The CEO of United National Consumer Suppliers, Brett Rose, says that it’s an amazing time to be a consumer because every day is Black Friday. Rose predicts that this is going to possibly be the biggest Q4 in our history.
All things considered, consumers want free shipping, not quick shipping. However, if all levels are equal with Amazon, Target, and Walmart, the one competitive advantage that Amazon has, that Target and Walmart can’t, is that Amazon has millions of these third-party resellers constantly filling their coffers with products. Target and Walmart are limited to what they have in stock that’s ready to go.
There is no denying that Walmart has made some massive strides. But to come after Amazon is hefty. Like I said Amazon has a constant supply of products where their not just limited to what they’re curating on their own. They’re limitless in regards to what everybody is sending to them to go right to the consumer.
Every Day is Black Friday
Interesting times with tariffs. If you read everything that came out Chinese imports are up 15 percent over the same time last year. They’ve all front-loaded in preparations for the President’s tariffs which are now in full effect. All of these retailers pushed up orders in what might have otherwise taken months. It’s yet to be determined, but consumers still need goods. There’s always going to be a need, the price is just going to fluctuate.
If numbers are indicative, everything these retailers are curating and everything the street is saying, it’s going to be one of if not the biggest Q4 in our history. Even if you look at Black Friday announcements, Black Friday is out already. Amazon has released their Black Friday items. BlackFriday.com, Macy’s, went live the other day with their sales. Retailers are vamping up to stay competitive. You go online now and you can figure out what retailers are selling for Black Friday.
It’s an amazing time to be a consumer. Every day is Black Friday. Right now it really is. They’ve already released what the doorbusters are going to be.
Still a Major Value in Having a Physical Presence
There’s always going to be the consumer that likes to go to the store, likes to feel it, touch it, get the treasure hunt, but now with real-time shipping, free shipping, real-time inventory, it’s a great time to be a consumer. It’s certainly competitive. While Amazon is making strides they are still going after brick & mortar. Buying Whole Foods and some of the other retailers they are looking at, says there is still a major value in having that physical presence.
Nokia CEO Rajeev Suri says that the company will start to launch 5G in 2019 and 2020 starting with the United States followed by Japan, South Korea, and China. He says that the rollouts have already begun with actual 5G launches next year.
Rajeev Suri, President, and CEO of Nokia discussed the company’s 5G rollout on CNBC:
5G Will Start to Launch in 2019 and 2020
It is starting to really move. We expect that 5G will start to launch in 2019 and 2020. We are starting here in the US which is the first market, Japan, South Korea, and China will come next during 2019. The rollouts have already begun with 5G and the launches next year.
We are a leader in the networks business and we acquired Alcatel-Lucent back in 2016. The first phase of the merger was all about elimination of duplication. Now we are in the second phase which is about optimizing the new company for lean as we get into 5G. There is some duplication, so we will cut legacy R&D, we will cut some real estate, overhead, and some areas in IT. So it’s still a little bit of duplication, elimination, and then optimization.
We’ve Got Mitigation Plans Around Tariffs
We have a global supply chain and we’ve got mitigation plans around what happens with the tariffs. Having said that, I don’t think we are seeing an issue on the demand side. We do see some issue on the cost side, but it’s not meaningful for us, not meaningful this year. It’s going to be a little bit of headwind next year but we know how to get through it.
Billionaire investor Ron Baron says that by 2030 Tesla could be a trillion dollar company. He says it’s clear that Tesla will be at $60 billion in sales within the next 3-4 years. Baron added, “It’s remarkable what Elon Musk has done.”
It was a good quarter for Tesla. They had $6.8 billion in sales versus $4 billion, so it’s up 70 percent. They made a billion for cash flow in the quarter before they spent on investing. That means they’re at an annualized rate of $5.5 billion of cash flow before they spend them investing. The company is valued for $60 billion, so it’s 11 or 12 times earnings, that’s not bad.
In addition to that, they are growing at 50 percent a year. I think that this year they did sales at $20 billion. We started in 2014 when they were doing $3.7 billion and this year it’s $20 billion, next year is $30 billion. I think that in 12 to 13 years, by 2030, this could be a trillion dollar company. I think it’s clear they’re going to be $60 billion in three or four years. This could be a really big company.
Cash Flow Doesn’t Appear to be a Problem
As the cash flow goes, when I look at the numbers it doesn’t appear to be the problem. Elon Musk says it’s not a problem, I take him at his word. He could have sold equity a year and a half ago at $370 to $380 a share, people were scrambling to buy, he chose not to. You have these businesses that they invest and when they’re investing they penalize profitability.
When you build a faith factory and you spend $300 million on the factory and it’s built for 250,000 cars a year and you’re doing 20,000 cars a year or 30,000, you’re not going to be profitable with that. But all of a sudden, you get it to 250,000 cars a year, you’re making $150 million on a $300 million investment, then you can double it. You’re at the point now where incremental investments are going to be incredibly profitable. They are now doing 5,000 cars a week, they’re going to be able to do Model 3 for virtually no additional investment. They’re going to get to 7,000 cars a week.
It’s Remarkable What Elon Musk Has Done
They told Wall Street this quarter that just ended that they were hoping to produce a gross profit margin of 15 percent on the Model 3 and it came out over 20 percent. Internally, they were hoping for 20 percent and he kept calling meetings, you got to cut costs here, you’ve got to watch that. When you’re building something from the ground up it’s not easy, it’s not easy doing what he’s done, remarkable what he’s done.
When he started making the Model S and Model X, those cars initially, when they were selling for over $100,000 a car, they had gross profits of 20 percent. Now they’re in the 90s for the car and the gross profits are 31 percent. Gross profits keep going up even though the price has gone down. The same thing is going to happen with this car. I think the gross profits on the Model 3 are going to be as good as they are on the Model S and X and I think the Model Y is going to be the best one they’ve ever had.
Etsy CEO Josh Silverman says that “machine learning is opening up a whole new opportunity” for the company to organize 50 million items into a discovery platform that makes buying an enjoyable experience and also is profitable for sellers.
Our mission is keeping commerce human. It’s really about in a world where automation is changing the nature of work and we’re all buying more and more commoditized things from the same few fulfillment centers. Allowing someone to harness their creative energy and turn that creativity into a business and then connect with someone in the other part of the country or in another part of the world, that’s really special. We think there’s an ever-increasing need for that in this world.
It’s about value. We’ve been really focused on delivering more value for our makers. Etsy really is a platform that brings buyers to sellers and that’s very valuable. We raised our commission from 3.5 to 5 percent commission which was I think is fair value for our sellers, particularly because we’re reinvesting 80 percent of that into the growth of the platform.
Free shipping is pretty much table stakes today. Yet only about 20 percent of items have free shipping. About half of all the items on Etsy buyers say have shipping prices that are too high and yet we grew GMS at 20 percent last quarter.
Machine Learning is Opening Up a Whole New Opportunity
Machine learning is opening up a whole new opportunity for us to take 50 million items from two million makers and make sense of that for people. We have 37 million active buyers now and many of them come just for discovery, just to see what they can find, and that is exactly the right thing for someone out there. Our job is to create that love connection. Etsy over the past 14 years, with a large team effort, has I think done a great job.
