The Experience Economy at the Mall

I’m not much of a mall guy. The experience shopping on Amazon.com, especially with Amazon Prime, is amazing, cheaper, and much more efficient. So, today, in an effort to get the kids out of the house, I took my two little ones to North Point Mall 20 miles north of where I live. North Point was chosen, instead of Lenox and Phipps nearby, due to the American Girl store.

Even though my daughter is too little to know much about the American Girl store she loves dolls, and the American Girl store didn’t disappoint. In the store they have a full restaurant, dolls, girl clothes with matching doll clothes, and a spa for the dolls. Yes, you read that right: they style the doll’s hair and clean their face/nails/etc as if they were people. It’s really quite frightening, but girls love it. The line for it was 10 people deep when I was there.

Amazon.com is competing less and less against the mall, especially North Point Mall. Malls and stores in the mall are offering two things Amazon.com will never offer: vertically integrated brands like Banana Republic and experiences like doll spas. Malls are a natural venue for the experience economy and today’s visit was no exception.

Here are experiences I saw going on at North Point Mall:

• Cafe and doll pampering at the American Girl store
• Build-a-Bear Workshop where you can build your own teddy bear
• Food court with tiny tables and chairs the perfect size for toddlers and little kids
• Carousel (merry-go-round) in the food court for $2 per child (adults not allowed)
• Train tours for five minutes around the stores for $4 per person
• Playground inside near Dillard’s
• Massage kiosk (people giving the massages, not massage chairs)
• Santa pictures (santa wasn’t there today but I’m confident he was there last month)

This doesn’t even include services inside the mall like haircut places and spas (for real people).

Over time the gap between what Amazon.com offers and what malls offers will grow. Malls are part of the new experience economy.

What else? What are your thoughts on malls becoming more and more about experiences?

3 Year Personal Development Plan

At the end of each year I reflect on the past 12 months and set my New Year’s Resolutions. As part of this process I also spend time updating my 3 Year Personal Development Plan. My 3 Year Personal Development Plan is a simple Google Doc with four categories of information: personal, family, professional, and community. For each category I have 3-7 bullet points with ARMD goals that are tactical.

Here are some example categories and items for a 3 Year Personal Development Plan:

• Personal
  Workout 2x per week
  Meditate 2x per week
  20 tennis matches per year
  10 rounds of golf per year
  2 cool sporting events per year
  Financial savings (size defined for each year)
• Family
  Spouse date night every week
  Dinner as a family 5x per week
  Quarterly week-long vacation
• Professional
  Company size (size defined for each year)
  Read one book per month
  1 workshop/learning event per quarter
  2 conferences per year
  6 trips per year
• Community
  Donate $X per year
  2 non-profit boards
  Volunteer X hours per month

This format provides structure and personal accountability that is fairly broad. I recommend developing a 3 Year Personal Development plan and reviewing it several times per year.

Have a great 2012!

What else? What other items would you add to your 3 Year Personal Development Plan?

Signs the Economy is Improving at the End of 2011

Over the past month I’ve heard more and more signs from front-line entrepreneurs that the economy is starting to get a little better. It could just be a seasonal thing with the holidays but the information is based on comparing Q4 of 2011 to Q4 of 2010. Now, I don’t think the housing market is going to improve for many years but there are signs other parts of the economy are getting better.

Here are some signs the economy is improving:

• One startup that offers a 10% discount to clients that pre-pay for a year in advance instead of paying quarterly has seen an up-tick in pre-pays, indicating their clients feel more confident about their financial position and are investing in new tools
• One company that sells directly to consumers has seen same store sales grow 50% faster in 2011 compared to 2010
• One business signed more new customers in Q4 than the rest of 2011, and Q4 isn’t normally a good quarter

Obviously, this sample size isn’t large enough to be statistically significant but anecdotally it appears that things are getting a tiny bit better.

What else? What other signs have you seen that the economy is improving here at the end of 2011?

