Here's what you don't know about Matt Ezyk.

Welcome to the Struggle Bus, a VSpot Show, the home of the e-com early news. I'm your host Vinny O Brien, or as my friends like to call me, hey you in the bushes. As an aged journeyman in e-com, I wanted to create a space called the Struggle Bus for us to get together and share experiences through empathy. E-commerce can be a lonely place, but our stories, if told make all of that a little bit easier. And today we spell e-commerce E-Z-Y-K. I am joined by the wonderful and kind Matt Ezik. Matt is one of the few e-com leaders who talks about AI discovery omnichannel without trying to sell you a silver bullet. He's senior director of e-com engineering at Hannah Anderson, ex-director at Petsupermarket, and a self-professed e-com Swiss Army knife. How's it going, Matt? Good.

Good to see you and good to be here.

Yeah, thanks for joining me. And you're one of those— you're one of the first cross-pond people I was lucky enough to meet. But I'm going to take you back a bit first. Describe a 17, 18-year-old Matt Isak to me. What were you into? What kind of hairstyle did you have?

That's kind of my style. I grew up playing hockey. I lived in the Massachusetts, Boston area. I actually had hair down to my ears. And, uh, so I was into hockey, I was into music. I, uh, I started playing music around then. I'm a bass player. Some, a lot of people know that about me.

Mm-hmm.

And, uh, that was, yeah, that was my life. I, I just revolved around hockey and music.

What were the posters you had on your wall? You strike me as a poster on the wall type.

Yeah. Um, I could probably even dig up some old pictures of that too. It's just like a lot of the bands I was interested in and, uh, yeah, it was, Um, you know, I, I, I often think about like growing up in like the, the '90s as, uh, being very privileged because it's a, it's a, it's a world that is long gone and I, I, I enjoyed it so much and I, I don't think I really appreciated it as much as I should have.

So did you get a chance at the time to understand what was happening or is it a retrospective feeling that you have?

I think it's a retrospective feeling. Feeling like there's just like when you're in it and you're in the moment, that's the world you're in. But yeah, the '90s were such a simple time and there's just a lot of good music, good movies. You know, as much as I love technology, I also love being away from technology and it was much easier to do that back then. So yeah, it was '90s were really special.

There's something about your personality from speaking to you a few times that makes me think you probably cross over that divide of you love the creativity of what technology brings, but you love the anchor of where you've come from.

Is that a—

yeah, you're kind of calm.

Yeah, absolutely. I'm a very creative person, um, both with like, you know, I really had a lot of that outlet with music, uh, as a, as a musician. And, uh, yeah, I, I definitely think that a lot of people on the technology side are like very black and white, stick me in front of a computer, let me write code. And, um, and, and those people really excel at doing that type of stuff. I'm, I've, uh, sometimes found, found myself in a place where it's hard to really pin down what I'm good at because I've, I'm a technologist that's also creative. And so not a, a common skillset, but I, I often find myself in roles where in my career. Like, I, you know, I can do the day-to-day, and then I like to branch out and do other things too, and that kind of scratches the itch.

One, one of the, the, the things I wanted to ask then about the music— are you a trained musician, or were you self-taught?

I was self-taught, yeah. I, uh, I picked up a bass at 14, and, um, I played drums. I played a lot of different instruments like piano and all, all sorts of stuff, but I taught myself how to read and write music and play. I played professionally from, I think the time that I was working remotely 100%, which was 2015 or '14, I went out and started basically moonlighting as a professional musician. Like just as like, okay, like if I was going to go earn money to put a roof over my head, how would I approach this? And that's what I wanted to do for a living. Uh, I actually almost went to college for it. Quickly realized that it was difficult to make money back then. This was like the early 2000s. Uh, I think it's different now with social media, but definitely back then it's challenging to, to earn a living playing music. And so, you know, I had a great day job and, uh, I could work remote and then, you know, play gigs on the weekends. And I did that up until 2019 where it just, it just became too much. I was, uh, I was working at Accenture at the time, and, and I was consulting with, um, with Disney, and I had to fly out to LA to their offices every week and then go home and play gigs on the weekend. So I think that really was the point where it burnt me out.

I have these kind of High Fidelity undertones going through my head. What was the name of your first group? It wasn't Kathleen Turner Overdrive, was it?

