News and Analysis
Street Culture: mParticle CEO on Appreciating People and the Founder’s Journey
“We want people who have historically been lucky. People who have demonstrated the ability to go out and create their own luck,” CEO Michael Katz says. “People who are curious, who engage and ask questions and generally listen, [who are] not just waiting for a pause in the conversation. “
Latest Posts
Stuck in the Middle: Why Should ‘Local’ Mean ‘San Francisco?’
I’m pretty well immersed in Dallas’ start-up community, and I’ve noticed a sea change in the last couple years. We may not have the flashy, high-profile buzz-making scene that you’ll find in Silicon Valley (or Alley), but investments are happening. I think that’s partly because we’ve had to make it without the mutli-million dollar seed rounds and gut through on wits and angel investment…
5 Things SMBs Need to Know About Their Customers in the Multiplatform Era
In a Street Fight webinar Tuesday sponsored by YP, Greg Sterling, a senior analyst with Opus Research and contributing editor at Search Engine Land spoke with Sanjay Sood, YP’s SVP of consumer platforms, about new strategies small businesses can use to get discovered by consumers in the smartphone age…
Transaction Overview: Go Daddy Acquires Locu for $70 Million
With the acquisition of Locu, Go Daddy is beginning to move beyond its legacy domain registration and web hosting legacy and showing that it has the strategic aptitude and willingness to acquire to provide a more complete solution for local businesses to manage and market themselves. We expect Locu to be a compelling value proposition to Go Daddy’s 11 million customers…
Street Fight Daily: Pay-Per-Gaze Advertising, 17.4% of Global Web Traffic from Mobile
How Pay-Per-Gaze Advertising Could Work With Google Glass (New York Times) … Google and Waze Finally Start Showing Off Each Other’s Tech (VentureBeat) … 17.4% of Global Web Traffic Comes Through Mobile (Mashable) …
Getting Drones to Do Our Hyperlocal Bidding
Drones are the perfect last-mile delivery vehicle for small loads. Ultimately, I envision a future where the drones do all the local delivery and put the brick-and-mortar shops on much more even footing with Amazon and other larger providers. Why would I use this service? Because if I can buy from people that I have a personal relationship with and enjoy the same frictionless commerce and zero hassle, I will do it much of the time…
5 Strategies for Finding Funding as an Early-Stage Startup
Although it’s a given that the founders of most early-stage hyperlocals need funding to bring their ideas to life, many entrepreneurs are still unsure of where to turn for financing during the earliest days. To answer that question, we reached out to executives who’ve founded hyperlocal companies and asked what worked for them…
PriceGrabber Acquires Snapette
Mobile shopping app Snapette is getting a new home. The company, which has 1.5 million users, is being acquired by e-commerce platform and shopping site PriceGrabber for an undisclosed sum. For Snapette, it’s a play for scale. The company boasts partnerships with over 200 brands and retailers worldwide, but PriceGrabber puts millions of shoppers in touch with more than 12,000 merchants and sellers, driving more than $1 billion in annual sales…
Street Fight Daily: GoDaddy Acquires Locu, Zillow Snaps Up StreetEasy
A roundup of today’s big stories in hyperlocal content, commerce, and technology… GoDaddy Acquires Merchant ‘Finder’ Startup Locu for $70 Million (AllThingsD)… Leaked Revenue Figures Illustrate Need For Hundreds Of Patch Layoffs (TechCrunch)… Internet Impacts Roughly $1.83 Trillion in Offline Buying (ScreenWerk)…
6 Strategies for Patching Up Patch
To meet the promise he made to shareholders, AOL’s chief executive Tim Armstrong is in the process of cutting staff and other costs at Patch in the hopes that his network of hyperlocal sites will be profitable by the end of 2013. But just making short-term cuts to hit profitability might not be the optimum choice. Patch also has to plant seedlings for mid- and long-term benefits that the company can reap 6-12 months from now…
The Road Ahead: What Autonomous Cars Teach Us About Marketing Automation