Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: TrueCommerce CEO, Ross Elliott (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What sectors are you big in? What sectors are adopting your methodology?

Ross Elliott: If I showed you the chart, you would say we are very cross-market. If you narrow it down, you’d find that the largest single group of customers on our business are in the industrial business. These are people that sell electrical supplies, plumbing equipment, heating, and air-conditioning.

We’ve got two types of the manufacturer community. We’ve got 10 or 12 of the top 25 electrical manufacturers globally. The second community would be for things like consumer-packaged goods. These are people like Kimberly-Clark and Procter & Gamble. Then we >>>

Thought Leaders in E-Commerce: TrueCommerce CEO, Ross Elliott (Part 1)

Very interesting interview on how B2B e-commerce is evolving both disintermediation and empowering of intermediaries to be more effective.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start by introducing our audience to yourself and Unified Commerce.

Ross Elliott: I am one of the founders and President of a company called TrueCommerce. We are a hundred-million dollar provider of B2B commerce and B2C commerce. We’re headquartered in Cranberry, Pennsylvania, which is a suburb of Pittsburgh. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: Not all of e-commerce has the mobile characteristic. For example, if I want to do fashion shopping, I am absolutely not interested in doing it on my mobile. I want it on my cinema display. I want to have as much information as possible. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Where in the grand spectrum of possibilities, in which markets, which segments do you see venture-scale brand opportunities in?

Tod Francis: I hate to dodge this question, but I think it’s actually hard to sit here and say this category and not that category because it’s about how the entrepreneur sees the execution and how they provide great value to the customer.

I’ll give you an example. >>>

1Mby1M Virtual Accelerator Investor Forum: With Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: One of the things that I’d like to point out is we work with people at a very early stage. It’s not always viable to start with your own product. This is where the parallel with the department retail business comes in. If you look at the P&L’s of department stores like Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, they sell other people’s brands. Then in the basics category, they sell their own brand. I have been in this business, so I know this inside out. This is how a lot of people start – acquiring customers and then building their own brand.

In the Internet, there’s a company that’s doing a good job at this. That’s Nasty Gal. They started as an eBay seller. She was selling sassy vintage clothing. She started doing that on eBay. Now, she’s doing her own brand.

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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? >>>

Investors Discuss E-Commerce Startup Trends in Podcasts

Entrepreneurs working on e-commerce startups face unique challenges today. You can learn more about the trends investors specializing in e-commerce startup financing are seeing by listening to the following 30-minute podcast interviews. These VCs and seed investors also discuss the key indicators they look for in the startups they invest in.

Daniel Gulati, Principal and Head of Seed Investment Practice at Comcast Ventures, discusses e-commerce startup trends and what can and cannot be venture financed at this stage, and why.

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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? >>>