Fashion4Home.com lets you Buy Your Next Couch From Your Couch
Exciting news, furniture shoppers! As the retail industry attempts to recover from the recession, a new wave of companies are introducing innovative business models and ways for consumers to shop and save.
The most recent to break out is Fashion4Home, which is challenging the status quo in high-end designer furnishings and putting an interactive twist on the experience. The online-only designer furniture company started out in Germany last fall and launched in the US last week. They offer the latest contemporary and modern furnishings from international designers that range from sleek convertible sofa beds to hip modular coffee tables that can be rearranged in 1,001 ways.
At the core, Fashion4Home.com is about putting the modern designer in touch with the modern shopper:
Shoppers vote and comment on sketches of brand new designs, giving the creators direct feedback – a first in the retail furniture business. Designers then iterate on ideas based on the input and Fashion4Home.com puts the most popular sketches into production. VentureBeat called the idea “social furniture” and Thrillist said the company lets you “furnish your pad democratically.” GigaOm made a comparison to t-shirt company Threadless, pointing out that Fashion4Home brings crowd-sourcing to the much more high-end and design-oriented market of home furniture.
A sustainable and eco-conscious business model was built around the concept of democratizing design:
Shoppers reap 50-70% savings compared to traditional retail thanks to a super compressed supply chain made possible by the Web and a direct-to-consumer sales model, eliminating the costs required for in-store purchasing: no importers, warehouses, wholesalers or storefronts. Because the company only makes products that have been purchased, it saves energy, resources and costs, a very important point according to the green design gurus at Inhabitat.
Best of all, the company is celebrating its US launch with a 10% discount through February. To receive the discount:
- Follow them on Twitter at www.twitter.com/Fashion4Home
- Mention @Fashion4Home in a tweet
Happy Voting!
We Make a Living Caring About Your Company
Last week, at Ultra Light Startups‘ January Entrepreneur’s Forum Managing Director Todd Barrish of LaunchSquad’s New York office, joined Rachel Honig of G.S. Schwartz & Co, Karl Schmieder of MessagingLab and Lloyd Trufelman of Trylon SMR for a panel about “PR, Branding and Buzz.”
Moderated by BizBriefs‘ John Adams, the panelists tackled strategies for startups that included what to look for when hiring an agency to DIY tips. Ultra light startups face the unique challenge of building themselves and their image from the ground up, which can make navigating public relations especially tricky. Graham Lawlor, Ultra Light Startup founder, noted that “PR clearly is something important to know about if you’re an ultra light startup” and just launching whether on your own or through an agency.
Barrish introduced LaunchSquad noting that “we make a living caring about your company,” emphasizing that public relations — whether for a young startup or a mature brand — is ultimately about creating a unique, intriguing story, understanding your business model and distributing your story in a targeted, strategic manner.
Offering advice to the entrepreneurs, Barrish noted the importance of creating a consistent, compelling story that can be carried across markets. “The first thing you can do as a small company is create that message and understand how you’re talking about yourself to your multiple audiences.”
The Ultra Light Startups’ Entrepreneurs Forum is a monthly meetup of about 100 entrepreneurs to participate in discussions of interest to individuals starting lightweight tech ventures. The meetings feature 60-second elevator pitch introductions from the attending entrepreneurs followed by pizza and networking and an interactive panel discussion.
Watch the panel in its entirety here:
Trekking Around With First Round
First Round Capital recently organized their first NYC Startup Trek, in part to commemorate the opening of their New York office this quarter and also explore the city’s incubator and co-working spaces. Partners from the early stage venture capital firm, which has already made investments in over a dozen NY-based companies, set out to meet with entrepreneurs and startups in their natural habitats to hear their ideas and discuss questions about technology, community, and investment. A couple of us out of LaunchSquad NY joined the trek and orchestrated some publicity around the event.
The day started at the NYU Poly Incubator at 160 Varick and followed with visits to Sunshine Suites, TechSpaces, New Work City and The Incubator at Rose Tech Ventures – a total of 8 different spaces throughout the day. What resonated most about the trek was the attitude towards First Round – many of the over 100 companies we visited were surprised and delighted at FRC’s grassroots approach to make themselves more available and approachable, seeking out the City’s most promising startups where they already are.
The trek ended at last week’s monthly New York Tech Meetup, where Charlie O’Donnell, FRC’s Entrepreneur-in-Residence, got up on stage for a few minutes to talk about the trek and play this video that we put together:
Read more of the great coverage in the Wall Street Journal’s Venture Capital Dispatch blog, CenterNetworks, and Charlie’s personal blog.