One thing I want to emphasize is the quality and the craftsmanship with so many of the products on Etsy. That’s something that has been such a delight for me. People like Kringle Workshops that make these incredible products. What we have been doing a better job and need to continue to do a better job of really surfacing the beautiful artisanally crafted products that are available at a really fair price. You’re not having to pay for warehousing, you’re not having to pay for all the other things that mass-produce things have to pay for, you’re buying directly from the person who made it. So it can be both beautiful, handcrafted, and well priced.
There are 2 million sellers, 87 percent of them are women, over 90 percent are working from home or are businesses of one, who can create a global business from their garage or their living room. Etsy does provide a real sense of community for them and that’s really powerful.
Amazon May Open New HQ in Queens Near Etsy
We feel great about our employee value proposition and come what may. Here’s what we have going for us. We think we’ve got the best team, certainly in tech companies on the eastern seaboard. We think ours is the best and we continue to attract great talent. The reason is, first and foremost, our mission is really a meaningful important mission and that matters. Great people want to work in a place with a great mission.
Second, our technology challenges are interesting. For example, search and using machine learning to make sense of 50 million items that don’t map to a catalog. Third, our culture is really special. We have been a company that’s authentically cared about diversity from the beginning. Over 50 percent of our executive staff are women, we have a balanced board, 50 percent male and female, and 32 percent of our engineers are female, which is twice the industry average. People who care about diversity and inclusion really want to come to work at Etsy. All of that is going for us and we’re happy to compete with whoever we need to.
Earnings Call Comments by Etsy CEO:
Active Buyers Grew 17 Percent
Etsy’s growth accelerated again in the third quarter to nearly 21% on a constant-currency basis. Revenue growth exceeded 41%, fueled by the launch of our new pricing structure, and our adjusted EBITDA margins grew to nearly 23%, while we also increased our investments in the business.
Active buyers grew 17% to 37 million worldwide. This is the fourth consecutive quarter that GMS has grown faster than active buyers, evidence that we are seeing increased buyer activity on the platform, which is a key proxy for improvement in frequency. We grew the number of active sellers by 8% and GMS per active seller is also increasing.
Two principal levers contributed to our progress this past quarter. The first is our continued product investment, focused on improving the shopping experience on Etsy. By making it easier to find and buy the great products available for sale on Etsy, we’re doing a better job converting visits into purchases. The second lever was our new pricing structure, which enabled us to ramp up investments in marketing, shipping improvements and customer support.
Successful Cloud Migration
We achieved a significant milestone in our cloud migration this quarter, successfully migrating our marketplace, Etsy.com, and our mobile applications to the Google Cloud with minimal disruption to buyers and sellers. This increases our confidence that the migration will be complete by the end of 2019.
Once fully migrated, we expect to dramatically increase the velocity of experiments and product development to iterate faster and leverage more complex search and machine learning models with the goal of rapidly innovating, improving search and ultimately driving GMS growth.
In fact, we’re beginning to see some of those benefits today based on the systems we’ve already migrated. I’d like to thank our engineering team for their incredible work to get this – get us to this point.
Digital marketing is now firmly embedded in our day-to-day lives; we start our day with newsletters and check our Facebook before bed. Its influence will continue to grow in 2019, and new advertising trends built on today’s digital innovations will grow along with it. It’s your job to learn to distinguish them and adapt your marketing strategy accordingly.
Here are four digital marketing trends to watch out for in 2019:
Snack Ads
Most people prefer watching videos over reading, which would explain why marketers are producing more video content. While video has madedigital avertising more dynamic, it’s also caused consumers’ already short attention to become even shorter. Luckily, snack ads are enough to keep your target audience engaged. As the name implies, these ads can be likened to snacks, something easy to digest but filling. These videos ads are less than 10 seconds long; they’re short enough to keep people interested while still getting a brand’s message across.
Consumers will be seeing more of these short ads in 2019. Youtube is already pioneering snack ads, and Fox Networks Group will reportedly follow in its footsteps by incorporating them in their linear programs and streaming services.
Voice Search
The coming years will see a deeper interaction between people, devices and applications.Researchers have forecasted that by 2020, 30 percent of web searches will be conducted without even touching the screen. Half of these searches will be done via voice commands.
It’s easy to see why voice search will play a vital role in our daily lives. Using voice to search and ask questions will elevate multi-tasking to new levels. For instance, you can do your shopping while cooking. A lot of people also find speaking to be quicker than typing. Domino’s Pizza is already using voice search technology, with customers being able to order their pizzas through Alexa.
With Google, Amazon, and Apple continuously working on improving their voice assistants, and more people expected to use smart speakers, your brand should make full use of this medium by producing relevant audio content.
Micro-moments
People are spending more than three hours a day on their smartphones, and it’s changing the way companies are trying to get the customers’ attention. The deluge of content and videos mean that brands should be able to deliver their message quickly and in an interesting way, and all in a matter of seconds. This new consumer behavior is what Google has termed “micro-moments.”
Image source: Google
Customers generally have four such moments – “I want to go,” “I want to know,” “I want to do,” and “I want to buy.” For instance, a customer is trying to decide where to eat and wants to know which restaurant is nearby.Brands can take advantage of this micro-moment by being able to provide the customers with the information they need. A Business Page on Google can help since you will appear on “Near Me” searches. Companies should also make sure they’re on platforms where customers search for information, like Amazon, Google Maps, or YouTube.
Augmented Reality
Virtual and augmented reality technology has given consumers something they want—the opportunity to be engaged in a brand’s message. A number of businesses have already embraced VR and AR’s ability to boost brand awareness and sell products. IKEA is a good example. The company’s shopping app gave prospective clients the chance to try out different design solutions before making a purchase.
Image source: YouTube
Social media platforms like Snapchat have also shown that augmented reality can expand a brand’s marketing reach and improve their interactions with customers. Snapchat’s facial and geo filter features quickly developed a following and helped the company, secure sponsors. 2019 will see AR and VR becoming a common marketing tool for companies, especially since the virtual and augmented reality markets are expected to hit $298 billion or more by 2023.
There are still several weeks left in 2018. That’s more than enough time to future-proof your brand. Take stock of these fast-rising digital marketing trends and develop a good strategy that incorporates them in your marketing plan.
SAP Chief Strategy Officer Deepak Krishnamurthy said at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal, “Imagine if we can work together and make inclusion a fact.” Additionally, Alexa Gorman, who is SVP, Head of SAP.iO Foundries Europe announced the creation of a dedicated accelerator program for women and diverse-led enterprises in Berlin, Germany.
Inclusive Entrepreneurship Across Everything We Do
Over the last 20 months, SAP.IO has worked with nearly a hundred companies across the spectrum of both the fund and the foundry. That’s a big number given that we have been around only for 20 months. But what I’m really proud of is the fact that over 40 percent of these companies were either founded or have a CEO who’s a diverse entrepreneur or women entrepreneur. That is something that you probably don’t see in the industry much where the average number of startups that are either women or diverse entrepreneur founded is probably around 20-25 percent.
Why is this important for us? It’s important because we want to be able to have an inclusive entrepreneurship across everything that we do. The statistics are there, so you know that less than 10 percent of venture capital funding goes to women, less than 2 percent goes to black and Latino founders, and less than 0.2 percent goes to black and Latino women founders. The statistics are pretty horrible and we need to make a difference and the difference needs to be made at three levels. It’s got to be at the financing level, it’s got to be about creating the right community, and it’s got to also be in terms of how you set up your team.
