Etsy, the popular marketplace for all things handmade, just announced that it will not just be hosting the 2012 session of Hacker School at its headquarters in New York, but that it will also offer ten $5,000 grants to women who would like to attend this year’s session but don’t have the financial means to do so. As Etsy’s VP of engineering Marc Hedlund notes, the idea here is to ensure that about 50% of the next Hacker School class of about 40 participants will be female. → Read More
Etsy, online seller of various hand-made hipster goodness, has reached a major milestone today. After less than four months on the App Store, the Etsy for iPhone app has surpassed 1 million downloads. The app launched in mid-November 2011.
But that’s not all Etsy has to celebrate. Since the release of the app, it’s seen 25-60 percent growth in visits month-over-month, and is seeing an average of 30 pageviews per visit. → Read More
Remember Jonathan Bouman, the young, Netherlands-based developer who brought us the awesome creation that is Scrolldit, a scrollable version of Reddit? Well, he’s back. And this time, he’s made a scrollable version of Etsy. It’s called Scrollsy, and, if you’re an Etsy lover, I guarantee that you’re about to waste a whole bunch of time on this site.
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Online pinboard Pinterest is all the rage these days, and as Etsy is showing today with its latest product announcement, e-commerce sites are starting to realize the power of pinning. The e-commerce marketplace is making it easier for Pinterest users to pin and organize Etsy items, via a new Pin It button on Etsy listing pages, along side the Tweet and Like buttons.
Etsy says that its members are big fans of Pinterest (and so is Etsy), so the integration makes sense. Etsy is also using Pinterest’s price display feature. So when you pin listings with the Pin It button, the required pin description field is prefilled with the item title and price. Users can also add a note about why they like the item, which will be added to their Pinterest posting. → Read More
The discussion regarding copycats of US startups in europe is still an ongoing one, and largely due to the fact that the copycats are often heartless rip-offs. DaWanda, a marketplace for DIY goods, took the successful concept of Etsy, which was founded in 2005, to Europe and has since then grown into a company with 65 employees and 1,9 million products for sale.
But in contrast to other “clones” in Europe, DaWanda does not deserve such a comparison, since they’ve managed to build a unique and individual style and community. Neither from a design perspective nor from a strategic one. With 120,000 designers on the site the company just announced that they’ve raised € 4 million in their latest round of financing. They are using the financial boost to develop and strengthen their international presence, with a focus on France. Those providing the capital are newly won investor Vorwerk Ventures, and existing shareholder Piton Capital. It’s an early birthday present for the designer marketplace, which was founded in 2006 and will be five years old in December. → Read More
We’re back for a new episode of TC Cribs, and this one is chock-full of unique, incredible creations that you’ll never see in another office: yep, we made it to Etsy.
The Brooklyn-based company gives artists, designers, sculptors, and all sorts of other creative people a place to sell their wares online — and the startup is eating its own dogfood by decorating its office with items purchase from the site. And boy, does it work. You can’t walk three feet without stumbling across a man made out of metal wire or freakishly massive owl. → Read More
Today marked a bit of leadership shuffling at Etsy, the online marketplace to buy your local hipster a handmade good, as CTO Chad Dickerson takes over the reins as CEO from Rob Kalin. Etsy is Kalin’s brainchild, and the founder has been acting as CEO since 2009.
Dickerson explained the change today on Etsy’s blog, saying that his focus as the new CEO will be to impel Etsy to move faster “and more purposefully”, and re-prioritize risk-taking and “learning by doing” and “iterating”. → Read More
Editor’s note: Guest contributor Jon Bischke is a founder of RG Labs and is an advisor to Altius Education, Fatminds and Udemy. You can follow him @jonbischke.
For people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters such as South Park in San Francisco, University Avenue in Palo Alto or the Flatiron district in New York, last week’s jobs report must have created some cognitive dissonance. After all, we’re in a boom/bubble right? It’s really hard to hire good people isn’t it? But take a moment to step outside the world of high technology and a dramatically different picture emerges of what’s going on in America. → Read More
Any parent will tell you that the anaPad will not keep their kids away from the household’s iPad. It might look like an iPad, but kids are smart. They know a capacitive touchscreen from a white board. But that’s fine. As the creators note on etsy, it’s designed to promote analog learning, hence the name, in a digital world. The magnetic white board looks like an iPad and that alone might be enough to hold a child’s attention for some math drills or quick game of hangman. And yes, the marker and icons are included. [Etsy via Wired] → Read More
From the why-didn’t-anyone-think-of-this-before department: meet Heartsy, which is basically a Groupon for Etsy, i.e. a daily deals site for handmade items sold on Etsy stores.
