Hi Reader,

After months building Venice, we're hitting our stride:

• 50+ exclusive discounts live
• Drop-In series launched with Kevin Indig this week
• All-Hands calls running (9+/10 feedback!)
• Amsterdam event next week, another city announcement coming
• New website launching soon

Building Venice has been a joy, and if I’m being completely honest, it’s been a stretch too. Since I paused my consulting work, it’s been a full-time sprint: 12+ months, zero salary. James and Ash have jumped in beside me now too.

We're all-in on building the home for European eCommerce. But to achieve our goals, Venice needs to become a real business.

We’ve been at a crossroads on how to best do this. We could try to run Venice solely through vendor sponsorships, but ultimately, we’d lose independence. We’d be working for them, not you. That’s not Venice.

To achieve this next phase, we're opening 100 paid seats at €100/month for new founders. (All vetted by me; quality isn't negotiable.)

For you all, we’ve put together a Founding Members package:

• €50/month (~€1.65/day, less than your daily coffee)
• €500 lifetime (one-and-done)

Plus discounts for referrals.

Nothing changes until January 2026, your access stays free if you want. The invitation is simply here if you’d like to back the mission early and keep the lights on for the long run.

In the meantime:

1. Keep exploring. Check out the vendor discounts, hop into Slack, attend All Hands and Drop In calls.
2. Ask questions. Hit reply or DM me anytime.
3. Upgrade when you’re ready. Next week, three months, or never — you keep access while deciding.

Thanks for being part of chapter one.

Best,
Patrick

P.S. Want to hop on a call to discuss anything? Grab a time here.

01. Around the Community 💬

• We hosted our first Drop In call this week with Kevin Indig. Kevin, who led SEO at Shopify and advises brands like Reddit, Hims & Hers, Ramp, and more, spent ~45 mins sharing his thoughts on the future of SEO and AI search. We had around 15 of you join the call live —thanks for coming along! You can check out our notes from the call here.
• The next Amsterdam event is coming up fast now. There’s still time to RSVP if you’d like to join us — Kasper Brandi Petersen (LABFRESH), Micha Medendorp (Marie-Stella-Maris), and Leonardo Caracas (Jump Ventures) will be leading a fireside chat. Afterwards we’ll also have plenty of time for some drinks and a walking dinner. RSVP here.
• We also shared details of the next All Hands call in Slack — it’ll take place on Wednesday 16th July at 5pm GMT. Madi Ablyazov CEO & Co Founder at Boldr will be leading this call and it’ll be focused on how to profitably scale D2C ads for a niche audience. RSVP here for an invite.
• The team at fourfive is hiring an Influencer and Creator Manager to help the brand scale its influencer and creator programme.
• The foufive team also pushed themselves out of their comfort zone to give away product samples to travelers heading to Glastonbury Festival this weekend.
• alt*ego’s Selena Morris shared some of her favorite spots to find design inspiration.
• Batch LDN was featured in Gents Journal.

02. Inspo 💭

• TRIP took over the Metro newspaper in London to announce its new Wild Strawberry flavour launch.
• Loved this from Disney: bringing the infamous Home Simplson meme to life for the launch of the latest series of The Simpsons on the platform.
• Irish beauty brand Sculpted by Aimee is doing a Base Camp pop-up tour, culminating in a London event at Covent Garden on Sunday 29 June.
• Interesting PR stunt from Kopparberg — the brand announced limited-edition gold plated tooth jewelry for opening bottles.
• One Trick Pony’s new peanut butter packaging really stands out.
• Wild is teaming up with Paddington Bear to launch a limited-edition fragrance.

03. Tactics, Trends, and Tools 📈

• Instagram posts from public professional accounts will soon start appearing in Google search results adding even more value to organic posts on the platform.
• Maximise has been building a huge following on socials (851k followers on IG) and now appears to be launching a focus supplement. Super smart play with the audience they’ve built up.
• Marketing agency owner Brandon Doyle shared how he’s tracking traffic from AI platforms in Google Analytics.
• Triple Whale now has over 120 AI agents built into its platform.
• Anthropic let Claude Sonnet 3.7 operate a small, automated store in the Anthropic office in San Francisco for a month. The goal was to test “AI’s ability to manage and acquire economic resources.” It didn’t go particularly well.

04. Market Moves 🌍

• The Sunday Times released its list of the UK’s 100 fastest growing businesses. A few retail/eCom brands on the list: Odd Muse, With Nothing Underneath, MyoMaster, Simmer Eats, and Montirex.
• Lola’s Cupcakes generated £25.3m last financial year.
• British business Dotdigital acquired influencer marketing platform Social Snowball for $20M upfront + $15M earnout.
• UK-based creatine gummy brand Ovrload is back. The brand took a 105 day hiatus after it was revealed some of its gummies didn’t contain as much creatine as advertised. The brand has since moved its manufacturing into Europe.
• Wednesday’s Domaine is launching into Albert Heijn in the Netherlands.
• Organic period-care brand TOTM secured a retail partnership with Waitrose
• Pimentae Drinks announced a £1.5M funding round.
• Personal care startup Bob launched its scented refill soap bar.
• Gymshark opened up a new store in Amsterdam.
• Mother Root launched a limited edition Rhubarb flavour.
• German online beauty and perfume store flaconi launched in Sweden, Finland, Denmark and the Czech Republic. Next month, it will also launch in Italy.
• German furniture and home decor brand Westwing entered three new markets: Croatia, Finland and Slovenia.

Wild Nutrition has today announced its latest retail partnership with leading online grocer Ocado.

Supporters

The Venice newsletter is supported by Portless:

Struggling with tariffs? Unsure about upcoming changes? With Portless, you only pay tariffs after your customers pay you, so your cash always moves faster than your costs. Get the details here.

Let me know what you’re working on! If you ever want to chat / get a second opinion - just let me know. If I don’t have the answer I’ll connect you to someone who will :)

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