Last fall, fashion commerce startup Monogram launched an iPad app that was aiming to be kind of like a mobile, shoppable magazine for those hip to fashion. It had all the makings of a great mobile commerce app: It looked good, it was easy to use, and it allowed viewers to buy all the latest fashions really easily.

But it didn’t catch on the way that the team had hoped, according to founder Leo Chen. One of the reasons he believes the app didn’t resonate with users was that “the motivation to share individual products wasn’t strong enough.” And there just wasn’t enough content. With the launch of Monogram 2.0, the startup hopes to solve both of those problems. So the team went back to the drawing board.

Rather than position Monogram strictly as a platform for consuming content and maybe buying some stuff, the team decided to leverage the huge existing world of fashion bloggers to help create and share content through its platform.

As a result, the new Monogram provides a full web editing tool suite, which will allow bloggers to publish and share their favorite fashions with others. Bloggers can create posts, or full “magazines,” of all their favorite content, which readers can browse or subscribe to. Each post provides shoppable links to products either featured in, or similar to, the clothes and accessories that are being shown off on the page.

For bloggers, the simplicity of the Monogram platform comes primarily in the tools that it provides for enabling easy purchases through their pages. Not only is the publishing part of the tool beautiful and easy to use, but the ability to add clickable items for purchase is just drop-dead simple. Rather than having to scour the web for the items they want to add, and putting in affiliate links, the Monogram platform provides an integrated search functionality within the platform, which scours the web for the products bloggers wish to share.

On the viewing side, the new version of Monogram enables easy to read and share versions of bloggers’ posts and magazines. Monogram is built as a web app with responsive design that can be viewed on PC, tablet or mobile device. The startup has also built a native app with all the same viewing features. However, users who wish to publish need to do so from the web.

Individuals who are logged in can repost the content of others, kind of like you can do on Tumblr — but all links go back to the original post. The idea is to build a sense of community within the platform, but also to provide the original publisher with the credit for creating the post.

The company is working on adding more features for bloggers — like, for instance, advanced reporting. It’s also working on figuring out an affiliate model so that they can get paid for the products that are sold thanks to their magazines. Chen tells me that he’d like to see the bulk of affiliate revenues go to the bloggers, while the company will take a small cut.

Monogram can afford to do that, he says, because the company’s R&D team is based in Shanghai, which means a low burn rate. The company has raised about $1.25 million led by Quest Venture Partners, with participation from Great Oaks VC, Alexis Ohanian and Garry Tan’s Initialized Capital, 500 Startups, Chinese seed fund Innovation Camp, Yintai.com CEO Robin Liao, Rapportive CEO Rahul Vohra, Decide.com’s Brian Ma, and angel investors Jared Kopf Christina Brodbeck.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Any programmer or blogger knows that when you work on the Internet, on a computer, it’s easy to gain weight. Tech office pantries are stocked with Red Bull, candy, chips and even things you wouldn’t think were too unhealthy, like protein bars. Protein bars are basically injections of sugar. That’s why they taste like a Snickers.

But what no one talks about is that the “Startup 15″ or 40 is avoidable if you put in the effort, not to diet, but to be healthy.

Because she is constantly around tech geeks and herself works online, blogger Darya Rose, who is both my friend and the wife of Google Ventures Partner Kevin Rose, is acutely aware of this pain and has a solution: Foodist, a way to stay healthy without going crazy dieting.

Reading her book a couple of weeks ago, I came across a passage that struck me as truth. In “Instagram, A Parable,” Instagram co-founder Kevin Systrom described a breaking point in his work/life balance as he tried to build the company. If you’re shoving down burritos in between database sharding, you probably can relate:

“We never ate healthy at the release,” recalled Systrom. “At least in the beginning, we’d be so into our work that crafting a salad out of arugula and radicchio just wasn’t going to happen midday.” Instead, they’d opt for the local food trucks or burritos near the office. Without their even realizing it, weight started to creep on.

“We were looking at old pictures from Instagram, and people were like, ‘Oh my God, you look so young,’ and I was like, ‘What does that mean? Do I have gray hair? That was like six months ago,’” Systrom explained. “After that I kept telling myself, ‘I’ve got to get healthy again.”

