In this episode of Beyond Fulfillment, live from ShopTalk, host Dave Gulas sits down with Jorrit Steinz, the founder and CEO of ChannelEngine. Jorrit shares his 20+ year journey in e-commerce, starting from building custom e-commerce systems and managing 75 online stores to building a global platform connecting brands to over 1,300 marketplaces worldwide.

Jorrit details the early skepticism he faced from brands who feared D2C marketplace sales would cause channel conflict, how the 2020 pandemic forced a massive pivot in the industry, and the lessons learned while scaling a startup from 20 to over 200 employees across multiple continents.

• Key Timestamps:
• 00:00 – Introduction live from ShopTalk
• 00:13 – 23 years in tech: Building custom e-commerce tech from scratch
• 00:45 – Running 75 e-commerce stores with 30,000 SKUs in-house
• 02:24 – The origin of ChannelEngine: Solving a multi-marketplace problem
• 03:13 – Dealing with early skepticism: "You're completely crazy"
• 04:12 – The COVID-19 turning point: How the global shutdown erased channel conflict fears
• 06:03 – Raising Series A & B funding to expand to New York, Toronto, Singapore, and Dubai
• 07:13 – The hardest phase of scaling: Moving from 50 to 100+ employees
• 08:30 – "Comfortable in the uncomfortable": Managing leadership pressure and trade show mishaps
• 09:48 – Jorrit’s day-to-day role now as founder and visionary

Key Takeaways:

• Patience in Market Readiness: When launching an innovative solution, expect resistance. It often takes 3 times as long and 3 times as much money as anticipated before the market catches up to your vision.
• Navigating Scale Bottlenecks: The hardest growth phase for a company is between 50 and 100 employees, where supporting functions (HR, legal, finance) aren't fully established yet, leading to temporary productivity drops before scaling up.
• Embrace Uncomfortable Situations: Effective leadership requires being comfortable in uncomfortable, unpredictable environments and hiring team members who complement your personal weaknesses.
• Build for Global Demand: Rather than fragmenting tech across different international regions, enterprise clients prefer a single, unified global provider.

Connect with Jorrit Steins: http://channelengine.com/

Learn more about our episode partners and support the show:

• 💼 Max Capital Hub: https://maxcapitalhub.com/
• 🌊 Oceans Talent: https://hire.oceanstalent.com/dave_gulas

#eCommerce #Startups #Marketplaces #ChannelEngine #BusinessScaling #BeyondFulfillment #ShopTalk