#045 : Ali Afzalirad @ BigCommerce

In this Chill episode, Overdose’s Andrew Potkewitz and ecomm legend Ali Afzalirad will discuss BigCommerce’s growth and roadmap, the rise of headless/composable solutions, ecomm trends and strategies, and more.

BigCommerce

BigCommerce is a world-leading open-SaaS ecommerce platform used by merchants of all sizes to conduct their businesses online. With sophisticated enterprise-grade functionality, customisation, and performance, it’s lauded for its simplicity, ease of use, and scalability. Headquartered in Austin, BigCommerce has offices in San Francisco, Sydney, and London.

BigCommerce has been an Overdose partner since 2018.

Ali Afzalirad

Ali Afzalirad is without a doubt a stalwart of ecommerce. His career almost spans the entire tech industry’s evolution, beginning back in the dark ages some twenty years ago. It’s a trajectory that has seen him dabble in everything from deep tech, to early applications, to agency, and onto SaaS—the space where he happily sits now as VP Enterprise Sales at BigCommerce.

He cut his teeth, back in the day, working for a company licensing software technology to device manufacturers. It was software development and a lot of source code. He was in sales, but there was nothing to demo.

“We sold real-time operating systems and protocol stacks to companies that were making devices.” There was all manner of devices: early cellphones, set-top boxes, digital cameras, and personal assistant devices (remember Palm Pilot?). Also networking equipment, like routers and switches, and avionics, such as ground proximity radar warning systems.

Then, one day, he heard about this thing called ecommerce.