Tag: deals
The latest Brad Feld Amazing Deal is online.
A few weeks ago I was approached by Sympoz, a company in Boulder that is excited about building online classrooms where anyone can take a courses in categories like Wine, Personal Finance, Cooking, etc. The have a nice looking site, and their classes are self serve, at your own pace, in HD. They have forums where you can interact with fellow classmates and teachers. Classes range in price from $39 to $99.
They asked me what I thought, and I told them I thought they should offer up some classes on my Brad Feld’s Amazing Deal Store. They agreed to give my readers a great deal. $19 for any class that in their inventory. And, I’m putting my money where my mouth is – I just bought (using my Amazing Deal site) the Wine Demystified course.
If you have a love of learning, or are looking for an interesting gift, give Sympoz a try by purchasing this deal. You could become an wine expert for less than the cost of a decent bottle.
I’ve been having a blast with Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals which was created by Deal Co-op, a recent graduate of the TechStars Seattle program. Last week’s deal – the Agloves – ended up getting picked up on Lifehacker and the limit of 500 gloves were sold (at 50% off) overnight! As part of the experience, I’m learning a lot about the Daily Deal business, how it works, what the actual economics are, and what the friction points are.
The latest Brad Feld’s Amazing Deal is now online. We’ve got a great one this week. You can purchase a $70 voucher for use on the Trek Light Gear website for $39. Trek Light has lots of great stuff, including some of the nicest hammocks you’ll ever see. We priced this deal to allow you to purchase their best selling Double Hammock, but you can also use it on other gear.
If you are interested in running a deal on the Brad Feld store, helping bring great deals to readers of this blog while helping me better understand the Daily Deal marketplace dynamics, let me know. I’m looking for deals that can be bought online and shipped nationally and that appeal to a high tech audience.
The new deal on Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals is up and is for Agloves.
As winter approaches, we all need gloves that we can wear and operate our iPhones while walking down the street. Agloves are infused with silver, which allow them to work with any touchscreen device. No more freezing my fingers as I check email outside in the winter.
The deal which runs through the end of the day of Friday is for $9, or half off the retail price (which I happily paid several weeks ago.)
I’ve got a couple more great deals queued up but am looking for more – email me if you have something to talk about. And – if you want your own daily deal site, just tell me and I’ll put you in touch with my friends at Deal Co-op (a TechStars Seattle company.)
I’m officially in the daily deal business. Check out my new “Brad Feld’s Amazing Deals” store and shop online for some outdoor gear from Giantnerd.com.
Rather than simply observe new things, I like to use them. I’ve been keeping an eye on the daily deal phenomenon and have had an opportunity to explore it in more detail mentoring Deal Co-op, a TechStars Seattle team. Deal Co-op is in the program via Alabama and has been running a profitable online deal company for the last three years. During one of our weekly mentoring meetings, they told me they could turn anyone with good business contacts and an online audience into their own Groupon. They asked me if I knew anyone that fit the bill, and I told them I did… me!
Deal Co-op thinks that daily deal marketing is best served at local levels, with more targeted distribution. I’m interested to see if they are right. My first deal features $50 in credit from Giantnerd.com for $25. Giantnerd is a Boulder based company that specializes in “Social Shopping” for outdoor apparel and gear. You can shop online at Giantnerd.com, so anyone reading this blog can taking advantage of the offer.
I’ll have more offers coming up soon, so sign up for the email alert list, and keep an eye out for more Amazing Deals.
I’m mentoring one of the TechStars Seattle companies that is working on a white label “Daily Deals” platform. I’m trying to come up with a few local Boulder deals to do where I can sell units of 100 of more. If you are a local Boulder merchant and want to play around with a new daily deal product, drop me an email and we’ll see where it goes.
Last night I printed, signed, scanned, and emailed two signature pages. As is my custom of not keeping anything around, I tore up and tossed the sig pages and then deleted the files. This morning I woke up to an email saying “We didn’t get your signature pages. Can you please send them.” I just went through the same print, sign, scan, and email process again.
This is so profoundly stupid. I sent a note yesterday afternoon in reply to the email thread asking if I was all set to go that said “I’m all set to go.” A bunch of lawyers were on the email thread (mine and the company’s.) We are wiring the money today. Now they have some pretty scanned sig pages also.
There has got to be a better way. Over the last decade, there have been lots of “electronic signature” companies pop up. None have seemed to take root in the corporate world. In the past year, I sold a house and bought a house. In both cases, there was some goofy online thing that I signed with my mouse (my signature looked like a messy “X”) for the offers (to make / accept) but I still had to go to the title company and sit and sign 37 documents to close. Every time I go to the grocery store I swipe my credit card through a little electronic checkout machine and when it’s time to sign, I put a big “X” on the sig line.
When I think about the number of places my actual signature is at this point, it’s a pretty useless mark. But for some reason it’s still important in the legal closing process. This now seems more like a tradition, instead of a useful thing.
While I’m not interested in funding something in this arena (it’s outside our focus), it seems like there’s finally an opportunity to solve for this, at least in the corporate world. I’m not talking about biometrics or retina scanning – just a valid electronic signature that becomes a standard. Maybe someday. Wouldn’t it be cool if they lawyers took this on and tried to solve it?