Author: golf Page 15 of 22

Core Capital Invests in $20M Round for NextPoint

On December 5, 2007

In Core Capital, Entrepreneurship, Venture Capital

Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested in a number communications infrastructure companies particularly focused on the IP and VoIP, announced its participation in a $20 million round of funding for Gaithersburg, MD-based NextPoint™ Networks, Inc.

According to the investment announcement , NextPoint will be the result of the recently announced merger between NexTone Communications Inc., a software-centric session border controller and session management provider, and Reef Point Systems, Inc., a mobile access universal convergence gateway provider. In addition to Core Capital, other investors in this round include the round lead investor, One Equity Partners, the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), as well as American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ:ACAS), Jerusalem Venture Partners, Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) and Summerhill Venture Partners.

The eMarket for Lemons and The University of Maryland

By golf

On December 5, 2007

In buySAFE, eBay, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Web/Tech

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few hundred business school students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland. Michael Beveridge, buySAFE’s VP of Business Intelligence, joined me in speaking at the invitation of Professors Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Peter Weiss, and Mingfeng Lin. The students had previously read “buySAFE – Creating and Profiting From the Bonded Seller Advantage“, a case study on buySAFE authored by Wharton professor, Dr. Eric Clemons. Here is the presentation that Michael and I shared with the students… “eMarket for Lemons – The Economics of an Evolving eCommerce Marketplace“.

As always, it was a terrific experience for me. The students were extremely prepared, and they had definitely done their homework on buySAFE, information asymmetry, and the ecommerce marketplace in general. If you ever want to get an excellent sense of how well your marketing efforts are working or how well you are educating the market about your solution, I highly recommend inviting a couple hundred college students to study your product or service and let them give you feedback. I loved it!

Turning the Risk Discount Into a Trust Premium

By golf

On December 1, 2007

In Uncategorized

This link contains a link to the presentation “Building Buyer Confidence” presented by Steve Woda, founder and senior vice president of strategy, buySAFE, for the MIVA Small Business Conference 2006, 29 August – 1 September 2006, p. 30

Steve Woda’s del.icio.us Links & Bookmarks

By golf

On November 14, 2007

In Uncategorized

The following is a list of recent articles that I have read or websites that I have found interesting. I hope this linkroll is helpful for you as well.

A Few Interesting, Recent eCommerce and Entrepreneurship Articles

By golf

On November 13, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Economics, Entrepreneurship, Steve Woda, Venture Capital, Web/Tech

Good morning everyone! If you know me well, you know that I am a voracious reader of anything and everything that I believe is interesting or useful either personally or professionally. My colleagues will attest to the fact that their Inbox usually has at least one article that I have recent found that might be useful for them or buySAFE. 🙂

Today, I have been catching-up on my reading list, and I thought I would share with you a few articles that I found interesting. Hopefully, you will some of the info interesting as well.

Steve

What is RSS and Why Do You Need It?

By golf

On November 11, 2007

In Uncategorized

Receive New Articles via Email
To receive new articles in your email inbox, enter your email address below and click the Submit button.

What is that Funny Icon?
The icon that looks like a volume button is actually a link to the page where you can subscribe to a blog’s ‘feed’ via an RSS Feed Reader or Email.

It was originally designed in orange, but as you will notice, some blogs get creative.

What is an RSS Feed?
Click To Watch The Video Below That Explains RSS Feeds in Plain English. The video is the masterful work of The Common Craft Show. Please visit their site for more DIY and Instruction in Plain English.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU&rel=1]

How Do I Subscribe To The Feed?
1. If you have a feed reader (see below if not) and you want to subscribe, just click the icon.

2. If you want to get the feed via email, just type your email address in the text box near the icon designated for email subscriptions.

What is Feedburner?
“Feedburner is best known for its Atom-to-RSS conversion: you give it an Atom feed URL (e.g. the one you have in a Blogger site), and you get a URL that contains the up-to-date RSS version of it. FeedBurner actually can convert from and to any version of RSS or Atom.” (Wikipedia)

In plain English: You tell Feedburner your blog’s web address (URL) and it creates a feed for you to advertise on your site. It also allows people to subscribe to your feed, and helps you manage the way that feed is received by your subscribers.

What RSS Feed Readers Do You Recommend?
iGoogle
MyYahoo
Bloglines
MyAOL
NewsGator
NetVibes
Wizz Reader for Firefox

And many, many more…

What Happens When I Subscribe via Email?
1. You will need to approve the subscription to the feed by responding to the email that was just sent to your inbox.

2. You will begin to receive either headlines, excerpts, or entire posts in the form of a standard email. Emails will arrive at a rate dependent on frequency of blog posts and frequency of RSS delivery (normally same day).

3. You always have the option to unsubscribe or change the subscription to a RSS News Reader so as to keep the articles out of your already cluttered inbox.

