to help the merchants with their Facebook and Instagram spend. That's their only job and you can book time with them once you've taken an advance from us. Customers that are larger and a bit more sophisticated may not need that service, but it's incredibly beneficial for the earlier stage merchants who are only getting up and running. And there's a lot of kind of helpful tweaks to how you set up campaigns, how you evaluate the performance of a campaign, how you adjust an audience, all those tips that we can give you are really, really beneficial. In the early days, the larger merchants have probably figured it out, but for the smaller merchants, it can be incredibly beneficial.
Nathan Bush: And I assume that goes both ways too, because you want to see your retailers grow and develop so that you can share in that success.
Aidan Corbett: Yeah, I am motivated for you to do very well. So we will give you those services.
Nathan Bush: Great stuff. Now, if we've got founders listening to this at home and they're going, yes, like cash flow is an issue, I'd love the idea of having this opportunity to generate cash flow without giving away a chunk of my business. When would you advise is the best stage? We kind of talked around it, but if we said, if you're in this situation, now's the time to start thinking about amp, we talked about that seed of an idea. But how do we know when you've got that seed of an idea? What are the metrics or the points that you go, this thing's ready to blow off with the right inventory and the right marketing.
Aidan Corbett: So I think you should always take on money as early as possible, because regardless of whether if it comes from Wayfair or some kind of an equity investor, but you always make better decisions as an entrepreneur when you have some cash in the bank. And I know this myself because my first startup bootstrapped it for a couple of years. You make short term decisions where you don't have a lot of cash in the bank and they're always rational when you've no cash in the bank. But they're never the right decisions to make. So what I would encourage all founders to do is as soon as possible, even if you have to give up a small stake in the business, don't give up control, but get some cash into the bank account because that will allow you to start making long term decisions. And what are long term decisions? Oftentimes they're experiments. So for example, if you would like to dedicate 3 or $4,000 to experimenting on TikTok in the early days, that's a huge decision to make unless you have a bit of cash in the bank. But you only really unlock the insights to help a company take off when you have some bit of a buffer that allows you to experiment and test with different things. So as a general rule, I would always say take on money as early as possible to give yourself the headspace and the room to actually grow and think long term. From a revenue based finance perspective, we often Operate at different levels, all the different players in the space. I would apply as early as possible. Most of the websites will actually tell you what is kind of our minimum threshold when we actually take money from you, but I would apply as early as possible because once you begin to grow this working capital challenge where inventory needs to get paid for before revenue comes in, it actually gets worse because the faster you go, the more and more inventory that you need to order. So the problem doesn't actually go away even if you're doing 30, 40, 50 million in sales, because we have companies like that on our platform as well. So even if you're profitable, even if you're growing really quickly, especially if you're growing really, really quickly, this working capital problem doesn't go away. So principle number one, I would raise money as soon as you can from wherever you can to give yourself that room to think long term. And then principle number two, I would apply to the platforms early based on the criteria that they have in place because they're normally pretty clear about who applies and who doesn't, and then let them help you scale. And my principle on this is if you need money for working capital, it should never be giving up equity. If you need money for product development or scaling the team or something like that, then you might want to give up a percentage of your company. But don't do it for working capital because if you're converting them into revenue three or four months later, that's not worth giving away a portion of your company for.
Nathan Bush: I love that notion of giving yourself the space to think of long term decisions as opposed to always living short term. Do you have any examples or types of decisions that you see founders often making? And they're just stuck in that short term cycle. How do founders understand or know that they're in that short term kind of cycle?
