Aol today confirmed a couple of big changes at the top of the company, as first reported yesterday by Bloomberg and AllThingsD. Susan Lyne, the exec who had previously been at Gilt Groupe, is the new CEO of Aol’s Brand Group (including TechCrunch). Meanwhile, Artie Minson is stepping down as COO as the role gets restructured. → Read More
As Susan Feldman waited outside the Southwest Airlines arrivals terminal at Los Angeles International Airport in October 2008, she had a nervous feeling in her stomach, which she compares to blind date jitters.
Except this wasn’t your traditional blind date. Feldman was meeting Ali Pincus, her soon-to-be co-founder, for the first time. They had spoken over the phone after a mutual friend set… → Read More
Jetsetter, the exclusive travel community for globetrotters, seems to be on a roll. In recent days, the company has announced a dozen some new corporate partners, a handful of new sale formats to entice customers, and new distribution partnerships with high-profile sites like Kayak, The Economist and the vacation rental service HomeAway.
But while many think of Jetsetter as a flash sales for… → Read More
Unemployment continues to be an issue here in the States, but the tech industry could prove a very valuable resource when it comes to building out the American work force. That said, I sat down with GroupMe co-founder Steve Martocci who may have a plan to help solve the problem.
In conjunction with former White House CTO Aneesh Chopra, musician Jon Bon Jovi, and Gilt Groupe’s Vice President… → Read More
The nominations have been tabulated and the votes are in. Over 300,000 nominations were calculated across 20 categories. Along with our partners GigaOm and VentureBeat, we are very proud to announce the finalists for 2011′s best in technology. Voting begins now.
For 2011, we’ve added some new categories. Best Location App, Best Cloud Services and Biggest Social Impact join the Crunchies ranks… → Read More
Flash sales giant Gilt Groupe is announcing major expansion plans to today, with the company’s e-commerce offering extending to over 90 countries. Additionally, Gilt will offer international customers free shipping for a limited time.
Gilt’s international sites will offer daily flash sales on women’s men’s and kids clothes and accessories, as well as home decor items through its Home vertical. → Read More
Flash sales giant Gilt Groupe has been steadily expanding its flash sales platform into a full-fledged e-commerce and curated content platform that reaches all major retail verticals including fashion, food, men’s clothing, and now the home. Today, Gilt is launching a brand new destination for home accessories and furniture, called Gilt Home.
While Gilt has been offering home goods via its… → Read More
Well this is interesting. Gilt Groupe is partnering with in-flight wifi provider Gogo to offer passengers exclusive in-air deals on the flash sales site. So when you log-on to Gogo WiFi on any Delta, United, Virgin America, Alaska Airlines and US Airways planes, you can find exclusive deals on Gilt.
You’ll also be able to access Gilt for free (as opposed to paying the $4.95 minimum price to… → Read More
Recently I sat down with a well-connected Silicon Valley CEO who just raised a ton of money, and who knew of other startups raising even more. There is a new startup club of younger companies raising money right now at $1 billion valuations. I already knew a couple of them, but I started asking a few venture capitalists and now I have a pretty good list of who is in that club and who is trying… → Read More
Earlier today, Gilt launched the latest addition to its group-buying sites with Gilt Taste—a very pricey online purveyor of produce, meats, fish, cheese, and other “artisinal” foods. While it’s easy to get distracted by the jaw-dropping prices ($50 steaks anyone?), the part I find interesting is that Gilt Taste is also an online magazine.
Mouth-watering food photography helps to move the… → Read More
Luxury group buying service Gilt Groupe is joining the mega-round bandwagon today with a new $138 million funding, led by Softbank, which took nearly half the round. Goldman Sachs, New Enterprise Associates, Draper Fisher Jurvetson Growth, Pinnacle Ventures, TriplePoint Capital and Eastward Capital also participated, as did existing investors General Atlantic and Matrix Partners.
Gilt Groupe… → Read More
Flash sales giant Gilt Groupe has acquired home decor site Decorati. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Founded by interior designer Shane Reilly, Decorati launched in 2009 as an online platform for both interior decorators and consumers who are looking for professional design advice and guidance. Decorati essentially aims to democratize the interior design community by bringing the trade… → Read More
The group buying industry has sprung out of nowhere over the past two years. A new report (embedded below) by daily deal aggregator Local Offer Network puts the U.S. gross revenues across the industry at $1.1 billion last year, and estimates gross revenues will grow 138 percent to $2.7 billion in 2011. Groupon alone, according to other sources, is expected to bring in between $3 billion and $4… → Read More
In one of the larger exits so far in the flash sales business, retail chain Nordstrom has acquired flash sales site HauteLookfor $180 million in Nordstrom stock and three-year earn-out of up to $90 million. HauteLook has raised $41 million in funding.
