The Buyble

Today we did a little (not so little) upgrade to Buyosphere that includes a few cosmetic changes and integration of search into our ASK box.

So you may be thinking, “Search? Bah. That’s so 1990′s! Who cares?” and you’d be right. Search is pretty basic to any site and we used to have it on our Buyosphere 1.0 version. But when we shifted our focus to being a Q&A platform, we made a decision to remove the search in order to remove confusion. Why have two boxes in the header? Integrating search and asking wasn’t a small task, but something we realized was necessary as people were starting to ask for it and we were seeing lots of duplicate questions.

It’s pretty nifty, too. We made it visual so that you can see a thumbnail of the people asking questions on the questions that drop down and the photos of the images on the products already existing.

Here are some core advantages to having search in the ASK box:

1. People looking for questions they recall, but are buried can now search for them pretty easily.
2. People coming to the site for the first time looking for something like an iPhone Case (we have oodles of those!) can just type in iPhone Case and see the questions and iPhone cases previously suggested.
3. People looking for products they may have previously seen on Buyosphere can just type in the product name or description and it will pop up right away.

The same thing will be integrated pretty soon into the ANSWER box. There are huge advantages to this. I’ve had this happen lots. Someone asks a question and I’ve bookmarked or suggested a product before…now I have to find that product, get the link again and repaste the URL. Blah. Pretty soon, I’ll just be able to type in the name of the product I want to suggest and, as long as it’s already on Buyosphere, it will appear. Looking forward to that, too!

And just to know how significant integrating this type of search is into a social database, go to your Facebook and try to find content in your own stream. I know.

Tarene asked “Looking for a structured dress…” the other day…but not just ANY structured dress. She was seeking one just like the one Zooey Deschanel wears in the opening credits of The New Girl.

I, for one, LOVE Zooey’s style. I’m a retro/vintage/retro-throwback kind of girl, so when I saw this question, I went a little overboard. About half of my wardrobe reflects this sort of look. Some of my favorite online shops that lean retro-look are as follows:

DorothyPerkins – love the dresses, blouses, suits, shoes, handbags…everything. The style is uber adorable and her prices are just as loveable!

MissSelfridge – where you go when you don’t want a ‘hint of retro throwback’ but a big, arse dose of it. Even the fabrics are more structured.

ModCloth – they cover every era, even the 80′s. I find the cutest stuff on there, but it’s pretty popular, so you have to go daily or else your size will be sold out! I love their ‘be the buyer’ feature where you can help them decide what to stock.

Etsy – Etsy has a gabillion sellers, but the more time I spend on there, the more gems I uncover. I love that if I find a dress that I love, but I’d like to have a little longer (or shorter), the designer can accomodate me.

To answer Tarene, I chose the following four options:

Are you big into this look, too? What would your suggestions be?

(other great resource for ideas here: What Would Zooey Deschanel Wear?)

Last summer, Buyosphere was picked as an ASTIA portfolio company, but we were pre-funding and incredibly bootstrapped. We couldn’t afford to pay the $5,000 fee associated with the program (instead of taking equity, they ask their portfolio companies to pay a one-time fee). So I got creative and put a campaign up on IndieGoGo. It was pretty amazing! In a couple of weeks, I raised the $5,000 from a whole bunch of amazing people – friends, associates and even strangers who liked the story!

My follow-up has been way too long overdue, though. For the larger donations, I scheduled interviews (Karen O’Brien was one!) and I tweeted people the thanks earlier on. But I never put up the list of the awesome supporters I promised. My poor excuse is that I was going to do it as a permanent thank you page on Buyosphere.com and I couldn’t get it on the development schedule, but I should have started here.

So…for everyone this is long overdue for, please accept my apology! And thank you thank you thank you from the bottom of my heart for your amazing support!

