What comes around goes around
I was reading on TechCrunch today that 5min raised another big round of funding for what is in essence a syndication platform for instructional, knowledge and lifestyle videos, both professionally produced and user-generated.
Sometimes, timing is everything. Back in 2000 there was no YouTube. We tried to do a video aggregation play for “special interest” and instructional videos just as 5min is doing today. But, the problem was that broadband and video consumption in general just wasn’t pervasive on the internet. We were too early. There was no existing content on the web to just link to so we had to dredge it up from video reels and encode it all! So, we merged Rocketvox with another company to become thePlatform and focused on video technology instead.
There are two key lessons I took away from that experience. First, was that timing is as important as your idea itself. If your timing is wrong you have two choices. One, is to buckle down and slog it out for years. Or, you can change your strategy. You know your timing is too early when you talk to big companies who obviously should care about what you are doing but who don’t yet have a developed strategy and team dedicated to working that particular initiative. In such cases you have to make the tough call. Do you put your head down and ride it out in hopes that you are right? Or, do you shift your model to try and demonstrate shorter term successes. It’s a personal question only you can answer. In retrospect, I think we made the right decision. However, it wouldn’t have been a dumb idea to resurrect RocketVox as a content play several years later. I never did and probably should have.
Sometimes old ideas done better and with fresh perspective are the best ideas going.
Interview series: Eric Peters of FrugalMechanic
1) Tell us about Eric Peters. How did you come to start FrugalMechanic?
I’m a Seattle native, born and bred here for 28 years. I graduated from the UW with a degree in Business – but I also paid for school programming database driven websites. Programming+Business = Win. After school, I split my time between corporate jobs at Amazon and Microsoft (MSN Search). At Amazon, I was the only business user in Retail Hardlines to have a Linux Developer box (which I had to get an SVP approval for) and also my own SQL login account to the data warehouse. At Microsoft, I was one of a handful of search data experts & got to run & analyze monetization and usability AB Tests for MSN Search.
I left Microsoft a few years ago to go to an Ignition Partners startup SecondSpace (now called DataSphere) where in June of ‘08 my best friend Tim Underwood (who I had recruited to SS) and I were laid off – that’s how Frugal Mechanic really got started. At the PI, John Cook wrote a blurb about us in August 2008 @ http://www.seattlepi.com/venture/374001_vc08.html. At the time our initial goal was to spend the summer and “build that startup idea” we never could scrape the time together for. That summer turned into much, much longer.
2) In a nutshell, how do you describe FrugalMechanic?
We’re a shopping website for auto parts.
OK, that’s a little short but that’s what the website does for consumers. On the backend we scrape & normalize content from across dozens of websites, handle price refreshes, and power a front-end that has over 50M pieces of fitment information for auto parts. Oh did I also mention we power over 40 different websites all from the same code base? A couple of our more high profile partnerships include http://autoparts.cardomain.com, http://auto-parts.myride.com, and http://autoparts.thecarconnection.com
3) Who are your big competitors and what value proposition sets you apart?
It would be easy for me to say Price Grabber/Nexttag/Shopzilla/MSN Shopping/eBay/etc. The reality, though, is they rank terribly for auto-part related searches, so our biggest competitors are other individual auto part retailers.
Over the shopping comparison engines, our biggest advantage is our normalized dataset. We know which parts fit which cars – that model just doesn’t work on Price Grabber/EBay/etc. We also can de-dupe the different auto part numbers to provide a more comprehensive retailer options (the same exact Bosch fuel filter can have over a dozen different part numbers)
Over individual retailers, it’s the breadth of our selection. No one has the ability to have as large of a SKU offering, since we don’t have to optimize for profitability by picking any handful of distributors. If one retailer gets cheaper pricing on Fram parts, we pass that information onto the consumer, if another has better pricing on Bosch then we pass that information a long. We’re an independent and comprehensive database.
The whitelabel solution I mentioned is one of our competitive advantages for driving distribution – there are a lot of automotive enthusiast websites that would like to have an turn-key auto part store without the headache of customer service. We can do that for them, and at no cost (in-fact we pay them a revshare of our affiliate revenue)
4) What do you like most about your job? What do you dislike most?
I love wearing multiple hats. By far, that’s one of the biggest joys a business-techie guy like myself can have. I can be having a biz dev call in the morning, writing code during lunch, and de-duping auto part categories in a spreadsheet all in the same day.
On the flipside, starting my own startup has been one of the most stressful situations – especially when we were consulting to bootstrap in the earlier months – it was very distracting and sucks a lot of energy out of you. My boss can also be a bit of an a$$h0le sometimes, but I find it hard to talk behind his back.
5) What bit of trivia would someone not know about FrugalMechanic?
My Co-Founder & Best Friend Tim Underwood is also a Seattleite (I have visual proof – http://twitpic.com/9xaxj – Socks w/Sandles!)
Reach Eric via Twitter: @ericpeters
Curious Office and H-Farm host Seattle Lunch 2.0
Pizzas, bottles of wine, sodas and people as far as the eye can see inside the Inkd global HQ today. That’s because our space became home to a variety of folks from the Seattle tech and startup community all attending the Seattle Lunch 2.0 networking and information session.
What’s Lunch 2.0 you ask?
* Leave work for your lunch hour or happy hour
* Come to Seattle Lunch 2.0
* Get free food and drinks
* Experience lunchtime or happy hour at a cool local company
* Learn about something new
* Meet new contacts in the industry
* Go back to work and be productive
We had a great time hosting the event along with our office mates Wishpot and Zooppa – showcasing the combined experience and insight of the folks heading up companies incubated by H-Farm and Curious Office.
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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
