Steve Woda's blog

buySAFE is Hiring Talented Software Developers and Sales Executives

As many of you know, 2007 was an amazing year for buySAFE as we accomplished more than 100% growth for each of the last four quarters.  I expect buySAFE to continue to grow at a very fast pace in 2008, and so as you can imagine, that means we are looking to hire very talented people.  Specifically, buySAFE is hiring exceptional software developers (see the position description below) and sales executives, but of course, we are always interested in meeting talent across the board.

If you are a VERY smart person that enjoys BIG challenges and wants to work REALLY hard on a talented team to help build a great company, then you and I should probably talk.  Similarly, if you know someone that fits that description, please let he or she know that I want to talk to them as well.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-27

• Should I pay my investor’s legal fees? - Venture Hacks
  Venture capitalists don’t want to pay their legal fees for financings. Don’t fight this term—that’s a “big move on a little issue.” Instead, cap your contribution to the investor’s legal bill. And watch the legal bills in small financings: don’t spend a large portion of the investment on lawyers or give up a lot of equity for the privilege of paying your investor’s legal bill.


• Santa Is Packing More Sofas and Less Jewelry - New York Times
  Forget about strings of pearls, dive watches or flower baskets. This could be the year of Barcaloungers and blenders. According to early online shopping statistics, sales of holiday stalwarts like jewelry, watches and flowers have dropped from last year’s levels, while sales of more practical items like furniture and appliances have climbed about 70 percent.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-25

• Procrastinators head to stores this week: NRF survey - DMNews
  As the holiday shopping season is getting shorter, the biggest procrastinators are men, according to NRF's 2007 Holiday Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch. The survey found that 19.4% of men had yet to begin their holiday sho


• Buyers of illegal software can get rewards when they blow whistle
  Software pirates who peddle their goods on eBay, watch out. A software industry trade group is hoping to entice buyers of counterfeit computer programs to blow the whistle on sellers by offering rewards of up to $500.

AuctionBytes Conducts Online Shopping Survey

AuctionBytes.com, one of my favorite ecommerce news sources, is conducting another survey to study online shopping behavior.  The survey explores a number of areas that are important for small business ecommerce merchants to fully understand about their customers.  If you have a few extra minutes, I encourage you to complete this survey.  Ina Steiner, the editor, will publish the survey results in a few weeks, and I will make sure to share with you as well.

You can complete the survey here >> http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=vX4t6OvcNW0_2fO8NFL8pFuA_3d_3d

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-24

• The Week Before Christmas, and All Through the Town - FocusOnCrofton.com blog
  A parody of Clement Clark Moore's "A Visit from St. Nicholas" by Margaret Woda.  Yes.  Margaret is related to me.  She is my mom, and she is really teaching me a thing or two about how to blog for business.  Keep up the great work Mom!


• BidPay Abruptly Closes Online-Payment Service
  December is an unlucky month for one online payment service. BidPay.com sent an email to users on Wednesday informing them it was discontinuing operations effective December 31, 2007, but gave no reason. It was 2 years ago this month that First Data Corporation abruptly closed BidPay before selling it to CyberSource Corporation.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-23

• Blogosphere Reacts to Google Knol - Advertising Age - Digital
  It has been called a competitor to Wikipedia, Jason Calacanis' Mahalo, Seth Godin's Squidoo and Yahoo Answers: Knol is Google's foray into knowledge aggregation. Knol lets users produce web pages devoted to various subject matter.


• Cyber Crime 2.0 - washingtonpost.com
  The year 2007 may go down in the annals of Internet crime as the year when organized cyber criminals finally got serious about their marketing strategies -- crafting cyber schemes that were significantly more sophisticated and stealthy.  Security experts say criminals are increasingly trying to ensnare Internet users by lurking on familiar Web sites and using purloined data to craft scam e-mails that are more believable, and thus more likely to entice an unsuspecting user.

How to Answer the VC Valuation Question

Over the last few years, I have presented to dozens of venture capital firms while fundraising, and inevitably, the venture capital investor always asks you what valuation you are looking for.  This reminds me of that job interview question we have all been asked... "What are your biggest weaknesses?"  There really isn't a right answer, but there sure are a lot of bad answers.

Stu Phillips does a nice job of explaining how to answer this important VC question on his blog, Soaring on Ridgelift. 

One hint... Don't answer the question! 

Well, there is actually more to that conclusion, but you can read the details in Stu's blog post, The Valuation Trap.

Nice post Stu!

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-16

• Blog Marketing Takes Commitment - Search Engine Watch
  Some marketers think "social media marketing" or "social media optimization" means "social media manipulation." There is a steady stream of how-to articles describing how to game the system of sites like Digg, or to develop linkbait to drive untargeted traffic to your site.  A better way to approach social media is to remember that behind every successful blog is a person. Reaching out to bloggers and building a relationship with them can go a long way in improving your social media efforts, your search ranking, and your overall marketing plan.
• Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Alternative PPC Venues: Three in particular may be especially useful
  In the world of pay-per-click advertising, there are three well-known players: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing and Microsoft adCenter. However, there are several other interesting pay-per-click sites you may not be familiar with, which you might find useful.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-14

• Technology Review: Microsoft buys Multimap for undisclosed amount
  Microsoft Corp. said Wednesday it has acquired a United Kingdom online mapping company to enhance its existing Windows Live Web-based services.The software maker did not say what it paid for Multimap, which provides street-level maps, travel directions and local information. Multimap also offers hotel and restaurant-booking services and builds private-label mapping tools for companies, including Hilton Hotels and Ford.
• EBay Is Ordered To Pay $30 Million In Patent Rift - WSJ.com
  A federal judge ruled that Web auctioneer eBay Inc. must pay about $30 million in damages to MercExchange LLC as part of a long-running dispute over a patent related to the ecommerce company's "Buy It Now" fixed-price feature. The ruling marks a setback for eBay in a series of recent legal challenges.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-13

