This video is lots of fun. A bit long and harsh on our consumer-driven culture, but definitely worth it. The video uses a great quote from economist Victor LeBeau:
“Our enormously productive economy… demands that we make consumption our way of life, that we convert the buying and use of goods into rituals, that we seek our spiritual satifaction, our ego satisfaction in consumption.”
If you’re curious but don’t want to spend 20 minutes on it, watch the video on The Story of Stuff Project website, where it’s interactive and you can skip between sections.
A fascinating new white paper recently published by AdAge and JWT focuses on today’s moms ages 18-44, clearly stating “women with children still handle the bulk of the household and child-care responsibilities”. It’s just amazing to see how much more women still do in the home:
The high concentration of yellow dots on the upper right of this matrix is annoying… In any case, the paper’s writers Marissa Miley and Ann Mack focus on how marketers should communicate with today’s women: “…the second half of this decade has brought a backlash against the mythical Supermom—that hyperactive Type-A personality who whips up perfect cookies and perfect children—and an embrace of the likable, more relatable real mom, who doesn’t obsess over the little things. Spilled milk? No problem.”
They talk about economizing, quoting one of their interview subjects as saying “cheap is chic.” And they examine women using the internet to shop: ” Not surprisingly, they are turning to the internet to make purchases. In the free moments after they put the kids to bed, for example, they’ll hop online and visit highly targeted female and/or social-networking websites to check out the latest trends or deals.”
We thank AdAge for allowing us to post this. Click here to read the entire document, it’s an excellent read.
I’ve dedicated much of the past nine months to observing business activity in secondary markets, past and present. I now find myself absolutely fascinated by the eBay vs. Craigslist trial which started last week. EBay acquired 28% of Craigslist in 2004 but claims that in 2007 Craigslist improperly diluted eBay’s interest to 24% – essentially throwing out eBay’s member from Craigslist’s board, as that required a minimum stake of 25%. Craigslist in tern counter-sued claiming eBay used its investment in Craigslist to help Kijiji.
Numerous interesting interactions are playing out in court as a result of these disagreements because the leaders of these two companies are publicly testifying. These are all people I have been admiring from afar: I read books about them, articles about them, their blogs, their Tweets, watch video clips… anything I can get a hold of to learn about their work. So it’s terribly disconcerting to see them all fighting amongst themselves. I look at Meg Whitman, Pierre Omidyar, Craig Newmark and Jim Buckmaster all taking the stand but what I see is Wonder Woman, Superman, Spiderman and Captain America. I imagined them as being the good guys, together defending that beautiful flea market in the sky… They’re my heroes, they’re not supposed to be arguing with each other.
Anyway. In terms of interesting specifics, as far as I can tell following from my laptop in Tel Aviv (while emitting personal attacks aimed at Wonder Woman):
After attending just his first two Craigslist board meetings, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar asked to be replaced. Omidyar testified that he was disappointed to see Craigslist’s management wasn’t looking for ways the two companies can work together. Which probably says it all.
Jim Buckmaster, Craigslist’s CEO, posted this on Craigslist’s official blog before the trial started and his blog post contains a useful link to Craigslist’s pre-trial brief. The only noteworthy Tweet I can find from one of my superheros is Pierre Omidyar’s, who posted this complaint the night before he testified: “One of the things I am most annoyed by is finding out in the evening that I have to wake up earlier than I thought the next day.” Turns out Superman’s not a morning person.
Lala.com started out as a CD swapping site. Founded back in 2006, Lala was able to raise over $14 million from Bain Capital and Ignition Partners, more than enough to launch a popular swap site and then adjust based on operational results. Indeed today swapping is only one feature on a site which is better known for enabling virtual ownership of music via a Digital Locker. Consumers “stream a song for a dime,” paying only 10 cents (US) for the unlimited right to listen to it online.
Lala became a full fledged online retailer in 2008, raising an additional round of financing from Warner Music. Its value proposition evolved several times – par for the course at any startup, not to mention one in today’s highly volatile space of digital music. Apple bought it for iTunes, which will either use Lala’s highly developed social networking tools, or its excellent eCommerce payment system, or its new iPhone app, or its remote hosting capabilities, or its patents, or its people… Or all of the above.
Regardless of how it ended up, Lala started out as a simple swapping site. With WANT lists and HAVE lists and consumers paying $1 to swap a disc.
Update: All Things Digital has an interesting breakdown of the deal’s financials.
We haven’t been blogging details about raising funds, mostly because of a fear of jinxing it. It’s one thing to mention an open event – a competition or a conference – but detailing people’s specific interaction with us is another. Isabelle and I set up meetings all the time with angel investors, industry executives and various facilitators. They graciously agree to meet with us, voice their opinions and introduce us to others. It wouldn’t be right to write about them without asking for permission, which simply isn’t a priority right now.