For background info on First Round Capital from Managing Partner Josh Kopelman, check out this video from Allen Stern:
Mochi Media acquired by Shanda Games
As the Internet evolves as a platform for both casual and console-quality games, tools like those that LaunchSquad client Mochi Media provides to help analyze and monetize these games are becoming tremendously valuable. That’s why Shanda Games, China’s largest operator of multi-player online role-playing games, announced today that they will acquire Mochi.
Mochi Media has been at the forefront of providing game developers tools to track distribution and usage analytics, enable version control and live updates to distributed games, and provide monetization via micro-transactions and real-time insertion of pre-game and in-game ads. As a result, the company’s network of games grew by leaps and bounds and now reaches more than 100 million people each month.
We’re thrilled for founders Jameson Hsu and Bob Ippolito, marketing gurus Josh Larson and Ada Chen, and the unbelievable Mochi team. The company will continue to operate as a separate brand developing the same products and services for developers, publishers and advertisers as before. But they’ll have a much deeper well of experience and technology to draw on as they continue to evolve our offerings as well as create new ones.
Keep a close eye on Mochi and this space, the opportunity is massive and we’ve only scratched the surface on how it will be addressed.
Todd Barrish Joins the Squad
LaunchSquad announced some pretty exciting news today: we’ve added Todd Barrish as the managing director of our growing NY office. Here’s our official announcement with more background on Todd and his accomplishments – and here’s some commentary from PR industry blog PR Newser.
Todd brings a ton of talent, passion and NY-market experience to our East Coast team. Over the past 3+ years, we’ve become increasingly inspired by what’s happening in NY as we’ve seen a growing and increasingly savvy ecosystem of entrepreneurs, investors and technology emerge. Working with innovative companies like Next New Networks, EPIX, UsableNet, Efficiency 2.0 and others has also opened our eyes to all the possibilities.
I had the opportunity to spend this past summer in NY, and saw first-hand the excitement and energy of the growing technology scene. Todd gives us scale and leadership to help make LaunchSquad the premier tech PR team in NY.
We’re not done though. We’ll soon be making other news about our plans and vision for LaunchSquad on the East Coast. Stay tuned.
East Meets West in SF
The entire New York office flew out west to San Francisco last week for our annual holiday gathering and celebration. For a few, it was a first trip to our Mission Street headquarters.
As the New Yorkers trickled into the office Monday and Tuesday bringing with them record cold temperatures, a scavenger hunt was planned for Wednesday afternoon. Teams were broken up accordingly: a veteran, a back-up, a newbie, a techie, a New Yorker and a nerd. They were set loose in San Francisco with a $50 bill, an iPhone and a set of clues. Here’s a sampling:
- Find a famous San Franciscan
- “Here’s to you Joe Dimaggio”
- Find a journalist
- Find a current employee of Twitter, Google or Facebook
- Find a relative of a LaunchSquad employee
- This bar is built on the remains of an old ship dating back to the Gold Rush
- Find a Whole Foods employee
- Eat some Jin Dui
- Visit a LaunchSquad client
Despite almost getting thrown out of Twitter’s new corporate offices and arrested at City Hall, Team #1 and its players Jason Mandell, Melissa Biles, Tory Whitney, Miko Mercer, Brigid Zapp and Lindsey Zouien made their way to the final pitstop, LaunchSquad watering hole, Kate O’Briens, to celebrate their victory, where event chairman Brett Weiner analyzed their iPhone photos for verification.
Thursday was the most serious of the days as we met off-site for our annual company meeting, which included presentations such as, “The State of the Squad,” the future of the company and PR, “Positivity,” and ended with an awards ceremony. The most coveted prize turned out to be the Sodastream.
Friday night’s final festivities sent us all to the Foreign Cinema’s Laszlo Bar where we noshed on oysters, tuna tare tare and mini prosciutto sandwiches as we viewed our annual company movie and toasted to the holidays as a team one last time before we bid adieu. Just another great week at LaunchSquad!
Cliqset to Power Real-Time Discussion for Tonight’s Boxee Beta Event
In the last few months, LaunchSquad client Cliqset has been building great momentum. In October, the company released its latest Beta, featuring real-time conversation and activity streams. Mashable even declared it as “FriendFeed done right.” Tonight, Cliqset will debut their real-time discussion app for the livestream of the Boxee Beta Unveiling event. It’s the first application on Boxee that lets people converse in real-time while watching a live event.
