In this episode of Very True, Alex sits down with Avi Moskowitz, Founder and CEO of PDQ, to explore the evolution of e-commerce from a simple "copy-paste" of retail to a data-driven, personalized experience. Avi shares his unique entrepreneurial journey—from bootstrapping an ISP and selling medical software to managing a craft beer business in Israel—and how those diverse "chapters" led him to tackle the $270 billion problem of cart abandonment. Together, they discuss why trust and logistics are the new battlegrounds for merchants, how to listen to customers at scale using AI, and the future of "autonomous checkout."Episode Highlights:[00:00] Intro: Alex introduces Avi Moskowitz and his non-traditional path to Silicon Valley success.[03:11] The Early Chapters: Growing up as the son of Holocaust survivors, early ventures in shoe shining, and bootstrapping an ISP during the internet's infancy.[05:33] The "Shut Up" Method: A critical lesson in sales: carrying index cards in his pocket to remind him to listen twice as much as he spoke.[10:27] The Beer Bazaar Story: How running a craft beer business in Israel and personally delivering hundreds of orders during COVID exposed the "trust gap" in e-commerce.[13:50] The Amazon Standard: Why Amazon wins on boring logistics and predictability, and why most other merchants lose customers by failing to build confidence at checkout.[18:37] Segmentation & Personalization: How PDQ uses over 1,600 data points to treat every customer differently—customizing offers, shipping, and badges based on real-time data.[21:01] Autonomous Checkout: The future of e-commerce where AI manages unit economics and business strategy in real-time to save sales.[36:40] Logistics as Marketing: Why the post-purchase experience (shipping, tracking, and delivery) is more important than the product itself for retaining customers.[51:37] The "WISMO" Plague: Why 50% of "Where Is My Order" tickets are submitted the same day an order is placed, and what that says about the state of online trust.Links & Resources:PDQ Website: https://www.prettydamnquick.com/Verisimo Ventures: https://verissimo.vc/ Follow Avi on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moskowitzavi/ Follow Alex on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-oppenheimer/About Very True: Hosted by Alex, Very True by Verissimo Ventures explores the honest, unvarnished stories of founders and the real problems they are solving. We look past the hype to find the truth in technology and entrepreneurship.

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