When he and I last spoke, in 2021, Bryan Mahoney had co-founded Chord, an ecommerce platform that separated the public frontend from the nuts-and-bolts backend. It was a “headless” structure that enabled merchants to connect with their preferred external providers rather than a one-size-fits-all solution.
The problem, Bryan says in retrospect, was a complicated setup that required replatforming. What merchants wanted instead was the platform’s component that consolidated data from the external providers, providing a holistic view across channels, customers, and more.
So he pivoted. In 2023 Chord became an ecommerce-focused data management company, no longer requiring customers to use its frontend layer.
In our recent conversation, Bryan shared the transition details and the importance of data for today’s brands. Our full audio is embedded below. The transcript is edited for clarity and length.
Eric Bandholz: Tell our listeners what you do.
Bryan Mahoney: I’m the co-founder and CEO of Chord Commerce. We help brands leverage their first-party data and digital channels to grow their businesses.
I co-launched the company in 2021. Before that I was chief operating officer at Glossier, the cosmetics brand.
We launched Chord as a “headless” ecommerce platform, one that separated the frontend presentation layer from the backend management tools. The problem was that it required merchants to maintain a lot of infrastructure. It proved to be too complicated. So we pivoted the company to what it is now, more of a data platform.
Bandholz: Why pivot the company rather than close it?
Mahoney: I’m addicted to commerce. I’m addicted to brand. The saving grace for Chord was that we were never only a headless commerce company. We knew early on that a headless platform would create a mountain of data issues from merchants connecting to multiple external solutions. Data would live on each of those platforms.
So we were a headless commerce and a data platform at the same time. But the companies that we met with kept pointing to the data component and asked if they could use it. We initially said they had to fully replatform, which was crazy.
I got tired of hearing no. And so, around 2023, we shifted from being dogmatic about headless to being platform-agnostic. Our customers no longer had to use our frontend. Shopify, Magento, whatever your public-facing provider, we can help solve the data problems.
And that really opened up the opportunity for us to work with more brands. Their data lived in different places. We got lucky because that’s when genAI systems burst onto the scene. It’s more important than ever to have your data in one place and accessible. Our market penetration has accelerated.
Bandholz: How does consolidated data benefit ecommerce companies?
Mahoney: You need a single source of truth to achieve your goals, such as a successful customer-acquisition campaign or a product launch.
You might use Google Analytics, Shopify, and Klaviyo. Perhaps you use Recharge for your subscriptions. Data on each of those providers could impact your acquisition messaging or your new product features. You need a holistic view of all of them to make informed decisions.
Bandholz: How do you standardize that data, once consolidated?
Mahoney: We’ve been working on it for years. Ours is purpose-built for commerce, an important distinction. There’s an awful lot of very good general-purpose data warehouses that are not opinionated about commerce. They don’t understand an ecommerce business the way that we do.
Bandholz: We’re launching a product at Beardbrand this month. We discussed in our team meeting this morning the best day to roll it out. Should we launch it after Memorial Day or before? A weekday or a weekend? Chord could have helped us, rather than relying on gut feel.
Mahoney: Yes, the key is to be data-informed. In your case, what happened in May in previous years? Is it a trend, or was there something else going on in the world at that time that may have affected the outcome? How have customer acquisition costs trended over the last month?
You can ask all these questions, but ultimately you’ve got to make the decision.
You can probe the data, which may be inconclusive, and decide to launch on Thursday. You then put your resources around that decision and remember the questions. A year from now or five months from now, when you launch another product, you can bring up that process.
I don’t ever want to propose a platform that removes the gut instinct of operators who know their brand, products, and customers better than we ever will.
But yes, we can provide the data to be better informed.
Bandholz: Are you pulling in data from similar companies to enable comparisons, such as repeat order rate versus an industry average?
Mahoney: Yes, we’re absolutely pulling in that information. We’ve been accumulating it for five years. Our customers can opt in to our own anonymized data co-op. We accumulate that data and provide benchmarks and industry standards.
But we never share personal information, and all of our tenants are completely isolated.
Bandholz: You don’t publish prices on your site, which tells me they may be higher than my company would pay. What sort of business will get the most from Chord?
Mahoney: We don’t have a pricing page up yet, though we do want our rates to be transparent. We charge a platform access fee to use our data connectors, the unification layer, and our core AI. It normally starts around $2,000 a month.
Our ideal customer is a company selling products online, D2C or retail, likely across multiple channels. The company wants its data in one place and to harness it via AI to drive growth. That can range from businesses with $10 million in annual GMV to those with $1 billion or more.
Our customers get an awful lot of infrastructure. It’s a great value for the money.
Bandholz: Where can people check out Chord and reach out?
Mahoney: Chord.co. I am on LinkedIn, and I host a podcast called “Brilliant Commerce.”
