Archive for category Business
Buy your Christmas gifts online around Dec. 10th
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on January 9th, 2010
My girlfriend works at a retail store in Bellevue Square and tells me not to do a last minute shopping because retailers jack up the price of products just before Christmas. While I cannot statistically prove this phenomenon, I would not be surprised if it’s the tradition.
I recently installed a add-on program for Firefox browser called The Camelizer which shows historical price of the product sold online such as on Amazon.com. I use it mainly to check out if the price shown on the product page is relatively expensive or cheaper than before. If the price seems to be higher than previous prices, I’d wait until the price drops down again. While looking at historical prices of many products sold online, I noticed a price pattern around X’mas times.
First, please look at the price chart of the Samsung TL220. This product features double LCD screen one in front of camera for the consumers who take self-portraits with background often.
It is hard to see but you can see that the Amazon price and New (3rd party) price drops down around Dec 12-13 period, and it goes back up, then drops again for couple days after X’mas.
Now let’s look at ASUS UL30A-X5. This is a Amazon exclusive custom model and the laptop is very attractive in terms of its mobility and power.
You can see that the price drops significantly from Dec 5-19 period and the price goes back again, then drops down after 27th.
My theory for the pattern is that Dec 10th-13th is the ‘last minute’ purchase point online to get the product delivered before X’mas. Sellers reduce price to give extra incentives for consumers to buy their product online. So why does the price jack up after that period? Consumers can still purchase products on Amazon and get it delivered to their house before X’mas if they choose more expensive shipping option. If such consumers are willing to pay premium for the shipping price, they should be able to pay for the higher product price as well. So the sellers take advantage of those real last minute sales online. It is interesting to see how the rule changes when you sell products online.
I also noticed that it is not predictable what happens to the product price after X’mas. I have seen ones that goes up in price, but I also see ones that goes down in the price. Although the price pattern illustrated here do not apply to every product, it is good to be alert for the price change around the X’mas season.
What I learned through Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur, Tech on September 1st, 2009
For this weekend, I was at Startup Weekend Redmond@BizSpark where entrepreneurs who are skilled at programing, business planning, legal advising, etc get together to build a business with working product just over the weekend. My team created an iPhone application “Learn That Name” which helps you remember the face/name of the contact on your LinkedIn account to avoid embarrassment. Although my background is a business development, I end up working primary as a lead web developer. I was just amazed at what came out just over the weekend, and my team won the first place by the vote from the other 14 teams.
I’d like to summarize what I think were the success factors which brought us a honorable mention at the Startup Weekend.
It’s all about a team work
With 16 members, we were the second largest group ever formed in the Startup Weekend. About half of the team were programming while the other half were putting together a business strategy. The key here was to coordinate 16 members who just met for the first time. Here are the steps we took to coordinate the whole team.
1. We first put Eric Koester, who came up with the idea, as a leader of the group since he was a visionary guy (tho he wish he had a programming skill!). We also appointed overall leaders and communication leaders in each of our programming and biz development department.
2. Before the first night was over, I collected everyone’s contact information on excel spread sheet and sent out everyone an email & poll to keep track of their availability by using Doodle.
3. The next morning, we had a meeting to put everyone on the same page. Again, what’s very important was to make sure all 16 members are headed to one goal.
4. To keep ourselves organized, we setup a Google Group (to share files and to have one email address for mailing list) and Dropbox (to share files between people who do similar tasks).
5. We frequently talked each other to make sure who is doing what by when. Everything just flow smoothly from that point.
Get objectives straight
There were many ways we could have developed our application: build web-based application for everyone to have access, build app for facebook audiences as opposed to LinkedIn, develop it on Microsoft stack to be eligible for receiving prize money, to add more fun features. We did none of those because we had a clear objective in mind: to launch a working product for LinkedIn audience in iPhone platform at the end of the competition. It does not satisfy the greater number, but it excites the few for sure, and that’s what we needed exactly.
Do not rely on partner services
Unless the process is automated, I do not recommend you to rely on getting ‘free’ subscription to any sort of services offered through Startup Weekend partners. We had issue getting a free 3 months trial hosting services from one of the partner and we never got it serviced. I decided to just pay $20 to get my teams website up and running.
Spacebook goes opposite of Netbook
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 28th, 2009
Have you ever heard of a Spacebook? Alaska based company gScreen is planning to launch a 15.4” dual-screen laptop in the market through Amazon.com within 2009.
Planned specs according to their website are:
- 2 LED backlit display screens
- Windows VISTA/ WIN XP PRO (optional)
- Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 2.26-GHz
- 4 GB of RAM (2GB DDR2 SO-DIMM x 2)
- 320GB 7200-rpm HD
- NVIDIA® GeForce® 9800M GT with 512MB dedicated memory (or)
- NVIDIA® Quadro FX 1700M Graphics with 512MB dedicated memory
- 9-cell battery
- IEEE 1394 1 Graphics Card Output (15-pin, D-Sub) X 1, HDMI X 1 Mic-in X 1, Line-in x 1, Headphone X 1 PCI Express Card X 1 AC Power Adaptor Output: 19V DC, 90W Input: 100~240V AC, 50/60Hz universal Battery Pack Li-ion 9 cells
The spacebook is not designed for a desktop replacement, but it is designed for a powerful ‘portable’ laptop. For designers and programmers, (I guess) there are occasions where they need to work outside their office and appreciate dual screen monitor. I’m neither a designer nor programmer, but I feel the need of dual screen at times when I have to open several office documents to work. But I can easily compensate for it by attaching a monitor via VGA cable.
