1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator AI Investor Forum: Felix Hartmann, Hartmann Capital (Part 1)

Felix Hartmann, Managing Partner at Hartmann Capital, discusses his firm’s investment thesis. This segment triggered an excellent discussion on Human Augmentation.

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: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Besides geography, what other parameters do you personalize on?

Darren Hill: For a lot of our fashion clients, we personalize on sizes. For instance, if you have come to the website and you’ve looked for a specific pair of shoes, we’ll actually tag your account and we’ll know what shoe size you are. So the next time you look at shoes, we will filter and sort that specific shoe category. We will make sure that the shoes at the top are available and are in sizes that you indicated that you were interested in. That simple little tweak can increase the conversion rate by about double for specific clients. That is pretty significant.

Sramana Mitra: What else in fashion is interesting in terms of personalization? I’ve started one of the first Internet fashion companies about 15 years ago. I know this category cold. What are you seeing in terms of trends? I’m a big believer in online >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: Darren Hill, CEO of WebLinc (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: Let’s fast forward to 2014. What is your business today?

Darren Hill: 2014 is an interesting transitional year for us. We had been in business for 20 years. All of the growth that we had, which was pretty significant, was organic. We invested all of our profits back into the business and never took any outside investment up until last year [2014]. Last year was the first time that we did take outside investments.

Sramana Mitra: What is your business?

Darren Hill: We have an e-commerce platform. Companies hire us to use that e-commerce platform for their business. It controls everything that their online store is doing. It controls the front-end—what the customers sees and what the customer interacts with. >>>

Web 3.0 and Online Fashion

Excerpt from my new book, From eCommerce To Web 3.0.

In 1999, long before fashion on the Internet actually took off, I started a company called Uuma. It was a traditional venture-backed personalized fashion startup that received an acquisition offer from Ralph Lauren before the company was caught in the first dotcom crash.

I am going to articulate the vision behind Uuma, particularly because that vision still remains unrealized. I hope that some entrepreneur, somewhere, will execute on it.

As you know, I define Web 3.0 as a verticalized, personalized user experience. The web is still utterly fragmented. You have to go to different places to find information about the same context. I have long had the vision of a personalized Saks Fifth Avenue. I want my store — my personal store — that carries merchandise that applies to me; that suits my hair color, eye color, skin tone, body shape and personal style. I want it to stock my favorite designers and more like those. And I want to see articles and community discussions that are specific to my interests.
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Online Fashion: A Venture Scale Opportunity That Silicon Valley Does Not Understand

Fashion is a HUGE industry. The global women’s clothing industry, just a piece of it, is expected to exceed $621 billion in 2014. How many industries do you know of that scale?

Yet, online, fashion has still relatively a small presence.

In this article, I will explain why, and how to unlock the potential of this enormous industry using the strategies and tactics of Silicon Valley.

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Introducing a Company that is Doing Justice to Web 3.0

On February 14, 2007, I wrote a widely read post titled: Web 3.0 = (4C + P + VS). On the Internet, it remains, after seven years, a widely read piece, defining a vision for the evolution of the web.

However, the web has not evolved according to this vision quite as rapidly as I had imagined. We have hardly seen the fragmented web mature into a more deeply personalized user experience.

Given that backdrop, I was excited to encounter a company recently that does realize the true potential of a context-specific, deeply personalized user experience that brings together content, community, commerce and vertical search.

Have a look at our recent Entrepreneur Journeys story: From Berlin, Bringing Art Auctions Online: Auctionata CEO Alexander Zacke.

Auctionata competes with Christie’s and Sotheby’s, engages a community of art collectors – both buyers and sellers, and art experts who know how to appraise and value art. It takes 20% from the buyers, and 20% from the sellers, and pays a commission to the experts who help them in each transaction. Given their items are high ticket, the business model is fabulously lucrative. I would even go so far as to say that this is one of the best business models I have seen on the web in a long time.

The entrepreneur, Alex Zacke, is from an Austrian family that has been in the art business for generations, and has deep domain knowledge of the art business. This background has enabled Alex to raise funding from VCs in Berlin on a powerpoint. The company is doing phenomenally well.

Thought Leaders in Cloud Computing: Tidemark CEO Christian Gheorghe (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: Again, I’m going to ask you to lift yourself out of Tidemark and take a blank sheet of paper in your head. You are a serial entrepreneur and you have started many companies. You have a good understanding of how to look at your industry and find right spaces or gaps in the market. What are some of these gaps that you have identified where you would point entrepreneurs to look into now? I often see opportunities and I am a serial entrepreneur as well. I can see opportunities that other people could work on. What are some of the other opportunities that are on your radar?

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