Retale CEO Touts ‘Tremendous Potential’ of Virtual Reality for Shopping
Retale, a mobile app that brings local circulars to consumers, is jumping right in to VR/AR, launching what it calls “the world’s first virtual reality location-based shopping companion.” Street Fight recently caught up with Retale CEO Christian Gaiser to discuss why the company is betting this technology will become a vital channel for future shoppers.
Basket President: App’s Crowdsourced Price Information Empowers Shoppers
“The difference in prices between stores in a five-mile radius can be as much as 50 percent, based on in-store unadvertised specials, advertised specials, and variance in list price,” says Andy Ellwood. His company, Basket, has built “a massive database” that allows the company to display that price information back to consumers.
Feastly Co-founder: ‘We’re Looking to Become the Largest Dining Establishment in the World’
Feastly wants to connect you with a specific chef instead of a restaurant, so that you can have a unique meal prepared for you and your party wherever you want to eat it. Street Fight recently caught up with Feastly’s co-founder Noah Karesh and advisor Lem Lloyd to talk about the thinking behind the service.
Street Fight Daily: DoorDash’s Unicorn Hopes Fall Short, Rite Aid’s Massive Beacon Program
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal publishing, marketing, commerce, and technology… DoorDash Struggles in Quest for $1 Billion Valuation (Wall Street Journal)… Rite Aid Preps One of the Largest Beacon Activations (GeoMarketing)… The Goldman Sachs Note Behind the Theory that Apple has Figured Out How ‘to Starve Google’s Core Business Into Irrelevance’ (Business Insider)…
StructuredWeb’s Nissan: We’re Just Starting to See the Complexity Curve Going Up
Long sales cycles, smaller target audiences, higher transaction values — all these characteristics separate B2B from B2C marketing. “There’s a level of precision that you need to have in the B2B space, because otherwise you can spend a lot of money without seeing any results,” said StructuredWeb president and CEO Daniel Nissan.
Zenchef CEO: The Restaurant Tech Sector Is Booming
French company Zenchef, which offers an all-in-one marketing solution for restaurants, has taken on the challenge of uniting thousands of European eateries on one platform. With 2,500 customers in France, Spain, and the UK, and plans to expand to Germany, Italy, Portugal, and Turkey in 2016, co-founder and CEO Xavier Zeitoun said “the key in this market is distribution.”
#SFSNYC: Beyond the Check-In: Big Data Analytics and the Evolution of Foursquare
Dennis Crowley started Foursquare in 2009 from his kitchen in Manhattan with a lofty vision: Amass enough data to map out specific areas, build a location-based recommendation engine, and create navigation software. But when the company introduced gaming dynamics to encourage check-ins, that’s what it became known for. Today, Foursquare’s ambitions and vision lie well beyond the check-in.
#SFSNYC: Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager on Whether or Not On-Demand is Really Necessary in Local Commerce
Of all the changes mobile has wrought, on-demand arguably has made the biggest splash. The emergence of companies offering products and services immediately, with only a tap or two of a phone or tablet screen, is pushing incumbents to change their business models to stay on top of their industries. Three of these young-gun threats — Button, Urgent.ly, and Pager — made an appearance at the Street Fight Summit, speaking on a panel about on-demand in local commerce.
#SFSNYC: Investor Ted Leonsis and BuzzFeed Editor-in-Chief Ben Smith on Media and the Local Economy
The Street Fight Summit played host to a wide-ranging conversation between BuzzFeed editor-in-chief Ben Smith and investor Ted Leonsis. The fireside chat touched on Leonsis’s decades of local economy expertise, stemming from his many investments in and experiences with media ventures, professional sports teams, and ecommerce ventures, including Groupon.
#SFSNYC: Google, Yelp, and ironSource on How the New Generation of Mobile Search Is Changing Everything
Mobile has become an automatic, subconscious extension of our digital lives, and technologies that leverage the versatility of smartphones are maturing rapidly. But the apps vs. web debate continues to rage. And where does search, which has existed since the early days of the internet, fit into the picture?
#SFSNYC: ReachLocal, ShopKeep, and Swipely on Whether or Not Vertical Approaches to Local Inevitably Become Horizontal
Small businesses have a lot of options when it comes to choosing tools that keep things running smoothly. In fact, they have a lot of options even when partnering with a single vendor because companies within the connected local economy are transforming into marketing one-stop shops for advertising, point-of-sale (POS), and other solutions critical to the daily operations of SMBs.
NinthDecimal Partners with TiVo to Measure TV Advertising’s Real-World Influence
In today’s digitally-focused advertising climate, overlooking TV’s influence is easy. It still accounts for the largest share of U.S. media spending, but with marketers increasingly focused on generating hard metrics-based ROI for every aspect of their campaigns, the challenge has been tying TV’s impact to real-world business results. With the launch today of a TV measurement solution in partnership with TiVo, NinthDecimal is banking on TV becoming a bigger piece of the ROI puzzle.
Rocket Fuel’s Medici: Within Two Election Cycles, Everything is Going to Be Done Programmatically
“In politics, advertising is definitely still a TV-centric world. But we’re moving in a direction where the voter is going to be a 360-degree touchpoint, and the media accessibility is going to be very easy. Everything is going to be done programmatically, and I think you’ll see that shift within two election cycles,” said Rocket Fuel national director of politics and advocacy JC Medici.
Urgent.ly’s Spanos: On-Demand Is How Everybody’s Going to Get Service for Everything
“I’ve long been a believer that on-demand is going to revolutionize every service sector in the economy. There will be different flavors of it, based on the characteristics of particular verticals. Five years from now, this is how everybody’s going to get service for everything,” said Urgent.ly CEO Chris Spanos.
ReachLocal’s Rowlands: In Order to Stay Relevant with Your Market, You Have No Choice But to Broaden
“A lot of companies started with a one-product solution — ReachLocal in search and other companies in email marketing or social. But our customers’ needs evolved, and they needed more than that one product. In order to stay relevant with your market, you have no choice but to broaden,” said ReachLocal CEO Sharon Rowlands about the pressure to offer a full suite of services.
Redpoint Ventures’ Dharmaraj: There Will Be Many Different Craigslists
“It’s about establishing trust and community. I think there will be many different Craigslists, each for your own local community. That’s where something big can be built in the local space — a Craigslist that’s organized by neighborhoods, rather than by cities,” said Redpoint Ventures partner Satish Dharmaraj about local “unicorns” waiting to emerge.
ShopKeep’s Richelson: You Have to Specialize, Then Grow
“There is no way a company can start with a holistic service. You have to specialize then grow. But I will say because of the cloud it’s very easy to bolt on other providers to create a holistic service,” said ShopKeep founder Jason Richelson about branching out beyond his company’s initial focus on SMB point-of-sale software.
ironSource’s Cunningham: You Need Every Data Set at Your Disposal to Compete with Facebook and Google
“In today’s ecosystem, there’s no fooling around anymore. You have some serious players taking 80 or 90 percent of the share, and the only way that you’re ever going to compete is with scale, targeting, a large user base, and product capabilities that can command real budgets,” said ironSource head of mobile and global brand partnerships Chris Cunningham about ad-tech consolidation.