Women and Diverse Entrepreneurs Driving Impact
What SAP.IO decided to do was the first foundry cohort that we ran in San Francisco we said it’s going to be a women cohort. We had seven amazing startups founded by women, that is the first thing that we did in the US. This was so successful that we said why run just a cohort? Why don’t we just go and run a whole location focused on women and diverse entrepreneurs? So in the summer of 2018, we had ten great startups with women-led founders that came in and worked on B2B SAAS products and solutions jointly with us. That’s what New York is all about. New York is going to be about women and diverse entrepreneurs driving impact with our customers.
This is making a huge difference. You cannot go and say that I’m just going to run a women-only program or a minority program for startups. You have to rethink how you do this fundamentally as a company. One of the things that we did was that our entire management of SAP.IO that’s running the foundry, over 80 percent, five out of the six accelerators are run by women. That means that you take the cognitive bias out of the equation.
Imagine if We Can Work Together and Make Inclusion a Fact
So you’re starting to invest in women and minority entrepreneurs in a much more proactive way. The industry average is more like 25 percent. Having 80 percent of the accelerators led by them makes an enormous difference, not just in terms of recruiting and attracting the right level of women entrepreneurs but also in terms of how you work with them, how you support them. and how you help them scale. If you look at the entire team more than 60 percent of a team is diverse. Again, this makes a huge difference in terms of how you take diversity not just as an afterthought, but keep it front and center.
We all know that diverse teams have better outcomes in terms of startup exits. Typically startups with diverse teams have a 10-15 percent higher exits and higher returns and the idea of having a diverse team that’s managing both investment and acceleration enables a culture of diversity that goes from the top down. That’s the idea of enabling inclusiveness and diversity from the get-go.
We all know that diversity is a fact. We also probably know that inclusion is a choice, but imagine if we can work together and make inclusion a fact, where It’s no longer a choice. Every company comes together and makes inclusion in terms of how we work with startups a priority and make this a real thing rather than doing something as a one-off basis.
Alexa Gorman – SVP, Head of SAP.iO Foundries Europe at SAP, announced accelerator program in Berlin at the Web Summit:
Launching the First Accelerator Program in Berlin
We started the foundry journey in Europe just over a year and a half ago with the foundry in Berlin that we opened. I’m really proud to say by the end of this year we will have accelerated just over 30 startups in areas such as machine learning, AI, but also industry 4.0 and the manufacturing space. What we offer the startups that come to us is to really be able to accelerate through integrating into SAP’s product portfolio, but then also access to the 400,000 plus customers that we bring. We started in Berlin last year where we’ve run three programs and are currently in our third program there. We just opened Paris in October and are accelerating six French startups. In general, we like to call the startups that we accelerate the rising stars.
I’m thrilled to be here today, of the 30 startups that we have accelerated I think we have about eight that are actually at Web Summit and are seeing phenomenal interest both from investors and from B2B companies that are interested in using their solutions. I’m also thrilled to be here today because we have an announcement. In line with what Deepak was mentioning, we’re actually launching the first accelerator program in Berlin, kicking off in March and running until June for the underrepresented minority. We will have a cohort there that will get the access and the mentorship that Deepak mentioned in the B2B SAAS spaces. It’s something that hasn’t been done or one of the first of its kind anyway in Europe and we’re basically opening applications today here at Web Summit. If there are startups here who are in that space we’d love to hear from you. Please go to SAP.IO and you’ll see all the details and the opportunity to apply.
Deepak Krishnamurthy: We Would Love to Hear Your Dreams
This is something that’s very important for us and we are confident that it’s going to make a big impact on the European ecosystem. If you are a startup we would love to hear your dreams, we’d love to understand how we can work with you and help you. If you’re a women or a diverse founder applications are open for Berlin, so please let us know how you can work with us. If you’re in the B2B space we can do things together that are going to be magical.
The co-founder & CEO of augmented reality platform company Blippar, Ambarish Mitra, told an audience at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal that within 5-7 years AR will be as ubiquitous as the Internet itself.
When you see the world with your eyes and through the eyes of a camera and something is recognized for the camera and you see some content that appears in the field of view, that is augmented reality. It is the enhancement of reality. Do not confuse it with virtual reality. Virtual reality has almost nothing to do with your immediate reality, it’s almost like escaping from reality.
It’s important to note why this industry is really relevant. Computers themselves are continuously evolving. You can see in the very early days it was all about the touchpad and the keyboard and it wasn’t a very natural behavior. Then the whole AI wave came along. What’s the role of AI? Besides artificial intelligence, I always call it IA, which is intelligent assistance. It’s here to serve us. We are not here to serve the AI.
Then touch, which is a very human function, touch computing came into play. In 2010 we saw the first birth of natural language processing. We humans talk and we want the computers to talk back at us. Then the final frontier which is vision. Vision is very important because vision is a large part of what makes us human. A lot of our cognition growing up comes from this sense which we call eyesight. Computers will one day, and beginning to already, will see and understand the world. Computer vision is very relevant.
AI and AR are Deeply Linked
We are already starting to see how computers are beginning to understand. It’s a very important branch of artificial intelligence and in a way augmented reality and AI has been positioned as very separate industries, but they’re very deeply linked. Augmented reality cannot scale until computers understand reality. It’s not just about gimmicky dinosaurs walking down a path. At one point we will see almost the entire Internet transform into an AR medium where everything in the field of view could come to life. It’s very relevant. You may not realize that even though the history of the Internet has been very words driven where you type some words and you get a response, but there are so many so many things in your everyday life which you cannot describe with words.
The next generation of computing is massively going to be vision based. AR promises to be a very lucrative industry because it is connected to the world we see and also a lot more possibilities with devices. Almost everybody has some form of an AR device because you have a camera on your phone. VR is an incredible and equally promising industry but still is a slightly niche utility because of how it moves you away from scaling or moving around the wider world.
This is the famous Gartner hype cycle which it has been applied to augmented reality as well. We started Blippar literally when it was in the very very earth early stages innovation trigger. We’ve actually been through the whole peak of inflicted expectations. We’ve raised a bunch of money and now it’s reaching a point where AR is under the scrutiny of whether it is going to deliver on its true potential.
AR Will Be as Ubiquitous as the Internet
The timing is great, five of the world’s biggest companies, not just in tech but the most valuable companies have invested in augmented reality. We are predicting that from five to seven years down the line it is really ready to be comparable and as ubiquitous as the Internet is today.
Facebook has launched an ad-based platform on AR. Snapchat has the famous face filters and of course, now Google with ARCore and Apple with ARKit are supporting the medium and making their phones compatible with it. So we believe AR is already having a positive impact.
About Blippar
Blippar is a seven-year-old British company operating out of Silicon Valley, New York, and London. Our mission was to create this ubiquitous AR platform which works on any camera device and brings the world to life. It’s been incredible the last two years with several large players coming into AR. It’s really validated the space.
