Winning Commerce through Bentonville's STOPWATCH with Meagan Kinmonth Bowman

Summary

On this episode of The Bentonville Beacon, host James Bell is joined by Meagan Bowman, Founder and CEO of STOPWATCH, a cloud-based commerce software. STOPWATCH allows businesses to thrive in the blinding speed and complexity of commerce by optimizing profit across retailers in real time. In addition to leading STOPWATCH, Meagan is also a member of Fast Company’s Executive Board and a full-time contributor to the Forbes Technology Council. Throughout the episode, James and Meagan discuss how COVID impacted supply chain management and consumer behavior, the specific challenges women in business face and the specialty of Bentonville’s startup ecosystem.

Thanks for tuning in!

Show Notes:

(0:57) Introduction to Meagan

(5:35) A Recovering Supply Chain

(8:04) How COVID Changed Consumer Behavior

(12:54) About STOPWATCH

(17:14) Meagan’s Experience with Fundraising

(23:19) Advice to Women Raising Capital

(27:13) Balancing Motherhood with Entrepreneurship

(29:11) Why Bentonville is Right for STOPWATCH

(32:29) Bentonville’s Startup Ecosystem

(37:12) Bentonville’s Past, Present and Future

(40:29) #Bentonville Story

(45:29) Closing Questions

‍Links

James Bell

Bentonville Economic Development 

Meagan Bowman

STOPWATCH

Michael Paladino

Endeavor Heartland

Atento Capital/412 Angels

Bentonville Square

Wright’s BBQ

Medical Device Guru

Quotes

“When you have a barcode on the back of a product, a different barcode could be on the back of the same product in a different retailer. So what stopwatch does is reverse engineer and put the genie back in the bottle and ask, ‘If you had one sky how would you build this out differently?’” - Meagan Bowman, (15:20)

“Developer talent is fantastic here. It’s very prevalent in things like Walmart and JB Hunt. It’s stuff that’s organized and it’s stuff big money gets made off of. So I knew from a culture perspective, [Bentonville] is going to be a really good place to build a team.” - Meagan Bowman, (30:14) 

“I like that type of energy. It’s kind of like get-up-and-go energy. I think one thing I really love about Northwest Arkansas is it doesn’t feel to me like you have to work super fast and be really flashy to make friends.” - Meagan Bowman, (34:18)