My Kitchen Cabinets Are Worth Millions
I want to try Jet, the new commerce site which promises to be even cheaper than Amazon. What prevents me? The idea of having to rebuild my “list” – the things I order frequently from Amazon or pick from the shelves as I shop physical retail stores.
How could they solve this cold start problem? One way would be to let me submit a picture of my store receipt, or photos of my cabinets, freezer and refrigerator contents. Some OCR + Mechanical Turk and they’d be able to return me a digital list for my next order. Allow me to forward my Amazon Subscribe & Save email receipts (or just comb my inbox for Amazon receipts a la how Tripit can extract travel-related messages) and you’ve essentially got all the personal information you need.
Dropbox previously acquihired Endorse, a team that was working on receipt-based coupon redemption and market intelligence. Basically you could submit photos of your receipts and get rebates from CPG companies for buying their products. They were also obviously assembling a large taste graph for what consumers purchase, since that SKU level data is usually unavailable outside of the specific store’s databases. Having been part of the Endorse beta it was a bit too challenging to collect receipts every time and they were never able to reach the scale needed to prove to brands that it was a compelling channel to support.
Are my suggestions good ideas for Jet? Maybe, maybe not, but many types of businesses face cold start problems and you need to be creative in figuring out how to build new habits. There’s lots of information value in my cupboards and receipts (not to mention inbox) which today goes unused.
Want more of me? I blog at www.hunterwalk.com & tweet @hunterwalk
Create Value / Sell / Repeat
9 年Hunter Walk Thank you. Isn't this related to cost of switching ? This also applies when switching SaaS providers.
CA, MBA. Strategy & Commercial Support
9 年Hunter you've hit the nail on the head, and it will come (IoT?). I suggested this to a telco some years ago, (that by letting customers charge a whole range of stuff to their telco bill, that this data could then be available for analysis and action), but they were not interested at that stage.
100% agree. Simplifying and improving the customer experience can drive new business as Hunter describes. A critical point for start-ups looking to acquire customers.
CTO at Input Output (IOG/IOHK) - Web3 - Building #Cardano #MidnightNetwork ?? Wharton CTO Alumni
9 年So if I clearly get your idea, the next killer app could be an application facilitate and automate the receipts scan process! ;)
Board Member, Start Up Mentor, Chief Strategy and Corporate Development Officer
9 年Ziploop can take all the receipt data (captures all the data -paper/email) and you can decide how to use it. It's free in App stores.