RingCentral founder and CEO Vlad Shmunis spoke with Jim Cramer on CNBC about how they are competing and leading in cloud communications, winning business from huge legacy companies such as Cisco and Avaya:
What RingCentral does is we change ways in which companies communicate, communicate internally with their employees as well as their customers. We have the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and two other NFL teams as customers which we can’t announce yet. They’re franchises and they are also companies. They have employees, they have customers who want to reach out to them and communicate with them. What we do at RingCentral is we make all of that very easy and very modern.
What do we do that is different? We enable companies and people to communicate the way that they want to. What does this mean? They can communicate via any mode, any device, whether it be voice, video, texting, or messaging. We have an open platform which means that people can enable our communications within their workflows. None of this was ever available before the cloud came in and we happened to be leading in the cloud.
We’re winning business from Cisco all the time. The number one provider or company that we replace happens to be Cisco followed by Avaya. These would be the two, what we call, legacy ventures. It is a huge field, it’s a hundred-billion-dollar market and we are in the lead. All of the legacy providers are in secular decline.
Streaming is going to be the primary way people consume sports content according to former ESPN President John Skipper. Skipper is now Executive Chairman of the Perform Group, which considers itself the digital leader in global sports media and is, in fact, one of the fastest growing sports media companies in the world.
John Skipper, currently Executive Chairman of Perform Group and previously President of ESPN talks about how streaming will be the future of sports viewing in an interview with CNBC at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal:
Streaming is the Future of Sports Viewing
There’s very little doubt that the way fans are going to get their sports in the future, in the near future in some places, and in the medium future, other places are through a streaming service. It’s a superior technology. It does not have to be linear. You can do multiple games. You can have a one-on-one relationship with your customer. As the infrastructure gets built out it’s a superior video experience. It’s the future of sports viewing.
It takes a lot of infrastructure and that infrastructure is not there right now. The ability to stream concurrently to large numbers of people can only be done by a few services including services that we own. We have the ability to stream up to 10 million live concurrent viewers, which as far as I know there are only two or three companies in the world that can do that.
Live Sports is the Most Valuable Content in Media
Our biggest competitors are anybody who’s bidding for sports rights. Ultimately, we have a very simple business, unlike the business of entertainment where you have to invent new dramas and comedies or talk shows, reality shows, or game shows. We simply have to get the rights to the sporting events that people care about.
What I brought is not the new world of data. What I brought is the understanding that live sports is the most valuable content in the media universe because people care passionately about it and because they are unique events that cannot be replicated. If you have the game they want to watch you’re in business. I am learning at the Zone about the technology of how to deliver that and then the advantage of having a one-to-one relationship and data on your customers.
About John Skipper:
John Skipper was named Executive Chairman of the Perform Group on May 8, 2018. Skipper previously served as President of ESPN Inc., where he worked for 20 years across all areas of the business.
Legendary investor and political activist Tim Draper says that instead of getting on the case of Elon Musk, we should be thanking him and other transformational entrepreneurs such as Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick.
Draper also suggests that Elon Musk probably should have just taken Tesla private in order to avoid the myriad of rules and regulations imposed on public companies.
Venture capitalist Tim Draper was interviewed at the Web Summit in Lisbon, Portugal by CNBC:
These Guys Transformed the World, We Should Thank Them
Every time I pull out my iPhone I think thank you, Steve Jobs, this is awesome. Every time I hit the Uber key, I think thank you, Travis, that is so cool. Every time I get in my Tesla I think thank you Elon. These guys have really transformed the world and we should just thank them everywhere we go. And if they are having trouble supporting them. What can we do to help? How can we support you? How can we make you happier? We want to make you happier, look what you have done for us! It’s so cool!
He Probably Should Have Just Taken the Whole Thing Private
Every human in the world has made a mistake. There are so many laws that you have to follow if you are a public company he probably should have just taken the whole thing private. When you are a public company you’ve got to follow so many rules. If you step one little piece out of line you guys in the press are like… oh my gosh, our hero has done something wrong. I think we have got to say, hey look, he’s a human being, he’s doing the best he can. He’s running two amazing huge multi-billion dollar companies that he started. Well, he started one and jumped in very early and saved the other. This guy is awesome, let’s do what we can to support him.
All of Us Should Really Focus on Making SpaceX Successful
I invest in early-stage startups and then I will ride them as long as I feel it’s the right thing to do. Have you driven a Tesla, it’s so much better than any other car out there. And SpaceX, all of us should really focus on making SpaceX successful. If Tesla doesn’t save this earth, he will at least get some of us off the earth so that we can move our species somewhere else. Elon was amazing… we are all going to Mars. People looked at him and said, oh he’s crazy.
But then all of the best engineers in the world said, how would we get there? Then they thought, how would we have human life succeed there? And then, how can we get there faster? All those questions happen with an engineer and so Elon gets the best rocket scientists in the world working for his company and so, of course, it becomes a big success. He’s going to get us closer and closer to Mars and maybe to Alpha Centauri and other places.
About Tim Draper
Tim Draper helps entrepreneurs change the world. Tim Draper helps entrepreneurs drive their visions through funding, education, media, and government reform. He has founded thirty Draper venture funds, Draper University, Bizworld, and two statewide initiatives to improve governance and education.
Email is still a very powerful marketing tool. Contrary to proclamations that it’s a dying or dead channel, email is still more relevant and effective than Twitter or Facebook. Most of the bad propaganda about email is due to how marketers misuse it. These days, eblasts sent out simultaneously to hundreds or thousands of random people doesn’t convert very well and might even be viewed as spam. To get the most out of your email marketing campaign, you have to learn segmentation.
Email segmentation is an organizing system wherein email subscribers are placed in different categories and messages customized to speak to each group directly.
The main purpose of email segmentation is personalization. You divide your email list into groups based on the available customer data, like their professional backgrounds, purchase preferences, buying habits, and their familiarity with your brand. These groups can be as large or as small as you want, depending on the category you chose.
Why Businesses Need Email Segmentation
Segmentation can be the tipping point that determines the success or failure of a company’s email marketing strategy. Here’s a list of reasons why your business needs to divide its email list:
1. One Size Doesn’t Fit All
The odds are high that you’ll have numerous shopper personas on your email list, as well as buyers who are at different stages of the sales cycle. Delivering the same message to everyone on your list just won’t cut it. A surveyby Hubspot shows that consumers simply won’t respond to messages that aren’t relevant to them.
2. Enhances Your Brand’s Reputation
Your brand’s reputation will also receive a boost if you utilize email segmentation. Marketers who segment their subscribers received fewer complaints and have lower unsubscribe rates. And since segmentation means that people on your list receive messages right for them, they will trust your brand more.
3. Improved Open Rates
Your email might be full of important information but it will remain useless unless the recipients open their emails. With segmentation, you can tailor the subject lines to resonate with the specific group you’re targeting, thus enticing them to open your email.
4. More Conversions
Email segmentation can boost the odds that the right content is sent to the right customer at the right time. One company who nailed this was Isotoner. The company saw their email marketing profits rise by as much as 7,000% when they segmented their emails based on the products their customers checked during their visit.
5. Reduces Unsubscribe Rates
People unsubscribe for twomain reasons – there’s a deluge of emails or the messages they’re receiving aren’t relevant to them. You’re dealt a blow everytime a prospective client unsubscribes. Not only are you blocked from having a direct in to their inbox, they’re also leaving a key marketing channel. Email segmentation will ensure that you won’t be guilty of these practices since your messages are customized.
