Rocked

Bruce Buchanan spent a decade building Jetstar into Asia Pacific's largest low-cost airline. During that journey, he discovered something counterintuitive: one of the first direct-to-consumer businesses in the world, Jetstar discovered the immense value of the "transaction moment"—that critical instant when a customer is checking out. By putting the right products and messages in front of customers at that exact moment, Jetstar could double profitability. When Bruce left the airline, he saw this principle could transform e-commerce globally. In 2012, he founded Rocked to make e-commerce "smarter, faster and better" by mastering the transaction moment.

Rocked's core insight was deceptively simple: at checkout, third-party brands would pay to show their products to highly-engaged buyers. A flower pot company checking out on Shopify might see a fertilizer upsell because the fertilizer brand paid Rocked to place it there. But Rocked didn't just take a cut of advertising spend—it was far more sophisticated. The platform dynamically optimized product selection, pricing, UX, and creative to maximize relevance in real-time. Someone buying parking might want to see distance to the garage; another might want a photo. Rocked's algorithm figured it out and sold 50-60% more of the complementary product compared to baseline.

Over time, Bruce built three distinct revenue streams around this insight: advertising (brands paying to reach transaction-moment customers), distributed commerce (a marketplace rev-share like a credit card fee, typically 3%), and SaaS (for enterprise clients wanting their own products presented at checkout). The model was elegant: Rocked kept 50% of advertising spend, passed 50% to e-commerce partners, and bore ~43 cents per dollar in hosting, technology, and operations—netting 7 cents per advertising dollar.

By the time of this 2021 interview, Rocked had 3,000 enterprise clients across 16 countries. Growth came from three channels: new verticals (retail and B2B were major wins), geographic expansion (Japan took off), and product expansion (the Shopify app launched just months before, targeting SMBs). Critically, Bruce noted that ~20% of annual growth came from existing customers expanding into new products—a powerful organic expansion dynamic.

The business benefited from positive unit economics: e-commerce clients (the supply side) had low single-digit gross revenue churn and actually negative churn due to expansion, while advertising and product clients showed seasonal volatility but steady annual retention.

COVID-19 tested Rocked severely. The company went into 2020 with 50-60% of volume in travel, ticketing, entertainment, and sports. When lockdowns hit, those verticals dropped 97% (ticketing/entertainment) and 60-70% (travel). But the company had made a prescient acquisition in B2B the year prior, and the retail vertical—which had been built for years—suddenly exploded as every incumbent needed e-commerce fast. The new business pipeline "went crazy." By mid-2020 fundraising, despite COVID's visible impact, investors could see the underlying business growing 35-40% year-over-year. Rocked raised $80M at a $450M pre-money valuation.

The key insight: Rocked measured success two ways. The reported $100M revenue for 2020 was artificially flat due to COVID impacts, but the "underlying business"—adjusting for the temporary collapse—grew steadily at 35-40%. This framework proved critical to communicating real momentum to investors.

By 2021, Rocked was on track to do $170M in revenue with ~$90M in gross profit. The underlying business (adjusted for COVID impacts) was tracking toward $200M. The company operated in 16 countries, served 3,000+ enterprise clients, and had just launched an SMB product via Shopify. The three revenue streams were in different growth phases: advertising was the largest and stable, distributed commerce was growing fastest (likely 50%+ YoY), and SaaS was the smallest (~$5-7M annually) but also expanding. With $80M in fresh capital, Rocked was positioned to acquire complementary businesses and expand into new verticals and geographies—though Bruce noted there weren't many competitors truly focused on the transaction moment optimization space.