In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Sean Wendt, Founder at dtcmvp to find out why cold email stopped working and how he had a hunch that honest feedback conversations would outlast any outbound playbook.

• How go-to-market changed between the Postscript era and today, and why partnerships now carry weight that BDR teams used to

• Why dtcmvp frames every vendor call as a feedback session first, and what founders get wrong when they treat it as a sales shortcut

• The real reason shelfware happens, and why talking to the most senior person in the sales process is the single best fix

• The gap between what people say publicly about AI adoption and what lean brand teams are actually able to implement

• Why AI cannot do the work your team was never going to do anyway, and what that means for how vendors should be building

• Sean and Aaron on the Wayback Machine test for spotting marketing companies pretending to be product companies

👥 Meet the guest

Sean Wendt, Founder at dtcmvp

🎙 Hosted by

Aaron Schwartz, Co-Founder and Co-CEO at Orita.ai

🎧 Chapters

[00:00] Cold Calling Car Dealerships to Shopify

[02:32] How Tydo Showed Sean Go-To-Market Had Changed

[03:19] Top of Funnel and Partnerships: What Actually Shifted

[06:20] Events Are Not If You Build It They Will Come

[09:13] Why dtcmvp Exists: The Empty Calendar Problem

[12:49] Do Brands See Through the Feedback Call?

[15:53] No Better Signal Than Someone Buying or Not Buying

[17:25] How Brands Should Vet 5000 Vendors

[19:35] Shelfware: Why Team Alignment Matters More Than the Tool

[21:16] The Gap Between AI Hype and What Teams Can Actually Do

[23:30] If You Cant Do It AI Cant Do It Either

[30:39] Long-Term Relationships vs Short-Term Meeting Wins

[34:26] Point Solutions vs Empire Builders: Where Shopify Is Heading

[35:44] Claude Doesn't Care About Tabs: The Bundle You Already Have

🌐 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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