How to Increase Conversion Through Email Segmentation
Group People into the Right Segments
Placing your subscribers in the right segment can give your email marketing campaign several advantages, like ensuring that each group receives the message most relevant to them and enabling you to respond to subscriber behaviors appropriately.
There are several ways you can group people:
By Geography: Create a category based on specific cities or states, time zones, or regions.
By Purchase History: This is particularly helpful in segregating new shoppers from loyal customers.
By Abandoned Carts: There are many reasons why customers don’t complete their transactions. However, an email reminding them of their abandoned cart can guide them back to your site to finish their purchase.
Be Clear on What Your Email Marketing Service Provider Can Do
There are so many email marketing providers right now, and most of them offer tools and services that can make email segmentation a walk in the park. For instance, companies like Aweber, iContact, and MailChimp have integrated tools that can assist you in growing your email list and communicating with prospective clients and loyal consumers easily.
Some providers also offer software that help determine your demographic and test and measure your email marketing campaign’s effectivity. They can also provide you with the critical data needed to assess your progress. However, you have to understand clearly how theymanage email segmentation as well as their regulations. These will help you adjust your strategies and settings so it complies with their rules and ensures your marketing campaign goes smoothly.
Use Segmentation to Customize Messages and Improve Customer Experience
Email segmentation is a key component to improving customer experience. Personalizing a user’s experience entails tailoring your marketing strategy based on the wants and requirements of various segments.
The idea here is to supply visitors with the right content that will capture their attention and entice them to take action. For instance, emails to new customers could include a banner offering them a 10 percent discount on their first purchase. Meanwhile, you offer loyal customers a discount based on their purchases reaching a specific amount.
Conclusion
Most businesses that switch to segmenting their email campaigns will see a significant jump in their conversions. Chances are, if you sell a wide variety of products and you have a relatively large subscriber list, you’ll need to segment. Take a close look at your current list of subscribers and use the information above to help determine what groups of customers are most important to your business and segment them accordingly.
Given the dynamic nature of the internet, it’s not surprising to also see frequent changes in consumer buying behavior, which online retailers try to predict and cater to on various digital platforms. Convenience and revenue growth of eCommerce businesses, however, come with a price in the form of fraud.
Sales transactions from online merchants are on an uptrend, but attacks on eCommerce businesses have alarmingly increased as well. Based on the first-quarter report by ThreatMetrix, 210 million cyber attacks were prevented in real time from January to March 2018 – up by62 percent from prior year. Some of these attacks have cost the eCommerce industry a whopping$58 billion in losses in 2017, according to the Global Fraud Report done by PYMNTS and Signifyd.
With the upcoming holiday season, incidents of digital fraud are expected to further rise in the eCommerce industry. Avoid the pitfalls of fraud by proactively taking steps to detect its forms and prevent them from hurting your bottom line, which can be significant for some eCommerce businesses. Fraudulent purchases can translate to chargebacks from affected online retailers, resulting in financial losses.
Pay particular attention to these three kinds of eCommerce fraud:
Types of eCommerce Fraud
1. Identity Theft
Among the most common type of fraud, identity theft has been a long-running scheme of cybercriminals. Identities, along with credit card information and addresses, are stolen using the latest techniques on data hacking, malware, and theft of mobile devices, which are then used to purchase from online merchants. Aside from stolen identities of actual individuals, fraudsters can also fabricate fictitious or manipulated personalities and use these instead during transactions.
2. Friendly Fraud
Sometimes called “chargeback fraud,” friendly fraud happens when customers call their credit card issuer and dispute the charge. While some fraud incidents are due to misunderstanding, others are done with malicious intent. Dishonest consumers will claim that they never received the item, heavily damaged, or not as described, requesting refunds from the online retailer after getting the package.
3. Phishing
This type of fraud is rampant and requires technical capability, as fraudsters pretend to be a company or eCommerce platform to trick customers into typing in personal information on a rigged form. Phishing emails often contain a warning to customers that their accounts have been compromised and need to input details like user ID, password, and personal information as proof of their identity. Armed with an individual’s stolen details, fraudsters can use these to make online purchases or transfer money to another account.
How Online Merchants Can Protect Against Fraud
To minimize the increasing risk for eCommerce fraud, there are a few things that you, as a business owner, can do. A proactive approach, rather than a reactive one, is more effective in preventing fraud from happening and taking a cut of your profits, especially during the holiday rush.
1. Have a good fraud protection system in place.
Before the buying frenzy of the holidays begins, ensure that your business has fraud prevention and chargeback protection systems set up. There are numerous tools available on the market, so choose one that fits your business needs. It’s a cost-effective solution that’s well worth the investment in the long run.
2. Use a prevention system that combines human and artificial intelligence.
While machine learning can effectively analyze patterns of fraud based on millions of transactional data, it still takes human intelligence to know something is off with a transaction.
3. Take advantage of the verification process as well.
To mitigate eCommerce fraud, make use of a good address verification system. This will confirm whether the bill-to and ship-to addresses are similar, along with email address and location as part of a customer’s identity verification when the transaction happened. An extra layer of protection helps by employing the card verification value to ensure that the customer holds or has access to the actual credit card.
Even though email fraud is a far-too-common occurrence, you still need a good authentication system for your business. Authentication systems with Domain-Based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance will give you a heads up if an email contains dubious links or potential threats. Aside from protecting your eCommerce business against fraud, email authentication assures your customers that what you send is trustworthy.
5. Determine transaction origins.
Each electronic device has a particular fraud profile and depending on what was used for the transaction, you can gauge and screen for potential eCommerce fraud. Device assessment assists online merchants in identifying transactions made by bots, flagging anomalous purchases through account takeovers, and highlighting malicious intents.
When consumer spending picks up during the holiday season, it is expected that eCommerce fraud will gain momentum as well. Ensure that your business is not losing money from fraudulent transactions by beefing up your prevention and authentication systems and keeping them updated with the latest patches.
Fred Smith, founder, and CEO of FedEx told Bloomberg this morning that they don’t see any negative impact from Amazon doing more of their deliveries themselves. Smith says that the biggest entity that will lose business as Amazon implements its own delivery force is the US Postal Service:
“I don’t think it (Amazon’s split HQ announcement) has too much to do with FedEx,” said Smith. “You’ve got to remember that Amazon is delivering things from their fulfillment center to customers. We’re picking up, transporting, and delivering things from every person and business in the world to every other business. The biggest single provider of delivery services to the Amazon fulfillment network is not us, it’s the US Postal Service. They’re the ones that Amazon’s proprietary or indigenous delivery system will take the most volume from.”
“Amazon’s a good customer” Smith added. “We think they will be a bigger customer in the years to come if they continue to grow and they certainly should, but they are going to do some of their deliveries themselves for many reasons. The biggest single entity that will lose traffic as Amazon puts out its contractor delivery force is the US Postal Service.”
Amazon is actively marketing their Amazon Delivery Service Partner program, seeking independent contractors to deliver packages from their fulfillment centers to customers. They are literally encouraging people to start their own business:
We are looking for hands-on leaders who are passionate about hiring and coaching great teams. With low startup costs, built-in demand, and access to Amazon’s technology and logistics experience, this is an opportunity to build and grow a successful package delivery business. Join a community of Amazon Delivery Service Partners in one of the fastest-growing industries in the world.