No, I don't remember. I mean, when I played professionally, I just played as like a hired gun. Uh, so that was really interesting to me 'cause it was always a challenge. Like I would build a name for myself and a reputation just, uh, by, you know, really doing the things that are in your control. And eventually I would just get random calls and be like, hey, we're, we're playing at this venue on Friday and here's the set list and here are the keys. And oh, by the way, this song that we're playing in the second set, we wrote it in the bathroom last night and here's an audio file so you can listen to it. And I love that. Like anytime someone throws a challenge my way, I'm just like immediately engaged. And we wouldn't, we would never rehearse. We just show up and they just expect me to know my stuff and play it.

Wow. That's amazing. It all kind of leads to the sort of personality that at least I observe of you. You're very comfortable in this modern world of fast-paced technology. You assimilate information really quickly. And I think some of that's down to the musician in you. I was speaking to a musician this week and there's something about the rhythm of music and the structure and the certainty of music that suits an engineering brain, but then you've got this creativity layer in terms of being able to read it. And then on the other side, you're writing it. Lots of people are very good at reading, but they can't do the writing part of it. If you were to be a musician today, where do you sit?

What's that? Sorry.

If you're sitting down to be a musician today, are you going to be the one who's reading the music or writing it?

Probably writing is where I would, like, I, I have really, I've really stepped back from it since 2019 'cause it was just nice to have my weekends free as an adult, which I, I, uh, I, I didn't have in my adult life up until 2019. Um, and, and interesting with AI, there's a lot of tools out there that you can, like, there's incredible stuff. Like there's one called Suno where you can just take ideas and hum them or put lyrics and whatever, and it will create. Whatever you're imagining. And I, I just remember just even just being a kid, like I would have song ideas in my brain, but like I didn't have access to a studio or the different instruments or something to record with to really get those ideas down. And then eventually technology improved and we had, you know, iPhones and, uh, I can go through all my like voice notes of like, I'll be just driving and I would just have an idea and just hum it into a voice note. And now we're at the point with generative AI where you can use a tool like Suno and really just have like a fully produced song just from like humming something into a phone. It's crazy.

We're at this phase and I'm sorry, Chris Martin from Coldplay goes around like that. He's got his little phone. He was on Howard Stern's thing where he captured all this stuff. But we've kind of had this boring phase in technology. I'm going to be really generalistic and call it that. And Then I talk to people like you and you seem so excited about the phase that we're in because of the power of possibility. Can you maybe walk me through the last 10 years and then bring me up to '22, '23 and why you feel enthusiastic about things right now?

Yeah, because the, I think, and especially in like the e-commerce world that we're in, it's, it's making things easier to for customers to buy stuff, right? Or to do whatever they want to do. Like I, I'm an early adopter of technology. I always will be. When we were sitting here in like 20, the end of '22, when ChatGPT first was released, I was immediately curious about it and started using it. And I was having a conversation with my wife this morning, actually, just talking about like how far we've come in just a few years. Of how those tools can like change your life. Like I use it for like health and fitness and I use it for music and there's a lot of things where, you know, I would use technology 10 years ago to improve what I was doing in those realms, for example. But it could never tie everything together and connect the dots like generative can. So I think it just makes people's lives better. Like we're, we're still at its infancy where most people You know, they use it sometimes, they use it in Google, whether they know it or not. But once they understand the power of it, and, and I've watched, actually my wife discovered this on her own and it was pretty cool to see. It's like, it's, it's just gonna improve your life. And that's, that, that's ultimately I think what, what they're designed to do. I mean, yes, we, we need to be profitable and run businesses and, but, you know, tho— those tools I've seen just improve people's lives and, and including my own.

It feels like we're trying to force shopping into that space right now when shopping to me feels more like a chore. And the convenience factor for me is really simple things like, you know, cardless payment and all those things. I still enjoy a little bit of friction, but right now we're trying to shoehorn shopping in there. It feels to me like we're always going to be shoehorning it in and we're kind of going to force shopping into the fabric of how generative involves itself in our lives. How, how do you see kind of the next phase playing out as best you can? I mean, it's so unpredictable as we see every day with, with news, the way it breaks out.

