Behavior Beats Identity: FERMÀT Co-Founder & CEO Rishabh Jain

This week’s episode is a deep dive into personalization, a huge category in e-commerce that’s getting rebuilt from the ground up for the AI era. 

FERMÀT is an AI-native personalization platform that sits on top of your e-commerce platform and customizes the site experience based on a visitor’s behavior, not their identity. That distinction sounds subtle, but it turns out to be the whole ballgame and it connects directly to agentic commerce because agents show up with intent, not an identity. We also pick up Rishabh’s founder journey and some very candid company-building advice along the way.

Highlights 

• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝟮𝟬% 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝗹𝗶𝗳𝘁: FERMÀT's data shows personalizing on behavior alone, even for fully incognito visitors, converts roughly 20% better than personalizing on identity and past purchases.
• 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗼𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗼𝗻𝗲: the marketer's dream of one-to-one was "a lack of imagination", the same person is a different shopper on Instagram, Google, and ChatGPT. 
• 𝗗𝗲𝘁𝗲𝗰𝘁, 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗺𝗲𝗻𝗱, 𝗴𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲: instead of humans watching a sample of session recordings and shipping site changes months later, agents trained on commerce watch every session, recommend changes, and generate the new experience.
• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗹𝗼𝗼𝗺𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: identity-based personalization was state-of-the-art 10 years ago. Rishabh's take on the incumbents: if nothing changes, "their 3 to 400 million of revenue will become 2 to 300."
• 𝗠𝗶𝗻𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗮𝗱, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗜𝗗: even when an Instagram visitor is anonymous, the ad they clicked carries demographics, performance history, and frequency data… context most brands never use.
• 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁: an agent is only as good as the feedback, context, and iteration speed you give it and every "actually, I also care about the collar" update is behavior data.
• 𝗦𝗮𝘆 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗲: Platforms are using AI to verify your pages and truth gets rewarded, not dinged.
• 𝗦𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁 ≠ 𝘀𝗵𝗼𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗿 𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗻𝘁: support agents should stick to facts and policies; shopper agents should infer.

Rishabh is one of the clearest thinkers I’ve talked to on where personalization goes in an agent-first world, and his founder advice at the end is worth the listen on its own. Enjoy the conversation.

Timestamps: 

02:44 Welcome Rishabh 
03:37 Rishabh's backstory: physics, Wall Street, PhD
06:33 Building three businesses at LiveRamp
07:56 Founding story: Apple ATT and iOS 14.5
10:33 Detect, recommend, generate
12:27 Where FERMÀT sits in the stack
13:57 Many-to-one personalization
15:22 The Bloomreach question
19:00 Does current behavior beat past behavior?
21:18 The data: a 20% conversion lift
22:34 The agentic commerce connection
23:44 The real estate agent analogy
25:41 Reading intent from incognito traffic
26:28 Into the weeds: mining a Meta ad for context
30:37 Side quest: the SEO cloaking myth
33:47 Writing for agents, bots, and humans
34:49 On-site shopper agents
39:40 Company building: know your why
42:38 Where to find Rishabh + the 1 to 100 podcast

👉 Connect with Rishabh: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rishabhmjain/
👉 Learn more about FERMÀT: https://www.fermatcommerce.com/
👉 1 to 100 podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6WAB5oOzco9oWrQmYmuFZ6

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