Over the past year, Mac, AppleTV, PC, and Linux users have been flocking to Boxee’s media center software for its TV viewing experience, social media capabilities, and large catalog of online multimedia content. Boxee is currently in Alpha but tonight they’ll debut their Beta software (featuring a redesigned look and feel), and preview the Boxee Box (no computer required!). So if you can’t make it to Brooklyn, Cliqset on Boxee is a great alternative to get you connected and engaged with the event and the Boxee community.
The Cliqset application will allow Boxee users to interact with each other in real-time as they as watch the event unfold. If you’ve already downloaded Boxee, go to the Boxee home page tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET and click on the Boxee Beta Unveiling in the Recommendations section. You’ll now be able to talk with fellow Boxee fans in a simple and clean interface. Mashable has a nice write up on this, and you can read more about it on the Cliqset and Boxee blogs.
So, tune-in tonight at 7:00 p.m. ET and join the conversation. I’ll be watching. To discuss, find LaunchSquad and me (Jen Gazin) on Cliqset.
Mobile Banking Reaching the Masses Thanks to Clairmail
One significant technology trend this year has been mobile banking’s big move from a niche to mainstream financial services story. It’s been featured in the Economist, BusinessWeek, Advertising Age, and several other leading publications (as well as by our own Miko Mercer last month) as a technology poised to begin effecting all sectors of society – from the unbanked individual to the billion-dollar corporation. Our longtime client ClairMail is at the forefront of this trend, with nearly 50 financial institutions as customers and a brand new software platform integrating three traditionally disparate methods of mobile communication – text alerts, mobile web, and a Smart Client application.
Aside from their excellent corporate momentum — they’ve posted 200 percent growth in revenue the past two quarters and a 700 percent growth in yearly transactions — ClairMail has also announced some exciting partnerships recently. At this year’s BAI Retail, they announced a new partnership with Visa, providing the credit card giant with the platform needed to expand its Visa Alerts program. ClairMail-fueled Visa Alerts will provide Visa cardholders with the ability to check credit balances and receive proactive, conversational notifications of fraudulent or questionable transactions in real-time. Essentially, you’ll be able to approve you and your date’s five-star dinner from your mobile before the waiter even returns with the receipt.
With all this in mind, it’s no wonder that ClairMail was just selected to the Bank Technology News’ (BTN) Innovator list for 2009. BTN cites ClairMail’s “increasing customer success (…) at a time when former competitors have faltered, or at least seem to be standing still.” BTN further points out that “Banks gain from using ClairMail’s triple play convergence technologies since it simplifies installations and minimizes update requirements, thus lowering support costs for financial institutions.”
It has been a terrific four years that we have already worked with ClairMail, and we’re looking forward to helping the company continue to drive the rapid growth of mobile banking into 2010 and beyond.
InsideView Drives Social Intelligence for Business
As we round the corner past 2009, it’s looking as if all-things 2.0 and real-time will continue to be the tech-buzz zeitgeist and a major theme of 2010. From real-time streaming media and news, social enterprise applications and more, the envelope is being pushed to deliver anything in its socially relevant format. This sits on the core principle that the importance of social media such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others – i.e, the information these networks contain – has exploded.
Our client InsideView has been driving the effort to put this new social information to work for businesses in some pretty exciting ways. The company’s flagship application, SalesView, works to deliver what they call Sales 2.0 – or social intelligence for the sales profession – leaving behind clunky old legacy data providers like Hoover’s and OneSource for more than 20,000 information sources that work in a more open and fluid world. In May, InsideView rolled out a huge evolution of its technology which harnessed social Web data for any sales person to easily access and act upon within their existing CRM. As TechCrunch said in its coverage of the launch, “InsideView’s service is helpful in filtering business information and news that lives on social media platforms to help enterprises create a knowledge base around a potential sales lead.”
It’s an approach that hasn’t been lost on InsideView’s customers. As BNET’s David Weir wrote last week, “There was a time that all you needed was your Hoover’s, your Dun & Bradstreet, and access to the latest SEC filings in order to keep up. Those days are gone … disruptive technology companies like InsideView look to me to be poised to eat their lunch.”
As hundreds of companies are looking for smarter CRM, leading enterprise solutions provider NetSuite chose InsideView as a premier partner in its effort to bring all enterprise platforms – beyond CRM and into the world of ERP, HR and billing – to a more social and productive place. When ReadWriteWeb wrote on the news, they agreed that this is an “unfolding trend” which will “create a more measured look at how Enterprise 2.0 applications fit with back office functions.”
