The GetJacked Shopify app provides e-commerce merchants with a unique rewards and loyalty program designed to increase shopper retention, though specific information about the founder is not publicly available. Pulse 2.0 interviewed GetJacked founding investor Jared Goetz to learn more.
Jared Goetz’s Background
What is Jared Goetz’s background? Goetz said:
“I started in this world young. I grew up on Long Island, raised by a single mom, and built things online before most people my age had figured out what they wanted to do with their lives. I made my first million at 21, and honestly, the money mattered less than what that win did to my head. It killed a lot of the limiting beliefs I was carrying, and after that, I just kept going. I built what became one of the fastest-growing Shopify stores in 2017, founded Zendrop, scaled it into a platform serving over 100,000 entrepreneurs a month, and had a couple of exits along the way. Ecommerce has been my home base for more than a decade. These days, I am a super proud husband and a father. I am deep into health and biohacking, and I have become much more curious about the inner game behind why people build what they build. GetJacked sits right at the intersection of everything I care about: commerce, technology, and giving the little guy an unfair advantage.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Goetz shared:
“GetJacked came together because a group of us had spent years in ecommerce and kept staring at the same broken thing. Loyalty was costing merchants money, and their customers barely noticed it. Ari Kassman, our CEO and chairman, and the rest of the founding group saw there was a smarter way to fund rewards, and we built around that idea. My seat is strategy, investor, and board member. I am not the one writing the code day-to-day; that is Ari and the engineering team. What I bring is the operator lens. I have launched and scaled Shopify businesses with my own money on the line, so I stay close to growth and partnerships, and to ensuring the product actually solves the problem a real merchant feels at eleven at night, when they are staring at their margins. I push hard on speed and make sure we’re executing.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory while working at the company? Goetz reflected:
“There have already been many good moments, but the one that stuck with me was watching the first Accelerator class come to life. On May 25th, we notified the group of Shopify merchants we accepted into the first class, and we handed Lohnr a $50,000 growth grant, the largest we have funded. There is something different about backing a real founder with real money and watching it land, knowing their runway just got longer. I have been on the receiving end of moments like that earlier in my career, so being on the other side now means a lot to me.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products? Goetz explained:
“At the core, GetJacked turns your loyalty program from a cost center into a profit center. The idea is that we fund rewards with third-party marketing budgets from trusted brands your shoppers already know, so the merchant does not pay for the incentives. There are a few pieces to it. There is the core Shopify app, which installs in a few minutes and does not touch your existing marketing stack. There is the model itself, where partner brand budgets convert into your native loyalty currency, allowing shoppers to earn 10 to 100 times more value than a traditional points system. There is the Accelerator, where we put real growth capital behind standout merchants. And there is GetJacked Lite for stores that want a simpler on-ramp. Across it all, the throughline is the same. Happier shoppers earning more, faster, without the merchant footing the bill.”
Challenges Faced
What have been some of the challenges faced while working at the company? Goetz acknowledged:
“The biggest challenge early on was the same one any new model faces: getting people to believe that something this good is real. When you tell a merchant they can give their customers 10 to 100 times more rewards at zero cost to them, the natural reaction is to wait for the catch. So much of our early work was simply proving it. We let the results do the talking. When a merchant watches purchase velocity climb and abandoned carts return, skepticism disappears quickly. People have been burned by overpriced loyalty apps for years, so earning that trust takes real proof, and we leaned into providing it rather than running from it.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
What has been the evolution of the company’s technology? Goetz noted:
“We started with a focused idea, funding rewards through partner marketing budgets, and the technology has evolved to make that exchange seamless. Early on, the work focused on building the pipes, connecting partner brands, converting their budgets into native loyalty currency, and delivering it within the merchant’s existing program without friction. From there, it has become a real network. We now have more than a hundred partner brands feeding the system, and the more brands and merchants that join, the more value flows to everyone in it. The Shopify install still takes just a few minutes, but beneath that simple setup lies a much larger incentive network than we had when we started.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s biggest milestones? Goetz cited:
“A few stand out. Reaching 100 partner brands in the network was a big one, because that network effect is the whole game. The more brands and merchants join, the more everyone earns. Launching the Accelerator in May and notifying that first class of Shopify merchants was another, especially writing that fifty-thousand-dollar grant for Lohnr. And honestly, the performance itself is a milestone. When you can show a merchant real lifts rather than just promising them, the conversation changes completely.”
Customer Success Stories
One have been some customer success stories? Goetz highlighted:
“Two come to mind. A national quick-service restaurant brand used GetJacked to reward customers with free burritos for playing games after purchase. Gaming partners, not the restaurant, funded the incentives, and those customers returned significantly faster, with purchase velocity landing around 2.3x. The second is a leading beauty brand that offered shoppers a 10x increase in points for doing what they do every day: discovering apps and playing games – funded by partners adjacent to their favorite retailer. This activated over 10,000 dormant shoppers in 24 hours! What I love about both is that the shopper walks away genuinely happy, and the merchant never has to pay for the reward. That is the model working exactly as it is supposed to.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from the competition? Goetz affirmed:
“What sets us apart is who pays. Almost every loyalty app on Shopify is a cost you carry. You fund the discounts and points and hope the retention math works out. We flipped that. With GetJacked, rewards are funded by partner brands that want to reach your shoppers, so merchants build stronger loyalty without paying for incentives.”
“On top of that, it is a network, so it compounds as it grows. Every new brand and merchant adds value for everyone already in it, with nobody having to build anything new. Most loyalty tools are a feature you bolt on. We are building loyalty infrastructure that is actually an economy.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Goetz emphasized:
“We want GetJacked to be the obvious move, not a nice-to-have but the default way a merchant thinks about loyalty. That means growing the partner network well beyond where it is today, bringing in more merchants, and deepening the Accelerator so we can put real capital behind the founders building the next wave of great Shopify brands. Personally, I want us to keep widening the gap between what a shopper earns with us and what they earn with a traditional points program. If we can keep increasing that number while keeping the merchant’s cost at zero, we win.”
Additional Thoughts
Do you have additional thoughts? Goetz concluded:
“What I keep paying attention to is how quietly broken loyalty has become for everyone involved. Merchants are squeezed on margins, customers are drowning in points they will never use, and the old playbook of discounting your way to retention no longer holds up. I think the next few years belong to models where value comes from sources other than the merchant’s own pocket, and that is the bet we are making. Beyond the business side, the most fun part of this for me is that it puts more in the hands of the shopper and the small merchant at the same time. I have spent my whole career trying to give regular entrepreneurs an edge, and this is that same mission in a new form.”
