There are many responsibilities and dimensions to the role as CEO of an emerging company. ..strategy, market/customer focus, fund raising, modeling, team building, hiring-firing, road map, resource allocations, user experience, cash management, sustainability, execution…execution…execution. So much more.
If you are running an emerging company in essence you have an idea, probably some data to validate it [...]
Today we launched our Mobile App at Swap.com and it is available for the iPhone on Apple’s iTunes App Store. We are psyched about this milestone. I have been using pre-release versions of the app for weeks now and I think it is very cool.
I have talked to many other Internet execs at RueLaLa, Kayak, [...]
Our community members at Swap.com are people who are trying to make the most out of the stuff that they have. We learned that many are teachers and librarians who have joined Swap.com so that they could swap for books that they need in their classrooms. These folks spend money out of their [...]
It is Spring!
Based on the harsh winter that we have endured in Boston, it is great to see the sun higher in the sky and for longer hours each day. Despite the fact that it is still kind of cold here you can tell that the good weather is right around the corner.
Spring has many [...]
Gemvara is a cool Boston-based commerce company that is focused on the custom jewelry category. Matt Lauzon founded this company after he graduated from Babson College and Highland Capital funded it initially.
Last week Gemvara announced the closing of their “C” Round, raising $15 million in new capital led by Balderton Capital, with Highland and Canaan [...]
When we were about to launch Swap4Schools we talked to five schools to help us get it going. I was delighted that my alma mater of Fitchburg High School could be part of this. Rich Masciarelli, the FHS Principal, was excited about a way for the library, which has no budget for new books, would be [...]
I think the sharing economy is very cool. Shareable does a really nice job covering this emerging market space. I thought it would be interesting to write a guest post for Shareable that told the story about how Swap.com, a leader in the sharing economy, has taken a unique approach to sharing office [...]
Swap.com is a pretty special community. Over the last few years this community has grown to 1 million members all coming together to make the most of what they have by swapping for things they want. Today books are the largest category in our marketplace as our members have listed millions of book [...]
Entrepreneurship is the American way. When Steve Case, the AOL founder, was in Boston last fall for MassChallenge, he talked about the keys to success for start ups being a combination of “People, Passion and Perseverance.” Every entrepreneur who has succeeded would agree. Of course you need to add some capital in there too.
As the [...]
The holy grail of entrepreneurship… taking a venture public. It has been a rocky time for entrepreneurs and ventures with this goal. The credit crunch, mortgage crisis and overall economic environment has stymied initial offerings for the last several years. Surely some companies did go out…but not many.
Yesterday, Demand Media sold 8.9 million shares at [...]
