Gokrt

Shop on.

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66% of people prefer to shop online vs. in store.

We ran across a great survey done by Lab42 about online shopping preferences and wanted to share it as well. Check out the original article here and let us know what your thoughts are.

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Are you the cream of the crop?

                               Our team met the folks over at cream.hr at the super awesome StartUp Festival and we decided to have them help us do an assessment of our founders. We got some interesting results.

Cream is a psychometric pre-employment assessment test that finds the intrinsic transferable skills that determine if someone is "hardwired" to be productive. The assessment measures five traits: Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Stress Tolerance, Openness (Creativity), and Agreeableness. Using proprietary algorithms developed by psychoanalysts at Harvard University and the University of Toronto, the results of the six qualifiers create a Cream Grade valued from 1-100. The higher the Cream Grade, the higher the propensity for the candidate to be productive.

We wanted to find out how each founder measured up on the scale and compare to each other to see if we complemented our strengths. But the real goal of the whole exercise was to see what personality types might be best for us to search for as we ramp up to bring on our first hires.  Through the test we found out that all three founders were very high in the openness category (creativity), which was kind of expected because all three of us have a very high desire to be entrepreneurs and look at problems in a different way.  It also showed that we all had a desire to be our own boss.  Other then those two things each person had different strengths and got at least one thing they can work on out of the results.

The great thing about going through this exercise is that after going through this process we feel we have a better understanding of who we need to hire next, and are therefore more prepared.

 Check out the site and take the free assessment to see where you stack up: http://cream.hr/are-you-cream

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Does It Really Fit?

As shopping evolves online, its exciting to think about everything you can buy online. But one issue that's always been a plague for online retailers, clothes retailers, is that people in general don't really have that much trust in clothes sizes. Because of this, people have always been less likely to shop online for fashion, and instead would rather buy for a local retailer. And when people do buy online, there's always those shoppers that get buyers remorse when the shirts too big, or the shoes are too tight.

Luckily, there are some great start-ups popping up all over the world trying to solve these problems. Here's a quick rundown of a few of them . . .

Clothes horse (interesting name) uses a patent-pending set of clever algorithms. They ask you to spare just a few details about yourself - how tall you are, your weight (Yes, your real weight. No, we won’t tell anyone), and a piece or two of your favorite clothing. Then Clothes Horse uses those along with everything they know about thousands of people like you and the actual measurements of different brands to fill in the blanks. 

Fits Me is a company in tech-savvy Estonia, which uses a virtual fitting room for online clothing retailers. It has brought together competences from diverse fields ranging from apparel design and anthropometrics to IT, robotics and engineering. With this virtual fitting room, users are able to try on clothes with augmented reality through their cameras.

True Fit patented software service (SaaS) deftly matches shoppers to clothing and shoes that truly fit their body and style preferences. In 3 quick steps, shopping process, they allow users to find the exact sizes that match them. 

Body Metrics uses a system that lets you try on clothes without actually trying on clothes by leveraging the technology behind Microsoft’s $150 Kinect camera – technology developed by a company called PrimeSense — to create a precise 3D model of your body that mimics your movements as an on-screen avatar. When a particular item of clothing has been mapped in the same way, you’re able to see exactly how it would look on you in real life.

We at Gokrt are really excited about these potential breakthroughs, because we love online shopping. Wouldn't it be great to know you will never have fashion retailer buying remorse again, at least for sizes. Now fashion sense is another questions, but that's where Gokrt comes in to help you make a better decision :)

So what are your thoughts, do you trust these tools, or do you think they're a waste of time. Also, do you even buy clothes online?

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Why riding the bus from New York to Montreal was the most bad-ass networking event of our summer.

Usually getting up at 6:30 in the morning to walk 8 NYC blocks in 80-degree heat to hop on a bus for 8 hours would be a terrible experience. But this time our team was headed to a very special bus, the #DOersBus which was sponsored by Twilio, Sendgrid and Microsoft to take 14 early stage start-ups to the International StartUp Festival in Montreal.

Jumping right into our schedule for the rest of the day, we had a bunch of mentors speaking and each start-up had ten minutes to give their pitch and get feedback from peers. The topics from the speakers were things like how to market an early stage company and is an accelerator right for your start-up; tons of great content and an opportunity for the people on the bus to get acquainted with the mentors on the bus. After that the 14 different companies each had one person come up and tell everyone what they were working on. Lots of great ideas and passionate people!

Here is a list of all the companies that were represented:

• ConnectCubed – Helps connect the right candidates with the right companies. • CredoHealth – Private video chat between patients and health care professionals. • FashionProject – Helping people donate clothes and earn money for non-profits. • Fiestah – One-stop shop for party planning, including caterers and photographers. • General Machines – Its Deatfel product hooks up the hard-of-hearing to others via phone.  • Kunvay – Easy way to transfer and receive ownership of creative work online. • Review Trackers – Helps you monitor online reviews of your business or product. • SlideSeed – SaaS that lets you create digital signage for you storefront. • SplitWise – Helping you split your expenses smartly with friends and family. • Tosigram – Making Terms of Service or Privacy Policy language easier to understand. • Thryve – iPhone app that helps you eat healthier, not just count calories. • Travtar – Travel search that compares hotels, hostels, short-term housing, and more. • Wedgies – Simple online and SMS polling that can be spread via social media.

