Blue Cape Ventures founder Hendrik Laubscher Hendrik Laubscherger (@henlaub) is the CEO and Founder at Blue Cape Ventures. He is a subject matter expert in global marketplaces and cross-border trade. He publishes a very valuable weekly newsletter which you can subscribe to here. In this broad ranging interview, we discuss global marketplaces, the latest events at Amazon, comparison shopping engines, direct to consumer, cross border trade, venture capital, and the future of commerce. Don’t forget to like our facebook page, and if you enjoyed this episode please write us a review on itunes. Episode 226 of the Jason & Scot show was recorded live on Friday, July 9th, 2020. http://jasonandscot.com Join your hosts Jason "Retailgeek" Goldberg, Chief Commerce Strategy Officer at Publicis, and Scot Wingo, CEO of GetSpiffy and Co-Founder of ChannelAdvisor as they discuss the latest news and trends in the world of e-commerce and digital shopper marketing. Transcript Jason: [0:24] Welcome to the Jason and Scott show this is episode 226 being recorded on Thursday July 9th 2020, I’m your host Jason retailgeek Goldberg and as usual I’m here with your co-host Scot Wingo. Scot: [0:40] Hey Jason and welcome back Jason Scott show listeners today on the show we are going to be talking about one of our favorite topics marketplaces and we’re excited to get a Global Perspective from hendrik laubscher hendrik joins us live from Cape Town South Africa where he is the CEO and founder of blue Cape Ventures. Hendrik: [1:00] Guys Jason and Scott it’s a massive pleasure to be here as a regular listener to guess I’m glad to be here. Jason: [1:07] We are thrilled to have you on the show as you know we always like to start out by giving listeners a little bit of background about our guests so can you tell us a little about yourself and blue Cape Ventures as well. Hendrik: [1:18] So background is in the 2000s I worked for. [1:26] A Fortune 500 company in the u.s. my God badly sick. I’m was forced to come back home to South Africa and do the the thing that’s happened in 2020 people having to rebuild their lives because of. Conditions that they can manage themselves so I went back to school then got lucky in 2008 to get onto a rocket ship that was, a boat by naspers one of the biggest investors in the emerging markets and and I’ve pretty much ID e-commerce box since like early, I travel around the world I’m not going to Nigeria for business turkey. I’m China often talk to the u.s. almost annually obviously not this year because of what’s going on and then my company look at the interest we’re a boutique consultancy that helps brands. Make sense of global markets we help investors basically, determine what’s next I due diligence and all kinds of things that are not allowed to discuss because of long and long long pages of India’s or not bore you with that but in general it’s about helping people make sense of marketplaces and of global internet Commerce which. Is it’s a it’s a thing but it’s still not well understood in my opinion. Jason: [2:56] Awesome and you publish and I may have the frequency wrong but I want to say a weekly email newsletter where you recap a lot of global Marketplace news. Hendrik: [3:09] So yes so what essentially happened was in Middle 2000s I decided or when I worked for NASA but it became quite apparent that. Understanding what the trains all for e-commerce is kind of a big deal IE you don’t want to be left behind so I think the most logical thing at the time for me was to basically go to the US which is essentially we converse online started. And I have since made lots of friends in various cities such as New York Seattle Chicago and the like and what I saw with everybody was the same problem and the problem is people are time-starved like they are still today however the newsletter is is. Mostly aimed at helping people understand what’s important because if you miss an important announcement from Amazon or giant or something that happ