Systrom had gained 25 pounds between Instagram’s launch in October of 2010 and its first 10 million users. “I bought a scale one day and realized my weight was up to 235,” he writes in Foodist. ”And I had never been this heavy in my life. I used to be 210, and I was like, ‘That’s not okay.’ But I knew I was not going to pull a sorority girl and just eat salad, because I love food. I can eat less, but I’m not going to stop eating food I like just to lose weight. That would make me unhappy.”

How did he do it? Exercise, by waking up earlier, making sure healthy food options were available in the Instagram office, the buddy system and saving indulgences for the real deal. He also packed a gym bag before bed, like a true hacker of life. “I knew that if I didn’t pack my gym bag with the clothes I was going to wear the next day, I wouldn’t make it to the gym. I also needed to lay out my workout clothes. I’d wake up in the morning and just make myself a deal: ‘Listen Kevin, all you need to do is put on those clothes and you’ll wake up on the drive to work and you’ll be fine.”

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

ThredUP, the online children’s clothes consignment shop, is today launching into a new vertical with the debut of a store for women’s secondhand clothing. The move, which puts the service up against competitors like Poshmark and Threadflip, follows its expansion into junior clothing announced at the beginning of the year. The women’s site had previously launched into beta in February, allowing customers to send in their clothes to resell, but had not yet opened its doors to shoppers.

At the time, ThredUP said that the decision to launch into beta had to do with the complexities of women’s clothing sizes and other inventory management hurdles, but of course, the store also needed the time to solicit merchandise from customers. As with its efforts in the children’s clothing space, the new women’s store works the same: users request a “clean out” bag, which is shipped for free and can be filled with the unwanted, but good quality, clothing, then returned (postage paid) back to ThredUP. The clothes are checked to see if they meet the company’s standards, photographed, and placed online for sale. Sellers receive somewhere between 10 percent and 40 percent of the resell price, depending on the clothing’s quality.

Though now ThredUP is moving into the women’s vertical, its business model makes it different from the peer-to-peer secondhand marketplaces, like Poshmark, Threadflip, Twice, and others, since users aren’t selling their closet contents directly to each other. This makes it less profitable for sellers, but it also eliminates the hassles involved with selling on your own. In the kids’ clothes space, where parents are often quickly overwhelmed with outgrown clothing and are grateful for anyone to take these items off their hands, ThredUP makes a lot of sense. With women’s clothing, it may be more tricky as those who think their gently used clothes are worth selling, as opposed to donating, are generally hoping to make a little money. And for that reason, they might choose to remain on those peer-to-peer sites, where commissions paid are generally only around 20 percent, allowing them to keep the 80 percent.

As you can see in the chart below, these companies are already solid competitors for ThredUP:

ThredUP has been growing since it refocused its efforts on consigning over clothing swap over a year ago, and now reports 500,000 registered users, 970 percent growth in item sales from February 2012 to March 2013, and 28% month-over-month growth in order sales. Revenue details are not available. However, the company has raised $23 million from investors, most recently via a $14.5 million Series C round last fall, led by new investor Highland Capital Partners, alongside existing investors Trinity Ventures and Redpoint Ventures.

The company is now receiving and processing between 8,000 and 10,000 items daily, up from 5,000 in February. Its kids’ clothing store has 150,000 items for sale from around 9,000 brands, and, at launch, the new women’s vertical will feature 30,000 items from some 4,000 brands.

In addition, ThredUP has made a move to address some users’ concerns with sending off clothes for resell, then finding that they’ve nothing to show for it when ThredUP deems the items not meeting its standards for quality. In the past, these were simply donated to charity. But for those interested, a “Return Assurance” option is now available, which allows users to opt in to having clothing returned. This service is available for $9.99, so you would have to have a significantly sized clean out bag to make it worth paying the shipping fees.

The new women’s shop is now open at www.thredup.com/women.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

I feel oddly guilty rejecting my Uber driver’s offer of a beer and a blunt. It’s 4 am. I’m drenched, hungover, and bewildered as to why I’m in a rustic garage on the outskirts of downtown Austin, watching tattooed pedicab drivers dance with a tiny dog in a pink tutu. This was not the ride home I expected.

Yet, my experience isn’t entirely unusual. After two years of experimenting with Internet services that allow everyday individuals to sell their cars, houses, and things — the so-called “sharing economy” — I’ve become accustomed to getting a face full of the sellers’ hopes, fears and quirks. Between services rendered and cash exchanged, friendships are forged, awkwardness is experienced, and memories are made.