• Trend Watch: What's Hot in osCommerce
  This is the first in a series on osCommerce, the popular free, open-source shopping cart alternative, and the industry it has spawned. I found this article to be an excellent overview of the history of osCommerce shopping carts, the major osCommerce players as well as the technical support resources that exist for the osCommerce products. As you may know, buySAFE is available for most of the osCommerce shopping cart platforms including osCommerce, Cube Cart, Zen Cart, CRELoaded, and X Cart, so if you already use one of these platforms and are interested in buySAFE, just email buySAFE's customer support team and we will help you out.

Facebook, Executives, College Students and Love

I was recently invited to join a professional colleague's Facebook network.  Up until then, I had strictly used LinkedIn as my only social network primarily because a) I have always found LinkedIn to be very useful for business, and b) I perceived Facebook as a playground for college kids.

Well I was wrong.  Facebook is awesome, and many of my professional colleagues were way ahead of me in discovering the network's value. Its utility becomes very powerful as your network multiplies and matures.  To be quite honest, I now view LinkedIn as a great place to view a professional profile or resume, but that is about it. Facebook provides a scalable method for communicating with your professional network.  The bottom-line is that I am learning to love Facebook. 

Since we are talking about Facebook, I thought you might also enjoy this article about the Facebook phenomenon.

"For college students, if it's Facebook, it's love | Reuters" 

For the Facebook generation, love now comes with a drop-down menu.

With profiles on the Facebook social networking site (www.facebook.com/) almost de rigueur on college campuses, students can define their relationship status with menu choices ranging from "married" to that perennial favorite, "It's complicated."

"It's complicated" could also describe the emotional calculations people in their late teens and early 20s make as they decide whether their relationships are what they call "Facebook-worthy." MORE >>

My Social Network Profiles:      
Facebook >>    
LinkedIn >>    
deli.cio.us Bookmarks >>

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-09

• Happy Holiday for European Web Shops? - eMarketer
  Retail e-commerce continues to grow in the largest Western European economies. 160.6 million European Internet users visited online retail sites in the month of October 2007.  This article provides a number of other interesting facts about European ecommerce.
• eBay Watch: PayPal Offers Storefront Widget
  This week PayPal released a new Web widget that lets you embed a virtual storefront onto your blog or any Web site that uses HTML code. The PayPal Storefront Widget allow you to list products, set prices and start selling in an online storefront format.  This Widget has real utility, and so you will want to check it out.

Daily Roundup for 2007-12-08

• Should eBay CEO Meg Whitman Step Down?
  Henry Blodget writes in Silicon Alley Insider that eBay CEO Meg Whitman is "one of the Valley's most celebrated and admired executives" but thinks it is becoming increasingly clear that Whitman is not the right person for the job. In this blog post, Ina asks the hard questions.
• Consumer Reports Warns of Counterfeit Items on Sites Like eBay
  A Consumer Reports press statement on the problem of counterfeit items said consumers should be suspicious of third-party websites that offer deep discounts for products that are usually pricey. eBay has become a Market for Lemons in a number of product categories (Tiffany products is just one of many examples), and so this is not surprising.

Core Capital Invests in $20M Round for NextPoint

Core Capital Partners, a venture capital firm that has invested in a number communications infrastructure companies particularly focused on the IP and VoIP, announced its participation in a $20 million round of funding for Gaithersburg, MD-based NextPoint™ Networks, Inc.

According to the investment announcement , NextPoint will be the result of the recently announced merger between NexTone Communications Inc., a software-centric session border controller and session management provider, and Reef Point Systems, Inc., a mobile access universal convergence gateway provider. In addition to Core Capital, other investors in this round include the round lead investor, One Equity Partners, the private equity arm of JP Morgan Chase (NYSE:JPM), as well as American Capital Strategies (NASDAQ:ACAS), Jerusalem Venture Partners, Safeguard Scientifics (NYSE:SFE) and Summerhill Venture Partners.

Read more about Core Capital Partners >>
Read more about NextPoint >>

The eMarket for Lemons and The University of Maryland

Last week, I had the opportunity to speak to a few hundred business school students at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland.  Michael Beveridge, buySAFE's VP of Business Intelligence, joined me in speaking at the invitation of Professors Guodong (Gordon) Gao, Peter Weiss, and Mingfeng Lin.  The students had previously read "buySAFE - Creating and Profiting From the Bonded Seller Advantage", a case study on buySAFE authored by Wharton professor, Dr. Eric Clemons.  Here is the presentation that Michael and I shared with the students... "eMarket for Lemons - The Economics of an Evolving eCommerce Marketplace".

As always, it was a terrific experience for me.  The students were extremely prepared, and they had definitely done their homework on buySAFE, information asymmetry, and the ecommerce marketplace in general.  If you ever want to get an excellent sense of how well your marketing efforts are working or how well you are educating the market about your solution, I highly recommend inviting a couple hundred college students to study your product or service and let them give you feedback.  I loved it!

Read more about Dr. Guodong (Gordon) Gao >>

Turning the Risk Discount Into a Trust Premium

This link contains a link to the presentation “Building Buyer Confidence” presented by Steve Woda, founder and senior vice president of strategy, buySAFE, for the MIVA Small Business Conference 2006, 29 August – 1 September 2006, p. 30