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COMMERCE SYSTEMS THINKING

NO BRAND’S DEMO

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Recent Memos

Feature: The Drop Economy

Palantir turned a merch store into the most important brand-equity case study in commerce; Shopify was pivotal. This essay is a feature post in an upcoming edition of the 2PM Newsletter. It’s cool to hate Palantir. The brand operation suggests that there is a silent majority of those who cheer on the brand, its CEO,… Continue reading →

April 17, 2026April 17, 2026

Web Smith

NATSEC Roundtable No. 10: The Forges Went Dark

Years ago, when Mizzen+Main was still a young brand trying to prove that performance fabric had a place in the dress shirt category, I made an argument that nobody wanted to hear: keep the manufacturing in America. Not because of patriotism in the greeting-card sense, but because of what domestic production would have enabled over… Continue reading →

March 29, 2026April 1, 2026

Web Smith

Deep Dive: No Brand’s Demo

Over the past several months, a few in the running community have reached out to invite me onto podcasts to discuss a goal that I have begun to make public. The goal is to reach day 1,108 of running a 10K or longer. The streak began to celebrate a reconstructed knee that recovered faster than… Continue reading →

March 28, 2026March 29, 2026

Web Smith

NATSEC Roundtable No. 9: Capital, Cloud, and Commerce

This is the new defense stack, and the best venture capital firms in the country (re: world) enable it. American military and intelligence capabilities no longer originate solely in the Pentagon or within the legacy defense primes. It is increasingly assembled across three layers that sit outside traditional procurement: venture capital, cloud infrastructure, and modern… Continue reading →

January 17, 2026March 9, 2026

Web Smith

New to 2PM? Here is place to start.

The Early Library

Recent Member Briefs

Member Brief: The Thinker’s Machine

Most of us have been the person in the room who can see the system. You can map the logic of a pipeline or a competitive landscape or a market entry on a whiteboard in fifteen minutes and everyone in the room nods because the structure is right. But then the meeting ends and someone… Continue reading →

March 29, 2026March 30, 2026

Web Smith

Member Brief: The Executive Order That Will Never Come

I was at a hotel off Zilker Park, early enough that the coffee shop was still quiet. Austin has this quality where even the lobby of a nice-tier hotel feels like a coworking space by 8 AM. Laptops materialize. Quarter-zips appear and conversations drift from weekend plans into quarterly targets without anyone noticing the transition.… Continue reading →

February 8, 2026February 8, 2026

Web Smith

Member Brief: Why Shopify Should Acquire BigCommerce

When eCommerce entrepreneur and venture investor Jeremy Horowitz joked on LinkedIn about buying BigCommerce and putting it out of its misery, the post went viral because it captured something real about the current platform imbalance. But what made the moment more interesting was not the joke; it was that Shopify COO Harley Finkelstein liked the… Continue reading →

December 28, 2025December 29, 2025

Web Smith

Member Brief: “Polyester Is For The Poors”

And then he said, “Polyester is for the poors.” I viewed the comment as crude but predictive. The categories once reserved for Wall Street boys, sports agents, and Georgetown political aides are now apparel for the true working man. The type of man who would be proud that some wealthy elite looked down on his… Continue reading →

December 15, 2025December 15, 2025

Web Smith

The Monday letter. Join your colleagues.

COMMERCE SYSTEMS THINKING