Coworking with Abhi Thanendran

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Abhi Thanendran is founder and CEO at live auction shopping app Tilt.

How would you describe your job to someone who doesn’t work in retail? I run Tilt. It’s a shopping app that started with live commerce: sellers get on a stream, buyers hang out, ask questions, and bid in real-time auctions. We’ve now expanded into C2C with Clips: Users hold up an item, describe it, and AI turns it into a shoppable video in 2.3 seconds, making Tilt the world’s fastest marketplace. For anyone who can’t join a stream at an exact time, Clips lives in an always-on scrollable feed. Together, they’re rebuilding shopping around real people and real products instead of static listings and AI-generated content you can’t trust.

One thing we can’t guess about your job from your LinkedIn profile? I’m a Sri Lankan Tamil refugee. My family settled in Canada when I was eight, and I grew up in the inner city. We had very little, but my parents put everything on the line to give my sister and me a better life. That upbringing has shaped how I see the sellers building on Tilt. Many of them started without capital or a degree, but they work relentlessly, and they’re using Tilt to create life-changing opportunities for themselves. A 22-year-old former McDonald’s worker is now running a serious business entirely from their phone. That’s what motivates me.

What’s your favorite project you’ve worked on? Clips. It’s the product we’re most excited about at Tilt right now: Hold up something you own to the camera, describe it out loud, and AI turns it into a shoppable video in 2.3 seconds. It sits in an always-on, scrollable feed like Reels or TikTok. Live commerce has always had a structural cap: It only works when sellers are streaming and buyers are watching. Clips takes that cap off, turning anyone with a phone into a seller, without them ever having to go live. Seventy percent of the people using it had never streamed before. It’s the closest thing I’ve seen to what YouTube did for creators, but for commerce.

Which emerging retail trend are you most excited about right now, and why? Retail’s next breakthrough is what happens when AI starts understanding video. Every big shift in tech comes from a specific unlock. Phone cameras getting good was what made video-first platforms—TikTok, YouTube, Instagram—possible in the first place. What’s changing now is that AI can watch what’s happening inside a video in real time: what the product is, who’s selling it, what a buyer is asking, what the room is doing. That turns video from a format you show into an interactive commerce experience, one that feels closer to being in a great physical store than to a static listing. The most interesting retailers over the next decade will be the ones that build for that combination.

What’s your go-to coffee order? Double espresso.

Worst piece of advice you’ve received? I don’t know what the worst piece of advice I’ve ever received is because I tend to ignore it. My brain has a pretty aggressive auto-filter. The minute I hear advice that feels counterproductive to my ambition, I throw it straight in the trash. It’s worked pretty well so far.

What was your favorite retail product when you were 15, and what’s your favorite retail product now? At 15, Hollister. Now, Brunello Cucinelli. It’s not that deep, but I’ve cared about clothes and personal style for as long as I can remember, even when I was eight or nine. At 15, Hollister was the brand, and my family couldn’t really afford it, so I used to mod people’s PSPs for money and then spend it at Hollister. Now it’s Brunello Cucinelli. I love the philosophy behind the company: Solomeo, the small Italian village at the heart of the brand, the craftsmanship, the materials, and the belief that you can build an incredible company while treating the people who work there with dignity. I think the common thread is that both brands were exceptional at selling a world to their customers. Hollister did it for teenagers; Brunello does it for people who care about craftsmanship and taste. The best brands make you want something before you can fully explain why.