00:00Why want to become bigger? What are the opportunities to lean in as a resolve plus commerce dot com business?
00:07Well, so I think first of all, you've got to frame it within the context of our growth.
00:11So we're seeing fantastic growth in our business. You know, extraordinary momentum.
00:15We went from nothing to 232 million of contracted annual revenue in one year.
00:23We did 60 million in the first quarter in revenue versus the whole year last year, 46 million.
00:28So we're growing at an incredible rate. And in this space, when you have the best product in the vertical
00:35that we're operating in,
00:36which is commerce and retail, it's very important, having been building tech businesses over many decades,
00:43although you couldn't possibly tell by youthful demeanor, that the most important thing is kind of land grab.
00:52We have to move quickly to consolidate our position as a leader.
00:55Now, we're doing that anyway organically. But if we were to acquire commerce dot com, which is a stock that's
01:01really a business that's really kind of stuck
01:04and needs us to unlock it, unlock the value, you know, we immediately give ourselves a greater presence.
01:14And we will continue to do deals like that when they're available at good value to increase our market position.
01:20So what would be unlocked with a commerce dot com is like the companies they already work with, the client
01:26base that they have.
01:27And you unlock it with this future of agentic AI.
01:29Let's just talk about the agentic commerce offering, because you're even a little bit in the world of crypto.
01:34And we've just had Jeremy Allaire of Circle on.
01:37And he thinks his business and stable coins are the future of agentic commerce.
01:41He's right.
01:42Do you how are you the rails rather than a circle, for example.
01:45So circle is a is a is a coin is a token.
01:48But you need that token to be sitting on some sort of infrastructure to allow it to be used in
01:53everyday commerce.
01:54Right. So, for example, if you went to Starbucks today, you're not going to use stable coins to buy your
01:58coffee.
01:58We're going to facilitate that change with Resolve Pay so that the retailers and the brands can take stable coins
02:06in the same efficient way for a consumer as credit cards and other forms of payment.
02:12Because crypto, as we know it today, is a frustrating and clunky experience.
02:18And we're changing that with Resolve Pay so that it's as good, if not better, an experience as what you're
02:23used to.
02:26Often, sometimes, M&A is strategic.
02:29Right. And so commerce.com is 60,000 merchants.
02:34Would you say, Dan, that that's the strategic value of it?
02:38And if so, you'd boost your offer.
02:41You'd be willing to pay more of a premium to realize that strategic asset.
02:47So, yes, a 60,000 merchant base that's frustrated with them because there's been lack of innovation.
02:53I mean, they're forecasting growth of one and a half percent in the next 12 months.
02:57I mean, you can't even imagine such a sort of embarrassing growth rate for a business in commerce.
03:04One and a half percent is just ridiculous.
03:06You know, we're growing, conversely, 750 percent year on year.
03:12750 percent.
03:13So, you've got a company where it is at the moment which is not really innovating.
03:18It has a large footprint that's historically been gained over, you know, over a decade of providing services.
03:25But it's kind of lost.
03:26And it needs us to come and inject value and enthusiasm and innovation into that customer base to energize them.
03:35Now, do we need them?
03:36No, we don't because, as I've just told you, we're growing 750 percent year on year and we've got all
03:41this momentum and everything else.
03:42But if we were to buy them, we could unlock that value and grow that element of the business much
03:48faster than it is today.
03:50In answer to your question, yes, I think we're open to being more generous with a deal.
03:58Well, but, you know, the board rejected us and then they put in a poison pill.
04:01And I really can't be bothered with a board that is so locked in its own protection that they can't
04:06see the benefit of a combination with us.
04:10We should have, you know, any sensible board should be having a proper conversation with us to try to extract
04:15the best value for their shareholders and, you know, fully embrace this opportunity.
04:20What about the competition and risk to you?
04:24I've enjoyed reading about Resolve and trying to understand the story, right?
04:28And it's whoever controls the agent layer wins in commerce.
04:32And a very reasonable question that the Bloomberg Tech audience would pose is, why doesn't an Amazon or an Alphabet
04:38or Google or even OpenAI just do what you do and come for you?
04:42I mean, they've tried.
04:44Some of them have tried.
04:45So OpenAI did a deal with Walmart.
04:47It was very highly publicized about five, five and a half months ago that was disbanded about two or three
04:53weeks ago.
04:54And the reason it was disbanded was it started making these terrible mistakes, which is what we call hallucinations.
04:59Generative AI uses probabilistic algorithms, you know, mathematical algorithms that guess words and the next word and the next word
05:10in a sentence to create a paragraph and to create, you know, an answer.
05:13And when you're guessing things, there is an element of error.
05:16And we knew this from the very outset because of my background in search and, you know, for decades and
05:21being involved in some of the major innovations in search technology in the 90s and the early noughties.
05:27So we knew that this would happen.
05:28So we spent the last 10 years preventing hallucinations.
05:32That's really our primary position.
05:35And, of course, we did it with a very clear vision of providing that technology to represent digital platforms as
05:41the best salesman on the planet, you know, interacting with customers.
05:44But you can't have the best salesman on the planet who's hallucinating, you know, who's saying the wrong things, making
05:49mistakes.
05:49Then you end up with returns, you know, misled customers buying the wrong products and so on.
05:55So we believe, and Microsoft and Google have endorsed that belief, that we have the only technology that in this
06:02vertical that is reliable for merchants.
06:05They don't have to worry in deploying our technology that their representative, generative AI representative, is going to be selling
06:12the wrong things, making mistakes, misleading customers and worse, insulting people.
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