Amazon is also hiring drivers directly as part of its new last-mile shipping program according to Business Insider:
For the first time, the company is planning to hire and manage thousands of full-time drivers to transport packages to customers from Amazon delivery outposts across the US, the company confirmed to Business Insider on Monday.
Amazon will manage these drivers directly, meaning the company will set their wages, provide them delivery vehicles, and schedule their routes. The drivers are seasonal but will have the option to apply to continue their employment with Amazon following the holiday season.
“Seasonal employees have long been utilized to supplement capacity during peak shopping periods,” an Amazon spokeswoman said. “This holiday, thousands of full-time, seasonal Delivery Associates will deliver to customers during the busy retail shopping season.”
Bumble is launching their app in Inda with the help of its new investor and brand ambassador actress Priyanka Chopra. The actress should help Bumble India get off to a fast start, having already announced it to her 23.6 million followers on Twitter.
Whitney Wolfe commented on CNN about changes Bumble made in an effort to make them feel more comfortable using the app in India:
Bumble is a Recalibration of Human Behavior
I believe that no matter what area of the planet you are trying to enter you have to be so in tune with the customs and the culture. We’ve taken a lot of measures, both in the product and in the go-to-market strategy to really be mindful and to bring something that the girls and women of India would actually want to use.
In India, in particular, we have deleted first names. Now you use your first initial. We want you to feel safe and secure and have your anonymity and know as a woman that you can really hide behind all these different shields Bumble provides you. So, a first initial for starters, verified photos, and then women make the first move on Bumble. This is a huge thing.
There were a lot of naysayers at the beginning of Bumble four-plus years ago that this is a gimmick, this is just a way to enter the space. But no, it’s not a gimmick. It’s a recalibration of human behavior and the way we treat each other. This creates safety in and of itself.
Women Need Empowerment Globally
I think that women need empowerment globally, it doesn’t matter where it is. The more disempowered the mindset, the culture, wherever that might be. You can even take America, for example, there are different parts of the country that are a bit more archaic in mindset. We had a lot of people challenge us here as well at the beginning of Bumble. You will never survive in the South, or you will never survive in this state or that territory. To be candid, we thrived.
The more disempowered, the more archaic, the more desire to rise and be equal women truly are at their core. We need to provide that globally. Yes, we need to be really mindful of culture and tradition. But at the end of the day, we aren’t doing anything other than saying we want to encourage empowerment and equality.
About Bumble
Bumble is a social network that allows you to feel empowered while you make those connections, whether you’re dating, looking for friends, or growing your professional network. When members of the opposite sex match on Bumble, women are required to make the first move, shifting old-fashioned power dynamics and encouraging equality from the start.
Western Union has partnered with Amazon to white label their cross-border money transfer platform. “Amazon engaged us to use our platform to service their customers in a better way in order to give access to the millions of customers who don’t have an access today to buy online and pay,” said Hikmet Ersek, the CEO of Western Union. “In the future, they will have the capability to buy globally and pay locally.”
Hikmet Ersek, President, CEO, Western Union, recently discussed the new partnership with Amazon, competition with Zelle and Vinmo, and the overall health of the business:
Western Union Digital Business is Growing Very Well
Our digital business is growing very well year over year. We are now in 50 countries with our digital business sending money to over 200 countries. We pretty much cover the world with digital. Our digital growth is very strong. Our retail money transfer business has been stable. In some countries, we have been a little bit slower like in the Middle East, but we had very strong growth in Europe and US outbound business. Our US domestic business has been a little bit slower than we thought. Generally, I would say that we had a very stable solid quarter and we are very excited about the future.
You Can’t Send Money From Your Mobile
US to Domestic there has been some competitive environment. Nothing changed like last quarter. We have certain customers that like to pick up cash immediately. Nobody can beat that. You can’t send (cash) money from your mobile. We pay out in cash immediately. There are also competitors like Zelle and Vinmo who have been capturing some market share there with their zero fee environment. That has definitely been US dominated but is only a small part of our business, seven percent of our revenues. We are more focused on the outbound business, global cross-border business. That has been growing very well.
Western Union is White Labeling Platform to Amazon
Amazon has engaged us, over the years we have been building a cross-border platform, which is unique. We are moving transactions in 132 currencies globally and we do about 32 transactions every second. We have a network of 550,000 locations. We are reaching out to about 4 billion accounts globally. This is a unique platform where today we serve our customers with this platform.
Companies like Amazon engaged us to use our platform to service their customers in a better way in order to give access to the millions of customers who don’t have an access today to buy online and pay. In the future, they will have the capability to buy globally and pay locally.
The Amazon partnership is for us very exciting because now suddenly we are opening our platform to new customer segments, white labeling to other organizations like Amazon. Today, we are serving our existing customers with our branded transactions. In the future, we will be able to serve huge organizations like Amazon, or Amazon will engage us with other organizations, to engage our platform and to use our platform to serve their customers.
Paying Amazon Has Been a Real Obstacle for Some
“There are people in the world who want greater access to Amazon’s huge product selection but paying for those purchases has been a real obstacle for many customers,” said Hikmet Ersek, president and CEO of Western Union. “We’re leveraging our money movement platform to make it easier to shop global and pay local. By facilitating the complex foreign exchange and settlement process, we’re opening up more consumer choices and access to online shopping for tens of millions of potential new Amazon customers.”
Forrester Research estimates that cross-border shopping will make up 20% of e-commerce by 2022, with sales reaching $630 billion. Choice, quality and cost are the main motivations for consumers to shop online from overseas, but there are challenges and concerns about the lack of payment options for consumers who prefer to pay in person or consumers who are not comfortable using online payment methods.
Internet pioneer Barry Diller says that the Internet revolution is still really young. He also says that this truly radical revolution is right now a very troubled revolution.
Barry Diller, Chairman and Senior Executive of IAC and Expedia, Inc., recently reflected on the relative youthfulness of the Internet and areas which are still ripe for entrepreneurs. IAC owns popular dating platforms such as Tinder and Match.
Below are Barry Diller’s comments made during an interview on Fox Business which you can watch in its entirety below:
The Internet Revolution is Still Really Young
The growth is just part of the revolution. People forget that the internet revolution is still really young, only 22 or 23 years. It took 10-15 years just to get up enough bandwidth to actually have rich media being served through it. We are really at the very earliest stage of this.
Expedia is one of the first companies to kind of colonize travel for the internet 20 years ago. That’s a world where the colonization of all these businesses is just now coming on ‘full line’ where you can do almost everything and almost everything more through digital platforms. So the growth is everywhere.
Fintech is Just Now Going Mainstream
Financial technology, Fintech, is just now really getting into very much mainstream. Big companies are being built for this. For us, it’s home services. Being able to the same thing you do when you want a car, being taken someplace rather than drive yourself, where you have an app and with Uber. Home service, which has been one of the most difficult areas to tame.