Yeah, it's a lot of the experimentation I've done is around that. And by the way, it's so hard to find time to do this. Like I do it at nights and weekends. Like I, I think a lot of people do. Just because I'm just personally interested in it. I also do it for career, but I, I think the more you can find ways to make people's lives easier, that's when it's going to work. Like, so for me in particular, one of the experiments I did last year, I, I was like, okay, like I, I travel a lot, I work a lot. When I'm home, I want to get ingredients to cook healthy meals, right? For the most part. And I don't have the desire or the time to go grocery shopping. I know some people like that. I personally don't. So I built a GPT where I can say, all right, I'm going to be home Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. I want— and it knows everything about me. It knows like the things I like, the things I don't like. I want to cook healthy meals on these days. It gives me a list of recipes and then it makes an API call to Instacart and then builds those carts of all the things I need. Like maybe I need a red onion or mayonnaise or whatever. The, the point I haven't had time to figure out is I would love to get to a point where it can, I can build it where it can price shop all the different stores in my area. And then I would get, you know, with, with the Instacart Premium, you just have to have a $35 minimum, so you can, it's pretty easy to hit that. I can get a couple different deliveries with everything I need and not even think about it. And then, you know, after work on Thursday, I got a recipe, I got all the ingredients sitting on my doorstep. That's like, that improves my life and that, that's personal to me. I think everyone's different, so it's hard to, it's hard to really find that, but I think there's a lot of people that have that use case. So yeah, you, yeah, people use technology to make shopping better and easier, then it'll pick up adoption. But to your point, like you can't just do it just for, just to do it. And if it's not going to help anyone, then why does it exist?

Yeah, Albertsons, I think they partnered with Pinterest in '23 to look at the behavior of what am I having for dinner? And it was exactly as you described it. It was using their API to understand what was available, what you like, what meals you were pinning. And it then created this kind of behavioral shopping cart for you, which I thought was really interesting at the time. And now we see it evolved where we can have full ownership of something like that. And the point about checkout, the, one of the engineers, the lead engineers in Shopify was interviewed yesterday and he made this really interesting point. He said, we don't have a universal checkout that we have tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of versions of it because of the way we allow it to be redesigned and redeployed despite what we think on the other side of it. But I just thought it was an interesting comment. You've always been really generous in terms of giving time. You said you, you don't find a lot of time for things outside of work. Was that a conscious choice you made earlier in your career, Matt, or was it something that you've seen benefits you and you decided you just keep it going? You give people time, seems to be to everybody, and you never seem to, um, you never seem to shy away from discussion.

Yeah, I leaned into that as a, uh, you know, a young career kid in my early 20s. I, most people don't know this about me, but I used to own some cell phone stores back when I was in early 20s. Like I, I got into that business and, uh, before I started my technology career and I joined a networking group called BNI and I, I learned pretty quickly that, you know, I was like the young buck in the group and no one was really taking me seriously 'cause they didn't know me. I was young, uh, so I sat there and I was like, well, how am I going to make this work for me? And what I learned there and what I've kind of taken with me in my career is that you usually get back more than what you give. Um, if you're really generous with your knowledge and your time, uh, you can really reap the, the rewards from it. And I did that in my early 20s, and then that's how I was able to build relationships with people. And really understood how much relationships matter. And so when I, you know, I've, I've unfortunately been most of, most of my adult life have been employed, but there was a time a few years ago where, you know, the company I worked for had budget cuts and I was laid off. And I don't really ask for much from my network, but I did at that point. And the outpouring of support I got was like incredible. And it's because I've spent years and years and years cultivating that and just really being like authentic with giving my time. Um, now there, there's certain situations where that doesn't make sense, right? Like if you're looking at like a sales relationship, right? Yeah. I mean, if I did that, then I would never have time to do anything. But like, if the, if it's a relationship I want to cultivate, I always look for ways I can help people and usually I can figure it out and it's, That's always served me well. I'll continue to do that forever.

And where did that kind of self-awareness or empathy come from? Like, was that at home? Was it people you played hockey with? Who kind of inspired that in you or helped you figure those things out?

I don't know. I think like I would growing up, I would rather, I would rarely get that myself. So I wanted to give it and, and once I saw the the return. Like, I would, I, I would do it without an expectation of return, and when I saw the actual return that I would get, it was pretty interesting, and I just kind of leaned into it more.

There's something about the hockey player in you that kind of grounds you as well, like, compared to football or basketball or baseball. There's this— and, and not being in the hockey environment, just having read about it and listened to people who've played it, it's, it's a, it's a different kind of mindset you need to play hockey. It's more self-focused yet team-focused. And as I said, humility is kind of the word that I feel I associate with it. What was it like growing up being a hockey player, and how did you arrive at that choice versus other sports?

