Deal Radar 2008: Blurb

Blurb gives individuals and groups the ability to create, publish and market professional quality photo books. Unlike offset printing, they can publish just one copy or thousands, bringing book publishing to the masses. The self-publishing and print-on-demand industry is starting to become a meaningful alternative to the older, slower, more traditional publishing model.

Still Bullish on Shutterfly

Shutterfly (SFLY), the online photo company, recently declared first quarter results. Their revenue for the quarter of $34.3 million missed the market’s views of $34.8 million, even though it was 29% higher over previous year Q1 revenues. Their GAAP net loss at $0.15 per share met market expectations and was higher than GAAP net loss

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 12)

SM: The TAM is huge. JH: It’s a $150B TAM worldwide, and $50B in the US. SM: I am not worried about the growth opportunity at all. JH: The key for me and the management team is, and I think for any small business in any space, is how do you focus?

Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 8)

SM: Why didn’t Flickr elect to work with you? JH: At the time we were competing with Yahoo Photos, and Flickr chose a small company who is producing product as their outsource manufacturer. That small company has signed up a number of sites who in the early days thought they were competing with Shutterfly. They

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 6)

SM: What are your margins on the photo book business? JH: We do not disclose margins specifically. What we report to Wall Street are prints which are all prints from wallet size to the 20×30 pictures, and personalized products and services, and that’s how cards, calendars and photo books are counted. What we have said

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 4)

SM: Your vision was to move beyond the traditional print model, and rather be the center of a lifestyle. JH: I also saw us as building a personal publishing platform. Yes, we have consumers doing all the beautiful cards, books and calendars, but we also have lots of small businesses, charities, schools, non-profits, jewelry manufacturers,

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Shutterfly’s Strategy: A Conversation with CEO Jeff Housenbold (Part 3)

SM: Before we move on with your Shutterfly story, can you shift gears for a second and tell us the history of Shutterfly? JH: Shutterfly was founded in 1999 by two employees of Silicon Graphics – Eva Manolis and Dan Baum. Eva was a product person and Dan was a technology person. They teamed up

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Deal Radar 2008: hi5 Going Strong

Last week we took a look at Xanga and today we will take a look at hi5, another popular social networking site. hi5 has an Alexa traffic rank of 8. hi5 is more popular globally than it is in the US. It is the number one site in Peru, Dominic Republic, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Portugal,

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