{"podcast":{"title":"Commerce Untold","slug":"commerce-untold-6726169","podcast_index_feed_id":6726169,"rss_url":"https://feeds.captivate.fm/commerce-untold/","website_url":"https://www.expanio.com","image_url":"https://artwork.captivate.fm/4669e79e-3649-4c6c-af0a-70d8e280e7e6/CU-LI-DP.jpg","author":"Eitan Koter","episode_count":221,"summary":"Commerce Untold goes beyond the headlines to uncover the real stories shaping eCommerce and retail today. Hosted by Eitan Koter, founder and CEO of Expanio, the show focuses on one of the hardest problems in commerce: how brands and retail-tech companies break into and scale in the U.S. market. Each episode gets into what that actually takes, from channel strategy and marketplaces to retail media, brand building, social commerce, live shopping, customer experience, and the technologies changing how people buy. You'll hear from founders, CMOs, retail and eCommerce leaders, and operators who have done it, sharing what really drives U.S. growth behind the scenes. The wins, the missteps, the expensive lessons, and the insights you won't hear anywhere else. If you care about how products get built, marketed, sold, and scaled in the U.S. and beyond, this one's for you.","last_synced_at":"2026-09-04T02:19:36.560007+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/commerce-untold-6726169"},"episode":{"title":"209. The M&A Window You Can’t Afford to Miss ft. Ilya Mikin","slug":"209-the-m-a-window-you-can-t-afford-to-miss-ft-ilya-mikin","published_at":"2026-05-27T12:30:00+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/commerce-untold-6726169/209-the-m-a-window-you-can-t-afford-to-miss-ft-ilya-mikin","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/commerce-untold-6726169","url":"https://expanio.com/test-v1/209-the-ma-window-you-cant-afford-to-miss-ft-ilya-mikin","audio_url":"https://episodes.captivate.fm/episode/c0a806ce-618b-4098-8aad-152db7556b0b.mp3","summary":"Ilya Mikin is Vice President of Technology M&A at Corum Group, one of the leading technology M&A advisory firms globally. His background spans more than two decades across enterprise marketing at Intel and Unilever, executive and CEO roles at companies including iHerb, multiple founder exits across AdTech, MarTech, and FinTech, and now advising founders through acquisitions. He has been on every side of the M&A table, which makes his perspective unusually grounded. This episode gets into what has fundamentally changed about how technology and e-commerce companies are built, valued, and sold. The old playbook of raising VC money, growing at all costs, and gunning for IPO has largely collapsed. What replaced it is a market where M&A has become the primary liquidity event for founders, and where the rules for what makes a company attractive have shifted significantly. Eitan and Ilya dig into what acquirers actually look at today: why NRR, GRR, and low churn have become the cornerstones of valuation, why private equity now represents up to 40-50% of buyers in some sectors, and what it means to be an AI-native company versus an AI-enabled one. They also cover the mechanics of the M&A process itself — the four to eight week preparation phase, how Corum builds competitive tension among buyers, why the narrative around a business often matters more than the financials, and the internal deal killers that founders rarely talk about openly. Ilya also shares his take on where shoppable video sits in a world increasingly shaped by agentic AI, why he believes emotional product categories are protected from agent-driven purchasing, and what he is personally watching in the space. Founders who are building toward an exit, or who have never seriously thought about t…","meta_description":"Ilya Mikin is Vice President of Technology M&A at Corum Group, one of the leading technology M&A advisory firms globally. His background spans mor…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":1921,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/commerce-untold-6726169/episodes/209-the-m-a-window-you-can-t-afford-to-miss-ft-ilya-mikin/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/commerce-untold-6726169/209-the-m-a-window-you-can-t-afford-to-miss-ft-ilya-mikin.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}