The concept should be overly familiar to you: registered users get sent exclusive deals on handmade items sold on Etsy by email. Acquired coupons, or vouchers as Heartsy refers to them, can be redeemed at the Etsy store that sponsored the deal (example). → Read More
These Lego Spaceman cufflinks are sort of self-explanatory just like the folks who wear them. Fine by me. $16.99 a pair on at this Etsy store where there are about a zillion and quarter more similar Lego cufflinks and tie tacks. I like these the best. [via Cool Hunting] → Read More
Let’s say you want to find that perfect quirky little black dress for New Year’s? Like a mashup of Etsy, Flickr color search, and Google Instant, Glancely lets you search Etsy visually, sorting instant results by color and by price so you can scan through multiple green knit caps or purple socks or whatever handmade items your heart desires. Hold your mouse over an item to get a closer look and click on an item to go straight to its Etsy profile. → Read More
Gift giving can be so hard, especially if you have a bunch of hipster friends who turn their noses at anything even slightly pedestrian. (“A box of See’s Candy that you bought at the airport? Are you kidding me?”). Well, fear not. All you need to do is make them take this little Etsy Taste Test on the commerce site for hand-crafted goods. After selecting a series of product photos that match their taste, they wil be presented with a grid of recommended products, along with other people on Etsy who have similar tastes. → Read More
Editor’s note: This post is the second part of an analysis of different consumer Internet business models by guest author Steven Carpenter. It is suggested that you first read Part I.
Most consumer Internet startups fall into a baker’s dozen of possible business models. In the first part of this post, I tried to lay out the three main buckets those business models fall into (media, paid service, and physical commerce) and then began to sketch out the first four business models (search, gaming, social networks, and new media). In my analysis, I include a rough financial model showing the key drivers necessary for each different type of business model to generate $10 million in annual revenues. → Read More
Editor’s note: Engineers love to take things apart to learn how they work. They call this a teardown. In his ongoing series of TC Teardowns guest author Steven Carpenter takes apart popular business models to see how they work. He’s done this with Groupon, Chegg, and Zynga. This time, he looks at handmade goods marketplace Etsy.
A few weeks ago, Etsy, the New York-based marketplace for handmade goods around the world, raised $20 million in new capital at a $300 million valuation—3 times the valuation of its last round in January, 2008. In contrast to the meteor-like rise of Groupon and Zynga, Etsy’s revenues have grown consistently since its launch in 2005, while establishing a trusted brand and international platform for makers of all kinds of wares to sell their products. Based on my analysis, Etsy will do $380 million in gross merchandise volume (GMV) and generate $30 million in revenues this year, up from $180 million in GMV and $15 million in revenue in 2009. This implies a 10X revenue multiple in the company’s latest valuation, compared to EBay’s 3.6 multiple. → Read More
Crafty commerce site Etsy just raised another $20 million in its fifth venture round (that would be the Series E). Index Ventures is the new investor leading the round, with partner Danny Rimer getting an observer’s seat on the board. (The board is made up of founder Rob Kalin, Caterina Fake, Accel partner Jim Breyer and Union Square Ventures partner Fred Wilson). Previous investors Accel and Hubert Burda Media put in some money as well in this round.
The round gives Etsy a pre-money valuation of just under $300 million, about triple the valuation it got during its last, $27 million round in January, 2008. Most of the shares sold—nearly $14 million of the $20 million—were secondary shares held by some of the early investors. But unlike other rounds we’ve seen lately, this wasn’t a liquidity event for founders. Kalin says he did not sell any shares, nor did any employees. → Read More
Good news and bad news. First, the vinyl iPad sticker of Rob Janoff’s 1976 Apple logo is only $3.50 on etsy or free if you buy one of the seller’s larger decals on etsy. But they are sold out. Sorry. [etsy via Gadget Lab → Read More
After a brief hiatus, the founder of Etsy Rob Kalin reclaimed the CEO title in January of this year. During a brief interview at Etsy’s Brooklyn headquarters, I asked Kalin, “Why do you think you deserve to be back as CEO?…Is there anything really unique about your vision that will take Etsy to the next stage?”
Kalin responded:
“Sure, so why do I deserve to be CEO is something that you gotta earn every day, so I definitely don’t take that title for granted. As far as where we want to go, to me the most important part of commerce is the social aspect of it. Social aspect drives the marketplace.”
Currently, Etsy is on track to record roughly $400 million in gross merchandise sales this year (versus nearly $200 million last year), Kalin argues that in just a few years Etsy could be in the multi-billion-dollar range— that is, if he can pull off his social strategy. In episode two of our profiles series, Kalin gives us a tour of Etsy, discusses profits, his social vision and why he stepped down in the first place. → Read More
Daily Grommet, a curated online marketplace and video review site for quirky inventions and products, has raised $3.4 million in Series A funding from a number of investors, including John Landry, Launch Capital and Gerry Laybourne, founder of Nickelodeon and Oxygen Media.
The site features one creative invention or product per day, with an in-depth video review. Daily Grommet will also sell the product on its site and take a small cut from sales. Think Etsy meets social product development platform Quirky. → Read More
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