In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Jake Cohen, 10-year Klaviyo veteran, Partner at Vinyl.vc, and co-founder of Privy, for a wide-ranging conversation on what really drives durable revenue, great products, and fundable companies in 2025. From pop-ups to a billion dollars in BFCM revenue in a single day, Jake unpacks the patterns he’s seen across thousands of brands and dozens of early-stage startups.

Together, they unpack:

• The Privy pivot, how an “anti-Groupon” for restaurants accidentally became a must-have e-commerce growth tool

• Vertical vs. horizontal SaaS, when to go deep in a niche, when to go broad, and why you should build generically but market specifically

• The “fierce nerd” founder, the personality profile Vinyl looks for and why being both obsessive and insanely competitive is almost a requirement

• Inside Klaviyo, steep-slope hiring, small autonomous teams, and why velocity matters more than being right 100% of the time

• Durable vs. desperate revenue, how to set goals with competing metrics so you don’t grow top-line while quietly wrecking your margins and brand

• AI as a power tool, not a god, what LLMs are great at today (ideas, copy, strategy scaffolding) and where Jake draws a hard line on “agentic commerce” hype

• Requests for startups, the next wave of infra: turning multi-person, multi-day workflows in marketing, personalization, and supply chain into a single button

👥 Meet the guest Jake Cohen, SVP at Klaviyo & Partner at Vinyl.vc; Co-founder of Privy

🎙 Hosted by Aaron Schwartz, Co-Founder & Co-CEO at Orita.ai

🎧 Chapters [00:00] Why This Episode Matters & Why Jake Cohen Is A Get [02:58] From Prada Stores to Product Manager: Jake’s Leap into Tech [05:45] Privy’s Plot Twist: How a Local Biz Tool Became an E-com Growth Engine [08:11] From Privy to Klaviyo: What Jake Learned About Relationships That Print Revenue [11:07] Vertical vs. Horizontal: How to Choose the Right Strategy Without Guessing [13:57] Build Generic, Sell Specific: The Hidden Art of Product Architecture [16:41] Inside Klaviyo’s Brain: Primitives, Data, and Adapting to Any Market [19:16] Interning for Your Customers: The Radical Empathy Behind Great Product [22:05] The “Fierce Nerd” Founder: How Jake Evaluates Who Deserves Venture Dollars [24:41] Craft Over Chaos: How Klaviyo Thinks About Product and Quality [27:05] Hiring on Slope: Why Curiosity Beats Credentials Every Time [32:46] Culture as an Operating System: How to Keep a Fast Company from Breaking [35:47] What Jake Sees in E-commerce Now (That Most Operators Miss) [42:38] AI as a Power Tool, Not a God: How to Use It Without Losing the Plot [46:40] Requests for Startups: Where the Next Wave of Commerce Innovation Will Come From

🌐 Check out Orita.ai for more episodes of The Orita Podcast, where we sit down with the most interesting operators, marketers, and founders in e-commerce to talk about what’s working right now. Hosted by the Orita team. Orita uses machine learning to help brands send smarter, more profitable marketing, by figuring out who actually wants to hear from you and when.

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