E007: How to Create an AI-First Ecommerce Company

“They’re the most capable ever, but not trained on your business.”

What pillars should every AI-first brand build, and which one comes first?

Matt Bertulli (Founder, Pela Case & Lomi) and Cody Plofker (Advisor & fmr. CEO, Jones Road Beauty) open up the playbook behind Winks, a brand where AI does the grunt work and humans make the calls. Piece by piece, they break down the four components that make that split work.

1. Company brain: Context, memory, skills

2. Operating system (OS): Human interface

3. Software and tools: Existing tech, SaaS

4. Agents: Researcher, writer, analyst, etc.

The era of “prompt engineering” is over. Company context lets agents upload ads and match landing pages without being told twice. Yet AI tools still misread research, which leaves one question: How much can you trust them?

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Chapters

00:00:00 4 Pillars of “AI First”

00:05:24 A Brand Built on AI

00:10:27 What Can’t AI Do?

00:16:33 Our Company Brain

00:21:41 How We Work in HQ

00:30:41 The Rest of Our Stack

00:33:37 Model vs Harness

00:37:30 Our Ad Upload Agent

00:46:15 Ad Volume vs Quality

00:49:14 Go Inside Winks OS

00:53:15 The 9.5 Out of 10 Loop

00:56:49 3 Things to Do Now