Aidan Corbett: I think if there's something they would like to try but they don't have the cash to do it, that's normally it. And I always think of it as experiments. So a classic case would be somebody wants to mix up their marketing spend or their marketing channels, but they're a little afraid to do it because they've been running the same types of campaigns for the last two to three years and they kind of work and they say, hang on a second, If I dedicate 20% of my marketing budget to this new thing, I'm going to lose out on where I am currently. So it's really that freedom to do experiments. And when I talk about experiments, it's almost Always on the marketing side. So that would be a classic case. Another case would be when you have a manufacturer or a supplier that you're not really happy with, but the switching cost for you to get samples from a new manufacturer, move some of that manufacturing over to that new manufacturer to test them out, juggling both of them, maybe having to pay for tooling. You're just not going to do it because the risk is too high. So it's the inability to run experiments primarily on marketing. But sometimes if you want to try a new supplier, they're typically the two ways in which you're kind of stuck in where you don't really have the cash flow to start experimenting. And that that's very difficult to grow from that perspective.
Nathan Bush: And I can imagine that you often see both of those things working hand in hand. The marketing do. A big marketing experiment goes really well, oh, hey, we need to help a lot more inventory, buy a lot more inventory. The marketing comes again. It just keeps accelerating like that, right?
Aidan Corbett: Totally. I can also tell you what happens when somebody has money and they don't use it well. And normally what happens there is they end up growing opex. So they end up growing their staff and bringing in lots of people or moving to a big agency. That often is the thing that can really hurt companies when they do have some cash is that they then kind of scale up the management team, but that doesn't acquire customers and that doesn't actually improve your supply chain or get you new products. That would be one thing to be aware of, especially if you raise quite a bit of cash. Be careful about the OPEX line because E commerce companies can be running with eight figures in revenue still with less than 10 people. And that's an incredible business when you think about it.
Nathan Bush: Absolutely.
Aidan Corbett: I'd love something like that.
Nathan Bush: Great stuff. So with your team here in Australia, obviously expansions on the cards for waveflyer, is there anything unique about the Australian market that you've experienced so far that you haven't seen in other territories?
Aidan Corbett: It's way bigger than markets with much larger populations, which is actually unsurprising because a lot of I think international e commerce merchants may not ship to Australia. So Australia is very reliant on Australian e commerce merchants. So for example, for us, the Australian market is much bigger than the Spanish market or it's much bigger than kind of the Dak region or the Nordics. When we would have. Or the Netherlands, we would have kind of pegged them as maybe a similar size or slightly smaller than Spain. It's a much bigger market for us because the consumers in Australia are not as well served by international brands or international players. And the second reason is Australian E commerce merchants are really good at exporting internationally. Really good. Maybe similar to Ireland. You're like, I don't really have an option because this market is. We're on an island and this market is somewhat limited. But the merchants are really good at international expansion. So they're the two reasons why we love operating in Australia. They will be the two kind of standout insights that we got that we weren't expecting.
Nathan Bush: Yeah. And it feels like we've had a lot of retailers hanging on over the last couple of years. And I don't like saying come out the other side of COVID but we're starting to get back to that. And the view seems to be very much on USA for, for a lot of retailers here in Australia looking to expand. Are you seeing that come through as well in your clients looking to get a bit of cash?
Aidan Corbett: Yeah. And it's much easier to expand there than it is into Europe. Obviously the UK would be an easy market for Australian merchants, but the US is so much easier than if you think of Europe as a whole because you don't need to do much internationalization of the website. They tend to be great consumers. They do tend to be very demanding consumers, especially on delivery and on fulfillment. They're so used to Amazon. The one thing that we would notice is that the tolerance of a consumer in Europe and Australia will be a bit higher in terms of when the product is delivered. Whereas in the US because they're so conditioned by Amazon prime in particular, they're so used to getting everything within 24 hours. So if you are expanding into the US just make sure your fulfillment is down and you've got a great partner because their level of tolerance for a three or four or five day delay is low. Yeah.
Nathan Bush: There's less care. Not care is not the right word. But here you get a little bit of forgiveness. I feel, especially if you're a founder with a story and people say that you're a real person behind the brand, you get that level of forgiveness.
Aidan Corbett: Yeah. And they've just been conditioned to an amazing customer service, primarily through Amazon.
Nathan Bush: So obviously huge growth for waveflyer over the last couple of years. What's next on your radar? How do you continue growing and expanding?
