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HappyStack is designed to identify growth opportunities in a brand’s current set-up and to ‘connect them with software providers that will drive execution’ .
One of the co-founders of tech unicorn Wayflyer today (12 December) has launched HappyStack, a new platform which also specialises in e-commerce.
The Dublin-based start-up, which will centre around an e-commerce intelligence solutions programme, is headed by former Wayflyer chief financial officer Jack Pierse, Joe Bollard and Jamie Khan.
The trio currently lead a team of 12 employees but intend to expand the number of roles within HappyStack up to 20 within the next three months.
According to the trio, HappyStack is designed to identify growth opportunities within a brand’s current set-up and to “connect them with software providers that will drive execution”.
Elaborating on what the company’s platform can do for its customers, Khan asserted that HappyStack wants to enable every brand “to do more, with less”.
“By analysing your growth, technology and marketing performance, while also benchmarking you against your competitors, we can uncover strategic opportunities,” he said.
Khan further claimed that the platform also evaluates the performance of leading software companies in the industry, thus enabling the HappyStack team to make data-backed recommendations for products.
At present, the company counts brands such as True Classic, Spacegoods and Cuts among those using its platform.
Inspiration from speculation
HappyStack’s founders revealed that they were particularly inspired by a statement from OpenAI’s Sam Altman.
During an interview back in January, Altman speculated about the world’s first one-person unicorn enabled by advances in artificial intelligence (AI). The trio said that they believe this vision could be realised in e-commerce.
Pierse explained: “It’s not uncommon for direct-to-consumer brands to scale to 9-figures in revenue with only a few hires. We worked with many of them at Wayflyer.
“Ten years ago, they typically relied on 10 software tools and had about 20 employees. Today, that has shifted towards 30 software tools and just five staff.
“We’re huge believers that with a strong product, the right strategy and an optimal tech stack, we’ll see a single founder scale their brand to a $1bn valuation in the coming years, and we want to play a key role in making that happen.”
Pierce also expressed his view that choosing software is still “largely opinion-based”, but maintained that this shouldn’t be the case.
“E-commerce founders often receive over 25 sales emails daily, most of which come from software reps promising huge results but lacking an understanding of the brand’s specific needs,” he said. “This leads to constant software churn, wasted resources and investments in projects that don’t move the dial, not to mention the cost of missed opportunities.”
Pierce’s former company, Wayflyer, was recently classed as Ireland’s fastest-growing tech company at this year’s Deloitte Technology Fast 50 Awards. The Award ranks the country’s 50 fastest growing tech companies based on their revenue growth over a four-year period.
And in September, it was included as one of four Irish start-ups (Fenergo, Teamwork, Tines and Wayflyer) which were listed on France Digitale’s Leading European Tech Scale-ups map for 2024.
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