Angels ($500+):

Karen O’Brien – @bondjanebond – blog
Susan Wilson – @fundher – site
Paul Dawson – @poleydee – LinkedIN
Hugo Schotman – @hschot – Google+Page

Good Friends ($250):

Robert Mowery – @rmowery – LinkedIN
Eric Bisson – @ericbisson_ – blog
Stéphane Distinguin – @fano – blog
Betsy Aoki – @baoki – blog
Toby Morning – @citizenspace – awesome coworking space

Pals ($50-100):

Alana Joy
Mark Simonds
Angie MacDonald
Josy-Ann Plamondon
Diana Yazidjian
Olivier Berger
Robin Wolaner
William Hutter
Jennifer Birmingham
Irene Koehler
Frederik Hermann
Dawn Bournand
Kevin Magee
Francois Mathieux
Alex Hillman
Anonymous
Anonymous
Nilofer Merchant
Dawn
Denton Gentry
Evan Prodromou

Supporters ($10-25):
Sheila Thomson
John Halcyon Styn
DesertWolf
Jay Goldman
Todd Jordan
Emilie Dupré
Ken Seto
Brian Hogg
Jesse Middleton
Wardell
Kat Karimi
Betty Toth
Garrett Nantz
Kristie Wilder
Primeminister Scratch
Chrystian Guy
Georgiana Laudi
Josyan McGregor
Shuba Swaminathan
Aimee Davison
Shanna Farina
Anonymous
Anonymous
Anonymous
Carla Borsoi
Philip Petersen
Ethan Lipman
Tony Bacigalupo
Gavin Heaton
Matthieu Guyonnet-Duluc
JP Filion
Jesse Taggert

One of the things that has been on our list of ‘ToDos’ for a while now is getting together a press kit and some good team photos (not just iPhone snaps of us getting ready to pitch or having a team drink). So we finally asked our good friend, David Giral, to help us with it and he said yes!

So we showed up at David’s studio last night carrying boxes and bags of costume changes, props and Ridley (my pug) and he was such a sport about it. We are delighted with the results and wanted to share them with you here:

Thanks David for doing this on such short notice and having so much fun with us!

Bonus Ridley shot:

January has been an amazing month for Press mentions for Buyosphere! Here are just a few:

Consider your holiday shopping sorted thanks to these sweet startups – TheNextWeb
Buyosphere’s Making Shopping Connections – ThirdWaveFashion
Buyosphere Demos at NYTM – New York Tech Meetup
Buyosphere raises $325K, relaunches as Q&A for shoppers – Venture Beat
New York Flexes its Tech Cred (Buyosphere Highlighted) – Forbes
Buyosphere Raises $325k from Real Ventures and Angel Investors – Next Montreal
Buyosphere raises $325k seed round led by Real Ventures – Tech Vibes
Lessons in Landing Seed Funding from Buyosphere CEO Tara Hunt - Tech Cocktail
Tara Hunt, Buyosphere, Woman Entrepreneur – Gotham Gal
Women 2.0 PITCH Startup Competition Finalists Announced For 2012 – Forbes
Un réseau social pour les consommateurs du web – LaPresse
Leadership Lessons From Community Maven Tara Hunt: When Not To Listen To The Crowd – FastCompany
Executive Suite: Buyosphere CEO Tara Hunt Says Hire People Smarter Than You – TheGrindstone
Don’t Hold Out For A Hero: Go Get Yourself A Champion – Forbes

If you want to get in touch with us regarding a story involving Buyosphere, please contact Deanne Yee: deanne@buyosphere.com or Tara Hunt: tara@buyosphere.com

If you didn’t already see, we are having a contest on Buyosphere where your awesome participation in asking, answering and inviting friends gives you entries to win great prizes like $500 credit at Beyond The Rack!

You may be thinking, “Bah. $500? What’s that get you these days?” Well, at Beyond the Rack, you can get a LOT. Here are just a few luxurious finds we found:

This amazing large red Coach tote. $479

This superb Michael Kors Milo Shoulder Tote In Mocha. $459

This awesome Barista Express Espresso Machine In Stainless Steel. $549 (okay…so you pay $49…but that’s only 2 weeks of Starbucks visits. )

These to-die-for Jimmy Choo Fennel Pumps in Nude (eat your heart out Kate Middleton!). $569

This stunning 2-piece gray pin-striped Valentino suit for men…regular $1,250, it’s only $449 on BTR!

