Show notes
Another episode with a true Commerce OG. This week Steve Papa joins us to explore the founding and growth-path of Endeca — the commerce search and guided navigation platform that became the de facto standard for retail eCommerce discovery in the 2000s. Endeca climbed to powering roughly half of the top 100 eCommerce sites before being acquired by Oracle in 2011. If you were building a serious retail site in that era, you almost certainly had Endeca under the hood - and many still do.Beyond Endeca, Steve was an early investor in Toast — writing the first check when every VC in the room said restaurant tech was a dead end — and he is now founder and CEO of Parallel Wireless, which is building trusted, scalable, secure cellular network infrastructure. It is a mission-driven effort operating at the intersection of national security, connectivity, and the physical infrastructure that communications, commerce, and digital experiences of all kinds will increasingly depend on. He is also an investor in Product Genius, an AI-native product enrichment and CX experience solution.It’s a great conversation, so pour yourself something to sip along with us and enjoy our wonderful conversation with Steve.Cheers!Episode Chapters:* Welcome and exploring the thousand year history of the shrub - a great NA drink that is easy to make, healthful, and can certainly be spiked.* Steve Papa, the latest inductee to the C&C Commerce OG’s.* The founding of Endeca in 1999 — the million-or-none problem, a bottle of Sinatra wine on eBay, and why guided navigation was the real insight.* How Endeca built arguably the first in-memory graph database and what made that such a significant innovation.* Endeca’s surprising first customer and it’s clever path to its big break: driving traffic to a potential customer before they ever called them.* Surviving the dot-com crash — closing $2M in Q4 2001 and why hiding that you were an eCommerce company was the only way to get funded.* The Endeca–hybris partnership: how Steve came across hybris in 2008, sent Carsten Thoma a cold email, and what may have been.* Endeca Latitude — the in-memory analytics pivot born from the financial crisis, and why it ultimately didn’t survive the Oracle acquisition. And how commerce was the real driver behind Oracle’s acquisition of Endeca in 2011.* The Toast origin story: the split-tab app that went nowhere, the conversation with restaurant owners that changed everything, and why Steve wrote the first check when every VC passed.* Toast’s unlock: how bundling payments doubled ARPU, enabled a direct salesforce, and became Toast’s real distribution innovation.* Parallel Wireless: what’s behind it, what happened when the US lost its ability to build wireless networks, what Salt Typhoon tells us about infrastructure vulnerability, and why this is mission-driven work.* AI at the edge: what the compute on your phone is already enabling, and why the walled gardens are the real limiter.* Product Genius: what today’s AI unlocks - driving conversion with real-time behavioral signals.* Final question: after a successful day somewhere in the world, what are we having at the party once the robots take over.Please share! These OG stories deserve to be heard — email it, Slack it, send it to the group chat. Just f*****g share it!This week’s drink: Orange Ginger ShrubA shrub — often called drinking vinegar — is fruit, sugar, and vinegar combined into a concentrated syrup that you mix into drinks and dilute. Shrubs and drinking vinegars go back in human civilization for over a thousand years - with the word itself from the Arabic sharaab, which is also the root of the words sherbet and syrup.During the colonial times in America, shrubs were everywhere — and essentially the first energy drink - potable, easy to make with available fruit, and extended with water. Shrubs essentially disappeared for about a century when prohibition, refrigeration, and commercial soft-drinks (especially Coca Cola) all arrived at once, and have been quietly hovering in the background ever since. The sobriety movement and growing interest in NA cocktails and mocktails have led shrubs to a resurgence as they can pack a lot of flavor, last a long time while refrigerated, and can be simply diluted in sparkling water or into more complex drinks. And of course, they are great modifier in cocktails as well. Today’s version, inspired by Steve, is orange and ginger — no alcohol required, though it welcomes a spirit if you’re so inclined. Bill made his with blood orange juice for a touch of extra sweetness and a quick hot-process ginger syrup finished with apple cider vinegar. Brian went a different direction, adding oleo-sacrum — a centuries-old technique of extracting citrus oils from peels using sugar — as part of the sweetener, which adds a clean bitterness and a layer of aromatic depth that the juice alone doesn’t have.It’s a genuinely refreshing drink, and the vinegar — which sounds odd if you’ve never had a shrub — doesn’t make it taste sour. It makes it taste more alive.Cheers!Orange-Ginger Shrub Mocktail1 oz. — Orange ginger shrub (recipe below)2–3 oz. — Sparkling water or club sodaOptional 1 oz. — Spirit of choice: gin, vodka, bourbon, or tequila all workGarnish — Rosemary sprig or cinnamon stick, with a dehydrated orange slice if you have oneSteps: Add all ingredients to a tall glass over ice. Stir gently to incorporate and garnish.Recipe: Orange-Ginger Shrub SyrupJuice of 3–4 medium oranges (blood oranges recommended for color and sweetness)3-inch knob of fresh ginger, peeled and sliced1 cup granulated sugar¾ cup apple cider vinegar or champagne vinegarOptional: 1 cinnamon stick and 5–6 whole clovesSteps: Combine 1 cup water, sugar, ginger, and any spices in a saucepan. Bring to a boil, then simmer on low for 10–15 minutes until reduced by half. Let cool completely, then strain. Stir in the orange juice and vinegar. Adjust vinegar to taste. Once made, the shrub keeps for 18–24 months.Enjoy!Please subscribe! We want to be sure you make it to the next party! Cheers!As always, it’s great to have you here! If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, share, rate (it helps!), and let us know your thoughts. We love to hear from our listeners.Be well, drink well, and here is to good business! Cheers! - Brian & BillCocktails & Commerce™ is a wholly owned subsidiary of StrategyēM, LLC. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cocktailsand.substack.com