Posted by on under sba loan program, kitchen timer, cornell university, digital kitchen, twitter, prior knowledge, klip, mechanical engineering, entrepreneur, us government, mba, bs, perspective, audience, china, blog | 
Adam Hocherman, 34, is an entrepreneur and founder of the consumer electronics company American Innovative in Boston, MA. Adam founded the company in 2003 with the help of the US Government's SBA loan program and is currently the 100% owner. He holds a BS in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA, both from Cornell University. Adam's writings can be found on his blog at DesignTheatre.net and through his Twitter feed. He welcomes your comments. Read more about sourcing in China here. Part III of the Going It Alone series will answer the question: What is a factory and how can I tell one from another? I will answer the question from a consumer electronics perspective and I will assume an audience that has little or no prior knowledge of manufacturing. The purpose of this article will be to try to introduce the burgeoning entrepreneur to the basic components of electronics manufacturing in China. I will do this in the context of manufacturing the simple electronic product shown below - a digital kitchen timer that we call the
Klip!
Tagi: sba loan program, kitchen timer, cornell university, digital kitchen, twitter, prior knowledge, klip, mechanical engineering, entrepreneur, us government, mba, bs, perspective, audience, china, blog
Posted by on under angel investor, checkout counters, preview copy, impressi, hsieh, banter, passi, happiness, photographers, ty, ceo, profits, peoe, models, adult |
Editor's Note: The following guest post was written by Cyan Banister, the founder and CEO of Zivity, a venture-funded adult content site that invites users to interact with models and photographers. Banister is also an active angel investor. In just over a month, my friend (and Zappos CEO)
Tony Hsieh will be launching his new book,
Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose (you can pre-order it
here). Reading a preview copy of the book led me to think back about the first time I met Tony, and what an impression it made on me. You meet a lot of people in your life. Think about it for a moment. How many people do you think you've met? Count up all of the social events, work, airplanes, school and checkout counters. Out of all of those people, think about who you really remember.
Tagi: angel investor, checkout counters, preview copy, impressi, hsieh, banter, passi, happiness, photographers, ty, ceo, profits, peoe, models, adult
Posted by on under john doerr, cup trophy, charlie rose, silver cup, sterling silver, techcrunch, compas, launch, cash prize, pints, final four, startups, countdown, battlefield |
The countdown to the official launch of
TechCrunch Disrupt in New York is down to the last several hours. Things kick off Monday morning at 9 am EST with Charlie Rose and John Doerr, and we run from there for three days. Half of the event is a startup launch battlefield where 22 new companies and products will show their stuff to the world for the first time on stage. Startups are eliminated over three rounds until we have a "final four" for best of show. Eventually an overall winner will be chosen. The winner receives a cash prize of $50,000, although that has paled in importance to the massive press and user awareness that the companies will get from their time at Disrupt. But we've also decided to add another award into the mix - The TechCrunch Disrupt Cup. This is a 16 inch tall sterling silver cup trophy weighing in at nearly six pounds - more than five pounds of pure silver. It holds 15 pints of your favorite beverage.
Tagi: john doerr, cup trophy, charlie rose, silver cup, sterling silver, techcrunch, compas, launch, cash prize, pints, final four, startups, countdown, battlefield
Posted by on under john borthwick, growing seed, ceo john, dealflow, panel moderator, startups, tumblr, techcrunch, building blocks, mecca, user experience, posited, ace, ui, new york city, investors |
Last week at
TechCrunch Disrupt, some of New York City's most notable investors and entrepreneurs took the stage to talk about New York City's seed funding situation. The title of Startup Mecca still clearly belongs to Silicon Valley, but as panel moderator Erick Schonfeld noted, the number of startups making their way to the Big Apple is on the rise and dealflow in New York is quickly heating up. The conversation touched on quite a few subjects, including what kind of companies tend to do best in New York. Betaworks CEO John Borthwick posited that many of the startups doing well in NYC — Tumblr for example — tend to focus largely on the UI and user experience. He says that many of the web's building blocks (AWS, etc) are already in place, and many of the services that will do well are building off of those.
Tagi: john borthwick, growing seed, ceo john, dealflow, panel moderator, startups, tumblr, techcrunch, building blocks, mecca, user experience, posited, ace, ui, new york city, investors
Posted by on under retail categories, bait and switch, compas, frt, department stores, email newsletters, designers, six years, bas, shopping |
I’ve long been
a fan of
Shop It to Me, a site that was early to the personalized shopping and promotion wave when it started back in 2004. It was a beautifully simple idea: Email newsletters that let you know when your favorite brands in your size were on sale. After some-six years of quietly building a business, Shop It To Me is finally invested in a new front end, back end and new retail categories. The users will start seeing changes today. This is a site that execution-wise got everything right, which is why it has out-grown and out-lasted a few dozen companies that have had a near-identical approach. First off, it has great inventory—all the biggest designers and department stores. The site allows you to enter your size info on a brand-by-brand basis, recognizing that we all wear different sizes for different designers. The email newsletters contain all the information you want, you only click through if you have an intent to purchase. That means there’s no bait-and-switch or overly goosed click-through rates for retailers.
Tagi: retail categories, bait and switch, compas, frt, department stores, email newsletters, designers, six years, bas, shopping