I, uh, pretty similar, I think, with a lot of people who grew up in, in like the '80s and '90s in the US. Like, I played every sport. I played soccer, baseball, football, hockey, I just love sports. I still do golf, right? I just found like that I like hockey and I was just good at it. Like that was the one sport where I felt like I was really good at it. And I took that same, you know, the same approach I took with business today. I took with hockey, I take with music as well, especially playing bass, right? So with hockey, I played defense, physically built really well for that. Like I'm, you know, you know, short and wide. That's perfect for a defender. Um, and I, I wanted to win games. I didn't really care about my personal performance as much, but I was just subconsciously always looking to win. Um, and that's the same mentality that works really well with playing bass in a band. Uh, in fact, it works so well in that, that it was just so easy for me to get work. Like, remember, like, I, I looked at what I did playing professionally as a job. And I played in Nashville, I played on huge stages, I played everywhere. And a lot of people ask me that, they're like, how do you get these gigs? And it's, it's so simple. It's stupidly simple with, with playing bass, right? You— it's a, it's a blending instrument. It's not really a solo instrument. And so many people you see out there are just noodling and playing to make notes. And just like, go up there, be an be a nice person to be around, have great tone, great gear, know your stuff, and then just play what you're supposed to play. It's that simple. And most people don't do that. And because of that, I, you know, I was able to get tons and tons of work, more than I would ever want.

I'm going to come back to that final point in a sec, but I want to quiz you on NHL '94. I think the best version of NHLK hockey on the Mega Drive what was it called on your side of the pond? But I think that EA Sports series, what, 3 or 4 years? What was it called?

It was on Nintendo. It was— well, back, I had it on Nintendo and Super Nintendo, and then, uh, eventually Xbox.

Yeah, I, I was a Sega guy, and I just remember that being the best game of all time. I used to pick the Montreal team. I think it had Curt Muller, Shane Corson, um, they had a really strong team. But I just remember that being the mother of all games. The bass comparison that you've given, I think is really interesting. The fact that you're the rhythm within everything else, the rest of the music's already orchestrated. Is that how you see yourself as a director of engineering, like blending merchandising and marketing and all the ends?

Yeah, that's a, you know, I've made that comparison a lot and that leads to servant leadership, right? I was, A lot of the groups and bands I was in, even though I was, uh, um, sometimes a hired gun just to play a couple shows, I, I took a leadership position naturally, but my goal was to make everyone better around me. And that's, that's what I do with work. Like I have a large team here at Hannah and I, um, I look at my, my job and the reason for me being there is to make the teams do their best work and enjoy the work that they do. And yeah, I've really taken that approach with everything I do.

How do you then assimilate all the information that's being thrown at us every day? Because look, you and I share a couple of Slack groups and you could spend all day every day just in those groups trying to figure things out. How do you determine what's worth taking with you into your day or leaving it behind you?

I think seeing common themes, right? Like if it in there on LinkedIn and just the news I consume, like when you see the same things being mentioned across everything, then you know when, when there's smoke, there's fire, right? So you're, you're seeing a lot of smoke. So that's, there's a lot of noise out there as, as you know, but you know, a lot of times I'll like, like a good example was the, the recent news with OpenAI pulling back on commerce inside of, or the shopping experience inside of OpenAI. Like everybody was talking about that and like I was actually on PTO, like, or coming back from PTO and I just kind of opened up everything after being away for a while and everybody was talking about that. So I was like, okay, this is something I need to learn about and understand and, and really have a good grounded point of view and how that affects me and my business.

Yeah, you go from PTO to PTSD pretty quickly. Um, that's right. The common theme that's emerging now that I hear a lot of people talk about is the hiring challenge, right? It's going to be more and more difficult, but there's a side of it I'd love to hear from your perspective, just given your seniority in our industry. What are the, what are the upskill challenges we need to set for ourselves as leaders in the industry?