With the price tag around $3000, the target audience for the product is very limited at this point.
Google Books to provide books in open book format EPUB
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 27th, 2009
Back in August 14th, I wrote a post about Sony’s movement to support the open e-book format, EPUB, on its book reading device. Google Books has announced that it will now provide its digital domain book library in the EPUB format. Read more about how EPUB is created on their blog.
Although Google Books only provide old books with expired copyright, consumers will be able to read them on any devices that will support EPUB format in future. Not only that, the size of characters can also be optimized for different reading devices since it’s not just a photocopy of books.
This announcement will not immediately kill the sales of Amazon Kindle as Google Books only offers books in public domain. However, Sony could certainly take an advantage of offering free books in EPUB format on top of it’s new digital book sales.
Microsoft PowerPoint 2010 slide show demo unveils
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 26th, 2009
I wrote a little bit about PowerPoint 2010 in Should I upgrade to Microsoft Office 2010? back in July. Microsoft unveiled the teaser of the slide show that’s created entire on the PowerPoint 2010. See the video below for the working demo.
Feature Sets (According to The PowerPoint Team Blog)
· Fully hardware-accelerated rendering engine
· New transition effects and an updated user interface
· Revamped animation effects and a brand new UI (timelines!)
· Animation Painter (copy your animations between objects)
· Choreograph animations with multimedia
The Good/Bad:
PowerPoint 2010 is visually appealing without a doubt. It is possible to create more interactive and fun slide shows if you are an entertainer. However, visuals can easily kill your presentation if you cannot draw audience’s attention with your message. I can also foresee the situation where presenters use too many animation and the points they are trying to make are scattered. My biggest fear would be to see presenters using same cool animation template which gets us bored. In my opinion, generic effects are plain but not boring, whereas special effects are special but boring.
3 reasons why Bing Cashback is so hot
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on August 21st, 2009
There are many ways to save money: mail-in-rebate, limited time offer, natural discount, free-shipping, tax-free, promotional code, and cashback.
My favorites are tax-free (through third-party Amazon seller) and promotional codes because I can get a good amount of discount instantly without being tricked by the seller. I hate to see discount in a form of mail-in-rebate or cashback because it usually takes good amount of effort and time to get cash back to me. Free-shipping is just another way to say price of the product includes the shipping cost. Of course, tax-free item has it’s own disadvantage as you have to deal with third-party stores and promotional codes are not always useful.
Bing Cashback is a cashback program hosted by Microsoft through it’s new search engine Bing. How it works is very simple and you can track all of your cashback account in a single Windows Live account. Let me explain how Bing Cashback is a new way to save your money.
Simple
It is very simple to use Bing Cashback. Just open http://www.bing.com/ and search the name of the company that sell the product you want.
Now, click the “Bing cashback” button that you see on the right upper corner of the ALL RESULTS shown above. You will see the pop-up box telling you that you can save X% of money by purchasing T-mobile’s product through Bing. You can join the program and it will take you to T-mobile website. Although the Bing cashback pop up will disappear, it will keep track of your purchase at T-mobile and send you a confirmation email.
Cheap
As you can see on the picture above, you can save 35% on any cell phone you purchase through Bing cashback. This is a huge discount considering that there is no other way to save this much on T-mobile product. It is usually hard to save money on stores like T-mobile because they only offer mail-in-rebate that takes as long as 3 months to process.
Fast
If you have a paypal account, you can join ‘quick cashback program’ to receive a cashback the moment you purchase the product without having to wait 60-day period. This is a great deal because you can buy a product as if it’s already discounted.
Conclusion
Although not all deals that can be found through Bing are best, you can definitely benefit from their program if you can find a exclusive corporate offered discount just like the one at T-mobile.
Which angel investor group is the right one for you?
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Entrepreneur on August 20th, 2009
Before you even submit your business summary to angel investor groups, you should consider several factors to see if you can build mutual relationship with them.
1. Funding focus
Any group has its own characteristics, and angel investors are not the exception. Depending on the region and on the people comprised of, angel groups may be focusing on funding startups in specific industry. For example, Zino society only invest in the technology startups. One of the biggest reason why they are specialized in few industry is because there is a concentration of experts in the specific field in the angel group. So you are better off applying for the angel group that’s specialized in your industry.
2. Funding trend
As economy shifts back and forth, the funding trend of angel investors shifts as well. At Keiretsu Forum, less companies get funding these days in exchange for larger amount of investment for the one that gets invested. Unless you think your company is outstanding, you might want take different route.
