Disqus - Latest Comments for dmreinke

Re: Doubling Down

dmreinke — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:20:52 -0000

Good post for those of us facing the entrepreneurial double-down question. Fred would love to see a post by you talking about the impact of doubling down for entrepreneurs.....when it works, it's a beautiful thing. But even when it's the right decision at the time, it doesn't always lead to success for the entrepreneur. No portfolio for us!

Re: Chris and Malcolm are both wrong

dmreinke — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 10:06:51 -0000

The "how" is still unclear to me, but I have a vague notion that these native business models Brad mentions will revolved around the continued backward integration of marketing (ie meeting consumer needs) into the value chain. How can we use technology to systematically push consumer feedback into the design and production phases of products and services? While this is already happening with web services like Craigslist, I can't think of any reason it won't happen in real products.

Re: Recap of Fashion2.0 Meetup Event

dmreinke — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 09:01:34 -0000

Darren. I think your comments are great.

My two cents on these three companies.

I've known Seph at ProperCloth for a little while now. I think he is a fantastic entrepreneur who is on his way to building an incredible company. I've learned a lot from him.

iStyle - Mike Albanese is really onto something. I agree that refining his pitch will help - but that's a much better situation than having a great pitch and a crappy business model. I mentioned to Mike that investors love comps and he should compare iStyle to Polyvore because it similarly involves self expression but is better than Polyvore - iStyle has built in virality and monetization.

Pier Eleven - Who knows if this concept will work but it's an amazing idea. I'm going to be watching these guys really closely. The challenge whenever you do something completely new is who do you target? Art folks or fashion folks? I think the answer is probably art - they wear clothes. Lots of fashionistas have little or no interest in the art world.

Re: Fashion 2.0 & the consuMEr in the MEconomy

dmreinke — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:52:09 -0000

Looking forward to Fashion 2.0 Meetup tonight and hearing from some great companies. I'll be sharing about StyleHop.

Darren, the NYC Fashion 2.0 community needs to be talking more about how to leverage new technology to get the consumer more involved in fashion. The history of fashion is that consumers don't play a role....they are just passively told what to wear. but the democratization of fashion is happening with or without fashion companies consent. The best companies new and old will be those that get on the edge in terms of pulling consumers into their companies to help guide and direct design, merchandising and marketing. Because the big fashion companies are not innovators and tend to sit on their hands when it comes to leveraging new technologies, the opportunities for emerging companies in this space is huge.

Re: If The Rumors . . .

dmreinke — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 08:19:35 -0000

Maybe the political mood is beginning to change in this country. I haven't seen any longitudinal polls about what the numbers are for folks in favor of drug legalization......I only know I'm more interested in that conversation than I ever have been.

I'd like to look and legalization and then tax the hell out of it.

Re: Message to Startups: Risk hasn’t increased….it’s just changed

dmreinke — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 11:06:08 -0000

I'm not personally convinced that VC is dead.....it's just going to get smaller. But this can't happen overnight. There are lots of funds that raised $200mm + in the last few years. They have capital they need to deploy.

Re: Message to Startups: Risk hasn’t increased….it’s just changed

dmreinke — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:12:31 -0000

Stage does matter, I agree. We raised over $500k in a family/friends seed round in March of 2008 to get us in the position we are today. It's true we couldn't get that kind of round done today.

However, now there are more people on the sidelines in the tech world that you can put to work for equity (vs cash)....so bootstrapping is MUCH cheaper than it was in early 2008. We have a lower burn and a stronger team than we had just six months ago.

While building a $10mm company still makes you an entrepreneur, it definitely doesn't make you a fundable startup - even for angels. With that kind of business the risks are still there but the upside is gone for investors. I highly recommend you spend no time trying to raise money and focus all your efforts on gathering people up that believe in you, the business and are willing to help you do the work.

Re: Interview with StyleHop’s founder, David Reinke

dmreinke — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 12:14:52 -0000

Hi Lauren.

Please contact Emily Schreiber regarding our internship program (eschreiber@stylehop.com)

Re: Why The Flow Of Innovation Has Reversed

dmreinke — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 17:14:10 -0000

Brad - great post.

It's a hard pill to swallow for some but I agree with you - the marketers are going to be running the show for a while. There are just too many fantastic, amazing tools out there to interact, connect, solicit, and engage consumers. There is an enormous amount of integration work (5 years worth, I'd say) necessary to make the consumer interaction model seemless and successfully parse out the actionable data for industry. But my intuition tells me this is a catch-up, cyclical type of issue. Once the marketers figure out how to package all this technology, the engineers will get their shot again as we'll be ready to digest something new.

Re: My Thoughts On "Startup Depression"

dmreinke — Tue, 07 Oct 2008 16:56:41 -0000

My own perspective as the founder of an early stage startup - I'm glad to be heading into the downturn. I'm excited by the potential to focus on basic blocking and tackling. If you have a strong idea you want out of the hype bubble and you want to focus on building a great company.

In my mind all the elements from moving from "2.0" to "3.0" are not in place yet. There is still a lot of work to be done to turn all this social network data into valuable assets. Maybe a few years of quiet execution will lead to some new breakthroughs that create the next Google or facebook.

Re: GiftGirl 2.0 Pre Launch

dmreinke — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 12:25:27 -0000

I was ecstatic when my wife was pregnant with our first son.....so for Christmas I thought maternity clothes would be a real celebration of her pregnancy. No, these weren't the really cute/fashionable maternity clothes you see out there. This was standard issue tent-ware....not my best moment.

Re: An experiment: Who's really out there and how do you measure influence?

dmreinke — Mon, 07 Jul 2008 16:41:35 -0000

found via twitter - posted via delicious