NewlyWish, the newly minted winner of the Women 2.0 Pitch NYC Startup Competition, provides a custom multi-merchant online marketplace. Users can choose from and register for goods at brick-and-mortar stores which have largely been excluded from the $19 billion annual domestic wedding registry market. → Read More
Etsy is releasing some new numbers this morning. The marketplace for hand crafted goods, which now has 20 million members (up from 15 million in May) in nearly 200 countries; passed the $700 million mark for sales so far in 2012 (compared to $525 million for all of 2011). → Read More
In August, Etsy, the popular online marketplace for all things handmade, announced it would be launching the ability to give friends and family gift cards to the marketplace. Today, Etsy is debuting the new feature, allowing you to purchase gift cards online here. → Read More
Editor’s note: Navin Chaddha is a Managing Director at Mayfield Fund, a global early-stage venture capital firm with over $3 billion under management, whose portfolio companies leverage the drivers of cloud/SaaS, mobile, social, energytech and big data. Some current Mayfield Fund investments include Appcelerator, Fab, Marketo, Poshmark, Solarcity, and Zimride.
The U.S. e-commerce… → Read More
Craftsvilla, a Mumbai-based startup that wants to become the “Etsy of Asia,” is announcing it has received a $1.5 million in new funding from Lightspeed Venture Partners and Nexus Venture Partners in India. The new round, closed in April, is an addition to a smaller, seed stage investment back in June 2011.
Like Etsy, Craftsvilla is a large, online marketplace unique for handmade, and… → Read More
Earlier this year, ColourLovers founders Aaron Epstein, Chris Williams and Darius A Monsef IV (a.k.a. Bubs) launched Creative Market in private beta to give its community of color and template-creating designers a place to sell their digital content. And, today, they’re announcing that they’ve closed a second round of funding to support the impending launch of Creative Market. (Which Monsef says… → Read More
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… → 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… → 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. → Read More
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… → 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”… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
Like the idea of that six-pack carrier for your bike, but you’re more of a wine drinker? Son, you’re in luck. This hand-made, leather sling for wine bottles attaches to your frame and lets you cruise to your date or party — without having to steer with one hand or bring a nerdy bag to hold the wine. It’ll run you $25 Canadian — at this point normally I’d make a… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → 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… → Read More
So your friend is an Apple head. He’s got the Mac Pro, the MacBook, the Air, the iPhone; he’s got Apple sheets, an Apple tattoo, he eats an apple every day — right, he’s got it all.
…or does he? → Read More
Avengers unite! [ → Read More
It’s been a long drought for IPOs, but venture capitalists and tech entrepreneurs are hopeful that 2010 will be the year they rain down on the Valley once gain. Earlier this year, a handful of IPOs trickled out, such as OpenTable, Rackspace, and A123Systems. But what people are really waiting for is another Netscape moment—an iconic IPO which will whet investor’s appetites and open the… → Read More
Etsy founder Rob Kalin will be taking over the reins as CEO once again in January, 2010, he writes in a blog post. Etsy’s current CEO, Maria Thomas, will be leaving the company. Thomas was brought on as CEO in mid-2008 from NPR (where she headed up its digital efforts), and helped grow the marketplace for hand-crafted goods.
The comScore chart indicates that it’s been on a bit of a tear lately… → Read More
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