1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 1)

Responding to a popular request, we are now sharing transcripts of our investor podcast interviews in this new series. The following interview with Tod Francis was recorded in September 2014.

Tod Francis, Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, starts with a discussion on the history of retail, all the way from shoe stores, to departmental stores, and back to specialty retail. This is followed by a similar overview of the history of e-commerce ranging from Amazon’s strategy to how specialty retail is translating into niche e-commerce, and how Tod is looking at investments in the category.

Sramana Mitra: I think the best question to start out with would be what do you see has happened to the e-commerce business since the 90’s? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You may have read my article on this subject especially in the context of fashion. I did the first e-commerce in fashion with exactly this premise – that it needs to be a personalized store. You have to use technology in the backend, and it’s a very expensive technology to build.

Daniel Gulati: I think the point, is we’re moving away from gut and more towards more of these analytical techniques. On the consumer side, there are some interesting apps that provide deep recommendations where you get to know the consumer. They go through and they actually have many product attributes for each SKU that they carry.

If I put what I know about you together with deep product attribution, can I give you the best recommendation that you will get? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: The part of retail that I find interesting is the niche. Let’s take fashion. I don’t wear big designers as much anymore. I also shop a lot when we’re traveling in esoteric designers that don’t have big footprints. These kinds of things are not accessible.

If there’s a small retailer that assembles and really well merchandises a group of designers and a group of products that are special and interesting, that kind of curation has tremendous value. It’s a small market. This is a very esoteric market. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I’ve thought about this quite a lot. My observation is that you have to have private-labeled brands to compete with Amazon at this point. In whatever category that you’re working in, you need a product that you can differentiate with.

You can’t really differentiate on the basis of other people’s products that easily unless you get some sort of an exclusivity from other designers or other product conceptualizers. The user experience is part of that differentiation. There are a lot of mattress brands right now. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 3)

Daniel Gulati: What’s changed with Amazon is, historically, you used to be able to red-line categories as Amazon-proof. Amazon is an intent-based environment and doesn’t really do well on discovery. They’re not going to get fashion, the inspiration, and emotional connection of buying a $300 dress online. On the grocery front, Amazon doesn’t have a fresh supply chain.

This idea of being Amazon-proof is fading away. Specifically within fashion, Amazon has a bunch of leading direct to consumer fashion brands now. We’re past this world where you can categorically say that Amazon is not going to enter my >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Is there a counterpart of yours on the enterprise side who also deals with seed stage investments in the B2B businesses?

Daniel Gulati: There are two relevant streams there. We have a sister fund that we are an LP in. They lead the best B2B investments on the East Coast. One of my colleagues focuses on enterprise and frontier tech based out of New York.

Sramana Mitra: In Silicon Valley, you don’t have an enterprise investor in the seed stage? >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Daniel Gulati, Comcast Ventures (Part 1)

Excellent discussion on the e-commerce startup trends and what can and cannot be venture financed at this stage, and why.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as Comcast Ventures.

Daniel Gulati: I’m currently a Principal of Comcast Ventures based here in San Francisco. I focus 100% of my time on seed and early stage investments in consumer internet companies. About half of my work is in e-commerce and marketplaces. The other half is everything else within consumer Internet – digital media, social media, mobile. Prior to joining Comcast Ventures, I was actually on the operating side. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: James Green, CEO of Magnetic (Part 1)

James points out that in e-commerce and digital marketing, point solutions have become more effective than the broad suites from players like Adobe and Marketo. Read on and see if you agree!

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself as well as to Magnetic.

James Green: I’m the CEO of Magnetic. Magnetic is a marketing and advertising technology company. The simplest way to think about us is we learn about what you’re looking for when you’re looking to buy something on the Internet through very large and distributed data networks. We help our customers communicate with you either by showing you advertisements or by customizing their web pages or by sending you emails. That’s what we do. >>>