How a drawing on a bar napkin led to a software platform that processes trillions of calculations
April 15, 2024
In 2007, while sitting at the pub Moran’s with a beer, I drew a sketch on a napkin that would change our business. I drew a software model that would allow an indie store to instantly show (and sell) thousands of products online—without any labor. (The secret sauce: The respective brand would do the product update work for the merchants.) The immediate goal was to help my two retailers more efficiently load products onto their websites (and save me the boredom of doing it).
How setting goals for our new members can help them be more successful.
January 31, 2023
When growing our network, we consider what it takes to keep existing members and grow into other industries. Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem reports that Facebook famously wanted a user to get 10 friends in a week because then the person would likely use the service. Similarly, Slack said users with about 10 connections tend to become active users. My company currently doesn’t have such new user benchmarks and we need to develop them.
Adding New Retail Members to the Product...
Read More
How integrating a messaging service into our e-commerce platform can help us acquire new customers.
January 31, 2023
It takes a lot of people to build a bridge, but just two to tango. This applies to the analog world as well as the digital one. In the digital space, I'm using tango to refer to messaging between two people. I believe messaging is a service we can add to our offering to diversify how our company Shop Local grows.
Different Networks Require a Different Number of Users in a Group
Andrew Chen in The Cold Start Problem states that a key difference among network models is the required minimum ...
Read More
In the book The Cold Start Problem, Andrew Chen says that the 'network effect’ is really three effects:
The acquisition effect
The engagement effect
The monetization effect
In the beginning, a business seeking to build a network has to concentrate on acquiring users, even if they are non-paying. Companies often give away the service, especially software companies, and we can see that with Facebook, Slack, TikTok, and many others. Bridge didn’t do ...
Read More
In her new book ‘Quit,' Annie Duke shares that the best poker players only play 25% of the hands they are dealt, whereas others play 50%. Ms. Duke talks with Stewart Butterfield, the founder of a few startups, most recently Slack (which is an acronym, which I didn’t know). Slack wouldn’t have been born if Mr. Butterfield didn’t drop a video game company to start Slack. Likewise for Twitter which was born out of the failed blogging company Odeo. Ms. Duke's lesson: winners ...
Read More
In the past, we’ve used spin classes and gyms as inspiration for Bridge. We see them as metaphors for helping retail business owners. The founders of SoulCycle, Elizabeth Cutler and Julie Rice, must have been eavesdropping on us: they are expanding their spinning approach to another sphere. The Times reports they have started Peoplehood, a business that seeks to help people via self-help (group-help?) sessions. It’s SoulCycle for the soul&...
Read More
Last February e-commerce company Shopify Inc. replaced the “Ottawa, Canada” dateline that began its press releases and earnings reports with a strange new one: “Internet, Everywhere.” The geographical shift came at the insistence of Shopify’s founder and chief executive officer, Tobi Lütke, who tends to view such matters through the prism of cold, hard logic. In May 2020, only a few months into the pandemic, he’d made the early, seemingly rash decision to...
Read More
January 5, 2020
January 5, 2020
Does your store sell Rifle Paper Company? If so, this Times piece about the cofounder Anna Bond may interest you. Notably, the paper magnet uses many digital services (including Slack) to fuel her analog empire.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.nytimes.com/2020/01/01/business/rifle-paper-co.amp.html
View Post
January 30, 2017
January 30, 2017
Slack, the business messaging service, is running an advertising campaign in the New Yorker and Wired. Slack says that it is βwhere work happens.β You can use the service to message coworkers and share files.
I imagined what Bridgeβs ad would say: Bridge is where retail happens. Bridge is a retail app for groups of people that work together to share products, price lists, promotions, and ordering tools so that everyone is in the loop.
View Post
January 26, 2016
January 26, 2016
Here are a few business apps to download and try out. They're for business owners / managers.
Will fine china manufacturers and retailers offer 'secret' discounts?
This article below from today's NY Times shares how brands and retailers in our market are offering 'discreet' discounts. How do we act on this info below to compete?
August 1, 2009 High-End Retailers Offering More Discounts
By STEPHANIE ROSENBLOOM Scott Stuart was at the Bloomingdaleβs store in Manhattan when a salesman sidled up to him, said a private sale was under way and offered him a discount on the slacks he was inspecting.