Who is Jinx?

Jinx is a growth operator turned advisor who has spent his career at the intersection of brand, performance, and commerce. He’s held senior leadership roles, including serving as CMO of a scaled, subscription-based DTC business, where he led full-funnel growth across paid media, lifecycle, analytics, and product.

Today, through GrowthStack Commerce, Jinx works with consumer brands, retailers, and commerce platforms to modernize how growth actually works. That means helping teams move beyond channel silos, outdated attribution, and surface-level optimization toward systems that connect customer insight, media, experience, and measurement. He also hosts The Art of Commerce, where he interviews operators, founders, and technologists about how real commerce decisions get made and where theory breaks down in practice. Across consulting, speaking, and the podcast, he’s known for pressure-testing assumptions and pushing teams to confront uncomfortable truths about how consumers really behave versus how organizations are structured.

What’s the biggest shift you’ve seen in how consumers expect to discover products compared to even 12–18 months ago?

The biggest shift is that discovery is no longer something consumers “do.” It’s something they expect to happen for them.

Consumers are far less patient with generic exploration. They don’t want to browse endless grids, filter menus, or comparison charts unless they absolutely have to. They expect brands to understand context quickly: why they’re here, what problem they’re trying to solve, and what tradeoffs actually matter. Discovery is moving from passive navigation to active guidance, and brands that don’t adapt feel slow and out of touch almost immediately.

What signals tell you a brand is ready to level up into agentic experiences?

The clearest signal is when a brand stops asking, “How do we drive more traffic?” and starts asking, “How do we reduce friction once intent shows up?”

Operationally, it shows up when teams have decent first-party data, clear product constraints, and alignment across marketing, product, and CX. Culturally, it shows up when leadership is willing to let go of rigid flows and allow experiences to adapt in real time. Agentic systems don’t thrive in environments obsessed with control. They thrive where outcomes matter more than scripts.

When brands fail to implement AI in commerce successfully, what’s usually the real reason?

It’s almost never the model. It’s incentives and ownership.

AI gets layered on top of broken workflows, conflicting KPIs, and unclear decision rights. Marketing wants conversion lift. Product wants engagement. Legal wants zero risk. Nobody owns the end-to-end experience, so the system gets watered down before it ever has a chance to perform. The failure isn’t technical. It’s organizational. AI has a way of exposing how fragmented decision-making really is.

What’s your favorite example of a “high-intent moment” where an agent could outperform a traditional PDP?

Any moment where the customer is trying to reconcile tradeoffs beats a static PDP every time.

Think about choosing between two similar products where the real decision hinges on fit, timing, or constraints: delivery windows, compatibility, usage frequency, or budget tradeoffs. A PDP forces the customer to do the synthesis. An agent can ask one or two clarifying questions and immediately narrow the field. That’s not incremental improvement. That’s a fundamentally better experience.

What’s one interaction you think will become standard in shopping flows that feels “futuristic” today?

Post-purchase reassurance.

We spend so much effort getting customers to buy, then abandon them to confirmation emails and FAQs. Agents that proactively validate the decision, explain what to expect next, and adjust recommendations based on that purchase will feel normal very quickly. It reduces regret, increases confidence, and sets up the next interaction organically. Today it feels novel. Soon it will feel negligent not to have it.

What’s the metric you trust most for proving an agentic experience is working?

Time for confident action.

Not time on site. Not raw conversion rate. How quickly does a customer move from uncertainty to a decision they feel good about? When agentic experiences work, sessions get shorter, questions get sharper, and downstream metrics like returns, support contacts, and churn improve. Confidence is the leading indicator. Revenue follows.

What does “brand-safe AI” actually mean in practice, beyond just guardrails?

Brand-safe AI means the system understands what not to optimize for.

It’s not just about avoiding hallucinations or policy violations. It’s about encoding brand values, tone, constraints, and tradeoffs into the system’s decision logic. A luxury brand and a value brand should not answer the same question the same way. Brand safety is about coherence and consistency, not just prevention.

Overall, where do you see the future of agentic commerce is headed?

Agentic commerce won’t replace storefronts or apps. It will quietly reorganize them.

The future isn’t a single chatbot replacing everything. It’s a layer of intelligence that sits across discovery, decisioning, and post-purchase, adapting experiences based on intent signals in real time. The brands that win won’t be the ones shouting about AI. They’ll be the ones where shopping simply feels easier, faster, and more human than you expected.