Billion Dollar Unicorns: Web 3.0 and E-Commerce Investment Thesis of 3 VCs

Last fall, we had three VCs participate in our 1M/1M roundtables to discuss their Web 3.0 and e-Commerce investment thesis. These interviews cover as well as build upon the themes discussed in my two recent books, Billion Dollar Unicorns and From E-Commerce to Web 3.0. If you are looking to build a Unicorn company in the Web 3.0 / e-Commerce domains, I strongly recommend you listen to these three interviews. In each case, listening to just the first 30 minutes would be adequate.

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: You should look at WebLinc. WebLinc is a very comprehensive system with one of the best personalization capabilities on the commerce side. They’re not necessarily as focused on the content side, although they are doing some very interesting user-generated content work.

Let’s talk about open problems and opportunities out there. Based on this conversation and the WebLinc conversation that we had a few weeks ago, one of the opportunities that comes to my mind is an integrated next-generation e-commerce system that really is set-up to power a Web 3.0 user experience which fuses content, community, commerce, vertical search, and personalization but can be handled from one system. Isn’t that an accurate observation?
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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Interesting. Can you give us some examples from your customer base where this kind of content–commerce fusion is happening on their website as we speak?

Gerrit Kolb: One example is Homebase. Homebase is using IBM system in the back-end. Then, we have JD Group who is using SAP in the back-end system. What usually happens is that people consume content form internal and external content editors. Then, they link it to specific offerings. They specifically create topic pages. Homebase is probably the largest retailer of home furniture and garden furniture in the UK. This is a very seasonal business. In the Fall season, you have different offerings and different stories. One thing they do is take pictures of those specific seasons. They have automatic flyover areas where they position their products directly in the story of a family that is going to picnic. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: How do you do it?

Gerrit Kolb: Most traditional web content management systems typically rely on an approach where the delivery of the web page is left to the web server. This means that you basically have a static environment that you can change a little bit with a little JavaScript. Our differentiating factor is that we have a component called the content application engine (CAE). We have developed a technology where we have a very scalable infrastructure and we have our own delivery infrastructure, which is highly scalable. Whereas if you wanted to scale in an environment where you are using just a plain server to do the rendering of your web experience, you don’t have the flexibility to do the contextualization and personalization. Also, we’re not only able to generate HTML, but also any stream of data that you could envision. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 4)

Gerrit Kolb: You asked about the completeness of the e-commerce platform. How do you integrate and what is the mechanism? There are basically two ways you can integrate. It’s typically referred to as who owns the glass. Some vendors go in and they say, “We’ve got to control the glass because the experience is so important.” The shopping element of e-commerce is reduced to an API calling. You own the whole experience from an event content management and a web experience management platform. Then you’re doing the call-outs to the back end e-commerce system.

The other thing, which is actually something that is important is that whoever is big in this business, has probably been in business for more than two or three years. One of our customers is a company called Office Depot. They’re the fifth largest retailer in North America. They generate >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 3)

Gerrit Kolb: Basically, there are two outcomes. Number one is that the story that you’re telling allows you to create packages that are combined with stories that are entertaining and sticky for the customer. The customer comes back because he wants to hear the stories about specific areas of interest. Secondly, people are able to find you because the SEO optimization doesn’t have to trickle. We have real content. At the heart of it, you have to have the ability to tell stories. Stories are always combined with text copies. They’re always rich media. There’s always pictures. There’s social commenting and rating. All of these things make a story engaging and compelling. That is the key for the retailers to survive. That’s a huge development. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Help me understand the correlation with e-commerce.

Gerrit Kolb: Typically, e-commerce solutions deal with making the product catalog available through a website. You end up having a grid where you can pick which product you want, what color you want, what quality you want, and what size you want. Then you have a shopping cart that lets you check out. This is really the cash register from a brick-and-mortar store perspective. What is missing, and this is something that is key to all the e-commerce solutions today, is everything that drives your customer to your website. That actually deals with motivating people to buy from you. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Gerrit Kolb, CEO of CoreMedia (Part 1)

You have heard me talk about a vision for Web 3.0 since 2007, when I first published my Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS) equation. In this interview, we discuss how the systems behind the scene are coming along to make a full Web 3.0 user experience possible.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with some introduction about your company CoreMedia. Let’s introduce our audience to yourself as well as to the company.

Gerrit Kolb: CoreMedia has been in business for about 19 years. At the very beginning of the Internet, CoreMedia started to develop software that was related to the management of structured content. That was quickly picked up by most of the media and telco companies in Central Europe. CoreMedia became, I would say, the heart and soul and the backbone of most of the media sites operating in Central Europe. As I said, our roots are media and telco, which is typically where the leading edge >>>