Ronak Shah

CEO & Co-Founder at Obvi | EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2022 | Featured on Inc. as 1 of 22 High Achievers | Chew on This Podcast Host

As the CEO of Obvi, I lead the company's vision to offer the most obvious choice of transparent products that deliver real results without sacrificing taste. Obvi, which has been featured on Inc. as one of the 22 high achievers of 2022, has grown rapidly since its launch in 2019, thanks to our innovative and customer-centric approach to product development, marketing, and community building.

With over a decade of experience in accounting, finance, and e-commerce, I have developed strong competencies in customer relationship management, analytical skills, communication, and technology. I have successfully completed enterprise-scale projects involving technology conversions, re-branding, custom CRM development, report design, and release management. As an EY Entrepreneur Of The Year® 2022 and a co-host of Chew On This podcast, I am passionate about sharing my insights and expertise on DTC content and strategies with other founders and entrepreneurs. I am also a growth ambassador for Gorgias, a universal tool for CX that I endorse and use for Obvi.

Chief Executive Officer

Obvi was founded with one objective in mind: present the most obvious choice of transparent products which present real results without having to sacrifice taste. At Obvi, we believe the industry as it is currently, is facing a phenomenon which is known as the paradox of choice; that is, the more choices there are, the less satisfied the customer is starting to become. We have set out to make that choice as obvious and easy for our customers. Simple and transparent formulas with a cutting-edge flavor systems make any Obvi product, the obvious choice.

True alpha isn’t found in podcasts, newsletters, or Twitter threads. It comes from being in the right rooms. 

At Chew On This, we try to give you as much as signal as possible with our newsletter and podcast. But digital content is only a one-way conversation.

So we’re always guessing about what challenges you're facing or what your next unlock might be.

But networking at events = two-way convos with some of the smartest people in the industry.

That’s where you’ll hear stuff like this: 

- “We dealt with that last year. Here’s how we fixed it.”
- “I know someone who can help. You have to talk to her…”
- “We just launched this and it’s printing for us.”

That’s why @ Chew On This is throwing the official afterparty at eTail this year. 

So If you’re going to be in Palm Springs on Feb 24th and want the kind of conversations that actually move your business forward, Join us → https://lnkd.in/eQ8wwSHU

The Plumber of DTC Brands | Growth Advisor to 25+ DTC Brands | Building with AI - Architect @ Claude Cowork

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I recently learned a stat that really blew my mind: on average, only 39% of customers opt into marketing at checkout on Shopify.

That's 6 out of 10 buyers you already paid to acquire who will never receive a single email or SMS from you. 

And since subscribed customers are worth 2.4x more in LTV, that gap isn't a small leak. 

For a typical Shopify Plus brand, it amounts to ~$65K/month in unrealized LTV. That's $780K a year sitting on the table if more brands just paid attention to how they handle marketing consent at checkout. 

By optimizing this structural issue, Ancestral Supplements went from 77% to 93% email opt-in, which meant $300K in incremental revenue.

I’ll be the first to admit I hadn’t given it much thought before I learned all this. 

Like many other founders, we just accepted Shopify’s marketing opt-in default settings and called it a day.  

But now I realize that this passive decision can actually cap retention revenue every single month. 

And the worst part? It doesn’t show in any dashboard. So you can’t really tell what you’re missing out on.

Dataships put together a resource that broke this down in a way that made me absolutely rethink how we approach consent at Obvi: 

What's causing the gap
What it's really costing us
How other brands are fixing it without spending another dollar on acquisition

If you also want to see how much this might be costing your brand, check out Dataships’ full breakdown by following the link in the comments.

Find out how more than 500 ecommerce brands have already unlocked $600M+ in incremental revenue through consent optimization - and how you can join them:

The Plumber of DTC Brands | Growth Advisor to 25+ DTC Brands | Building with AI @ Ronshah.co

Open article: How to Turn Marketing Consent Into Your Next Big Revenue Driver by resource.chewonthis.io

How to Turn Marketing Consent Into Your Next Big Revenue Driver

Something I’ve realized mentoring other founders recently: A lot of brands aren’t held back by bad marketing. It’s bad MEASUREMENT.

I’ve talked to leaders pouring serious time and money into ad creative, agencies, and testing. They’re working harder than ever. But the needle barely moves.

Then, when we look under the hood together, I find their entire system is calibrated wrong.