It’s the most, essentially, local of everything. It’s where your water heater breaks, your air conditioning doesn’t work, just take it on the emergency or quick service side, and you want help. Now there is an app in Angie Home Services in Home Advisor where literally you do the same thing. You say I need a plumber and it will show you plumbers hovering around, Uberish like service providers, where you will be able to do the full-service of that transaction on your mobile device because it’s there and it’s ready for you.
It’s Really a Platform
That is just now at it’s very earliest stages. It’s just one example where the growth runway is infinite. It’s really a platform. The platform takes consumers over here who have needs and service providers over here who provide services and through technology, it makes a perfect match or at least a good match.
That’s what all of those things are, they are platforms. Once you have a platform then when you say will others be created, well certainly there will be other platforms created, but there won’t be that many because the network effects have to come into play.
Tinder is Now Moving on the Same Track as Match
We’ve been involved in Match almost 20 years I think. We bought Match quite early in the cycle. We found that… you know what, that’s a very good idea. We found this little company in Texas called Match.com which we bought. The thing is when you say it’s just now becoming where people get married, we had over a million marriages ten years ago come from Match.com.
Then the technology moved forward and you have Tinder, which is actually younger in terms of people. People on Match were fairly serious, yes they wanted to date and see what happened on a little one-time date, but they also really wanted relationships. Tinder got younger and earlier stage of pre-relationship, one-time dating or one-time whatever. But now, it is moving on the same track as Match did where real relationships are coming out of Tinder. It’s an alternative to the historic pattern of going to bars or being fixed up. This actually does bring technology into the mix.
This is a Truly Radical Revolution
When you are inside of a revolution, which I was just lucky enough in timing to get into in a very early stage, you don’t realize the effects of what is happening around you. This is a truly radical revolution. Right now it is a very troubled revolution which happens at very early stages.
Part 1 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
Part 2 of Barry Diller interview on the Internet Revolution:
Analyst Toni Sacconaghi at Bernstein says, “The issue is all about if units are weak on iPhone what is that saying about the sustainability and health of that business and the sustainability and health of the growth of the installed base?
Toni Sacconaghi, Senior Technology Research Analyst at Bernstein, recently discussed investors reaction to Apple’s latest earnings report on CNBC:
iPhone Sales Decline Concerns Investors
The real issue is that if you work from Apple’s guidance they’re saying effectively, or we impute, that iPhone units are going to decline five to ten percent in the December quarter. That is really the key controversy going forward. Can you have a healthy Apple if iPhone units are gonna decline going forward?
You may say, well they’re getting price increases and revenues are still going to increase this year. However, if units do go down this cycle, and it looks quite likely that they will, the market is effectively saying… we’re not sure that we can take price increases from you anymore Apple. If iPhone prices don’t go up and smartphone units are down this year and will likely continue to be down then all of a sudden you’re talking about 60 plus percent of the revenues of the company that are going down. If units aren’t fuelling the installed base, installed base drives services growth, then all of a sudden you have a different story.
Are Weaker iPhone Sales a Result of Price Increases?
That’s really the controversy. It’s not so much that they withdrew units. People really view the withdrawal of unit information as a validation that units are going to be weak this year. The issue is all about if units are weak on iPhone what is that saying about the sustainability and health of that business and the sustainability and health of the growth of the installed base?
I think there will be an investor debate and that’s what you’re seeing in the market’s reaction today about whether lower unit growth this year is portending something more structural going forward. It’s not black and white. The market was expecting units to be flat and ASPs to be strong. ASPs are going to be strong but units are going to be down, so the markets recalibrating that. Really the core strategic question is what is weaker unit growth saying about how consumers are responding to Apple’s prices and what does that mean about future unit growth and its implications for services growth?
SAP CEO Bill McDermott, in a wide-ranging interview with Bloomberg talked about enterprises moving to the cloud, competing with Oracle’s new autonomous database, competing with Salesforce, and its huge business in China:
SAP Has Taken Over the Enterprise Database Market
Do you have a major move to the cloud? If legacy companies haven’t fully invested themselves in the cloud where they’ve converted their revenue streams more to cloud than on-premise I think you will see them make bold moves to get cloud-ready. No choice, that’s where the customer wants us.
We obviously have taken over the enterprise database market with HANA. HANA has many of the characteristics that you mentioned (referencing Oracle). HANA can take data from any source, everything that is either structured or unstructured and data from any source in the enterprise. HANA is running the biggest enterprises in the world now with 25,000 customers at mass scale. We like our HANA database very much.
It’s All About the Customer Experience
We see a fourth-generation of CRM where we go beyond the current market participants. Basically, they focus on sales, marketing campaigns, things that essentially take money out of the customers pocket. What we want to do is focus on an omnichannel ecommerce world where we connect the demand chain because our customers are social, mobile and on the run. They shop in every channel, direct to consumer, wholesale, retail. We want to connect that demand chain to the supply chain so that we have a complete end-to-end business.
Why is this so important? We are not just talking about CRM, we are talking about customer experience. The way CEOs think about their brand, their products, their human capital, their customers. All of the people inside of the company have to be completely committed to the customers outside the company. This is what we call fourth-generation CRM. It’s all about the customer experience.
We’d Like to See China and the US Cooperate
The most important thing is that we get paid to run businesses and work in an environment where we let government do what government does. All government leaders have to do what’s best for their country and best for their constituents. These tariffs are obviously a serious situation. You have the two largest economies in the world with $30 trillion in combined economic firepower that right now are at a little bit at odds with each other.
It’s good, as we saw in today’s tweet, it was stated that at the G20 President Xi and President Trump will sit down and talk. That’s very encouraging to the market. Markets like certainty. So certainly we would like to see China and the US cooperate. It’s good for supply chain, it’s good for business.
China is Regarded as SAP’s Second Home
Germain engineering is highly regarding in China, as it is in the United States and around the world, but we do particularly well in China. China is our fastest growing market. We think that China is easily regarded as SAP’s second home in terms of market receptivity, ecosystem growth in China, and our long-term prospects. We think China will end up being the biggest market in the world soon.
We have the most sophisticated data privacy in the world. We acquired a company called Gigya where we have billions and billions of customer records. We protect your privacy, we don’t let customers actually engage you unless you agree that you want to opt-in on various offerings from our customers and they serve their customers. We follow the same reference architecture, the same high-security standards and cloud standards in China that we do in Europe, the United States, and every other theater in the world.
We are very confident in China in the way enterprises can serve their customers in China with high-security standards. We recently announced a very important partnership with Alibaba and that is a cloud partnership that will not only impact our growth in one of the fastest growing regions in the world.
We Are Very Diverse and Highly Inclusive
We actually have appointed in the last 12 months two women to our Executive Board, not just because they are women, but because they are great leaders. That would be Adaire Fox-Martin and Jennifer Morgan. If you look at our company we have a third of our workforce that is female and we also have a third of our leaders that are female.
We are very diverse and highly inclusive. One of the things we really enjoy is what we have done with Autism at Work and now we have dedicated one percent of our hiring to autistic folks, at least on the spectrum somewhere, to help our workforce be highly productive and diverse. That extends also to the solutions that we have. If you look at success factors, the number one human capital solution in the world, we have a business without bias mentality.