Thanks to the immense popularity of members-only, online sample sales, HauteLook has grown to 4 million members since launching in 2007. The site… → Read More
It looks like you’ll soon be able to shop for cars on flash sales sites. Gilt Groupe has just announced a first-ever auto flash sale of a Volkswagen Jetta on the site.
Beginning on Wednesday of this week, Gilt will sell 3 brand new 2011 Jettas to members at $5,995, which is down from a starting list price of $15,995. The company says the flash sale will take place over three days, signifying the… → Read More
We all know that the early success and insta-revenues of companies like Gilt Group and Groupon have inspired more clones than Jango Fett. But while profitable and growing, my impression was that most of them are one-off rounding errors compared to Groupon’s swelling revenue estimates – numbers that seem to go up in the press by $100 million every time they don’t have any real news on this… → Read More
Gilt Groupe has made a name for itself, particularly in the United States, for operating a successful flash sales site that offers its members products and experiences at heavily discounted prices for a limited period of time. Now, the company is turning to traditional e-commerce for its next trick. → Read More
Well at least one former Digg engineer out there that had a happier Thanksgiving. We’ve gotten word that John Quinn, former Digg VP of Engineering, will be joining luxury discount marketplace Gilt Groupe as VP of Engineering come next Monday. Quinn will be working in the Gilt Groupe New York office under CIO Steve Jacobs.
Prior to Gilt Groupe, Quinn had spent three years at Digg and before that… → Read More
I’m a big fan of members only flash sales sites; which take a Gilt-like model to sell high-end clothing, hotel rooms, home goods and more at 50 to 70 percent off retail prices. So when decided to try out Exclusively.In, a members-only shopping site for fashion, jewelry and home decor from Indian artisans and designers I was intrigued to see if a niche-site could draw a fair amount of traffic from… → Read More
Beyond the Rack, a members-only sample sale site has raised another round of funding. The startup has just announced a $12 million round of funding from Highland Capital Partners and BDC Venture Capital. This brings the Beyond The Rack’s total funding to $16.5 million.
Similar to Gilt, HauteLook and Ideeli, Beyond the Rack is a members-only shopping site that offers steeply discounted (from 50 to… → Read More
Few will dispute Amazon’s role as current king of the e-commerce space, but this week’s TechCrunch Disrupt conference raised an interesting question: Did Amazon miss the boat on social commerce?
At the conference last week in New York, John Caplan, CEO, OpenSky; Rob Kalin, CEO, Etsy; Susan Lyne, CEO, Gilt Groupe and Dan Porter, CEO, OMGPOP sat down to discuss the idea of social commerce and… → Read More
I’ve long been critical of how hotel rooms are found and booked online. It’s impossible to tell quality and cleanliness from a standard write up, photos and a star rating, let alone have any idea of the quality of things like the restaurant on site, the friendliness of the staff or the millions of other little things that can make a hotel stay a pleasure or a nightmare.
And no, consumer… → Read More
Online sample sale site Gilt Groupe, is debuting its free iPad app today, letting users access its flash sales directly from the device. Gilt Groupe’s sales on luxury goods on its properties, including Gilt, Gilt Fuse, and Gilt Man, can all be accessed directly from the app.
The app allows you to receive real-time sale alerts, check upcoming sales and receive an instant Gilt membership when you… → Read More
Poking fun at their more gilded competitors, group-buying site Groupon announced its April Fool’s launch of Groupöupon. As far as April Fool’s jokes go, the site is pretty convincing. It’s actually not far off from some of the pitches we see for elitist group buying startups. I was almost fooled, until I saw the umlaut (a bit much), and the fact that for each featured item, Groupöupon’s price… → Read More
Online private sales is a growing business model that is rapidly becoming a staple of online shopping. Ideeli, Gilt Groupe, Vente-Privee, HauteLook and others are quickly gaining millions of users each and attracting significant amounts of venture funding. But the one issue I find with these sites is that it’s annoying to have to check each site every day for sales. I subscribe to almost a dozen… → 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
Austin, TX
Seattle, WA
San Diego, CA
Menlo Park, CA
Boston, MA
Disrupt Europe: Berlin Hackathon
Berlin, Germany