Why Is It On This Blog?
By clicking on the icon and adding this blog as one of your blog feeds, you will be able to browse through our headlines, ensuring you never miss an article.

Google is an advertising cheapskate!

By golf

On October 29, 2007

In eBay, eCommerce, Google, Marketing, Microsoft, Venture Capital, Web/Tech, WOMMA, Yahoo!

What is the most valuable brand in the world? Google is the number one brand in the world with an estimated value of $66 billion according consulting firm Millward Brown Optimor.
This got me thinking… How did Google become the most valuable brand in the world in just a short nine years? As the Founder of a consumer-focused internet company, I find this question very interesting. Conventional wisdom would suggest that Google must spend billions of dollars in advertising every year to accomplish such an impressive feat.

Well after a bit of research, one thing becomes clear… Google is an advertising cheapskate!

Build Buyer Trust to Drive Holiday Revenue

By golf

On October 22, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, Marketing, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

How can you drive up your holiday revenue? Build trust with your buyers!
That’s right. By simply spending a bit of time and energy thinking about how your consumers do their searching, shopping, and decision-making, you can increase your holiday revenues in a material fashion.

On Wednesday, October 24, 2007 at 11:00-12:00 PM MDT, I will be giving an educational webinar sponsored by Infopia and buySAFE on the subject of building trust with your buyers to drive up your revenues and
profits.

If you can spare an hour of your time, I promise you that you will learn something
new and interesting. If you are serious about building your online business, this will be time well spent.

Space is limited, so please register for the webinar as soon as you get a moment. You can register at https://www.gotomeeting.com/register/890705170.

Related articles:
“Infopia Integrates with buySAFE” – Infopia Blog

buySAFE and ScanAlert (HACKER SAFE) Announce a Major Trust, Safety and Security Partnership

By golf

On June 3, 2007

In buySAFE, eCommerce, HackerSafe, Portable Trust & Reputation Signals, Trust and Safety, Web/Tech

This week, buySAFE and ScanAlert, the provider of the Hacker Safe service, announced a huge partnership, and in my opinion, this is a great development for e-commerce.

Under the terms of the deal, ScanAlert will provide buySAFE’s Certified Merchant solution for free to its merchants during the HACKER SAFE account activation process and from within the account management console. In addition, buySAFE will make ScanAlert’s PCI validation services available to its merchants for free as well. This is truly a terrific combination for merchants and buyers.

Obviously, buyers want to find the right product at the right price. Once that has been accomplished, buyers basically care about two things when considering whether or not to make a purchase online…

Am I going to get what I pay for?
Is my private information going to be safe?

buySAFE is the best in the world at making sure buyers will get what they paid for. buySAFE does this by rigorously inspecting its merchants’ sales experience, online reputation, identity, and financial stability. Then, buySAFE monitors the merchant’s transactional history, in real time, for any sign of transactional or business default. Finally and perhaps most importantly, buySAFE puts its money where its mouth is bonding the transactions of buySAFE merchants up to $25,000 per transaction if requested.

Hacker Safe is amongst the best in the world at ensuring that buyers’ private information is going to be safe. They accomplish this goal by performing daily vulnerability scanning of their merchants’ websites. This helps to make sure that the merchants’ websites are secure and difficult for bad guys to breach.

Both companies are industry leaders in the online trust, safety and security world, and both have thousands of merchant customers using their services.

Again, it important for merchants to understand that their shoppers are concerned with two things… and Will I get what I paid for, and is my private information going to be safe? Optimal web site conversion metrics can only be achieved by answering both of these questions credibly. Together, buySAFE and ScanAlert are a powerful combination that will benefit merchants, buyers, and the entire e-commerce industry.

Related articles:
"buySAFE & HACKER SAFE in a Ground Breaking Announcement – Enabling Risk-Free eCommerce" on the buySAFE blog
"BuySafe Partners with ScanAlert/Hackersafe and CRE Loaded" on AuctionBytes.com

Chicago Will Host eBay Live 2008

By golf

On June 1, 2007

In buySAFE, eBay, Web/Tech

If you are an eBay fan (as I am), and you live in the Midwest, you will be very happy to learn that eBay Live 2008 will be held in Chicago. eBay has not yet announced the decision, but Ina Steiner, a very authoritative source on all things eBay, has broken the story in her "eBay Live 2008 to Be Hosted in Chicago" blog post.

There are a number of major companies in the e-commerce ecosystem, both merchants and third-party service providers, that have decided to skip eBay Live 2007 in Boston in the interest of attending other prominent e-commerce conferences (buySAFE is one prominent example). All of of us who own equity in eBay are rooting for them to regain their shine, and so perhaps Chicago and 2008 can be a resurgence opportunity for eBay and their ecosystem.