So…ask, answer and invite friends as much as you can until February 14 and you can have one of these or many other awesome items that BTR carries!

Also..don’t forget that we have Etsy ($250 gift certificates) and Market Publique ($150 gift certificates) prizes, too!

What an amazing first two months we’ve had since we first launched the newest version of Buyosphere on November 22, 2011! Two months! Lots of questions! Even more answers! And tens of thousands of products! And there have been loads of product improvements. You can check back almost every day and see changes and updates to the site. Not to mention that there are some more big, awesome things coming down the pipe. We’re stoked!

These are all real people helping people shop. And we are getting emails like this one:

Dear Buyospherites, I didn’t think your product would work…especially with the beta thing hanging off your logo. But it did. I asked a really general question that I didn’t expect an answer to and ended up buying something out of it. I hate shopping. You made it a little less painful. Thanks.

And our favorite:

Hey! Stop sending me such good suggestions on my question! I asked about crazy boots on a lark and now I actually want to buy something. Damn ur good. p.s. don’t tell my girlfriend about this site.

So, in order to celebrate the fact that we are actually doing what we set out to do (help people find stuff), we are giving away a couple of shopping sprees! Because we see so many men on the site, we made sure they could benefit, too. Here are our awesome giveaway partners:

1st prize – $500 in credits at Beyond the Rack

$500 will take you far on Beyond the Rack, one of the most shopping clubs online! Get designer fashion at super discounts. <3 BTR!

2nd prize – $250 gift certificate at Etsy

Spend your $250 on the NEXT big designers and retailer at Etsy. We see lots and lots of people loving the Etsy around here.

3rd prize – $150 gift certificate for Market Publique

Market Publique is the destination for vintage online, featuring curated sellers from all over the world. Buy, sell and discover unique vintage pieces that fit your modern wardrobe!

To find out more about the contest, go to our CONTEST PAGE. But just so you know, every time you ASK, ANSWER and invite others who ASK and ANSWER, you get an additional entry to win. Good luck and thank you for the amazing support!

2012 is starting out with an awesome bang. We haven’t officially announced it yet, but Buyosphere raised our seed funding in November (separate post soon) after a long spell of bootstrapping. This gave us the opportunity to get the new site out and hire some amazing people. One of those amazing people is Deanne Yee…and I couldn’t be more excited about finding her.

Yesterday I tweeted that the key to success is hiring people who are smarter/better than you are which was definitely aimed at Deanne. Though she didn’t start until today, she was already sending me ideas I hadn’t thought of and asking me questions that I didn’t know the answers to. I did what every smart entrepreneur has to do…I hired someone smarter than I am. It’s the best thing I’ve done since partnering with Cass and Jerome.

Who is Deanne?

To say Deanne Yee is impressive would be a major understatement. Her resume is awesome, but that isn’t the main reason I wanted to hire her. She has qualities you can’t see on a resume. She’s connected. She has mad style. She has ambition and passion and drive. She understands what appeals and what doesn’t. She isn’t afraid to tell me that I’m headed in the wrong direction. She’s written for Lucky Mag, FashionablyMarketing and many more fashion news sites. She left her lucrative career in law to take the leap into working in fashion and startups two years ago and has built an incredible brand for herself. The minute I saw her, I knew she was ‘the one’.

Frankly, I was shocked that she took our job offer. I think we got über lucky. Don’t tell her that, though.

If you want to get to know her, you can find her on Twitter, her blog, Facebook, Pinterest, Polyvore, Vimeo, Wishpot, Google+, YouTube and, of course, Buyosphere. Definitely introduce yourself. She is my new boss in the marketing department. Though I’ve had a pretty strong history in tech and startup marketing, I fully admit that I’m at a big loss when it comes to fashion and retail marketing. Deanne knows this stuff inside out and I am super excited to work with her starting today! (I should also add that Deanne is a New Yorker and is the start of our official presence in the city.)

