Storenvy Goes From Getting Kicked Out Of YC To Raising A $5M Round

Storenvy Goes From Getting Kicked Out Of YC To Raising A $5M Round(techcrunch.com)

67 points by bjonathan 13 years ago | 23 comments

Storenvy has an interesting model, but I'm a bit skeptical about their scalability. I started a fashion brand in HS (backpacks, apparel) and we launched a Storenvy store pretty much off the bat since there was no cost. The issue is that they don't seem to have accountability for their customers. They didn't run any checks to make sure my business is legitimate (obviously it is), that we actually sold product before, that we even had a website. This is polar opposite to Amazon, which runs several screens to make sure sellers are legitimate (getting our products on Amazon took nearly two months).

Perhaps even more importantly, the marketplace model for e-commerce does not align with individual sellers. Marketplaces are focused on expanding, adding more sellers, and expanding product portfolios. Sellers, meanwhile, prefer to be one of few on marketplaces so that they have greater visibility. With Storenvy's model (basically no barriers), I don't see much value being provided to sellers. Even if there is 0 cost to the seller, there is little incentive for them to invest time into building out a profile and attracting customers on the platform.

NewMonarch 13 years ago | |

Hey Hacker News!

Thanks for the thoughts. Actually, here's how we're thinking about it:

Storenvy is a custom store platform first and a marketplace second. Every merchant gets her own fully customizable storefront. We make it easier than anyone else by getting up and running with your own store in minutes.

But after you get online, you immediately have the problem of figuring out how to drive customers to your store. The next generation of merchants relies solely on social media for this. Buying advertising typically isn't even considered. So we created the first online store platform with a social network built on top. When you create your store, you're immediately connected with the rapidly-growing Storenvy marketplace where people are discovering and buying your awesome stuff.

In short, we are the only online store platform that actually makes you more sales. And "more sales" is the killer feature of a store platform.

Soon we'll start charging a commission on sales that happen in the marketplace. You still keep all of the sales through your storefront.

We'll get better at things like seller ratings and reviews as we grow. That's why we're hiring so many engineers. http://www.storenvy.com/jobs

jsabo 13 years ago | | |

>In short, we are the only online store platform that actually makes you more sales.

Do Amazon and Etsy not also do this? By just searching for say 'cufflinks' on Etsy I'm searching all of Etsy's "stores", and the same with Amazon. Although granted, neither put an emphasis on a storefront for each individual seller.

colkassad 13 years ago | |

Does the "curation" aspect help them? According to their site, items move to the top according to popularity (would like to know more about what that means). Taking a look at men's bags, the first page had a number of items I found appealing, more so than I find at a traditional online retailer. One of the few consumer-oriented startups posted at techcrunch that caught my eye.

aviswanathan 13 years ago | | |

But most online retailers implement some sort of 'popular' tag. Maybe Storenvy has more sophisticated algorithms behind-the-scenes that I'm unaware of

dcolev 13 years ago |

Curious -- I see a lot of baked goods for sale that look prepared from a home kitchen. Is this legal? That's assuming many of these for-sale foods are not FDA inspected. I'm not sure I would buy any baked goods from personal storefronts if it was sold out of state.

deefour 13 years ago | |

It goes by the local government where the kitchen is. Here in Connecticut the home kitchen needs to be inspected/licensed/approved just like any other commercial kitchen.

kmfrk 13 years ago |

So, were they rejected or "kicked out", i.e. accepted only to get thrown out?

rm999 13 years ago | |

I just read his 'infamous' post. He explains that he got accepted, then found out he would have to change his cofounders for personal reasons. This concerned ycombinator, which changed its mind and decided not to fund him because of all the sudden changes and the fact that it was affectively a single-founder company.

http://joncrawford.com/post/20378314843/how-i-got-kicked-out...

colkassad 13 years ago | | |

Not sure why it was called 'infamous'. Was inspiring, if anything. Good for him and his wife for doing what needed to be done.

rhizome 13 years ago | |

It's even more complicated than that:

http://joncrawford.com/post/20378314843/how-i-got-kicked-out...

He glosses over it, but basically he appears to be a biz guy who had lost his technical cofounders for some reason and had his (idiosyncratic and evidently tenatative) acceptance rescinded.

NewMonarch 13 years ago | | |

Hi, Jon here! Actually, I'm the technical founder. I'm a Ruby on Rails developer originally (have commits in Rails itself). The other founders were graphic design and sales. For about 6 months (post YC incident), I was doing design, engineering, customer support, and fundraising for our seed round with just the help of my wife helping out with Community and writing.

Sometimes I miss those days. :)

KMuncie 13 years ago |

I just launched a custom store front for Storenvy that I built on Foundation 3.

http://malibusown.com/

It was more difficult than I had hoped to develop for. One of the biggest issues in my opinion right now is the lack of proper mobile support. The stores need to be responsive. With that said, I was able to have a discussion with their community manager and it sounds like they are working to make things better, no doubt this round will help greatly!

ericcholis 13 years ago | |

Random tip, try to run any PNG you have through a compressor like http://tinypng.org/. For example by compressing your main logo, tinypng saved you 68% of the original size.

KMuncie 13 years ago | | |

Ah, indeed! Thanks for the heads up!

abuella 13 years ago |

http://shoply.com offers the same aggregated marketplace for small brands and local businesses.

edouard1234567 13 years ago |

I'm wondering if YC tracks false negatives to tune their filters on the application process?