Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: James Green, CEO of Magnetic (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What size are we talking in revenue terms?

James Green: The sweet spot for us is total online sales of $5 million to $100 million. There are a couple of people who are a bit bigger but mostly, they’re in that range.

Sramana Mitra: Switching gears, what are the emerging trends in e-commerce that you see as significant and what are the open problems in the context of those changes. >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: James Green, CEO of Magnetic (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: In the context of that, answer my question on retargeting specifically. You did bring up retargeting as one of the areas that you have specialized expertise in. I’m curious about retargeting specifically.

James Green: Retargeting, initially, was just an end of the shopping cart. You chase them to say come back with a discount. That expanded to be much more sophisticated. There is a lot of data science that says, “You’ve exhibited this particular behavior on the website and so you don’t have to abandon the shopping cart or put anything in for us to figure out that these patterns mean that you are in market to buy something.”

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Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: James Green, CEO of Magnetic (Part 2)

James Green: Let’s take a company like Bluefly. They’re a large online retailer. They sell fashionable clothing. If someone visits their website, we can help them do site retargeting. We can go and say, “You exhibited this behavior in this website. Perhaps we should send you an email because that’s how you like to be communicated with. Perhaps we’ll send you an ad because you opted out of email.”

It could also be that when you visit that site, we’ll customize the site so that it will be relevant to the sorts of trousers, dresses, or whatever it is that you’re in market for. >>>

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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. >>>

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Bootstrap First, Raise Money Later: Joe Speiser, CEO of Little Things (Part 1)

Joe bootstrapped his first digital media/ad network business to $50 million in revenue and then sold it to private equity. Later he started a second business, an e-commerce company, that he bootstrapped for a year and then raised venture capital. His third business is a spin-off within the second business that takes him back to his digital media roots.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start at the very beginning of your journey. Where are you from? Where were you born, raised, and in what kind of background?

Joe Speiser: I’m from New York and I went to school in the city. I studied at the Columbia University. I’ve been doing all sorts of businesses from a very young age. I always had a passion for trying to start something from scratch and make a living. My dad is an entrepreneur. I used to work in his warehouse for most of my summers. It definitely taught me a lot watching my dad run a business. I don’t know if it’s something that’s taught or something that you’re just genetically predisposed to. I enjoy it so much. >>>