EP128 - TopHatter CEO Ashvin Kumar We caught up with Ashvin Kumar at the ShopTalk 2018. Ashvin is the co-founder and CEO at Tophatter an innovative live action site for mobile shoppers.  With the engagement and psychology of a game and the economics of a marketplace, Tophatter generated over $300 million of GMV in 2017 (100% up on 2016) and sells 100,000+ items every single day.  We talked with Ashvin about his background, including his previous start-up Blippy.  The pros and cons of various auction format and how Tophatter appeals to it's entertainment seeking value oriented shoppers. Episode 128 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded on Tuesday, March 20, 2018. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, SVP Commerce & Content at SapientRazorfish, and Scot Wingo, Founder and Executive Chairman of Channel Advisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. New beta feature, Google Transcription: Transcript Jason: [0:25] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this episode is being recorded on Tuesday March 20th 2018 I'm your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I'm here with your co-host Scott Wingo. Scot: [0:37] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners we are live live live from shoptalk and Las Vegas excited to have on the show. Ashvin is the top Hatter co-founder and CEO and tophatter is the world's most entertaining Marketplace they've raised over 35 million in venture capital and we're really excited to hear your story hear about tophatter and talk about, marketplaces machine learning in a variety of other topics welcome to the show action. Ashvin: [1:06] Thank you and thanks for having me Jason Scott have to be here. Jason: [1:10] We are thrilled to have you so one of the ways we almost always start out the show is get a little bit of the background of our. So can you tell us sort of how you started your career and found your way to this. Ashvin: [1:23] Sure so I'll let I'll start at the at the very very top so I was born and raised in in Silicon Valley. Local kid that that that never left the Bay Area basically there's there's not too many of us a lot of lot of folks descending on the Bay Area these days so I got to grow up in Palo Alto. Went to Palo Alto High School I was in I was in the valley and that the.com. Bubble and I remember I'm there is just remember there was a big there just weren't enough programmers and like the in hanging like the 99 2000 time and I remember getting your coffee. When your programmers you know how to write Java and I was like. Yes and I had no idea when got a book studied about the week before got in there and started learning job at up the I make great money that sell rather this is awesome and so that's where the bug started for me. Jason: [2:23] Will assume job I was like a required freshman class at Palo Alto High School now. Ashvin: [2:27] You know what's interesting at we we did do a little a little programming it at pellets high school so we had a little bit of that there but not a ton it wasn't quite as in Vogue as it is now. I know I think computer science is like Stanford's largest major by far and certainly the flavor of play for the decade. Yeah so after Polly Went to went to Stanford computer science Stanford actually while I was there I was interned at Amazon. That's where that's where my co-founder and I first spent a lot of time together he was an internet. At Microsoft and I was an intern at Amazon and so we decided to split the difference in. And find a place to live in between the two so we lived in the University District in Seattle. And every every night we come back and talk about the differences between Microsoft and Amazon which is awesome and I had a fantastic 2003. Does neutering there for a few months and it was it was already felt like a fairly big company with a lot of but still plenty of opportunity ahead of them and I remember. I want one thing I'm a Jeff Bezos