3. Number of investors
No matter how many angel investors the group has, you are going to spend same amount of time preparing for the pitch. So it is better to approach large investor group so you can get the most exposures even if your company fails to obtain any funding lead. The more members they have, the better you are connected with other potential leads.
4. Fee
Depending on how big meeting is going to be (room, food, etc), and depending on how far you have to travel to get to the meeting, you will end up paying couple thousand dollars at the end. One good way to measure the cost performance is to use the following formula: sum of the cost you pay / # of angel investors specialized in your industry. You can always ask how many members would be interested in your company, or you can simply multiply the total number of angel investors and the percentage of the total number of investment your category. For example, if you run a software company and are looking to present your company at Keiretsu Forum Northwest, your cost performance is: $6000 / (100 investors * 42%) = $143 per investors specialized in your industry.
5. History
In my opinion, it is better to contact the angel group that’s been there for awhile for several reasons. First, an organizing committee most likely knows the characteristics of the investors well, so they can tell you what is going to be expected. Second, angel investors are likely to be familiar with the funding process and many of them can share you their experience of going through funding process. Third, it is self evident that both investors and entrepreneurs have been satisfied with the system. One thing to be careful is to not assume that it’s going to work for you just because it worked for others.
Conclusion
There are obviously more things to look at besides the profile of the organization, but you must at least study these factors before you apply. Otherwise, you will regret for paying large sum of your money for the outcome you have not expected.
A single reason why you should be networking
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business on August 19th, 2009
I learned the benefits of networking in the business world when I was a high school student. Since then, I’ve been slowly building up my network of people. As I add more people on my LinkedIn account, I start to wonder what I’m supposed to do with the list of the contacts I have built so far. To me, building up network that’s not adding value to me and to my contacts seemed rather wasteful. Sure, I never know who’d turn out to be my business partner five years from now, and maybe I’m just not seeing it happening since I’m just 22, but I don’t feel excited about networking unless I can find someone who can build mutually beneficial relationship with me the moment I meet them. So I came up with a simple conclusion: keep networking, no wondering. By constantly networking with new people, I will simply have more chance to meet someone I can do business together immediately, and it will build up my future contact list at the same time.
Please note that I’m not suggesting you a shot-gun approach where you just talk to whoever you see and hope someone will turn out to be helpful. Instead, I’m suggesting you to be motivated to constantly meet new people even if it doesn’t seem to benefit you immediately. The key is to build mutually beneficial relationship to increase your quality contact list.
Dell’s Inspiron 11z fails to fill the gap
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 18th, 2009
Dell Inspiron 11z
Dell has released a new laptop Inspiron 11z at $399 that obviously tries to target the gap between the netbook and laptop. The specs are: 11.6 inch screen (1366×768), 1.2GHz Celeron 723, 2GB DDR2 RAM, 250GB HDD, 3 cell battery (usually lasts 3 hours or less), and Windows Vista as pre-installed OS. This laptop is hard to be categorized as either netbook or portable laptop and here is why: the battery lasts much shorter than the other netbooks in the same price range, and the spec is much weaker than the other portable laptop. To describe Inspiron 11z verbally, it’s a portable laptop squeezed into the body of netbook with no added value. My recommendation: don’t even consider to buy this.
Amazon vs. Sony on e-book reader
Posted by Elisha Terada in Business, Tech on August 14th, 2009
Amazon Kindle
Not only that Sony plans to release a $199 e-book reader, $100 less than Amazon’s entry model Kindle, it is planning to standardize the e-book format called ePub that is accessible by other applications. Up to this point, Amazon has been selling its e-books in the exclusive format that other devices cannot access to. While Amazon is selling books, Sony is trying to sell convenience to its consumers.
Amazon’s Strategy
It is no doubt a smart move for Amazon to release its own e-book reading device, Kindle, in the first place. Although analysts were skeptical about the demand of the product, Amazon has successfully tied its contents and the device to approach the target customer right. If it wasn’t started by Amazon, e-book reader would not have become so popular in this age of the internet. The strategy is very similar to the success of Apple selling cool gadgets with attractive contents in a package. However, an exclusive deal is always opposed by an open deal such as Google’s Android (open) for Apple’s iPhone (closed).
Sony’s Strategy
Just as Google promoting open-source mobile platform to benefit users and developers, Sony is promoting open e-book format that will be potentially accessible by any applications. If you are aware of what Google is doing with its Google Books, you may have already realized that it is no coincidence that Sony has been supporting Google’s open book project. Not only that the e-book format will be open, Sony is for the first time selling electronic device that is considerably cheaper than its consumer. So exactly, what is Sony selling to its customers? Assuming that the project will take off successfully, readers will be able to read more books at a cheaper price (since the book file is not exclusive anymore), and it is easy for customers to actually start reading e-books on a device that has competitive price.
Conclusion
It is very challenging to standardize the e-book format, but Sony has already shown its success in its history including the recent Blu-ray win over Toshiba’s HD-DVD. The market is still at early-adopting stage but it’s showing great traction, so it makes sense for Sony to enter in this market at this time.
Read more about Sony’s e-book reader
Sony readers to use open e-book format in move against Kindle
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