Disqus - Latest Comments for dwhittemore

Re: The Case for Optimism and Risk at Startups

David Whittemore — Wed, 05 Nov 2014 15:07:10 -0000

Mark - it's great to see an investor strongly stand up for one of their entrepreneurs. This is what every entrepreneur wants out of their investors. And obviously we need investments like UBeam from VCs now more than ever, given that public funding for things like the space race has dried up and doesn't look like it's coming back any time soon.

I agree that the takedown post on UBeam was not written in a tone that was constructive. He sounded like a jerk, and it played well to the audience. But is there a possible tone for a public post like his that would be a worthwhile contribution to the startup community, without insulting the founders or bumming them out? I think there can be value from public posts - by identifying and analyzing the core assumptions (tech, business model, acquisition strategy, etc) of a startup, and making guesses that ultimately prove to be true or false ("guesses" being the key word), we can all grow as entrepreneurs and startup team members.

If the writer had written his post along these lines, I think it would have been productive: "From my perspective as a third party, with no insider knowledge, here are my guesses at the technical components of UBeam that will have to be resolved by the team for this to work..." The audience of that post gets to learn and track how UBeam tackles these issues.

Re: GRP Excited to add Sam Rosen to Its Ranks. How Did He Get the Role? Hustle. Here’s the Story.

David Whittemore — Wed, 16 Jan 2013 19:12:07 -0000

Congrats Mark and Sam! Love the hustle.

Re: Fostering enterprise

David Whittemore — Mon, 22 Oct 2012 16:54:59 -0000

It's very exciting to see ADI take the initiative to try to create an entrepreneurship house on campus. As an alum who has only worked in the startup world since graduating CU, I know first-hand the value and personal satisfaction that comes from taking an entrepreneurial path. I continue to see more and more of my fellow grads from '06 move over from the finance and consulting worlds into entrepreneurial pursuits. I can only imagine that with a program/house like this in place on campus, more Columbia grads would discover entrepreneurship as their calling in life earlier in their careers.

-David Whittemore
CC' 06

Re: E-commerce startups

David Whittemore — Thu, 16 Aug 2012 11:25:48 -0000

If you're a multi-brand retailer that doesn't manufacture your own products or offer some experience/niche to connect with a shopper in a different way than Amazon, and your vendors use Amazon as a channel as well, it's going to be brutal to compete. Amazon will likely win.

But - the medium guys I spoke of will be specialty brands with a significant quantity of SKUs that offer an ability for the consumer to connect directly with the brand or a unique experience. I work primarily in the apparel space, so those are the ones that come quickly to mind - J.Crew, Brooks Brothers, Coach, Orvis, Under Armour, etc. All of these companies do $100m+ online/direct, which in my mind constitutes medium - nowhere near the magnitude of Amazon, but not artisanal, either. And there can be brands/retailers with minimal offline footprints that fit this mold as well: Bonobos, CustomInk, ModCloth, etc. They're not necessarily $100m+ businesses yet, but all of the online-focused retailers/brands are young in the grand scheme of things. Many of the multi-brand retailers with a niche business are doing brisque businesses as well - Motorcycle Superstore, Freshpair, etc. Overall, we'll see a few of these specialty retailers creep up toward $1b in revenue online. L.L Bean does $2b online.

Consumers want to connect directly with brands and unique shopping experiences - we're going to see this category grow bigger and bigger. But Amazon, Macy's, Home Depot, etc are unlikely to be unseated from the Top 15 any time soon.

Re: E-commerce startups

David Whittemore — Wed, 15 Aug 2012 20:18:21 -0000

Great post, some thoughts-

One of the biggest reasons the e-commerce top 15 have faced less turnover is because 9/15 out of them existed before the internet existed, and have huge brick & mortar footprints. The top 15 for all web properties were fighting against companies in new industries with very little history & shallower moats - so the turnover has been brisque. This may slow down over time as internet incumbents get better at protecting their territory, we'll see. Regardless, e-commerce disruption of the top 15 is more difficult when you have to compete with the offline footprints/histories/marketing power of the Walmarts/Ikeas/etc of the world.

Regarding the "middle" of the distribution - a quick glance at the IR500 confirms how stark the dropoff in revenue is between Amazon and the rest of the e-commerce landscape. That said, we're still very early in training e-commerce talent (not to mention launching e-commerce, even for brands/retailers that have been around awhile). We're going to see more and more "medium"-size players grow up as they figure out e-commerce and get more sophisticated.

Additionally, new brands are more often starting with an online launch; 20 years ago, they would have started with wholesale, catalog, and/or TV/home shopping before going into direct brick & mortar. 20 years from now, many of the new household brands will have started online. This to me connotes something so much more than artisanal or long-tail.

Moral of the story - online consumer behavior and the e-commerce pie is growing at a CAGR that is leading to a ton of revenue to be made across the large, medium, and small guys.

Re: http://www.wwd.com/retail-news/direct-internet-catalogue/new-fit-web-site-goes-live-5725446

David Whittemore — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 08:18:30 -0000

Thanks for the great article, we're excited to help apparel retailers solve this problem! We can be found at www.clotheshor.se

Re: Clothing is Being Disrupted

David Whittemore — Fri, 11 Nov 2011 17:38:36 -0000

I love uniqlo, and pretty much only buy jeans from there now. I still love Diesels, and the construction is definitely much better, but you just can't beat the price of Uniqlo. I've seen the ads for Joe Fresh, but haven't been able to check it out yet - I'll have to do that.

Re: The Business of Big Data

David Whittemore — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 17:13:28 -0000

Missed the talk today, but the slides are very helpful. Thanks Ben!

Re: No more milestones, I mean it

David Whittemore — Sat, 28 May 2011 11:40:26 -0000

fair point!

Re: No more milestones, I mean it

David Whittemore — Fri, 27 May 2011 19:13:10 -0000

Can confirming hypotheses themselves be described as achieving milestones? So the shift in the early stage world needs to move away from milestones as specific business metrics (e.g. revenue - what if it's not scalable revenue?) to confirming hypotheses (e.g. we think our product will provide value prop x to customers, we went live with y customers, the customers confirmed they are seeing value from the product, and are willing to pay z).

Re: Why Product Metabolism Is Every Startup’s First KPI

David Whittemore — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 22:18:13 -0000

Great post, Dustin. I totally agree with product metabolism being a DNA marker of successful startups. Any insight into how to actually track it, other than a smell test?

Re: Coming of Age as an Entrepreneur

David Whittemore — Fri, 25 Feb 2011 19:42:52 -0000

I remember that night well. We bummed around until we could find an open bar in midtown to keep the startup chat going. Congrats Matt! Though I'm pretty bummed to hear the hawk is gone.

Re: Leaving VC - Becoming An Entrepreneur (Oh My)

David Whittemore — Thu, 11 Nov 2010 16:56:29 -0000

congrats Mark! excited to see what the new startup is!

Re: How Our Startup Got Featured on CNN

David Whittemore — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 15:17:29 -0000

Congrats on the CNN piece, Vin!

Managing the customer experience the way you guys do goes beyond just the customer development phase of a startup though. Creating WOW experiences can extend throughout the life of a company, and can be a differentiator if it's part of your core company culture - look at Zappos. Then every customer experience becomes a marketing & PR opportunity that can lead to a small blog article or tweet or even a major CNN piece, and you'll never need a specific "PR" effort.

(Yes as you might have guessed I just finished reading "Delivering Happiness" by Tony Hsieh from Zappos, and am little bit of a Zappos fanboy right now).

Re: - This is going to be BIG! - Need a Technical Co-founder? Hire a Product Design Lead First

David Whittemore — Mon, 11 Oct 2010 01:50:55 -0000

Rahul - I don't think what you're saying is too dissimilar from what Charlie is suggesting. Basically, an ideal "business" co-founder for a web company will come to the table with product design/UX skills (including the ability to intelligently prioritize how to get to product/market fit), marketing skills (funnel analysis, product positioning, customer feedback, etc), and sales/bizdev with initial customers/partners. That paired with a brilliant technologist makes for an ideal 2-cofounder team. If that's not possible with 2 people, then you're looking at splitting the skills across 3 people. Some other thoughts on your questions:

1) Agreed, "business" co-founders should have experience/be capable of prioritization.

2) Balancing fully designed-and-implemented features versus MVP is one of the toughest parts of being a startup Product Manager. In my experience, the key is wisely selecting the few important features that will truly test your hypotheses about customer behavior, and intelligently designing them. Don't add cruft to your app, but putting too little thought into the UI/UX of a feature brings with it the risk of not running a valid test of customer behavior.

3) Ideally product design and technical leads would come together at the same time, to avoid the problems you describe.

4) I agree here - business co-founders with no web product experience generally have more difficulty assessing both designers and technologists than those with experience. The best way to mitigate this would be for them to get assistance from friends in the startup/web product world with vetting potential co-founders.

Re: Funding & Next Steps

David Whittemore — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 19:05:27 -0000

congrats! really excited to try out your product when it launches.

Re: For the Good of the NYC Venture Scene I'd like to see...

David Whittemore — Wed, 21 Apr 2010 23:54:32 -0000

+1 for groups like Hackny and the professors and community leaders driving them, like Chris Wiggins and Evan Korth. When I was an undergrad at Columbia, the student enthusiasm around building products simply wasn't there, but now groups like ACM and ADI seem to be channeling it. We're doing our best at Columbia Venture Community (http://www.meetup.com/Colum... to work with all of these groups and act as a conduit between Columbia and the broader NYC startup ecosystem.

Re: Stop Comparing. Start Building.

David Whittemore — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 17:54:04 -0000

Nate - I agree with you that we need to focus on actionable ways to improve NYC's startup ecosystem. One of the biggest limitations of NYC is having support from educational institutions for startups and a constant stream of viable employees for startups from educational institutions. That's one of the big issues we're trying to address with Columbia Venture Community: Columbia and other NYC schools need to drive awareness of startup and entrepreneurial career pathways, and to provide resources and support to the community to a greater degree, the way Stamford and MIT do.

Dave Whittemore
http://www.meetup.com/Colum...

Re: Gmail’s Tasks complete me.. err, my work stream

David Whittemore — Wed, 21 Jan 2009 13:01:49 -0000

Hey Pat - while I love Gmail tasks' design and implementation, I don't like that I can't get it on my iphone. For non-job-related tasks, I do a lot of my task documenting and processing on the subway when I've got my iphone in my hand. It's also great to reference my tasks when I'm out and about or in a meeting. Any thoughts on Gmail Tasks' lack of a mobile version?

-Dave