 Hello everyone, and we are kicking off day one of Commerce Tools Elevate. I'm Rebecca Knight, your host, along with my co-host and analyst, Shelly Kramer. We're here in beautiful Miami Beach, Florida. First time that theCUBE has ever been to Commerce Tools Elevate. You and I both were just in the keynote. We heard from the founder and CEO of this company, the chief product officer. What were your first impressions? You know, I am very excited about this event because I am a commerce expert, and by that I mean I am an expert at purchasing things online. Shelly, I too have a bit of that expertise. I mean, I bow down, but I'm sure. No, and so really talking about the future of commerce and all of the things that they touched on in terms of making customer experience is easier. Making partner experience is easier and all of that sort of thing. That's music to my ears, because that's what every end user wants, right? A more seamless path to purchase, and that's what brands want as well. They want to be able to deliver more quickly, to sell more, to make customers happy, all that sort of thing, so you can't really lose. Exactly, and what's so fascinating is because, yes, we both have this expertise in shopping online, but you really understand the tech that underpins this. And so, and I really cover future of work issues, but what is so fascinating is how they are going to be using AI to continue, yes, providing personalized recommendations for us in order to cross-sell and make sure that they are maximizing our wallet share, but they're also using it to improve other parts of the buying process. Well, and a lot of this is improving processes for vendors, for partners who they have alliances with, for developers, all of that sort of thing. And I think the key theme that we're hearing here is simplicity across the board. So being able to take commerce tools, products, and drop them in, and to be able to use things very, very quickly, and the very tail end of the keynote they were talking about, a major implementation that took six months from the time of getting the idea and talking about the strategy to actually implementing in that. Six months is really pretty quick in the big scheme of things. So I think there's a lot to be excited about here for sure. Absolutely. So one of the other themes that we kept hearing a lot about is, yes, innovating with the customer in mind, the customer-centric way to innovate and be creative and think with the customer, what does the customer want? What does the customer need here? But also trust, trust is so important when it comes to any kind of technology. We are going to be hearing today from one of the heads at PayPal. And he said, we built our platform on trust. Customers know how we deal with their data. They know that they can rely on us. And I think that that is such, and it's not just a buzzword. No, it's not. It's a key differentiator today. And I think customers knowing where to trust and there's so many different payment options and that sort of thing, I think PayPal has long been sort of the gold standard. I mean, and so it was great to hear their message about not only building data privacy and protection into everything that they do, but again, focus on making all those experiences seamless. Yeah, I'm one of those people who often checks ops for guest checkouts. I just don't want to mess with things. And so seeing the protection that they could expand across guest checkouts and things like that, those are little touches that go a long way towards showing customers we got you. And we know what matters to you and our job is to keep you safe while helping expedite what it is you want to buy. So. Exactly. Yeah. One of the other things that we're hearing a lot about is this idea of innovating with the customer in mind. And that's one of the things that I'm really curious to hear how they do that. Do they get you and me in there as their focus group? What do you need here? But I mean, bringing together here at in this amazing convention center room that is filling up as you and I are talking here with partners and customers and people who are part of this ecosystem, how they're bringing to bear what they're learning and coming up with a set of best practices of here is what customers want and need. And here's how we deliver. Well, I think that, Rebecca, you can always tell when you're navigating a path to purchase, how much attention has been paid to user experience. And I can't tell you how many times I've been embarking upon a purchase journey and said, oh my gosh, I can't believe you're making me. You know, and kind of going back to PayPal's example with, you know, part of their new, newly announced innovation was, you know, not having to scroll, not having to go from screen to screen and that sort of thing. So that kind of functionality shows they're watching customer behavior and paying attention to customer preferences. And that's really, you know, one of the things that they touched on toward the end of the keynote was that they realized that customer expectations have changed dramatically, okay? And I don't know about you, but I will not hesitate to abandon a purchase if there's something that is irritating, doesn't make sense, inconvenient. I mean, and it can be something I really, really want, but sometimes I think, oh, I'm actually glad this didn't work because that's, you know, I didn't really want that or whatever, but I feel