Back from an intense "vibe coding" ecommerce seller villa in Hua Hin, Thailand, and I am still processing it.
It was one of those weeks where the value is not only in the code written or the meetings done, but in seeing how other experienced operators are thinking. These were not beginners playing with AI for the first time. These were serious ecommerce sellers going deeper into their own systems, their own applications, their own dashboards, and their own ways of using AI to make better business decisions.
That further strengthens my picture of the future.
I keep seeing the same direction more clearly: AI agents are going to work closely with people in both daily life and work life. It will not be some far-off abstract thing. It will be in the store operations, the product research, the customer conversations, the data dashboards, the supplier decisions, the marketing follow-up, and the way we manage teams.
For ecommerce sellers especially, this is becoming real very fast.
One of the big takeaways from Hua Hin was around Cross Border Summit #8, happening November 3, 4, and 5 here in Chiang Mai, Thailand. We received some good feedback from the sellers at the villa. They liked the format from previous years: a balance of new speakers and returning experts. There is value in having a reunion of trusted operators who come back year after year, while still bringing in new perspectives as the market changes.
And wow, the market is changing.
Ecommerce, AI, sourcing, logistics, marketplaces, independent brands, agentic commerce, seller-owned data - there is a lot to cover this year. The new venue was also positively received, which is encouraging as we are now about four months away from the summit.
On the product side, the team also made strong progress on our internal ecommerce brain for brands such as Excalibur Brothers. We have been calling this direction The Fly Sales, and it is getting more concrete.
The idea is simple but powerful: if we can connect real business data, seller insights, product trends, and AI, we can build a flywheel for business expansion. Not just random AI outputs. Not just a dashboard that looks pretty. A system that helps us see what is happening, predict what might happen next, and decide where to invest time, money, and attention.
That is exciting and scary at the same time.
At the villa, we saw other sellers thinking in a similar direction. They are looking at Amazon API data, Sellerboard-style comparisons, internal dashboards, product research flows, and ways to make their businesses smarter. That gave me more confidence that this is not only a Shadstone idea. This is where serious ecommerce operators are going.
So for me, the next push is building these "business brains" and operating machines across the portfolio.
One direct result that came out of the conversations and the work at the villa is shovel.today — a focused data layer built for the business intelligence needs of our various companies.
This is not about adding one patch to one website. It is about creating ongoing systems. Data comes in, insights are generated, the team acts, the machine improves, and the business compounds over time.
This weekend I am back to Chiang Mai and catching up with the family. It is also back to office work. July 4 is coming up, which is a holiday in the US, but here in Thailand it is a normal work day. And honestly, I feel more motivated than ever.
The Hua Hin week gave me energy. It reminded me that the future is not just AI replacing work. It is AI and people working more closely together, with experienced operators building better machines around themselves.
That is what we are building toward. Thanks everyone for following along, and make the most of the week ahead.