We spent our first day hammering out the overall marketing strategy and will be working on the content strategy over the next couple of days. Definitely subscribe here and to our new Tumblr where Deanne is going to post great interviews, finds, trends, feature great Buyos and create a great resource overall. We’re already working on ideas for FashionWeek, IFBCon, SXSW and the Texas Style Council Conference just in the first 3 months of 2012. We have our work cut out for us, but looking forward to the results!

Welcome Deanne!

For those of you who have visited Buyosphere in the past day or so, you may have noticed we’ve done a bit of a shift in direction! When you log in today, you see:

“Egad! What is that?! And how did you go from the previous version to this one?” You may be asking. Well, it’s a bit of a story. We hope you are sitting comfortably.

It all started waaaaay back when Cass, Jerome and I first got together around the original concept. All three of us met up thinking about the same issue from different angles:

Shopping online *should* solve everyone’s needs, but it is actually more difficult to find what you are looking for today. There is too much choice and not enough personalization.

Cass saw this with her former work at Fluid and Truition. She worked with all the big brands online who were trying to build personalization into their sites. She recognized that personalization didn’t just mean it should happen on single sites because the customer is multi-brand focused. The customer wants to find what is right for him/her, wherever he/she will find it and if the brand keeps fulfilling those needs, the loyalty will stay consistent.

Jerome saw that people are missing lots of information that could enhance their lives because of the sheer amount of content that is available online and sought to find a way to filter the right content to help bubble up the content that is right for the individual.

I came from the shopper perspective. I’ve shopped online for years and have found it harder and harder to find unique, interesting products to fill my inquiries. It started with a search for a black skirt – something that I saw as a simple task as anyone could produce it, right? not so much – and continued to plague me through the years. I needed to find a way to do one search through the sites I love for the stuff that is right for me.

Buyosphere 1.0 tried to ‘fix’ this by using data. The idea was that people could start bookmarking the products they love, want and have and create their ‘Buyographies’ – or taste profiles – then we would use that data to help filter their searches. The problem, as we found out quickly, was that this process was many years away from being useful. There are über problems with this:

1. In order to hook into the web wide world of stores, we needed to make our data compatible with about 1 gabillion setups of data. Every store online seems to structure their product pages differently. We figured this out quickly with the bookmarklet – the browser based pop-up that scrapes data from product pages to input the products into your Buyography.
2. A person would have to have hundreds of products in each category to really create a solid taste profile. And with the rate at which people shop online (2-3 products/month for a heavy shopper), this would take YEARS.
3. There is no personalization engine alive that can figure out nuances that effect each of us. They try to align brands, tags, tags that align to brands, stuff that others buy like you, etc. But how do robots REALLY know what I’m looking for?

…and so on. So about 3 weeks after we released the initial version of Buyosphere, we went back to re-think our approach to solving the issue (not to mention there were about 5 trillion other sites doing the product bookmarking thing). How do we create value TODAY for people looking for stuff they need NOW?

That is when it hit us. Why are we focused on algorithms and data? What about leveraging the power of really smart people who know how to shop? I kind of have a history in understanding the power of social. Why was I ignoring it? Why weren’t we seeing this?

It took stepping back from a horse-blinder focus to one goal that made us realize that we were running towards a false finish line. And we wouldn’t have done it without adversity. If we had $5Million in the bank, we would have continued try to solve the wrong problem. But we didn’t. We were self-financed and, well, pretty much broke. We were looking for someone who believed in the team and the long term vision, but were losing sight of that ourselves. Figuring out that we were on the wrong path couldn’t have come at a better time.

It was simple. We were creating a platform to connect people looking for stuff to people who could find stuff. Okay, it’s not *that* simple. But at least we know what we have to do to create a great experience and it is do-able on our platform rather than having to hook into thousands of other platforms. We sat down mid-August to start spec-ing it out and figuring out how to design the user experience.

And…of course we looked to Quora for inspiration. And Stack Overflow. And even the points system on Yahoo!Answers (because they would know!). And about a million other sites, of course.