If your acquisition optimizes for platform ROAS, you’re rewarding the channels closest to conversion, not necessarily the ones creating incremental demand.

So branded search looks amazing.

Retargeting looks efficient.

Upper funnel looks wasteful.

Budgets shift accordingly, and you start making more of the stuff that’s working.

But over time, revenue hits a plateau, even while all your KPI dashboards look strong.

That’s why we partnered with Lifesight to create The Guide to Modern Measurement.

What you’ll learn:

-Why last-click and even data-driven attribution fail at scale
- Why incrementality testing is non-negotiable
- How to think in terms of incremental ROAS and profit instead of reported platform metrics

If you’re allocating meaningful spend across channels but not really sure what is generating demand (vs what is just capturing it), this is worth a read.

Get it for free here: https://lnkd.in/eRhF6fjj

#Lifesightpartner

Open article: The Hidden Profit Playbook: How to Unlock 6 Figures From Your Existing Traffic by resource.chewonthis.io

The Hidden Profit Playbook: How to Unlock 6 Figures From Your Existing Traffic

Everyone is talking about AI agents.

But here's what most people miss:

General-purpose agents are going to lose.

Right now, if you want to build an agent that actually works, you have to train it with skills. Most people won't do that. Most companies can't.

The ones who will win are the ones building agents for a specific person, a specific job, a specific context.

Hey Noah did exactly that.

They built an AI agent specifically for C-suite executives and founders. Not for everyone. For busy people who are constantly switching context - between clients, investors, team members, and deals.

And you can see why it's going to take off:

It works from your phone.

You text it things.

It tells you when it's done.

No friction. No headache. No lost API keys. No onboarding. No new app to check.

As the market matures, the people building for specific cohorts are going to capture the most value. A general AI that does everything is table stakes. An AI that knows exactly how a founder operates - and acts on it - is a product people get addicted to.

If you're a founder or exec who wants to actually empower your work (not just talk to a chatbot), comment HEY, and I'll send over the waitlist.

#HeyNoahPartner

DTC founders, this one’s for you: The time to start prepping your marketing flows for BFCM is now.

Yes, I know it’s only February.

But every year in December, my DMs are full of founders saying the same thing: “I should’ve migrated my ESP earlier.”

And they’re right. The best moment to switch something so crucial in your operations is during the low season. That’s when you actually have the breathing room to:

1. Prep your flows (Welcome, Cart Abandonment, Browse Abandonment)
2. Clean your lists
3. Dial in your deliverability before the peak season hits

And sure, I know everyone dreads doing this because migration sounds like a nightmare. 

But that fear of losing data or messing up tech keeps people stuck on platforms that are draining their margins.

And that’s the most expensive mistake you can make.

Omnisend makes migrating a breeze by handling that heavy lifting for you. 

They have a white-glove migration service and a 24/7 team that moves your essential data and automations for free so you don't have to figure it out alone. This includes: 

- Cloning your existing segments and automations
- Creating your signup forms
- Submitting the toll-free number verification for your SMS marketing

Plus, their platform offers incredible power at a much smarter price than other alternatives (we're talking up to 60% cheaper for similar features) and a $79 ROI for every $1 spent. Really. 

So, if you’re serious about upping your game this November, set yourself up to win from February by switching to Omnisend now.  

Get 30% OFF for the first 3 months here: https://lnkd.in/edQ9j3i9

Looking for a devloper that can take a figma file for a landing page and code it out in under 48 hours, pixel perfect. 

Not looking to pay $2k per page but have 8-10 pages ready to get developed. 

Help 👈🙏🏻

Email me: ronak@myobvi.com

23 Year Old Shopify App Founder \\ Sharing my Startup Journey with the World

Creating the best popups in eCom

Trusted by Nike Strength, Hexclad, Comfrt, Milk Makeup, Hot Ones, and 3K+ others

Shaan Arora

This feels surreal to say. Alia has officially been acquired by Dotdigital.

There were a lot of nights I pictured writing this post.

[more emotional parts below, but I need to first talk to our customers and partners before anything else]

NOTHING will change for our partners and customers.

We're not asking anyone to move their ESPs to keep working with Alia.

If you have Slack channels with us, those channels will remain and you'll still keep your current CSMs with us.

Our same commitment to customer support and customer success for our customers and partners will still be there in full force.

We're not done building Alia by any means. Our team and product are staying intact.

And we're excited to build and move quickly as we've always done, but now with the resources of a much larger company.

