Why the Next Billion-Dollar Brand Won’t Have a Website | Roy Rubin, Entrepreneur and Investor

In this episode of Retailgenic, host Scot Wingo sits down with Roy Rubin, co-founder of Magento and General Partner at R-Squared Ventures, to explore the future of e-commerce in an AI-driven world.Roy shares why he believes the next billion-dollar DTC brand won’t even need a website, what agentic shopping means for the future of retail, and how platforms like Shopify and Amazon may get disrupted next.We also dive into:The founding story and evolution of MagentoWhat went wrong (and right) during its acquisition by eBay and later AdobeHis prediction that AI agents will replace traditional commerce UIsThe good, bad, and ugly of agentic platforms like Perplexity📰 Subscribe to the free Substack: retailgentic.ai📺 Watch episodes on YouTube: youtube.com/@retailgentic🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts: Spotify, Apple, etc.Notable Timestamps:00:01:02 — What is Retailgenic and why now?00:02:11 — Meet Roy Rubin: Magento founder, now VC00:04:43 — The billion-dollar brand with no website?00:06:07 — Origin story: How Magento was born00:13:03 — PayPal's early investment & eBay’s acquisition00:27:12 — Roy’s VC firm and investment thesis00:40:00 — Agentic shopping and future of AI commerce00:44:46 — Social commerce & influencer-powered retail00:47:00 — Virtual influencers, LLMs, and the closed web?