Building Businesses in Aftermarket Designer Merchandise: ShopWorn CEO Richard Birnbaum (Part 4)

Richard Birnbaum: Even though distributors around the world were back-dooring the goods into the United States through e-commerce, I personally believe that the brands just closed one eye. It gave them deniability. The deniability factor is very important for them because when the dealers would start to complain, the brand would say, “We have no

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Catching Up On Readings: State of OTT

This webinar-related report from Comscore takes an in-depth look at today’s over-the-top content consumption and device usage and platform’s imminent surpassing of DVR tech. For this week’s posts, click on the paragraph links.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (Part 4)

Vikas Choudhury: Entrepreneurs today are either second-generation or second lifecycle. They come to us after having tried something on their own, so we do believe that they will just look at the funnel that is out there. You have tens of thousands of new companies in India. Less than 1% get angel funding. Less than

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Building Businesses in Aftermarket Designer Merchandise: ShopWorn CEO Richard Birnbaum (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: This business started with you taking consignment inventory. Is that how you continued or did you switch to buying inventory? Richard Birnbaum: The next step was going to the 47th Street in Manhattan and checking out all the different vendors. I was trying to learn the distribution model of dealers of these great

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1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: It sounds like you are very comfortable with getting into markets that don’t have a lot of traction, which is unusual in India. What drew you into angel investing at that point? Vikas Choudhury: It was actually something that wasn’t really orchestrated. I was running a software analytics company at that point in

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Colors: Rice Terraces, Yellow Storm

I’m publishing this series on LinkedIn called Colors to explore a topic that I care deeply about: the Renaissance Mind. I am just as passionate about entrepreneurship, technology, and business, as I am about Art and Culture. In this series, I will typically publish a piece of Art – a painting, a poem, a piece

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Building Businesses in Aftermarket Designer Merchandise: ShopWorn CEO Richard Birnbaum (Part 2)

Richard Birnbaum: We realized that the garment business was not for long term. We were buying back in the late 80’s. We were buying designer goods in the United States. We were buying Tommy Hilfiger, Calvin Klein, and Ralph Lauren. Back in those days, e-commerce was not what it is today.

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Vikas Choudhury of Pivot Ventures (2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s talk about some of the things you’ve invested in. We’ll talk about Pivot Ventures investments in a moment. You said you’re one of the first angel investors in the Indian ecosystem. Talk a little bit about what you invested in 2005. How has that landscape changed? How has your investment evolved through

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