like understanding that and making the path to purchase as simple, effective, private, trusted, I think all of those things are the goal here and it's really great to see, you know, all of the vendors here and to see the industry really embracing this as a whole. This is all about, you know, happy customers buy more, happy customers stay, you know, happy customers tell their friend, like there's everything to win in this situation of delivering best in class customer experience. And there's so many little things that they talked about on the main stage, telling me if I have any rewards, telling me what else I might want to add to my basket and just as you said, helping you along the way and making it seamless and easy and not so cumbersome and full of friction of now you need to check with this and now you need to multi-factor authentication, which of course is important, but it just adds to the time that you're spending buying a pair of shoes, which is, it's not what you want to be doing with your time. I think that's also what's exciting about the power of AI and, you know, on one hand, we're all familiar with like a Netflix experience or an Amazon Prime or an Amazon experience, right? So platforms learn our behavior, they learn our preferences. It's like I might not think about this series that Netflix feels would be perfect for me based on my behavior. So when you think about the fact that we all have a finite amount of time, right? And so we have time to discover certain things, but having the power of AI being sort of out there, I mean, this is good and terrible, Rebecca. This is good and terrible. Yeah, I don't know that I really need to buy any more than I already do, but I'm just saying like having that really being able to minimize the effort that we as consumers spend in discovery process helps us and it also of course helps merchants on the other end. That's really interesting to see as well. One of the things you said earlier and this is really true and they've talked about it on the main stage too is these macroeconomic headwinds whereas consumers are feeling the inflationary pinch. We are still coming out of a pandemic which really did revolutionize how we work, how we live and how we buy things for ourselves and for our families. I'm really curious and they didn't talk about it much. I hope we can get into it more on the show today. The changes that they've seen in our purchasing patterns and particularly in the way that Gen Z shops because they are the it generation and they're going to be driving a lot of consumer purchasing for the next decades to come and they don't quite have the purchasing power yet but they will, they will. We hope seem to. I don't, yeah, mine seem to be, I have no problem saying mom, if I did for me. Right, so it's our wallet share that they're getting but I'm curious about how they are appealing to these digital natives who really do have perhaps higher expectations than even you and I have who are time crunched and don't want friction but at the same time these younger people who have grown up online who really, this is the first way they made their first purchases. I think it comes down to two words, speed and simplicity. I mean, that's their expectation and these are people who, you know, I mean we lived through, things have required ridiculous amounts of patience. We lived through dial up internet for God's sake, you know? I mean, you know, I remember when I was a kid, I was the remote, right? So this generation has not lived through any of that. They don't have to be inconvenienced in any way. They know how it should be. And so if we're not serving up those experiences and maximizing how we can best leverage technology to do that, they're out. So I think there's every reason to embrace this, you know? I mean, it's a financial reason, of course. So we have a great show. We have a lot of the commerce tools executives, including the founder and CEO, Der Corrig, who was up on the main stage. Also the CMO, Jen Jones, we have a lot of great guests up ahead as well as great customer story. Ulta Beauty and PetSmart and well-known and beloved brands that are coming on to talk about how they use commerce tools and what they're seeing in terms of changes in what their customers want and what the technology can do for them. It's exciting and you know, one thing I do want to mention that was an important part of the keynotes is this shift to a focus in B2B. And that doesn't mean we're leaving B2C behind in any way, of course. But what's happening is that, and this is not really new, but it has been happening for the last little bit, is that, you know, customers are used to certain things in B2C experiences. Now they expect those same things in their B2B experiences. And so to see commerce tools and their partners step into the B2B arena, which is infinitely more complicated, I think that really signifies the big transformation that's happening here. And there's some really exciting things ahead on the B2B front as it relates to composable commerce. Yes, Foundry, B2B, and one of the things you're talking about, we're going to be hearing from PayPal with the new Fastlane. And hearing about deepened relationships and partnerships and new expansions into new territory. So it's going to be a great day. I hope you will stay tuned with us on theCUBE. I'm Rebecca Knight for Shelly Kramer. You are watching theCUBE, the leader in tech enterprise news.