When we got to the event everyone hustled and pitched to as many people as they possibly could. We were all sharing a tent with 4 tables and set up for 3 hours each day to talk with all the attendees of the event. The awesome thing about coming up with 13 other companies and getting to know each other before we were on the floor is that everyone seemed to generally care about what all the companies were getting out of the event.

Fast forward to the end of the event and everyone is exhausted but also stoked for how well the event went. Our friendly Sendgrid developer evangelist, Swift, buys some beers for the bus at the duty free shop on the Canada/US border and we all sit back reflect and enjoy a cold beer. The rest of the trip was spent sharing stories about why everyone is doing what they are doing and what is next for each company.

Being cooped up in a bus for that amount of time with a bunch of passionate people was an amazing experience and now that we know all about these companies and what’s driving the founders behind them we are invested in helping them succeed as much as we can.

Thanks again to the Twilio, Sendgrid and Microsoft sponsors!

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Refiniery29 and the Next Generation of Ecommerce

We at Gokrt think its really exciting how much commerce has been evolving lately. Because of this, we like to see how brands online are taking better advantage of it. Brands that aren't usually retailers. A few days ago, Mashable.com wrote an interesting article about the the fashion magazine Refinery29.

Like most online magazines, the main way Refinery29 makes revenue is through paid advertising. But now, they are building in the ability for people reading articles to actual shop or add items that are being featured in certain editorials. So if you read about a great new style of shoes, you now have the chance to buy that exact style right there.

The interesting part to us at Gokrt is this seems like a great connection. Why wouldn't a site that specializes in fashion and latest trends allow users to purchase those items. Another interesting thing is this may help them lower their dependency on traditional paid advertising. 

It will be interesting to see how this "Shop" feature helps the online magazine evolve from simply being a media resource into being a shopping resource for its 5 million readers. And just so you don't think this is they only magazine selling products, other magazines such as Time Out New York, Real Simple and Elle are beginning to do the same.

So what are your thoughts on this evolution of online shopping into media content? We're excited to see how well this new product for Refinery29 does, and whether it evolves how people use their site.

Here's the original article:

http://mashable.com/2012/06/28/refinery29-ecommerce/

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The Future of Online Shopping

Leo Chen over at Techcrunch wrote a great article about fashion tech and the future of that market online.  For good reason a large portion of the article with dedicated to info on Pinterest and the impact that it is having on the area. 

Things like free shipping are being commoditized and new technologies are emerging to make the market more accessible for smaller companies to compete with the big guys.  One of the changes that is really shaping the future of ecommerce is the adoption of social shopping as a method of finding new products.   We are stoked about how great this is going to be for the consumer!

Read over the original article and let us know your thoughts: http://techcrunch.com/2012/06/16/social-commerce-pinterest-and-the-future-of-fashion-retail/

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Ongig featured us in their blog about the power of SEO in recruiting!  Here is the video, but check out the full post here:  http://ongig.com/gokrt-case-study

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It's not easy for Online Shops either

While new tools for shopping are being introduced everyday for the regular person, it's important to note that it's not an easy task for shops to be found online. Small businesses who set up their shops overnight can't really expect to get results overnight. Because of this, it is very important to take advantage of the already existing tools, from posting products on Etsy.com, to creating Pinterest Pin Boards with your items, to have really strong SEO content to help people find you. Not to mention all the competition.

Here's a great article that Mashable did giving some quick tips on how to boost your websites sales. Does everyone agree with their examples? What else would you add to the list? Do you think Gokrt would be a great tool for your Small Business as well? If so, how would you plan to use it?

http://mashable.com/2012/06//boost-sales-website/

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Meet our 2012 summer interns!

The Gokrt team is very excited to have a couple awesome interns working with us over the summer.  Here is a little bit about each of them and what they will be working on over the next couple months.

Brandon Reim - Marketing ( [email protected] )

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"I'm a Liberal Studies Major with a minor in Business Management at San Francisco State University. My personal interests usually revolve around outdoor activities, travel, literature, film, music and conversations in bars. My future aspirations would be to found my own startup that focuses on challenging social problems, or working for an established start up that is changing the way people interact with each other."

Brandon will be working on working with the team to create and implement our initial marketing plan for the alpha release that will be coming out in a couple weeks.  We are laser focused on making a tool for keeping track of and organizing everything that people are considering buying online.  If you know anyone that does lots of online shopping and would be interested in testing out Gokrt for us, hit up Brandon! 