However we’d like to make an exception in the case of Brooks-Keret, as it’s looking for people to know about its activities and we can definitely recommend.
Brooks-Keret is an Israeli firm which provides financial management solutions. Lots of companies and startups outsource their entire financial activities to BK, which handles everything from financial planning to monthly paychecks. It’s managed by Gil Keret and Oren Brooks. I was introduced to Gil by my friend Samantha Talpir.
One of the great facilitations Brooks-Keret has started organizing is a monthly angels’ panel. The panel consists of 3-5 angel investors and we had the good fortune of presenting to it earlier this month. To be honest I don’t remember much because it flew past me so quickly… We had 20 minutes but they felt more like 2… It took place at their offices in a big meeting room; I have a faint memory of about 15 people seated around their conference table, all very intimidating except for the reassuring smile of Carmit Oron, BK’s Marketing Manager who is also a saint. I hooked Isabelle in via Skype and opened our slides. We presented, they asked questions and gave us feedback. Then Carmit whisked me out to give way to the next scheduled entrepreneur.
Our presentation went well and it’s a great initiative. Beyond that we don’t want to say anything else so as not to jinx it…
We closed our online survey today and want to thank the 152 parents out there who took the time to answer our questions this past week. Two out of three respondents were mothers. We had 83 Americans, 42 Brits and 27 from a variety of other countries all over the world.
We can’t share our key findings online at this stage, but we can say the following:
1. Parents in the US and UK turn mostly to eBay and Craigslist for second-hand goods. Gumtree and FreeCycle are next after that. Incidentally, our research shows that Craigslist has grown in the past year from 4.4m unique users to 8m uniques. Which is staggering.
2. We had no idea Babycenter was so popular – both in the US and UK.
3. While we received clear assurances of the opportunity in this market segment, there doesn’t seem to be much interest in a swapping ecosystem for second-hand maternity clothes. Toys, clothes, furniture, books – all yes. Maternity clothes – no. Why not…?
A special thanks to the Maida Vale Mums for boosting our participation rate in the UK.
We have a new survey available online. It won’t take more than five minutes. Please help us if you are a parent, or about to be one, by filling it out.
In September we wrote about Safeguard Scientific’s investment in Swaptree. Safeguard (NYSE: SFE) released some more information about it yesterday in its Q3 earnings call:
“Swaptree is the largest integrated on-line platform for trading books, CDs, DVDs and video games. It continues to grow its user base and continues its leadership in the market. In addition, the company is moving to initial revenue stage in 2010. Safeguard deployed $3.4 million of capital in Swaptree in July of last year and we own a 29% stake.”
This means Swaptree was valued at $11.72 million.
As an industry leading blog about consumer bartering, we are compelled to point out that Swaptree isn’t the largest barter platform of books, it’s second to Paperbackswap. But we’ll forgive Safeguard Scientific a little spin since second place is pretty great too. Swaptree is the first to raise institutional capital in what we call the second wave of online consumer barter activity. It’s definitely a leader and we hail to it :).
A full transcript of Safeguard Scientific’s call can be found here. A webcast and podcast of it are available here.
We’re very pleased to announce we’ve been accepted into Astia’s Doing it Right program. Astia is a global non-profit organization that supports women entrepreneurs. It’s known for its unique ecosystem of venture capitalists, angel investors and businesswomen. Doing it Right is its “venture bootcamp,” a week of marathon workshops and coaching. It’s a highly competitive program so we’re honored and excited to be, as Groucho Marx would say, a member of this prestigious and classy club.
We hope to benefit from Astia’s advisors and network. We wanted to attend Doing it Right next month in Silicon Valley, but we’re having a hard time coming up with the funds so we may end up having to wait till May and attend in London or New York instead. But we’ve already received some valualbe feedback just from Astia’s screening process alone. 60% of Astia’s members have achieved funding or acquisition within one year of teaming up with it, so this is great news.
Last Wednesday, Swacle had the opportunity to pitch our concept in London to potential angels and investors at The Next Women’s event, ‘Darwinian Business: Survival of the Fittest’. The Next Women is a Women’s internet business magazine, with a focus on startups and growing businesses, led, founded or invested in by women.
This was a great opportunity to:
be exposed to so much creative energy and drive and find inspiration in the achievements of other women
practice my Swacle pitch, as – unlike Daniella – I have not been in front of investors yet
leave child, dog and countryside and re-enter the world of city grown-ups (never thought I would miss Starbucks so much!)
Our pitch had to be under 3 minutes which was a real challenge but we had a great presentation coach (Annette Kramer) to help. I was terrified that this would be like Dragon’s Den and that I would get torn to pieces. However, the judges were very friendly and asked very good questions about our target market, 16-24 yr olds.
In addition to the pitching sessions, there was networking time and presentations by investors and successful entrepreneurs. Here is what I took away:
