Disqus - Latest Comments for Philip Wilkinson

Re: Web Startups Are A Commodity

Philip Wilkinson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:45:39 -0000

The thing is - there may well be 10,000 new start-ups created by hackers over the coming years but they won't be 10,000 GOOD ideas. All it actually means is increased competition on the good businesses with good solid ideas who then have to try and out-compete another 15 doing the same thing with the same amount of funding, basically turning into an arms race again. The remaining bad ones go on to fail and reduce the chance of others investing in similar ones again...

Re: Can shopping work with social networks?

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 09:17:31 -0000

Interesting point Vera - right now a lot of social shopping sites focus on niche long tail items rather than anything mainstream. Actually, at Crowdstorm we're trying to do both and give people the flexibility to share and talk about whatever product exists. Now the trick is do you either add all products across the internet into the site or do you let users upload them as they see fit so that you're only talking about products that are seen as interesting by the community..?

Re: Can shopping work with social networks?

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 16:35:48 -0000

Now that's an interesting idea.... have a kind of "product pit" where all the products exist but have not made it into the Crowdstorm community until they get recommended or pushed to the front by a trusted, reputable member...

Sounds a bit like dig then doesn't it...

Re: http://www.techwinter.com/2006/06/05/jobs-jobs-where-are-the-employees/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:34:56 -0000

Great post (and we're not just saying that because of the plug) :-)

It reminds me of an old saying I stuck on my wall years ago:
It's not how many ideas you have but how many you make happen.

Starting a business is really difficult and I would never recommend doing it on your own. So if you can round up a team of co-founders or find other people starting a business you believe in (easier said than done)- join forces.

Lastly, try not to think about the money aspect. Get involved with a business you are passionate about because you really believe in it and that it can change the landscape. Your passion for it will result in perservance and success after which the money will fall into place.

Re: http://www.techwinter.com/2006/06/06/web20blogger-mixer-june-26-7pm-in-central-london/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 06 Jun 2006 20:36:53 -0000

HI Roger,

Please put me down on the list. Sounds like fun.

Phil W

Re: Blogger/Web2.0 Mixer Redux (No.2) - End of an Era :)

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 12 Sep 2006 20:27:08 -0000

Nice one Roger and thanks for inviting the Crowdstorm team. It was good fun and look forward to the next one and hope you will come to the Crowdstorm party sometime at the end of this month :-)

Re: My company is in Stealth mode, what can I blog about?

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 03 Oct 2006 22:04:50 -0000

Agree completely Roger. Think about it this way: for every idea you come up with, 4 other people across the world have already thought about it at the same time!

John Wilson is completely right about it being down to the team members and the execution of the idea.

Reminds me of my favourite saying It's not how many ideas you have but rather how many you make happen!

Re: End of an Era - Music goes DRM free

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 03 Apr 2007 22:34:58 -0000

Yes - this is great news and I'm really pleased EMI and Apple have done this. Kudos to them.

I'm going to start buying my tracks from them and upgrade my existing collection to the new high quality. They will make around Â£100 from me just me just from this alone in the first week - imagine how much more they'll get from everyone else!

Re: http://www.techwinter.com/2007/04/08/opencoffee-a-meet-and-greet-for-startups-and-other-web-heads/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 03:28:00 -0000

Thanks for the mention Roger. Credit to Saul for running with the concept and making it a reality. As I always say "it's not how many ideas you have, but how many you make happen" :-)

Re: Yahoo considers sale of shopping service Kelkoo, after bad performance

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 17:44:09 -0000

I think it's unfair to call Kelkoo the "king of spam" as after all it did and still does provide people with a place to see the cheapest price for the product they want to buy. An ad for Zanussi Fridge going to a kelkoo price comparison result is hardly spam.

Kelkoo still has over 75% of the price comparison market in the UK (hitwise UK) so can hardly been said to have "lost" the game.

Saying that, I admit they have not innovated for many years especially since the Yahoo acquisition - and this is because all the founders and real visionary's left (bar one).

The fact that Yahoo hasn't made it work says more about them than it does Kelkoo - i.e., Yahoo don't "get" ecommerce and europe.

Re: TrustedOpinion snares investors' trust, $1.3 million

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:39:52 -0000

Completely agree - I don't want to keep adding friends in yet another network - and especially because my friends share completely different tastes in movies to me!

Re: New social shopping network: ShoppingWords.com

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 11:46:29 -0000

"more of a shopping research platform that plans to use the wisdom of crowds in helping people make buying decisions"

Is it though? I think the vision is spot on - but the implementation, as you say, just doesn't do it.

Re: Shoppero.com - A Social Shopping Network that Pays Back

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 21:27:40 -0000

Have to disagree with you here Pranav. There are two reasons why actually paying people in cash for reviews doesn't work (proven with ciao and epinions..)

1: People are fed up with only getting small pay cheques (£10 / month, if that) for a lot of work they put in and don't want to do more for that kind of value

2: Paying affects the quality of a review as you're either only getting someone to submit something because they know there is some cash at the end or it loses trust and credibility with the group

Re: Dump your partner on Facebook - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:52:13 -0000

Wow Michelle does have a lovely way of putting things - I can never write like that without putting a hyphen everywhere!

I'm sure "FREDERICK" is putting on a brave face right now and working out subtle ways to get you back Walshy.

Re: Take the test to see who and what you are - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:57:43 -0000

I've done this test before and came out:

ENTP

Basically it means a very creative, social, entrepreneurial chap that jumps around between lots of different things and gets bored easily!

P.S. I've tried to submit this f'ing thing 4 times now and it keeps saying I've got the spam sum question wrong. 8+4 does equal 12 - it DOES!

Re: Carphone Warehouse or criminals? - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 18:59:42 -0000

5423-6345-0789-1234 exp: 07/08 code: 171

oh shit..

Re: Bebo co-founder, Paul Birch strikes again - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 21:08:01 -0000

So - anyone tried it yet?

Re: No time to read reviews, just make a recommendation please - Paul Walsh, the Irish Opportunist

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 28 May 2008 11:17:06 -0000

Go on - tell us now... Why does Crowdstorm have the most potential for reviews and shopping recommendations? ;-)

BTW: crowdstorm.com is the US version - crowdstorm.co.uk is for us UK peeps.

Re: Reviews - how useful are they?

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 19 Dec 2006 04:32:00 -0000

I agree with weaverluke in that these days the internet has opened up much more opportunity for "experts" to emerge who aren't journalists or bloggers. My mate next door knows loads about Hi-Fi equipment (and I mean tons!) yet he doesn't blog or work for a magazine (far from it). Tapping into his knowledge is really beneficial and there are thousands like him who should then be classed as an "expert" and a "user.

Re: The next generation of social networks will have a purpose

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 09:30:29 -0000

Do you think the big networks - e.g. myspace will continue to introduce vertical elements to their network - e.g. Myspace Music (already), Myspace travel etc...?

Re: The next generation of social networks will have a purpose

Philip Wilkinson — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:28:13 -0000

Well, forums have never been "mainstream" really Joe. A true mass market consumer proposition happens when my parents can use it easily and liked it! The first time they did this with price comparison, I knew something was brewing in the air..

So, a forum has always been seen as a place where the technical literate go and ask very technical questions to each other in a geeky way. That's the "perception" at least.

Due to this, you need to do a lot more than "upgrade them to let people add friends" before they start to compete with an affinity based, offline enhancing social network.

Re: Musings on the wisdom of crowds and machine intelligence

Philip Wilkinson — Sat, 20 Jan 2007 07:31:33 -0000

You can always do both right - you take some basic explicit data if provided by a user, combine it with some clever algorithms for measuring implicit behaviour, draw some conclusions, enhance it again and again as the user does more explicit things.

Re: Tesco goes into real estate - now that is a BIG play

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 05:54:52 -0000

Anything that gets rid of estate agents Nic is a brilliant thing but I do wonder if people are really THAT motivated to do the whole process themselves. It'll come down to shear laziness.

Going through the process myself right now and you would have to:

-take good photos of the property
-draw up the floor plans
-get the property listed on as many search aggregators as possible (some only take ones through estate agents directly)
-work out a value
-take incoming calls from potential buyers and handle questions
-set up viewings for the house
-take people round the house
-do follow up calls with them
-manage the offer process
-liaise with surveyors and solicitors

This is on top of you doing all the things to find yourself a new home (viewings, calls, offers, dealing with sellers estate agents..)

So all in all, my time is actually worth more than the £5k fees I'll probably end up paying for 8-10 weeks work..

Thoughts?

Re: Tesco goes into real estate - now that is a BIG play

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 05:09:53 -0000

If they are my estate agents - then the answer is very little :-)

Re: Listen to the voices in your head

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 03 Sep 2007 11:22:39 -0000

True - but don't confuse that instinct with the feeling you get when lots of people tell you you're wrong or stupid to be doing it. There's a subtle difference - and in one scenario you make the right call and in the other, you ignore the doubters and go on to make your millions to spite them :-)

Re: Buy.at and advertising in the long tail - including on TheEquityKicker

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 13:30:12 -0000

Ok Nic - call me daft but hasn't this been happening for years - as in anyone could sign up to an affiliate network and past a wide range of paying media into their site / blog...?

Amazon do widgets for products too.

As for WAYN - any evidence yet to show that people visit each others profile page when thinking of buying a product?

Re: Bright spots in the gloom, predictions and planning

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:20:57 -0000

It's interesting all this prediction stuff Nic - completely agree with things being considered carefully. In fact, I have never seen any downward analyst predictions in my short working career - but maybe that's because I gravitate to high growth markets :-)

Like with any share - they'll go up and down and no one can really guess it correctly - but believing in the fundamentals and going for it - that's the way to do it (as Punch would say).

Re: Bright spots in the gloom, predictions and planning

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:22:30 -0000

btw Nic: I can never submit comments on your blog in safari as the word spam filter throws a wobbly.

Re: Data portability and the home of the social graph

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:38:26 -0000

Spot on nick! That interfacing of different services that use the same synchronised social graph will be huge.. You could even add things like: "I'm organising a facebook event about fellow photography experts hooking up" - send the invite to all my friends on Flickr, and show what cameraeveryone owns / recommends in the box below.

Now the real question is how do we keep them all in sync once they are initially imported? If I add a new friend on facebook, and I've already signed up to Crowdstorm - how do I sync the new friend easily into the site again?

Re: Data portability and the home of the social graph

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:39:11 -0000

and your comments have rel='external nofollow' tags... BOOOOOO

Re: AOL buys Bebo for $850m cash

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 13:49:19 -0000

Now they've got some money - reckon Balderton will start investing in the younger companies again.? eh... eh...

Re: Internet M&A - the party is over

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 14:13:44 -0000

Absolutely - this gives us all a bit of time and breathing space to really grow some great businesses i the next two years. Head down, build it up, resurface again... muahhahahahah

Re: Venture investment in Europe holds up

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 06:50:28 -0000

Oh stop it Nick - stop it right now!

You can twist the figures all you like CalibreOne but I want someone to actually publish a list of UK internet companies in the last year that have received investment from UK and European VC's...

Anyone dare?

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 16 May 2008 11:51:10 -0000

Interesting... reminds me of that Derren Brown show at the Horse Racing events where he sent thousands of people tips on which horses would win and eventually found the person who had won 7 times in a row (purely because SOMEONE had to have done it)...

This is a real hard thing to quantify statistically as there are so many factors at play. Gut feel of course would agree with you Nick - logically, more experienced people are most likely to ride out the ups and downs with venture help.

In hindsight though, I reckon my first start-up was a big success purely because I was blind to what I was letting myself in for and I was a cocky little sod :-)

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:54:39 -0000

@herve - I've actually found that 2nd / 3rd time entrepreneurs manage their time better and also want to have many businesses on the go at once (managed by others sometimes) due to that very reason that it takes 5-7 years to make one work. Far better to have three seeds planted on the go rather than 1 by the time that next 5 years is up..

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 09:56:27 -0000

Re: Are serial entrepreneurs any better than first time entrepreneurs?

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 04:44:17 -0000

@herve - nope, talking about pure entrepreneurs here. I have 3 businesses I'm heavily involved in right now, one I hired a CEO to run for them and still work on strategy with them once a month, the second I run every day, and the third I took on the Marketing Director role (currently part-time until cash flow grows more) while the other founder runs it as a CEO. I've also got a 4th in the works and looking for someone to run it...

After all - if one of them doesn't work - I've got 3 more to fall back on and haven't wasted 5 years :-)

Re: Problems building at eBay

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 03 Oct 2008 12:58:55 -0000

Ah well - sit back, knuckle down, innovate, keep costs low - all simple stuff :-)

Re: Problems building at eBay

Philip Wilkinson — Sat, 04 Oct 2008 12:39:09 -0000

I used to work for Ross Perot back in 1998 :-)

Re: Reminder – success equals profits

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 07:18:01 -0000

Nick - are you sure success isn't just about how many times you can get your business name mentioned at networking events and dinner parties? ;-)

Re: 2006/05/15/kicking-up-a-crowdstorm/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 16 May 2006 05:09:07 -0000

Just to let you know that we are working on the distributed features as we speak. In fact, at the moment you can easily click the "blog" link by a product and get it posted automatically on your blog.

Re: 2006/05/15/kicking-up-a-crowdstorm/

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 19 May 2006 12:07:46 -0000

sure Bryan:

What normally happens with something like Cnet or any official reviews is that an editor or one reviewer writes their opinon and you choose to either agree or disagree with it. These sites or publications thus decide what products they want to talk about based on what they believe their readership may want.

Social shopping is instead about the users themselves choosing and deciding on the content and products they want. Not only that, but by recommending and commenting on products - a buzz is generated around items of interest which in turn propogate to the top of any rankings. Seen as the "wisdom of crowds" whereby a large number of diverse people will make better decisions than one or two individuals.

Amazon has product reviews but there is no way to know if one product is better than another at any point. If three products all got a 4 or five star rating - how would you know which one to choose?

Combine this with being able to share your recommendations with friends and you can then even jsut pick products from a group of individuals whose opinion you trust. As an example, I have a couple of friends who know a lot about HD LCD TV's and I want to see which ones they would recommend for me to buy as our interests are very similar.

There's even more to it but I'm concious of how long this post is getting :-)

Re: Jellyfish Launches Radically Different Shopping Site

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 27 Jun 2006 12:22:23 -0000

Insightful comments guys, here's my two pence worth from my experience at Kelkoo over the last few years:

Good bits
********
G1: Interface is quite nice. Subtle use of Ajax to enhance the display
G2: Good that you can refine by merchant, manufacturer, price

G3: Transparency - at least they are being open about the commission they get and share, and potentially making more of showing the end user the sales volume to that merchant (i.e. how popular it is).
G4: hmmm.. that's it

Bad bits (things to improve....)
*******
B1: They haven't really made it clear enough about what they do. Is it a shop, a directory, a price comparison engine, or a cash-back site? I've been in ecommerce for 8 years now and I still have problems visualising it!
B2: I can't see the difference between this and a price comparison engine, or indeed any other cashback site. Merchants are competing on that all the day by discounting their products (which is like cashback but you see the effect instantly). Merchants will just work off ROI as usual. They want the most traffic with the minimum discount to users and if they don't get it, they'll leave.

B3: It typically takes 90-120 days to get your cashback! Ouch!
B4: Merchants have different margins and returns on different product ranges which means they have more success discounting certain product items rather than offering cashback across their entire range. I notice that they actually do let merchants offer better cashback on product and category levels but I don't know if this is a painless process for a time-constrained, already investing time in price comparison optimisation merchant

B5: Example: I searched for "sony digital camera DSCW50" (I actually didn't know which sony camera to go for but that is why you would use Crowdstorm (blatant plug)) and found the price at Jellyfish among a limited range of merchants for $232.41 which included cashback. Doing the same thing on Shopwiki.com found me a price starting from $205 and I didn't have to sign up to anything.
B6: Merchants have different margins and returns on different product ranges which means they have more success discounting certain product items rather than offering cashback across their entire range. I notice that they actually do let merchants offer better cashback on product and category levels but I don't know if this is a painless process for a "time-constrained, already investing time in price comparison optimisation" merchant...

Lastly, "voice of reason" highlighted a way for merchants to abuse the system, and "Bryan Bartow" correctly noted that not everyone shops on the best price (

Re: Google Video

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 03 Jul 2006 06:19:16 -0000

I like it that Google shows a larger sized video by default but I did find they lack a lot of content still. Youtube is still the leader in terms of being able to find what I want from a lot of options.

Re: 2006/07/07/yellowikis-receives-ridiculous-legal-threat-from-yell/

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 11:46:26 -0000

That's just ridiculous! Some corporate love-starved lawyer at Yell has tried to think of something to justify his or her overly paid existence and come up with this.

I didn't realise Yell had a trademark on the term "Yello" or the colour itself...

Re: 2006/07/07/yellowikis-receives-ridiculous-legal-threat-from-yell/

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 21:11:28 -0000

Well, here's another example - in the UK there are a lot of cheap chains of Kentucky Fried Chicken shops called "Dallas Fried Chicken" and "[insert state here] chicken" generally. Now, KFC surely would not be keen on the fried chicken copying here?

Granted, these guys should not have actually used the words "yellow pages" on the site itself. Sometimes a site that could be construed as similar is better than one which obviously is copying.

Re: 2006/08/08/crowdstorm-social-networking-meets-shopping/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 15 Aug 2006 09:58:40 -0000

It depends how you all class "Social Shopping". A lot of the sites mentioned are more about visual bookmarking (kaboodle, stylehive) than creating a real wisdom-of-crowds based shopping experience.

I really believe that our "buzz" element combined with social networking will play a key role, although I do appreciate that there is a big battle ahead of us but we say "bring it on" :-)

Re: 2006/10/17/who-will-buy-bebo/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 17 Oct 2006 10:53:28 -0000

Interesting Pete - although you may be creating an unwanted rumour for bebo at this stage.

I've done a post on the Crowdstorm blog about the how UK based ventures are comparing with the US based ventures - which I though was relevant to this.

Re: 2006/11/24/myspace-store-could-make-billions/

Philip Wilkinson — Sun, 26 Nov 2006 16:37:18 -0000

Ah - it's not about just having a "Store" JaV - but about how you leverage someones social network to help them find new products and see what people they trust are recommending. How many times have you asked someone you trust what to buy and believed that far more than an anonymous review or posting on the net?

Re: 2006/12/21/social-shopping/

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 05:29:10 -0000

vote: Crowdstorm

Re: 2007/02/28/trustedplaces/

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 11:13:24 -0000

Nice one chaps! Go UK!

Re: 2007/03/02/bbc-youtube/

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 15:18:53 -0000

Ok - so this is annoying. How come the UK tax payer has to pay for the BBC in order for everyone else around the world to watch it for free?

A deal like this defeats the very model the BBC has operated on and I for one feel we should demand out license fee back!

Re: 2007/04/10/myspace-store/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 10:39:09 -0000

Interesting... thing is though - are just your "friends" the best people to ask when trying to find a product to buy? I trust one of my friends for digital camera recommedations, but wouldn't even dream of asking him about what car or bottle of wine to buy..

Re: 2007/06/18/terry-semel-yahoo/

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 17:33:16 -0000

About time! Yahoo needs some fresh blood and get rid of the massive middle "average" management. Who's up for splitting it into new divisions with their own autonomy and start-up feel?

Re: 2007/07/30/best-british-startups/

Philip Wilkinson — Tue, 31 Jul 2007 09:33:21 -0000

yeh - we were a bit peeved Pete, but end of the day - it's only a list eh :-)

Re: Netvibes Launches Facebook Widget, Challenges Lock-In

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 06 Aug 2007 11:59:59 -0000

Would make a load of sense to open it up and allow sites to let users import their contact details from any other network.

After all, it's not about trying to maintain a silo (AOL anyone?) but rather lock people in by having the best possible product so that they don't "need" to go anywhere else.

Re: 2007/10/02/yahoo-kelkoo/

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 07:56:06 -0000

Wow! As one of the original Kelkoo founders it's strange to see this kind of announcement but actually not that surprising, for numerous reasons:

1: Kelkoo has not innovated since the Yahoo acquisition and spends more time getting them to fill in headcount spreadsheets
2: Merchants can now get traffic from many more sources (adwords, feed aggregators, widgets) at cheaper and sometimes better qualified places
3: Services aren't just price lead anymore - there needs to be a focus on other things
4: All the existing founders left!

I've written a full post on my blog with some good insider info fresh from the source:

http://blog.crowdstorm.com/?p=282

Re: 2007/10/05/stylefeeder-funded/

Philip Wilkinson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 14:11:57 -0000

I'd still prefer http://www.crowdstorm.com :-)

Re: 2007/10/21/auctomatic-beta/

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 05:30:20 -0000

Looks really good - as a powerseller myself - I'm willing to give it a good go.

Re: Broadband Genie: Phil Wilkinson is back!

Philip Wilkinson — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 19:13:49 -0000

wow - this post is still around!

Re: Increasing Alexa Rank – A Joint Experiment

Philip Wilkinson — Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:02:33 -0000

So what's the result Everton - does it work based on the experiment results?

Re: Increasing Alexa Rank – A Joint Experiment

Philip Wilkinson — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 05:11:54 -0000

Interesting...

Going good - we've had a lot of technical challenges to overcome last year but everything now on track :-)

Re: Ashley Qualls – 17 Year Old Dot Com Millionaire

Philip Wilkinson — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 10:08:44 -0000

ha ha - real names Everton - now rearrange these words: "kettle, black, pot, calling.." :-)

Re: Yahoo Considering "Strategic Options" For Comparison Shopping Service Kelkoo in Europe

Philip Wilkinson — Wed, 03 Oct 2007 12:01:20 -0000

The industry definitely has changed and it's always infuriating to see that Kelkoo have been restrained in riding along with it - due to adapting to the Yahoo corporate structure. My friends still there are always complaining how things are dull and that they spend more time filling in headcount spreadsheets than actually thinking how to be radical and improve the product.

As one of the original founders (shopgenie & kelkoo uk) - I've put some insider info on my blog:
http://blog.crowdstorm.com/?p=282