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Brian Anderson is founder and CEO of Nacelle, an e-commerce platform used by brands like Ilia Beauty and Thinx.
How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I usually say, “Have you ever purchased something online, like a piece of clothing, either on a desktop or your phone? Well, I make software and technology that makes that work.”
One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? Something that you wouldn’t really know from my profile is that a lot of my job involves learning new concepts, figuring out what’s important about those concepts quickly, and then putting them into action. I try to embody this idea of kaizen, which means constant learning. As a founder and CEO of a technology startup that isn’t excessively large, I often come into the day not knowing what I need to become an expert in, but I must become an expert in that thing very quickly or at least have enough knowledge to make a good decision about it. Luckily, I have a great leadership team that supports me and ensures that we’re not making any big mistakes.
What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? The first prototype of Nacelle. I built it with the first two engineers who worked at the company and I was writing a nice chunk of the code. For months, it was day in and day out of just banging out code on my laptop and shipping it. It was totally everything you could think of typical startup life—we did all those things. I definitely slept on the floor in the WeWork space we were at more than once. That was a fun time.
Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? Personalization has been something that’s been talked about for so long in the digital realm, and very few organizations have been able to execute it. And I think now with the advent of AI, and of course with some of the technology that Nacelle brings to market given our AI capabilities, merchants are finally able to personalize in this very practical manner.
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What’s your go-to coffee order? My favorite is actually black coffee, but I’m really, really picky about it, so it has to be a really high-quality brew. It has to be a pour-over, so if that’s not available, then a good cappuccino is definitely my go-to.
Worst piece of advice you’ve received? The worst piece of advice I ever received was to have a work-life balance. I generally disagree with this idea of work-life balance, and I much prefer the Jeff Bezos concept of work-life harmony. So, if you think about work-life balance, it’s trying to do the right thing, which is saying, “Hey, you have to have like balance in your life,” but the way it’s often presented is, “Look, you need to just have a 40-hour work week, or you need to spend just three hours every weekend with your family.” This is totally not how the real world works. Work-life harmony, as opposed to work-life balance, is saying things aren’t so rigid. Some weeks you’ll have to work 80 hours a week at your job, and some weeks, your brother-in-law has a disaster, and you have to fly to Florida or something to go help them out and be supportive.
What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? When I was 15, I was building computers with my friends in high school, and we were doing all sorts of fun things. By far, the Nvidia GPUs that were coming out were what we were obsessed with…As for my favorite retail product now, I’m kind of a snob about clothes... I’ve been looking for a good pair of straight-leg jeans because I’m totally over the slim jeans trend…I randomly walked into an Abercrombie and Fitch that I haven’t been to in like, 15 years—basically since college—and I found the perfect pair of straight jeans that I absolutely love, and they weren’t expensive.