Philtered

The Gilt Group Hoax

CD — Thu, 09 Dec 2010 21:31:56 +0000

Today Gilt Group is offering a wine sampler kit from TastingRoom.com for $25 (marked down from $45 – a 44% savings!). But on TastingRoom.com, the same sampler kit can be had for $29.99. So does Gilt always jack up the “original retail price” to give the appearance of significant savings? Screenshots of the offers after the jump…

Gilt’s “44% savings”

The original offer on TastingRoom.com:

SkillSlate Gets Funding, Aims to Improve Local Services

CD — Wed, 03 Nov 2010 16:26:40 +0000

Congrats to Brian Rothenberg, a former InSITE fellow of mine, who recently helped raise a round of VC funding for his startup, SkillSlate.com.

SkillSlate’s goal is to connect consumers with local individual service providers. When you need a service performed, individuals are often better than larger companies. Without a big brand to hide behind, individuals are usually more invested in their reputation, so they’re more personable, offer higher quality work, and are cheaper because there’s no middle man taking a cut (since larger companies tend to take a sizable cut, and pay their people less). However, outside of a word-of-mouth recommendation, it’s often hard to find them, which is where SkillSlate comes in.

I’m particularly excited to try out the service because I’ve never had a great experiencing hiring individuals from Craigslist. Last year we hired a painter, who did an awful job and never showed up on time – and the year before that we hired a carpenter to fix some steps on our deck, but he took 2 months longer than expected. I can’t wait for SkillSlate to expand beyond NYC and begin serving San Francisco.

The last few months

CD — Sat, 16 Oct 2010 20:47:51 +0000

It’s been a while since my last post. School ended in May, I moved to San Francisco in June, and started work shortly after. I joined the Corporate Development team at Adobe, with a focus on m&a and strategy. It’s been a terrific experience so far — exploring new business opportunities, meeting interesting companies, and working with a great group of product managers and executives. I believe Adobe has a number of fascinating opportunities to pursue (in addition to growing an already strong business) — and I look forward to helping them get there.

Brilliant marketing on foursquare

CD — Fri, 07 May 2010 03:33:11 +0000

A local car service is the mayor of LaGuardia Airport in New York. How long will it be until Foursquare begins selling space here to advertisers? This is the first page you see after checking into a business — and I have to imagine it helps deliver new customers to this car service. Imagine landing on the runway, opening your phone and checking into 4sq, and clicking a link to schedule a luxury car service drive you home for the same price as a taxi. Not bad.

Back on the bike

CD — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 04:08:11 +0000

Now that we’ve got reasonably warm weather again in NY, I’m ditching my subway card in favor of my bike. Not only will I save $80/month from my metrocard, but I also get some extra exercise and a more scenic commute to school. In fact, cycling is a great way to get around NYC (as long as you invest in a good lock) and a time/money saver too. Here’s a photo of my bike, except I recently added a front brake and toe clips.

Gmail outdoes Apple for Mail on iPad

CD — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 03:17:12 +0000

Gmail is hands down the best mail solution on the iPad. The UI is terrific (a step up from Apple’s native mail app) and it’s quick and responsive. Plus I love the fact I can side swipe messages to archive. Nice job Gmail team!

Yang’s Dumplings in Shanghai

CD — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 00:18:17 +0000

Yang’s Fry Dumplings was definitely one of the food highlights of Shanghai. They charged 5 Yuan for 4 dumplings. That’s about $0.75. I wish we had dumpling shops as good as this in NY and SF…

Taken for granted: fresh air and an uncensored internet

CD — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 18:41:34 +0000

After spending the last week in China, I have a much greater appreciation for two things: clean air and an uncensored internet experience.

As soon as I stepped out of the Shanghai Pudong Airport my chest felt tight and my breaths were noticeably shorter. I thought that I’d experienced air pollution in Mexico City and Los Angeles, but the air in Shanghai was definitely dirtier.

It was interesting to visit China last week, especially as the discussion of whether Google will continue its operations in the country was nearing a final decision. It was a hotly covered topic in the China Daily just about every single day.

While I had a great trip and it was exciting to see how China is quickly developing, it was refreshing to land in New York yesterday and finally be able to access Facebook and Twitter. As an American traveling abroad, there are things I take for granted, such as bit.ly urls working properly and Google functioning as expected. But in China, this wasn’t the case.

Below is a short recap of the things that didn’t work for me during the course of my daily internet use in Shanghai last week.

Google.com: I was occasionally able to search Google.com from my hotel, but it tended to vary based on what I was searching for. If I got a blank page, I would switch the .com to .cn and it worked okay, but the results seemed more China-centric.
Gmail: I wasn’t able to access Gmail my first day in China, but was able to access it thereafter. However, there were times it wouldn’t load, but then 10 minutes later it would be fine. I couldn’t figure out what caused it to stop working from time to time.
Twitter.com wasn’t accessible, but Twitter apps on the iPhone (e.g., Tweetdeck) tended to work over the wireless carrier (but not via wifi networks).
Facebook: Again, same thing as Twitter. The FB iPhone app worked over the wireless carrier, but neither their website nor iPhone app worked over wifi.
Google Image Search: I was able to search for terms and see thumbnails (i.e.. Shanghai Fakes Market), but clicking on results to see full-size images resulted in a blank screen.
Google Apps: I was able to create and edit Google Docs, but for some reason Google Spreadsheets was blocked.
Google Reader: It worked for the most part, but when I tried to visit URLs in Reader, many of the Feedburner redirects were blocked.
URL Shorteners such as Bit.ly were inaccessible. So even if I could see someone’s tweets in a third party app, the urls they shared didn’t work.

While I didn’t spend much time investigating the errors above, I did notice that the error codes I received from each of the services varied — leading me to believe the government uses different approaches for blocking each service. For example, Google Image Search redirects gave me a 101 error, Facebook.com served a 118 Error, and Google Spreadsheets gave me a 107 error.

Discussing the housing bubble in China

CD — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 10:02:41 +0000

Today we met with Stephen Green, Head of Economic Research at Standard Chartered Bank in Shanghai. One of the biggest topics we covered was the housing bubble in China. While Stephen agrees that a bubble exists, he doesn’t think it will have the same impact as the one we recently experienced in the US. He argued that you can’t compare the US bubble of the last decade with the one here today because this is essentially China’s industrial revolution, where there is such tremendous growth that a 10-20% correction would have a negligible impact on the economy. Other arguments he cited were the continued urbanization of China and the fact owners put over 30% down. Therefore, a correction would have to be huge in order to wipe out home owner equity and impact the financial system here.

Visiting Seoul and Shanghai

CD — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:41:57 +0000

I’m currently in Seoul and will be heading to Shanghai tomorrow. Lots of interesting meetings scheduled with entrepreneurs and tech companies to get a lay of the land over here. Best way to connect with me will be over Twitter or Facebook, as I’m checking in over wifi networks periodically as I travel.

Update 3/7: Neither Twitter or FB can be accessed from my hotel. Not sure if it’s just a local issue or nationwide.