Computers don’t have bias. In the way we build the algorithms in the software they eliminate bias from the hiring process. The computer doesn’t have a bias. It looks for the best candidates and it fills an algorithm or model that the company is trying to get at. If you want 40 percent of your workforce to be diverse and inclusive, the model is built to do that for you. You don’t leave it up to humans, you let the software do the work and then the human judgment comes in at the final phase of hiring. It’s changing companies everywhere.
Peter Lorimer, co-host with Genevieve Gorder of the Netflix show “Stay Here” which helps people successfully rent their homes on Airbnb. “To succeed in the world of short-term rental you have to offer more than just a comfortable place to sleep,” said Lorimar in a promo for the show.
“Stay Here” co-host Peter Lorimer recently discussed the show in an interview on Fox Business (full interview below):
Helping People Get More ROI From Airbnb
We call it the ‘junk drawer’ kind of philosophy. I think it is changing, the business is evolving now, but it used to be Granny’s old apartment or the garden shed, you just throw a little bed in it and it was full of rotten old furniture and horrid flowery sheets. Too much stuff… and too much old stuff. But now people are looking at it as a business and our show is one of the first out there helping people get more ROI.
People Making Massive Income on Airbnb with Minor Modifications
There are a fraction of people right now that are making a massive income with just minor modifications. The worst thing people can do is leave their Airbnb rental in kind of a soulless vacuum to fend for themselves. If I’m flying into Frankfort, Germany and I want to stay in an Airbnb I want to experience Frankfort through the eyes of a local. I don’t want to roll up with my three screaming kids wondering what the wifi is, no snacks, and the place being a little bit dirty.
Dirty is the Worst
Dirty is the worst. What I try to do with my clients in Los Angeles, and I’ve been doing Airbnb before it was even cool, I say remove your head and pretend this is not your home. Pretend you are walking in for the first time and what you don’t like and then I have to point it out. Too much clutter is number one. Bad taste is number two. There is a little bit of bad taste in L.A. and all over the country. Then number three is to anticipate what the guests want before they want it.
Why Are People Renting on Airbnb?
Some people are getting extra houses and some people are flipping into extra properties. I have a client and a friend who is the marketing director of a big Fortune 500 company and he said, “Pete, I’m taking off to Bangkok, I’m going to stay there for nine months, can you rent out my place, I’m just going to be on the beach banging away on my laptop and I want to make a profit to cover my travel, all of my expenses, and have my mortgage paid.” And he’s doing it.
Millenials Embracing the Shared Economy
I wanted to forge my own flavor of real estate which was very kind of rock and roll and that seemed to work really well with the newer generation, the Millenials and younger who embraced the shared economy.
According to Rich Greenfield, media and technology analyst at BTIG, Facebooks is starting to show huge monetization potential for apps that are not the news feed. “The reality is that as you look out more broadly over the next few years Facebook has got a lot of different initiatives that are at the very early stages of monetization,” Greenfield said. “They are just scratching the surface of Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook Watch, and IGTV, which is the Instagram video platform.”
Rich Greenfield, media and technology analyst at BTIG recently talked on Bloomberg about newer monetization opportunities on Facebook that may eventually even surpass the core news feed app:
Facebook is Dominating Mobile Time Spent
I think it’s less about this war between Apple and Facebook or YouTube versus Facebook, the reality is Facebook is one of the dominant companies in terms of mobile time spent. Despite all this fear that people are abandoning Facebook or not using its application, the reality is that there is a billion and a half people using Facebook every single day. Not all the other applications, but Facebook itself.
800 Million People Using Facebook Marketplace
There are 800 million people using Facebook Marketplace. I have never used the Marketplace tab and I don’t know anyone who has used the Marketplace tab, but they’re saying there are 800 million people using that Marketplace tab to transact. They actually highlighted cars as becoming a place of real transfer where people buying and selling cars.
There are just so many things that Facebook is doing that are not always obvious to someone in the US. There are places in the world like Indonesia where Facebook Marketplace is the default way that goods are bought and sold. There are really some big differences globally such as the use of Messenger versus iMessage overseas and not all of that is apparent to a US investor.
Huge Monetization Potential for Non-News Feed Apps
The reality is that as you look out more broadly over the next few years Facebook has got a lot of different initiatives that are at the very early stages of monetization. They are just scratching the surface of Messenger, WhatsApp, Facebook Watch, and IGTV, which is the Instagram video platform. These are at the very early stages. What you do see is tremendous engagement across the family of Facebook apps and that creates a big long-term opportunity.
That’s what the Street is excited about, that they are just beginning to give hint of monetization of these things beyond the core news feed.
Like many businesses, Tommy John was launched out of a personal need to solve a problem. Tom Patterson, CEO of Tommy John, was inspired to start his now wildly successful clothing company Tommy John because he couldn’t understand why nobody was doing anything to fix the undershirt and underwear problem he was having.
My background is I’m a former medical device salesman. I was like Will Smith and The Pursuit of Happiness selling medical devices. As my suiting and dress shirting was becoming more fitted and tailored I couldn’t figure out why all the undershirts in the market were designed to be form-fitting for a UPS box. I’d have to tuck them into my underwear, I’d buy a size bigger so they’re longer and they’d bunch up and shrink and stretch out and turn yellow.
I ended up drawing a sketch with my limited art skills which took about an hour. Erin (Erin Fujimoto, co-founder) and I went to the garment district in downtown Los Angeles, bought some fabric, took it to a dry cleaner who had a tailor inside and said could you sew some prototypes together. Ten shirts later I sent them to friends and they loved them. We ended up making 200 shirts and then built a two-page PayPal checkout website in April of 2008 Tommy John was launched, really out of a problem that I had that I wanted to solve and then learned that many men suffer from the same issue.
I Didn’t Want to Be This Coulda, Woulda, Shoulda Guy
Launching Tommy John came from a personal need. I had lawn mowing businesses and snow blowing businesses that I had started before. Then I was watching The Big Idea, a TV show with Donny Deutsch, it was really Shark Tank before Shark Tank and a lot of entrepreneurs had ideas and I thought what’s my idea? This undershirt was the idea.
Fast forward to Fall of 2008, I was laid off my medical sales job and I read an article that there’s no better time to start a company than during a recession. I didn’t want to be this coulda, woulda, shoulda guy, ten years later having these regrets. What if I would have started this company, I had this idea, I wasn’t married yet, we didn’t have kids, didn’t own a home, and I thought there’s nothing really to lose. I can always go back and get another medical sales job but I didn’t want to have any regrets.
I called a buyer at Neiman Marcus. My background was strategic selling and I was trained on how to get to decision makers, but instead of selling a medical device I was now selling underwear. Obviously, not as scientific and not as life-saving, some argue it maybe is, and we were launched into Neiman Marcus in 2009.
Tommy John’s DNA is All About Comfort
I thought at some point a business idea would come to me and it happened to be when I was at a hospital doing a presentation and everything was tucked in, but my undershirt was up to here like a midriff. Why doesn’t anyone fix the undershirt problem? Then it led to my underwear riding up. Why doesn’t anyone make underwear that stays in place through movement? It really is all rooted in comfort and I think Tommy John’s DNA is all about comfort. I think what you see in the market today with women wearing leggings everywhere and flats taking over high heels people just want to be comfortable.
AR Will Be as Ubiquitous as the Internet 
Amazon is also hiring drivers directly as part of its new last-mile shipping program according to 
