What is web 2.o?
Now this is the question that has 1,000 answers. However, Gregor Hohpe has done a great job developing a lengthy definition based on patterns. I especially like some of the real world examples which include:
* DoubleClick –> AdSense
* OFoto –> Flickr
* Britannica Online –> Wikipedia
Have a read. VERY good time spent.
ImageKind’s first venture capital meetings
Today we received 2 calls to meet with Bay Area venture capitalists. We’re flying down during the first week of September to have a few meetings. This is a really great opportunity for us to clarify our thinking even more abour our business. We get so caught up in the day to day aspects of what we’re doing that we often aren’t forced to articulate our business in terms of digestible bullet points. For now, I get to stop thinking about how to minimize resize errors on 15,000 pixel wide TIFF files that someone is trying to upload and I get to focus on the stuff that matters. I guess every business, at some point, needs that obligatory PPT deck whether you’re raising money or not. You’re either pitching to investors, pitching to customers or pitching to partners.
What do we do?
Who are we?
What is the basic proposition?
What is the market size?
What are the market trends?
How will you market it?
What return on marketing do you expect?
What do you require to do this?
What are the challenges and what is the competitive landscape?
How does this wind up being a great investment?
I like these kinds of exercises. I think it’s important to be super crisp on this stuff. The meetings should be interesting.
On our fundraising…
ImageKind is only going to get better but we’re delighted with what we’ve been able to achieve with relatively little money. In many ways, developing ‘more with less’ remains a very interesting challenge although we’re now entering a phase where the actual incubation of the concept has been demonstrated but marketing of the community has not yet commenced. We’ve been proactively contacted by a number of angel and venture investors in that last few weeks though our plan to this point has been to fund the effort internally. Since we opted to internally fund the project in the first phase, I had to put pretty serious pressure on our developers to release a lot of features very early even though we all knew that more time and money would allow us to put out something even better if we had waited longer. But, the process is a balance. The product is never done. And that’s why we’re reconsidering taking outside capital. It’s much easier to see how you can do more for members after the first version is complete than you can conceptualize before any work is done at all. So, raising more money may be one way to acknowledge that the product is never really done if there is a real market for the product in the first place. Taking our first few meetings with venture capitalists suggests that raising money for our little venture could be a very real possibility. However, I’ve decided that the best thing for us to do with this particular project is to assume that we won’t raise a dime and continue with the same perspectives that we started with. That includes the following:
1) Keep delivering (shipping) features as fast as you can. Daily if necessary.
2) Focus on getting cash flow. Getting cash early is more important than focusing on a long term profitability argument. Get cash in hand in the first few months from sales.
3) VC’s tend to hate service based businesses. Yet, in the early days of every business, the business is basically about servicing your first and few customers to the nth degree. My message internally has been to ‘over service’ our first few hundred customers. Over time, the company should hopefully graduate to a more automated machine.
4) Project conservatively yet understaff and underspend anyway.
5) Continually draw comparisons to businesses people already know. Many people know who Cafe Press is. So, I love it when I do a Google search on “Cafe Press of Wall Art?” and get several returns. The market is drawing an easy-to-understand parallel between our business and something else that they already understand but that isn’t quite the same. This allows you to draft on the marketing budgets of other companies.
We’re really flattered by the contacts from potential investors. One thing we all agree on is that developing communities usually takes twice as long and costs twice as much as you’d normally think. Occassionally YouTube’s can happen. But, Zazzle didn’t raise $16 million from Kleiner Perkins for nothing!! Not NEEDING the money certainly seems to help the process but recognizing that things can be more expensive than you think is probably healthy thinking.
Print on demand continues to grow
ImageKind is a model print on demand business. We haven’t yet done any real marketing and certainly haven’t spent any money on marketing since we launched our beta two weeks ago. My sense is that we will see more and more of these print on demand businesses over the next few years. Today, it was announced that Blurb raised $13 million.
Blurb, an SF-based self-publishing online service, has received about $7.16 million funding, in its second round, which is going to cap at about $13 million, according to an SEC filing, picked up by PE Week Wire. Return backers include Canaan Partners and Anthem Venture Partners.
The site allows users/bloggers to create an publish their own hardcover book, along with other similar services.
FastCompany did a good blurb about the company: Blurb and others are greasing the wheels by creating their own alternative marketplaces, like an Amazon for everyone. BlurbNation hooks up authors with proofreaders, editors, and marketers, letting them bypass established publishers and still reach the right audience.
65 VC & Angel Investor Blogs
If you’re into this kind of thing, or if you are looking to raise money this is a rather interesting link.
Thanks to Andrew Fife at Cryptine Networks for pulling it together.
Nice mention from Emily Chang
I respect Emily and her blog(s) very much. She’s a much respected designer and blogger and I highly reccomend adding her to your RSS reader. That’s why we thank her for mentioning ImageKind.com on her website.
What web 2.0 means…
The guys over at 37signals ran an interesting survey – “what does web 2.0 mean to you?”
Pretty interesting list of responses.
Nice post on ImageKind from a talented software developer
It was after Steve Lacey wrote a nice post about ImageKind on his blog that I actually met him through a mutual friend and got to know what he was really up to himself over SwitchGear Software. He has quite a distinguished career and it sounds like the concept he is working on should be pretty interesting. Since he’s such a smart guy we really appreciated the review. It means a lot that experienced software folks like what we’re up to.
Thanks to Peter Cooper
One of our companies, FeedDigest, just gave ImageKind a nice plug on his increasingly popular blog over at PeterCooper.co.uk FeedDigest has 24,000 users but with a new version forthcoming I expect those numbers to increase substantially over the next year. I use it on my personal site at KellySmith.com to post my del.icio.ous bookmarks at the bottom of the front page. Use it yourself to add any RSS content to your web page. Pretty cool stuff.
Our traffic tripled today…
ImageKind got a nice review on one of the most popular online UK portals today called theRegister. Nice, fair overview of the system.
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Curious Office Companies
Inkd
Inkd is our latest internally developed concept. We raised our $1.7 million seed round on September 22 and are backed by Second Avenue Partners and a variety of tremendous angel investors. We are developing the World's First Market for Original Print Design.
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CafePress
Cafepress acquired Imagekind in July 2008. CafePress.com is an online marketplace that offers sellers complete e-commerce services to independently create and sell a wide variety of products, and offers buyers unique merchandise across virtually every topic. -
Imagekind
Curious Office started Imagekind in 2006 and it is the world's fastest-growing art site offering over 750,000 high-quality fine art images for sale. Imagekind gives consumers limitless options to purchase museum-quality framed and poster art from over 50,000 domestic and international emerging and established artists. -
SEOmoz.org
Curious Office invested in SEOmoz along with Ignition Partners in 2007. SEOmoz serves as one of the largest online hubs for search marketers worldwide by providing education, tools, resources and paid services to help make every SEO the best they can be. -
Shelfari
Amazon.com acquired Shelfari in September 2008. Based in Seattle, Shelfari introduces readers to our global community of book lovers and encourages them to share their literary inclinations and passions with peers, friends, and total strangers -
Fanzter
Fanzter is headquartered in Collinsville, Connecticut and are the creators of the wildly popular celebrity style and entertainment platform Coolspotters.com, which launched in May 2008. Fanzter secured $2 Million In Series B Funding Led By Steamboat Ventures in March 2009. -
Wishpot
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netConcepts
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Rouxbe
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RocketVox
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FeedDigest