Notes from Flashpoint Meeting with Sigma Partners

Tonight we had the opportunity at Flashpoint to do a Q&A with one of the general partners from Sigma Partners. He fielded a variety of questions, primarily around venture capital, and provided candid answers. Here are a few notes from the talk:

• A typical Series A for them involves co-leading with another investor, buying 50% of the company, and carving out 25% for founders and 25% for future employees (e.g. $6 million invested on $6 million pre-money valuation)
• It took a week to raise their previous fund by calling on their existing LPs whereas their next fund will take significantly longer due to contractions in the market
• Many funds from 2007 haven’t returned any money at all to LPs resulting in even more challenges for VCs to raise new funds with the expectation that many VCs will go out of business in the next five years

Flashpoint is a great accelerator and I enjoyed listening to the Q&A with Sigma Partners.

What else? What other thoughts do you have on VCs and the fundraising market?

Notes from Greg Foster at Flashpoint

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Greg Foster, CEO and co-founder of BrightWhistle (marketing platform for multi-location healthcare companies), was the guest speaker at tonight’s Flashpoint meeting at Georgia Tech. His message was focused on entrepreneurial lessons learned. Here are a few notes from his talk:

Greg did a great job telling stories and sharing his lessons learned.

What else? What were some other lessons learned shared at the event?

Atlanta Startups are Funded by Customers

At last week’s Venture Atlanta event I was talking with a number of venture capitalists from outside of Atlanta. After the first day, in which several early stage startups did a great job presenting, one venture capitalist made an observation I agree with:

Atlanta startups are funded by customers much more so than investors.

Immediately I concurred and cited examples of local successful technology companies that took little or no outside funding and grew substantially by way of paying customers.

Can everyone build their business via customers only without outside funding? No. Startups that can do so, especially in towns like Atlanta that have the right ingredients but little risk capital, are at a significant advantage compared to those that are not capital-light.

What else? Do you agree that Atlanta startups are funded by customers much more so than investors?

Over 1,000 Employees in Atlanta’s Marketing Software Cluster

In early 2010 I wrote a post titled Atlanta’s Online Marketing Software Cluster to bring awareness to the numerous startups in town. Well, I wanted to revisit the companies listed in that original post and add employee counts based on LinkedIn as of late October 2011. Here we go:

• Silverpop – Email marketing (416 employees)
• What Counts- Email marketing (70 employees)
• MailChimp – Email marketing (100 employees)
• Hannon Hill – Web content management (29 employees)
• Pardot – Marketing automation (53 employees)
• LoopFuse – Marketing automation (7 employees)
• LeadLife – Marketing automation (6 employees)
• CoreMotives – Marketing automation (7 employees)
• SalesFusion – Marketing automation (7 employees)
• ThePort – Private social networking (16 employees)
• Mobilization Labs – Private social networking (7 employees)
• Nimbus – Non-profit online marketing (10 employees)
• IgnitionOne - Search engine bid management software (89 employees)
• Vitrue – Facebook marketing (178 employees)
• BrightWhistle – Healthcare digital marketing platform (13 employees)

Total number of employees: 1,008.

Now, these are total employees listed online, and not all are in Atlanta. All of these companies are headquartered in Atlanta with the majority of their employees here. With 1,008 employees in these 15 companies, marketing software is one of the largest technology clusters in Atlanta.

Comparing Austin’s Capital Factory Demo Day and Venture Atlanta

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During the second day of the Venture Atlanta conference this week I was talking to a very successful VC who, like me, had attended Austin’s Capital Factory Demo Day a couple months ago. We were comparing Capital Factory Demo Day and Venture Atlanta, which to be fair, are pretty different events but involve a number of startups and investors.

Here are my personal observations comparing the two events:

• The speakers for both events were good but the Capital Factory speakers were more startup-specific and amazing (Bob Metcalfe’s talk and Brian Sharples talk)
• Capital Factory cost $99 to attend and had 300 attendees while Venture Atlanta cost $495 to attend and had 650 attendees (Venture Atlanta is a non-profit)
• The Venture Atlanta startups were significantly further along, on average, when compared to the Capital Factory ones (Capital Factory had the five accelerator startups which were only a few months old and then 20 other startups from the community)
• Capital Factory had a much more laid back atmosphere with jeans and t-shirt most common as compared to Venture Atlanta where slacks and coat was most common
• The Georgia Aquarium venue and the University of Texas Executive Education center were equally great with the aquarium getting the edge
• The mix of B2B vs B2C startups was consistent at both events with B2B being much more prevalent

Overall, both events were great and represented their respective communities well.

What else? Did you attend either event? What were your thoughts?