Ben Schneider - Design and UX ( [email protected] )

"After receiving a degree in literature from San Francisco State I came to the amazing realization that...Surprise!,  I had no direction in my chosen field other than writing semi-witty tweets. I am a man of many interests. I like the little things. Good friends, good food, good booze and good conversation. A plethora of jobs from tattoo shops to tech start-ups has led me to realization that the doodling I did for fun can actually be put to use. This led me to enroll at The Academy of Art University for graphic design. I have taken a strong interest in the interaction elements of design. I look forward to taking on a new challenge in an inspiring and growing environment."

Ben will be working mostly on helping with designing a variety of themes we will be testing over the summer with our Alpha users.  Our goal with Gokrt is to make the tool simple enough for anyone to be able to use immediately without any learning curve, but we also want to make the platform visuals and color scheme flexible.  We will be offering some initial themes that you can choose in the settings as well as make the whole website editable so you can add your own colors or images.  If you have any questions or design requests hit up Ben!

Cheers // team @ gokrt.com

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Next Generation E-Commerce

Next generation e-commerce is really starting to catch on with companies like Pinterest, Etsy and Fab making a big splash.  Aggregated and curated content is becoming more and more relevant to consumers and slowly chipping away at the strong hold that giants like Amazon, Macy’s and Best Buy have on the marketplace. Established brands like those aren’t going anywhere, but it’s absolutely time for a major disruption and a paradigm shift in how consumers not only find content, but also how they decide to buy. 

Gokrt is a tool that helps people make decisions about what to buy.  Most people don’t want to share everything they are considering buying with their social networks.  We allow people to organize all of the items they are looking at online into one view, then group the items together and take notes about their thoughts at that time.  We also bring easy to find and hard to find content (i.e. reviews and blogs) to the user automatically.

No one ever has to leave a bunch of tabs open to keep track of stuff, email yourself a link that you will just forget about in the future, or keep a wish list that is buried deep in an ecommerce site.  Gokrt is making online window-shopping simple.

Here is a litte teaser screenshot of the tool.  We will have it out there for you to test mid June!

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Pitch Advice by Entrepreneurs for Entrepreneurs

We’ve started to get out and pitch Gokrt to… well, really anyone that will listen.  We were lucky enough to get into a pitch coaching session at Orrick in Menlo Park with some awesome VC’s from Javelin Venture Partners and Norwest Venture Partners.  Sitting in a room with 11 other passionate entrepreneurs listening to people pack as much as they possibly can about their idea into 12 slides and a 10 min long speech for 4 hours really gives you some perspective about what a pitch is and what it represents for you.

We could tell that each company put a ton of thought and effort into highlighting what they thought was most important to world, particularly the world that the VC lives in i.e. investment, risk, and reward.  There were a couple things that stood out to me as important regardless of the relevance of the idea, the strength of the team or the ripeness of the market and I thought it might be nice to share them with you.

1. Your deck and your pitch really need to tell a story.

Most likely you are not going to knock the socks off of the people that are listening to your pitch.  They hear these things 7 days a week.  They probably heard a pitch that sounds almost exactly like yours 3 days ago.  So, don’t dive into the details and get caught in the weeds.  You have 30 seconds to get these guys attention, and after that 9 min and 30seconds to not make a total fool of your self and loose their attention. 

2. A picture speaks a thousand words.

People are listening to your words and looking at your deck, so put as many pictures and as few words on the slide as possible.  A catchy visual to enhance your story is really all the slides are for.

3. Everyone likes a good joke.

Relax.  Yes, this pitch is very important.  No, you don’t want to screw up.  People are going to feed off of your energy and you set the stage for how the conversation happens.  Be confident and not cocky (the VC is probably cocky enough for the both of you… I kid, I kid) and remember not to take your self too seriously.

4. Be Prepared.

You’re the expert.  If they know more about the industry that you’re entering then your probably not in the right industry and you’re definitely not ready to be pitching to a VC.

Cheers,

The Gokrt Team

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We have a tab problem as well.

Check out this article by @mollyoswaks over at Gizmodo.  It’s talking about having WAY too many tabs open at once and resonated with me because that is exactly the type of problem we are working on at Gokrt. 

While this article isn’t about online shopping specifically, it highlights the frustration that happens when you find something you might like to buy but don’t want to deal with right away. The reasons you might not want to buy something right then and there are endless, but the result of having a bunch of tabs open is always the same. Frustration and lost content.

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Let's get this party started

We are super excited to announce that Gokrt’s team is complete and we are on our way to building a fun and useful tool to help you make better shopping decisions online. Gokrt is now three strong.  We are all avid online shoppers who think that it should be easier and more intuitive to organize and keep track of all your different shopping carts around the web. It’s a really exciting time for ecommerce.  With the availability of new ways to look at big data, the user adoption of new and innovative technologies using bookmarklets and browser extensions and the continued growth of the online shopping marketplace we are poised for some new and innovative companies to make a disruptive splash in the marketplace.  Agile companies like Gokrt can make a big difference quickly, and that’s what we plan on doing! Join us during this exciting time, let’s talk about what you want to make your online shopping experience easier and more fun! Thanks, team @ gokrt.com