Uh, that's a good question. It's, I guess it depends on your role. I think with everyone, it's understanding how AI applies to your role and how it can augment what you do and not replace you. Like, sure, there's going to be roles that it replaces. That's, we're not going to get away from that. And that's going to become more and more as we go on. But I think for a lot of us, we can use these tools to just be 2, 3, 5, 10x better than what we are. And I, I really strive to do that and learn how to be better at that every day. And I have been, like, I feel like I'm so much more productive with the tools I have and like the workflow. I don't feel like a lot of people really lean into it as much as I do. And you have to at this point, like in 2026, absolutely. Like you're, you're going to just stand out as a, just a better, being better at what you do in your career. Once you're using these tools they have available to you. I think that was definitely the case 3, 4 years ago, but now so many other people are doing it, you're going to— the gap is going to widen even more and more this year.

So we're getting close to where I try to keep these things tight. I'm going to be getting to your— if your career was a song right now, what would it be? But we're just before ShopTalk. I try not to timestamp these too much. What are those things? What are those themes you're going to be looking for over at ShopTalk this year? And what are the things you're going to be trying to avoid?

I avoid hype as much as possible. It's been an interesting, after going to ShopTalk for years, I've seen the, the hype curve with AI go up and down. I think in '24 and '25, it was just, everyone was talking about AI, but I didn't really see too many really good concrete use cases for it. Now you do. So the hype cycle's still there, but now there's definitely a lot of use cases for it. And it's not just in engineering, it's through marketing, it's through everything. I, I love ShopTalk because I see literally every vendor that I work with there and I get to spend time with them and I want to understand what they're doing with, with AI that I can use in my business now, uh, because that's the quickest path to value. I already have a contract with them or working with them. And there's quite a few that are doing some amazing things. Like, uh, one I've been using a lot recently is with a, uh, a vendor called LogRocket and they record sessions on my site and they translate friction and errors into like technical information that my team can use to triage. But the problem with all these tools and whether it's something like that or a DXA tool like Quantimetric or Full Story, there's thousands and thousands and thousands of sessions. So it's someone's full-time job to sit there and sift through them all. And all these tools have AI, but I like LogRocket in particular because I'm able to go in there and have conversations with it and, and it will pick like 4 sessions for me to watch, which is much more manageable and it'll sift through all the sessions and look at them. So, um, that's something really tangible and useful that I can use in my everyday and my teams can use. Uh, so that's typically what I'm looking for. Uh, every, every booth is just, I actually had vendors, uh, ask me for feedback on their booths and all of them, they're just like, we do AI, AI, AI, AI, generative AI, AI, everything. And yes, you have to, it's, it's a fine line. You have to, to say that you're innovating and doing something there, but what's the actual tangible value that you're going to give me as a customer? And, you know, a lot of times it's just, it's not really that clear.

The one thing that strikes me about listening to you now is that the go-to-market strategy is going to change drastically for vendors or needs over the next 12 months. It's no longer good enough just to say something or tag yourself along with a trend or shift that's out there. I'm conscious of the time. I would try to keep this, and I've already overrun, but you could talk all day, and I think we could listen to you all day. If your career was a song right now, Matt, what's it gonna be?

I'm gonna go Drake, Started From the Bottom.

Ooh, straight in with Drake. My God. I was expecting something from a different generation for you. I wasn't expecting Drake.

That's, that's how, that's how I feel. Cause I've, I started an early technology career, um, making very little money, working overnight, doing, uh, M&A projects at CVS. And yeah, a lot of times I try to ground myself in that thought and it's like, you know, I've come a long way and I feel like I got a long way to go still, but it's definitely keeps you humble.

So yeah, you carry those, you carry qualities like that in abundance and you, your final question to you, you kind of say this is kind of somewhere in the middle of the road for you. Where does your ambition get to in your head?

Yeah, that's a good question. I would love to lead a brand or technology company one day as one of the top executives. That's a goal I think I've had for a very long time. And okay, well, yeah, we'll see where my path leads me, but that's kind of where I've been pointing for quite a while.

Well, if you need an Irish head of entertainment or someone across the pond, get me in mind when you get there. Will do. Matt, thank you so much for taking time out. People can find you on LinkedIn, I guess. Where else can they look out for you?

I'm on Twitter. I don't use it as much, or X, but LinkedIn's definitely the best place.

Amazing. Matt, you've been an incredibly gracious guest as ever. I appreciate everything you do for us and for our industry and for being so kind and Never saying no to the silly requests that I put in front of you fairly frequently. So thank you very much.

For you, anything.

Have a great morning, my friend.

Me too.

Good luck.