Recently, I co-founded a new startup named Evoqu.
We develop ShopAdvisor,
a cloud based multichannel platform for deferred shopping (remember the
things you want to buy later). It's a disruptive innovation for generating
revenues for media publishers, bloggers, retailers and brands, from user
segments they could not monetize before.
We sit in the crossroad of 2 BIG industries:
Commerce and Media. It’s a $2T market
that is in the midst of a huge shift.
Recent technology innovations accelerated the
shift in user behavior in shopping and media consumption. New players using
these technologies from the ground up are capturing significant market share
quickly, while incumbents try (and some struggle) to adjust and to
reinvent themselves quickly.
Today, we the consumers, buy less and less print
magazines and newspapers and instead we switched to get the daily news
"fix" from online blogs, social media sites and
online newspapers. Its easier, cheaper and faster to read what we want,
when ever we want, as soon as it happens.
At the same time we, the consumers, continue to
shop more and more online and in the last couple of years we've started to feel
comfortable enough to also shop using our mobile and iPad.
That means the old monetization engines that only
a few years ago yielded high margins, for the Media and Commerce players, are
now under pressure. Companies in the media and commerce space that will
continue to put their heads in the sand and only "pilot" / try new
monetization engines, in order to not disrupt their existing cash cow will find
themselves in a couple of years struggle to catch up and survive.
Circuit City is a good example. I recall reading
a few years ago the book 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins. In the book Jim listed
some great companies with strong management team. One of them was Circuit City.
Unfortunately, Circuit City management team failed to realize the rapid change
in how and what consumer buy thus no longer exist.
During my career I've been fortunate to
be part of several similar mega shifts in consumer consumptions due to
technology advancement, both as a disruptive player and as the incumbent.
We, the founders of Evoqu, have recognized these
mega trends in the Commerce and Media spaces and decided to found Evoqu in
order to:
- Help
the incumbents to accelerate their adoption of new innovative growth monetization engine.
- Assist new
players to focus on their core competence (content, distribution,
re-engagement) while we integrate the new growth monetization engine to their
properties.
- Empower the
consumers to be a smarter shopper by integrate technology with the
natural way consumer shop.
I've decided to use this blog to share some of my
insights from my exciting journey of building our startup.
