Well said! People often ask me for my founder perspective, and I always say the following at the end of such meetings - This is just my point of view biased by my personal experiences. You should talk to more people and hear their points of view. And in the end you should make your own decision.
Ordoro https://www.ordoro.com/ could be a good alternative (Disclosure: I am the co-founder of Ordoro). Ordoro works well with Shopify and has an open API. We've successfully migrated users from Stitch Labs to Ordoro in the past.
I feel the same sentiment while walking old European cities vs modern cities. I found this tweet very helpful in understanding why I feel that way. The pictures are great, even if you don't agree with the thesis. https://twitter.com/wrathofgnon/status/883181352933236736 "It is time for a thread on traditional urbanism, or town planning 13th-century style. I will dispel some myths of modern dis-urbanism...Traditional urbanism has short blocks. No building takes more than 3-4 seconds to walk past, providing interesting colors, shops, textures...Modern dis-urbanism means massive buildings, long block: takes minutes to walk past with nothing to distract or relieve the tedium. (Zürich)
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> Lots of people won't do this and will just bounce
That's a huge assumption. The only way to know for real is to A/B test. You may be surprised by what testing will tell you. We constantly A/B test landing page designs at Ordoro, and have often found results that are counter-intuitive.
Yes. According to the Outbox blog "senior leadership of USPS made it clear that they would never participate in any project that would limit junk mail and that they were immediately shutting down our partnership" http://blog.outboxmail.com/post/74086768959/outbox-is-shutti...
Disagree. Understanding the root cause helps even non-technical customers make the right decision. For example - "If I move to a different service (competitor of Basecamp), is there a chance that I will run into this issue there too? Answer is yes, based on how DHH explained the problem." Customers understand that shit happens. Particularly because many Basecamp users are business owners and can relate to shit happening in their business too. Explaining the root cause in plain language, and emphasizing that the user data is safe is a great way to deal with this situation.
Seems like a terrible deal to me. If your idea is any good, I'm sure you'll find 100K via AngelList or so as a convertible note. Giving up 50% to an incubator is unheard of. Incubators are great, but there is only so much they can help you with. Startups are filled with uncertainty and you may need more funding later on. And if you have already given up 50%, you are gonna find it real difficult to raise more capital.
Here is the answer I posted on Quora http://qr.ae/tswXk about dropshipping in ecommerce. Main points to note -
Pros of dropshipping
- You are not sinking your cash into inventory. So, dropshipping is better for your cashflow.
- You can vastly increase your product offering at very low cost because you are just displaying the pictures of someone else's product. You are not buying the product up front.
- You don't need to worry about shipping goods, managing a warehouse etc. You just focus on marketing and selling the goods, and you keep the margin (Diff between what the customer paid you and what you owe to the supplier)
Cons of dropshipping
- You are trusting your brand with some one else. If the supplier doesn't ship on time, the customer is gonna scream at you, not at the supplier.
- Margins are much lower. Since the supplier carries all the inventory risk, they will also eat up the margin correspondingly.
PS: My company Ordoro (http://www.ordoro.com/) offers software that helps ecommerce retailers manage their dropshipping workflow. This includes rules-based notification to your suppliers, and shipping notifications to your customers.
Thanks for mentioning Ordoro (https://www.ordoro.com/). Yes, we have integration with Shopify and a few other carts. And we can batch print shipping labels for USPS, Fedex, UPS (more shipping integrations coming soon).
