Dan McKinley recently put together a very useful tool in estimating how long to run your A/B tests.
The obvious corollary here being, “your experiments will take much longer than you think”.
Let’s dive into some real-world numbers.
Read MoreEtsy acquired my startup Adtuitive in 2009. At the time, we had a pretty cool product that automated online advertising for small retailers, and we were operating at a modest scale of 200 million ads a month.
Deciding to sell the company was tough, but the last three years at Etsy were awesome. I had the privilege of working with very talented folks across a full stack of things, from Hadoop infrastructure to search ranking to search UI. And of course, search ads. During this time period, I saw Etsy grow from $180 million in 2009 sales, to over $80 million last October alone. My team grew from Adtuitive’s engineering team of only 4 to almost 30 in total.
Read MoreIf you eat out in New York City, the image above should evoke some sort of visceral reaction. In July of 2010, the NYC Department of Health began rating each of the 24,000 restaurants throughout the five boroughs of the city. Each restaurant is given a grade of "A", "B", or "C" based on violations ranging from improper food temperature to sewage problems to the presence of vermin. You can browse the complete list here.
Fast forward 2 years, and the new system seems to be a win for consumers - Mayor Bloomberg credits the program to a 14% reduction in Salmonella, the lowest rate in 20 years. And according to this press release, NYC restaurant revenue is also up 9.3% since grading began. But still many restauranteurs disagree, expressing anger over these health inspections. Restaurants complain about the complexity in understanding the grading system, fighting with the city over infraction points, and spending additional money to maintain their facilities to meet the city's guidelines.
Read MoreThe Wall Street Journal recently had a piece on investing in the Facebook IPO. They admit, “most retail investors will be shut out of the offering and won't get the IPO price, meaning they likely will have to pay more in the days that follow if they want an early piece of the action”.
To see what’s going on here, let’s take a closer look at what happens on the day of the IPO. In pricing the IPO, there are two prices to consider: the offer price, and the open price. The offer price is set by the company and underwriters. This is the stock price that the company receives in its IPO sale. The open price is set by the publicly traded market on the day the company goes public.
Read MoreI love innovation. I love working with smart people. And I love working with limited resources around extremely tight deadlines.
3 Day Startup: 30 bright entrepreneurs. Ideas flow Friday night, business plan and product demo need to happen by Sunday night.
The program started out of UT Austin, and I attended as a participant at their first event. I actually pitched the idea that the group ended up building that weekend, which ended up spinning out into a company now called Moodfish. Nik has since taken Moodfish 1000x further, well beyond the simple idea I had. 3DS has grown tremendously since and is now a worldwide operation. They've held events in Germany, Spain, The Netherlands, France, Portugal, Israel, Chile, and China.
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