Aidan Corbett: There's a couple of different geographies that we're going to enter this year in Europe that we're not in already. France and Germany will be the two most notable markets that we're entering and then second we're going to expand out our product range. So as I mentioned at the beginning of the podcast, we're not going to leave E Commerce but what we are going to do is move beyond the initial product, the merchant cash advanced product, into other areas where we can help merchants. So we'll do that probably launching our second product which is in beta at the moment, which unfortunately I can't disclose, but we'll be launching that next month. So hopefully all your listeners will stay tuned for that. But that's the focus for us right now. Stay in E Commerce, begin to expand into new geographies with the initial product and then build some additional products on top of or we're staying within the same vertical.
Nathan Bush: Do you see waveflyer as more of a finance company or more of a data company?
Aidan Corbett: Right now it's a finance company and that may change into being more of a data led company as we begin to launch more products. Right now we are selling money, no doubt about it.
Nathan Bush: It's a really interesting model and I love hearing how you take the tools that we use in E commerce every day and use them in real world scenarios to work out whether what kind of risk you can take on. Because it's definitely not an approach most banks are taking on at the moment.
Aidan Corbett: No. And it's not worth their while because they're regional and they will serve any business that comes in. It's not worth their while building a Shopify or a Facebook ads collector, but it's definitely worth our while when e Comm is the focus.
Nathan Bush: Aidan, if we've got founders who have listened to today's chat and said I'd love to find out more or even apply to see what I might have access to. What's the best way for them to get in touch?
Aidan Corbett: Wavefly.com is the website to go to and you can self sign up there and we'll be in touch very quickly.
Nathan Bush: Beautiful Aidan, thank you so much for sharing what you're doing at Wavefly, but also just the tips that you had from some of the merchants that you're dealing with has been really insightful.
Aidan Corbett: Thanks Nathan, really appreciate it.
Nathan Bush: Always learn something from our explainer episodes. E Commerce financing is a fast growing and often confusing space. But for me there were so many E commerce growth gems in that conversation beyond financing that gave great insight. Here are my picks. Number one CAC to LTV as a key metric, Aidan shares that customer acquisition cost to lifetime value typically measures over the first six months is the most important metric when he is looking at whether an e commerce business has a proven idea ready to scale with a cash injection. Now if you're not measuring cap to ltv, I would consider making it one of your key metrics to keep an eye on. Number two, the TikTok boat has not sailed. Wayflyr are seeing customer acquisition costs continue to grow on traditional traditional e commerce platforms and networks such as Instagram and Google, and they don't expect it to slow down. They suggest looking at emerging channels and TikTok is still identified as an emerging channel with some clients now putting 20 to 30% of their marketing spend into TikTok. And as Aidan said, it's not too late to get on board for these early CAC bargains. And the third takeout that I took book that I love is Freedom of Cash Flow. I really liked when Aidan said you always make better decisions when you have cash in the bank and I don't think that just applies to e commerce businesses. When you're struggling to keep up with cash flow, you focus on covering up risk and keeping up with the next bill that's coming in. With a bit of cash in the bank you can do experimentation and make long term changes which ultimately unlock sustainable growth. Cash flow remains critical thanks again to Wayflyer for bringing us this bonus episode. If you want to know more or even apply for financing, head on over to waveflyer.com that's waveflyer.com where you can get started straight away. There's also a bunch of case studies including ones from Australian brands where founders share how they used to wayflyers funding
Nathan Bush: to grow their business.
Nathan Bush: It's really interesting stuff. So that's all available over on wayflyer.com to check that out. To get the highlights of today's episode, head on over to add to cart.com au and sign up for our free newsletter each Tuesday. We will send Monday's episode summary links and discount codes for you to get go next level on. And if you're looking to explore your next e commerce opportunity, come and Visit us at eSweet. We're a dedicated e commerce talent agency connecting the best e commerce talent with the fastest growing brands in Australia. Head on over to esweettalent.com au where you can download the free e Commerce Salary guide and sign up to our weekly e commerce job emails. Thanks for listening and until next time, keep those customers adding to card.
