Jackson Jeyanayagam avoids predicting the future of DTC marketing. "The shit's happening right now," he says. "What was cool is no longer cool anymore," said the former CMO of Boxed, offering virtual reality as an example. It was hot five years ago, he said, but "we're not there yet." Hear more at the jump!

Of course you do! Because you need to have a conversation with your customers. So says Kelsey Cohen of Bloomscape. "Create a content strategy that brings value to your customers. Create a content plan that is performative and insightful." Sit up and listen in!

Gravity Products launched on Kickstarter in 2017 and gathered $5 million in 30 days. "We haven't taken additional funding," Mark Wynohradnyk says. "It's a fine balance of sustainability and scale." You don't want to miss this story.

Steps to building a killer brand are "stupidly simple," says Eric Bandholz. First, establish your core values. Beardbrand's are: freedom, trust, hunger. "Make sure it's integrated so much at your work culture." Here, he talks about his little red book!

After performing a "reverse segmentation," the brand began to layer audiences until it arrived at 575 above-average audiences with "some sort of engagement measure with our brand." And who was at the tippity-top of that list? Find out at the jump!

"We stopped growth when we realized we wanted to build a sustainable business," says Brett Podolsky. "We invested in supply chain infrastructure and technology, which is the secret sauce to the business." Get more pointers at the jump.

When D2C brands look to development new products, how do they use the data they have to help them go forward -- or not? For Pour Moi's Ulli Haslacher, it includes consumer feedback from the shopping network. Listen in!

There it was, a small tech store in the Big Apple, a store no one had heard of. And then it discovered podcasting, and Policygenius was on a lot of people's lips. "That was a big aha moment for me," says Blayne Smith. Hear more about this medium!

For locals, Francis Ford Coppola Winery texts as a way to connect with customers, sending news of upcoming events. When it gets a poor review on Yelp or TripAdvisor, it picks up the phone and invites the person back. Find out more at the jump!

FirstBuild's Rick Hasselbeck explains that the company's "makers," as they are called, are "nimble and scrappy. Anyone can come in off the streets with an idea." One day, someone wanted to make a pizza oven. Hear how they did it!