This evening I had the opportunity to moderate a discussion panel on emerging technologies in eCommerce, as part of the Longmont, Colorado NewTech group, in collaboration with the Longmont Economic Development Partnership. We had a great crowd of about 50 people at the Longmont Museum, and covered a wide range of topics.

Moderator – Jeffrey Donenfeld

• Current – Dealflow and Investment Manager, Boomtown Accelerator, Boulder, Colorado
• Current – MBA Student, University of Denver Daniels College of Business
• Past – SEO and Mobile Media Senior Strategist, Morpheus Media – (AOR for LVMH)
• Past – Antarctic Science Support Technician – South Pole Station, WAIS Divide Field Camp

Looplist – Zachary Schmidt(COO), Ryan Tomlinson (CEO)

• One-Liner – “Looplist is an AI-driven Social Marketplace that provides each user with a uniquely tailored shopping experience.”
• Concept of “Aggrigate Marketplace”
• Where do you get data from, and how do you get so much? Do large platforms like Etsy compete or contribute?
  • Why collect it yourself rather than use 3rd party?
• Competitive advantage/Blue ocean – doesn’t amazon have better data?
• Is social commerce the bleeding edge of business intelligence?

Door to Door Organics – Greg Lems

• Previous: CTO at ClickBank – $425MM marketplace for digital goods focused on eCommerce.
• Current – CTO of Door to Door Organics – a nationwide healthy food delivery business with 20,000 weekly customers.
• What are main technological challenges for scaling from 20k to 50/100k customers?
• How do you balance computer automation and service with real customer service to keep customers happy, but also run an efficient business?
• Geographies – already in a couple of markets – what considerations do you make when evaluating new markets?
• What kind of consumer data do you use to inform moves? Would Socal commerce data help? Are your customers more social because they’re online buying groceries, or less social because they don’t want to go out to the real world store to buy them?
• What’s the crazy new tech that will push you forward? Drones? Predictive ordering? Partnerships?
• Mobile app development – efficient to develop for android/ios in one stroke, or must treat each on its own and develop in tandem? Is mobile essential for grocery ordering, or for only some kinds of ecommerce? (React Native)
• NEWTECHLONGMONT will receive $10 off 1st order colorado.doortodoororganics.com

Etsy and Slack – Moishe Lettvin

• Formerly worked with Etsy as an engineer
• How does Etsy operate with any efficiency given the extreme diversification of its merchant base?
• How to create normalized, high quality metadata from non-pro merchants?
• How does engineering work on a platform that’s constantly moving?
• Slack – As far as engineering and scaling the product, how do you balance technical engineering challenges with less-predictable cultural and societal shifts?
  • Is slack pushing this?