Founder Showcase goes on TV
Carbonated TV brings us to the live scene of the 4th Founder Showcase in Silicon Valley. Here, get ready to learn more about this quarterly event; its founder, Adeo Ressi; and even tips for attracting the right VCs and angel investors. Read more →
FI Graduate Wins Founder Showcase
Results from the last round of Founder Showcase are finally out. And for the first time, a FI graduate takes first place – SeePort from the Bay Area FI program.
Founder Showcase is an open pitch event where any seed or early-stage company younger than 2 years old and with less than $500,000 in funding is invited apply. Read more →
(FI Graduate) Profitability is doing well.
Despite the difficulties startups are facing these days, Profitability – Founder Institute graduate from New York, is doing well.
Founded earlier this year in 2010, with their headquarters in the SoHo neighborhood of Manhattan, Profitability seeks to help businesses grow and operate more profitably. To achieve this end, the young enterprise has developed a web application that analyzes and interprets QuickBooks data securely in order to generate a prioritized list of recommendations for business improvements. But this application doesn’t stop there, it also goes onto provide the relevant content and potential partners so that more concrete actions can be taken. Read more →
The Science to Entrepreneurial Success
Based on Aaron Patzer’s Predicting entrepreneurial success: Got what it takes?
All over the world, every single founder under the Founder Institute program, started out as one of many applicants, hoping to become an entrepreneur someday. The applicants undergo an admissions test that separates the founders (those who make it into the program) from the rest. Once in the program, founders are mentored under seasoned entrepreneurs, and subjected to rigorous trainings. Read more →
A New Investment Landscape
Let’s say you’ve got a fantastic business idea. You develop it a little, write up a business proposal and talk to a few potential partners. It is now time for you to raise some capital before your little startup truly takes off.
A few years back, a venture capitalist (VC) would probably be your best bet. Being in the business of investing in new companies and ideas, they are well placed to invest millions in your startup; should they like your idea. But today, in 2010, it seems the time of VCs is nearing its end. With its current average returns, VCs simply no longer represent a prominent asset class. Read more →
PostSellIt – making up-selling possible for all retailers.
“PostSellIt is an incredibly simple way for online retailers to up-sell, and recommend their products in their email receipts. With PostSellIt, retailers just have to relay their email receipts through us, and we handle the rest. It’s that simple.” explains the man behind the idea, Derrick Ko, 24, Founder.
As consumers, we are all well familiar with how extremely effective Amazon’s “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought” section can be. How many times, have you spent more than originally intended on an item so persuasively recommended to you via this section?
Retailers know this too. But woe to most of them, current recommendation engine solutions either require too much time and expertise (for extensive integration), or too much money. Thus, the recommendations are left to the big boys in the industry.
PostSellIt seeks to rectify this, by making up-selling possible for all retailers. With a user-friendly process, now, even small retailers can recommend their products (in the same way as e-commerce juggernaut Amazon) through their email receipts and confirmation emails.
Although this startup is still in its infant stage, it has certainly gotten a few big players excited. For its pilot trial, PostSellIt has managed to secure a partnership with Flutterscape, which is in turn backed by netprice – one of the largest e-commerce companies in Japan. In the meantime, the company is also in the process of firming up a few more partnerships with retailers in the United States and Indonesia.
Upon graduating from Purdue University, West Lafayette, USA, Derrick had worked in some internationally renowned IT giants – Microsoft USA and Hewlett-Packard USA. But unlike most of his counterparts in the IT industry, Derrick is more than an employee of some technology company. He is also a founder.
Under the Singapore Founder Institute program, Derrick has spent the last 4 months developing his latest startup PostSellIt. This is however, not his first entrepreneurial sabbatical. Derrick has the experience of iSyndica.com and Yum.sg – an IT startup he founded – under his belt.
Yet, despite his prior experience, Derrick decided to join the program for “The network, and the advice that the network provides. It’s easy to start a company these days, but it’s hard to become remotely successful. The success of a startup partly depends on the founders’ connections, and the advice they receive in the company’s formative stages. And the Founder Institute provides that.”
When asked to comment on his entrepreneurship journey, Derrick shares that “It’s hard work. It’s draining. But it’s awesome.”
As someone who admittedly lives around his email inbox, Derrick observed that large portions of the email we receive are transactional emails (aka email receipts). It was here, that the idea was first planted to somehow take advantage of this nifty observation.
Later, the idea grew as Derrick came across research that said we read 70% of all our email receipts. And even more interestingly, that up-selling within those receipts increases revenues by 3% on average. Realizing that only huge online retailers actually do that while smaller ones are missing out because of cost or complexity, Derrick wanted to change that.
And the rest is history.
Visit PostSellIt at http://postsellit.com