-

I want to first express gratitude to my co-founding team.

Cory, Bill, and Jake have challenged me every single second of this journey and I appreciate it more than they'll ever know.

I try to read more and listen to more podcasts so that I can understand what they're saying when they're chatting to eachother at work.

I'm forever indebted to them, and I'm excited to keep building with them for a very long time.

I'm extremely grateful for the broader Alia team as well. I know that we ask a lot and that we're not the most typical company in many respects, but I'm damn 
proud of you all and your commitment to the company.

I'm very grateful to my family for the unwavering support and all the thoughts and prayers they've been sending since we started this whole thing four years ago.

When I asked my parents if I could live with them after college and work full-time on my crazy idea that had no funding or revenue, they didn't hesitate for a second.

Living at home with them when our company had no money gave me the chance to ground myself and work as hard as humanly possible.

My parents have supported me and given me space when I needed it, and I appreciate them dealing with me when my mood swings based on the revenue growth of the company on a week-to-week basis.

I also want to thank my friends for supporting us and caring. I know we can act crazy sometimes about this company and I appreciate you bearing with us.

Thank you to Dotdigital for trusting us and our mission. We’re just getting started, and we’re thrilled to build the future side by side.

Cory and I first started building Alia four years ago when we were 20 years old, 
both interns at a bank.

Being able to celebrate this with the same person who I've been with since the start is a feeling I can't put into words.

Oh, and by the way, we didn't take a dollar of outside funding to build Alia. 

As I'm holding back tears, I'll conclude with this:

I've been posting almost every weekday since January 2024 on LinkedIn and Twitter. And, at least once a week since then, I've dreamt of writing this post and how it'd feel to write it.

It feels better than I could've ever imagined.

Bootstrapped to $60M Exit // Building The Next Generation of Popups

I've always thought it'd be cool to have a proper sales team in person. And here they are 👇🏽

Like having people in the office just ripping the phones. 

And having other people taking back to back to back demos and closing deals. 

And having the sales team learn from eachother and exchange tips. 

And ringing a bell when a big deal closes. 

Like all of that I thought would be so cool to do. 

And now we're actually doing it and they're all here in the office and I get to just watch all of this unfold. 

I used to do every cold call, knock on every retail store in NYC to get demos, take every sales call, and send all the follow up emails (and I liked to follow up A LOT) to get closes. 

And now I get to watch people who are better than me at these things just go out there and CRUSH IT. 

Let's get after it Sameer Soomro, Raihan H., Rohan Duvvuru, and Abdul Anwar

Bootstrapped to $9M ARR // Building The Next Generation of Popups

We just shipped one of the most requested analytics features from our brands

LTV and repurchase rate analytics👇🏽 

Specifically, we now track the following, amongst others:
- Cohort data showing the number of shoppers at each order milestone (1st, 2nd, 3rd order, etc.)
- LTV
- Repurchase rate
- Median time to purchase

And A LOT of filtering capabilities as you can see attached. 

Bill Wohlers builds and ships at the speed of lightning ⚡️

'i just can't go back to the bank' -- this was my mantra in the dark days of our now $9M ARR B2B SaaS

tldr; if our startup failed, i'd have to go back to being a cog in a machine at a bank. thinking that i'd have to go back was my motivation to work harder. 

When we first started ideating for Alia, I was in college and living w/ my co-founder in NYC doing a 6-month internship at Credit Suisse. 

We'd go work at the bank and then come back at night and work on our crazy idea. 

And I hated going to the bank. Like dreaded it. 

I felt worthless and meaningless when I was there. 

Nobody cared if I lived or died. And if I died, they would replace me within the hour. 

That feeling was torturous to me. 

Moreover, nobody even really cared about the work I was doing. It was busy work and I knew it and they knew it. 

I also looked around me and didn't want to be like anyone that I was sitting near.

But when I went home and worked on our crazy idea, I loved it more than anything. 

And working on it wasn't glamorous. 

We did the worst grunt work imaginable in the early days. 

Like going on Etsy and commenting on items, trying to get visibility to the brand and begging them to chat with us college kids and give us advice. 

BTW, we did that for two weeks straight and made over 20 Etsy accounts that all got blocked because we were spamming. 

I'd walk around NYC, pitching our idea to businesses, only to be rejected by all of them. 

I'd email hundreds of people a day and get no response. 

We had no good signals and it was pure brainless work. 

