211. Stop Optimizing for Revenue. Optimize for Profit ft. Cem Atik

Cem Atik is the co-founder and CMO of Harucon Ventures, a firm that acquires minority and majority equity stakes in e-commerce and SaaS businesses doing between one and ten million in annual revenue. Rather than operating as an agency or consultancy, Cem and his team get in with capital, take operational control of marketing and finance, and work to make the businesses they partner with structurally profitable.

Most e-commerce brands that come to Harucon Ventures have the same underlying problem: they are optimizing for the wrong things. Revenue looks healthy. ROAS looks acceptable. But unit economics are broken, overhead is bloated, and the margin structure makes scaling impossible.

In this conversation, Cem walks through exactly how his team diagnoses and fixes that. From cutting ad spend by 1.7 million euros in a single month to replacing a fulfillment provider that was silently overcharging a brand shipping 25,000 packages a day, the fixes are rarely glamorous but consistently high-impact. The conversation also covers his four-engine growth framework: acquisition, retention, conversion, and profit-first optimization, and why founders who lead with ROAS are measuring the wrong thing entirely.

Cem also breaks down channel mix strategy, including why Pinterest and Bing Ads are consistently underused, why TikTok affiliate is one of the highest-leverage growth levers available right now, and why the real money in e-commerce is almost always made in retention, not acquisition.

Founders who are scaling but not compounding, or growing revenue while watching margins compress, will find this episode unusually direct and useful.

Website: https://www.vimmi.net

Email us: info@vimmi.net

Podcast website: https://vimmi.net/commerce-untold/

Eitan Koter's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eitankoter/

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VimmiVideoCommerce/featured

Guest: Cem Atik, Co-Founder & CMO, Harucon Ventures

Cem Atik's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cem-atik