Other writers like Dan Woods from Forbes.com, or thought leaders such as Andrew McAfee (coiner of the phrase ‘Enterprise 2.0′ itself) agree. As Woods recently wrote in his Forbes article titled Tracking a Million Conversations, “The big-picture value comes from putting a technique to use in the context of a business. InsideView enables a sales person who is evaluating which leads to pursue to make better decisions by seeing more information on the background and context of the company.”
InsideView is a game-changer, diving into the social Web, digging in to the real-time inner-workings, and then providing a practical and enterprise-wide solution (whether it’s in salesforce.com or on-premise suites from Oracle/Siebel – the company works with all major CRM vendors) that anyone can start using.
Now that’s real social intelligence!
LaunchSquad’s Fifth Annual Thanksgiving Pie Bake-off
The much-anticipated fifth annual Thanksgiving Pie Bake-off promised fifteen pies, but delivered ten. There was not one plain old pumpkin in the bunch, but lots of bourbon. So much so that the Bake-off Committee regretted moving the date from a Friday to a Wednesday. Adding to the commotion were accusations that blue ribbon winner Brett Weiner, who would have been out-of-town for the original contest, bribed the committee members to change the date. Did he also buy some votes?
Let’s roll it out:
This year’s winner was Apple Pie with Walnut Crumble with a Rye Chaser baked by Brett Weiner and touted as traditional apple pie with a very big twist. “Anything with a walnut topping and a whiskey chaser gets my gets my vote,” said former Bake-off Committee member, Virginia Zimpel. Other bakers cried foul–maybe the tasters were too inebriated to know any better?
Meanwhile, in New York
LaunchSquad’s New York office also had an unsanctioned, rogue pie bake-off today, with Aly Gibson’s Caramel Apple Pie with Sweet Cream Topping taking top honors. Though the bake-off wasn’t officially OK’d by the Pie Bake-Off Committee, the competitive spirit of the original contest was certainly there. Said Gibson, “The sweetness of this pie is really the taste of my blood, sweat, and tears. … I am hardcore.”
Fellow New Yorker Miko Mercer called the pie “exquisite,” saying it was “the most complex pie of the bunch.” Mercer also added, however, that Aly was “a little intense” during the competition.
The rest of the pies at our home office broke down as such:
2nd Place
Pumpkin Cheesecake baked by Sara Schulte. A Bake-off Committee member was reprimanded for showing bias by lavishly praising the delicious pie (or is it a cake).
Tied for 3rd Place
Southern Pecan Pie baked by Tory Whitney. The quintessential pecan pie! Delicious.
Apple Bourbon Pie baked by Corey Lewis. While the lattice top crust was quite impressive, Baker Corey Lewis complained of his pie’s lack of sweetness. “I needed Washington apples,” he lamented.
Deep-dish Pumpkin Pie with Whiskey Butter cream baked by year-three winner Monica Miller. “Beautiful enough to sell in a bakery, but I don’t like pecans,” said the always-controversial taster, Jason Mandell.
Kentucky Derby Chocolate-Pecan Pie baked by Bake-off darling, Melissa Biles. ”Rich and scrumptious,” said an anonymous taster, “bring on the mint julips!”
Tied for 4th Place
The Pookie Pie baked by newcomer Steve Mnich. “We’ve never seen or tasted anything like this before,” said the Bake-off Official, Jason Throckmorton. “Is it a pie? Is it a cake? Is it a culinary nightmare?” The Pookie Pie was almost disqualified, however, the Bake-off Committee accused of working too closely with the LaunchSquad Kitchen KGB, decided to show some heart.
Pumpkin Apple Crisp baked by Aly Brady. “Not a pie, not a pie,” complained many bakers though the Committee interpreted it as a “crustless pie” with all the right components.
Tied for Last Place (only because the bakers showed some virtue and did not vote for themselves)
Maple Nut Pie baked by Greer Karlis, AKA the “trail-mix pie,” as some deemed it too healthy for LaunchSquad standards. The bake-off committee gave it an A for its colorful presentation and its healthy splash of booze.
The Yammer inspired by our favorite internal form of communication, Yammer, baked by first-time ever pie baker, Emilie Cole. Emilie complained that Martha Stewart’s instructions were too difficult and plans on using Rachael Ray’s 3-minute pie recipe next year.
Please also note that LaunchSquad pie recipes are not available to the public.