BUT I LOVED IT. 

I loved it because it was all for us. 

One day, when we'd become successful, we'd reap the rewards of the hard work. 

And not just reap them in a small way, but reap them in a massive way. 

Fast forward to graduating college and going full time on our startup. 

Still nobody cared about us and nobody wanted to pick up my calls. 

I dialed more and worked harder because if I didn't succeed, I'd have to go back to Credit Suisse. 

And I WAS NOT GOING TO GO BACK TO THE BANK. 

Every hour I worked and every call I made was getting me closer to not having to go back to the bank. 

This was my motivation when things were hard. I hope you find yours. 

[pictured is me at work during the day]

“Wtf, how did a Shopify app sell for that much?”


I’ve been hearing this a lot in the week since we closed.

People hear “Shopify app” and they think something like a Wordpress plugin.
It’s understandable, but it underestimates 1) how big Shopify is and 2) what you can accomplish if you stay focused and execute ruthlessly.

1 - Shopify is not just some cute build-your-own-shop company. It powers many of the brands everyone knows and loves, including Alia customers like Comfrt, Hexclad, and DRMTLGY, as well as future Alia customers like Red Bull, Kylie Cosmetics, Gymshark, and literally millions of other brands.

2 - Our company is at the cutting edge of popups, which almost all Shopify brands depend on. They might seem simple, but anything that drives this much revenue can unlock millions of $$ in lift when you go as deep and remain as focused as we have.

Despite this, there’s one question I get asked constantly - “How much left is there to build in this space?”

The honest answer is - I don’t know, but I know we’re not anywhere close to the limit.

How do I know that?

Because in a few weeks, we’re dropping a feature that no competitor has released yet. Something that will up the standard for personalization in e-commerce, and add yet another bullet to the long list of reasons that Alia should be THE go-to for every single Shopify brand.

Stay tuned, more coming soon.

Enjoy this photo of us on a Times Square billboard with a George Washington actor at Mt Vernon:

Founder @ The SaaS Hub | Helping Shopify Apps Get Seen, Trusted, and Installed

View Yuvraj Kewate - building TheSaasHub’s profile

🚀 From $1M to $8M ARR. Bootstrapped. 
That’s the journey of Shaan Arora, Founder of Alia the Email & SMS Popups app on Shopify.

We recently recorded an in-depth conversation for The SaaS Hub Podcast | Shopify App Founders Edition, and it’s one of the most honest founder discussions we’ve had so far.

Starting today, I’m dropping a few short clips from our conversation on YouTube.

The full episode goes live tomorrow.

In this episode, we talk about:
• Scaling from $1M to $8M ARR
• Building in a highly competitive pop-up category
• Bootstrapping vs raising capital
• The discipline behind sustainable SaaS growth
• What most founders get wrong about scaling

What stood out to me the most was not just the growth numbers but the clarity and conviction behind the decisions.

If you’re building on Shopify or running a SaaS company, you’ll want to watch this one.

Short clips dropping today.
Full episode tomorrow.

Subscribe & watch here: https://lnkd.in/dBMZSbf7

#ShopifyApps #SaaS #Bootstrapped #Ecommerce #FounderJourney #TheSaaSHub

Founder & CEO of Contara: The Retention-Driven Conversion Agency

Most Shopify pop-ups convert at 3-5%. Here's how we increased that to 15%+ for our clients.

1. We use Alia to power our pop-ups (highly recommend)

2. We lead with a fun question

Here's your game plan:

When someone lands on your site, prompt them with something interactive. Something that makes them WANT to engage.

Examples for CPG brands:

- "What's your biggest wellness goal right now?" (for a health brand)
- "What's your go-to morning routine?" (for a supplement brand)
- "Pick your flavor personality" (for a beverage brand)

It should be just one click, something fun, make it feel like a quiz.

THEN after they answer, hit them with:

"Nice choice. Here's 15% off your first order, just drop your email."

Why this works:

1. Micro-commitment
They already engaged. Psychologically they're more invested in finishing the interaction. Giving you an email feels like the natural next step.

2. It feels personalized
A question says "we want to know YOU." 

3. You collect zero-party data
Now you know what they care about. Their first email from you can be tailored to exactly what they told you. Open rates go through the roof.

4. It breaks the pattern
A question stops the scroll because it's unexpected.

Check out this example on our client's site.

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The Battle

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Shaan Arora

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Ronak Shah's LinkedIn Performance

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