Before the Industrial Revolution uprooted us from our small-town community roots, I imagine most business transactions included a side of humanity. Modern-day business sterilize transactions of the personal element. Human resource departments have hollowed out their employees, leaving little more than a pleasantly smiling husk of a person.

South By Southwest By The Sharing Economy

Every March, over 25,000 technology enthusiasts cram into the moderately sized metro of downtown Austin for the annual tech pilgrimage, South By Southwest Interactive. Hotels are sold out six months in advance, and every public service is bleeding out their windows with demand.

You’d have an easier time catching a cab stumbling naked and drunk down Times Square on New Years Eve than hailing a taxi during SXSW.

At 4 a.m., after the final after parties had simmered down, the only shot I had at making it back to my bed before I had to wake up the next morning was Uber, the popular smartphone taxi application that had contracted with independent pedicabers during SXSW, to usher sleepy technologists to and fro downtown Austin.

I did not, however, foresee the torrential downpour halfway though my trip that instantly saturated my clothes to my frigid bone. No longer able to stand the sharp icicles falling from the sky, yet still needing to finish the ride, our courtesy pedicab driver took a pit stop at Pediacab HQ to pick up his car and stow his bike.

Pedicab headquarters is like the second-class deck of the Titanic, a dimly lit haven where free-spirited tattooed servicemen party their blue collars off to loud music, an abundance of cheap beer, and liberally available recreational drugs.

“I got jungle juice for sale! It’s strong,” yelled a muscular African American man in his mid-thirties, who backed up a truck full of tortellini and cheap liquor, during what appeared to be his nightly run to the breaking pedicabers. Passing off a blunt, a line forms to offer him wads of crumpled dollar bills in exchange for a styrofoam box filled to the brim with cheap, delicious carby goodness.

“They just aren’t cut out for straightforward jobs,” explains my pedicab driver, about his uniform-less colleagues. “I had a regular sort of office job,” he adds. But, pedicabbing “filled a niche that I didn’t even knew existed.”

Indeed, eccentric personalities seem to flock to the peddling business. The night before I had been driven home by a red-headed engineer, whose super-skinny, yet muscular body supported a head with a beard so thick and unkempt, it look liked it had burst out of his chin. He told me that between judo tournaments, he was pulling 22-hour days as a driver to pay for graduate school in geographic information systems.

It goes to show that behind every invoice and credit card terminal is a person who has experienced their own unique set of crazy, which life inevitably presents while living on our crowded Earth. Traditional retail robs us of a truer view of humanity, with its memories and the tangible sense of its diversity.

Though I wouldn’t knowingly pay money for it, sometimes the worst experiences are the most enriching. I once endured 20 minutes of forced laughter, as my driver regaled me with his amateur comedy routine. Lyft, a popular car-sharing alternative in San Francisco, encourages its drivers to be extroverted. Usually, this just means a mandatory fist-bump and a “how’s your day?” On occasion, it’s much more.

My would-be comedian driver reminded me that not every starving artist is hocking paintings on a street corner. More often than not, it’s a cashier scribbling notes in between customers, dreaming of the day he’ll make it big and tell his boss to screw off. Many of the world’s cherished artists, scientists, policymakers, and businessmen have humble roots.Who knows how much creativity and innovation the world has lost due to the callous whims of an entitled consumer.

So, while I can’t give our comedian his big break, my time with the sharing economy has made me more patient with those I regularly interact with. I’ll think twice about giving the stink eye to a barista who forgets my request for extra-foam on my no whip tazo chai frappuccino. I’ll wish my Verizon customer service agent a happy Easter. I might even refrain from tweeting nasty remarks at a politician or vote for a bill to fund a community arts center.

Or, as the Scottish author Ian MacLaren once reminded us:

This man beside us also has a hard fight with an unfavouring world, with strong temptations, with doubts and fears, with wounds of the past which have skinned over, but which smart when they are touched. It is a fact, however surprising. And when this occurs to us we are moved to deal kindly with him, to bid him be of good cheer, to let him understand that we are also fighting a battle.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

One of the main problems with buying designer clothing off of eBay and other auction sites is that there is really no guarantee that the item you are purchasing is actually what it appears to be. Despite a crackdown by eBay on counterfeit designer goods, the site still has a problem with fakes (though eBay will refund you if an item is fake). YC-backed Lollipuff is an auction site that fully authenticates any designer clothing and accessories it sells.

On Lollipuff, the founders employ a combination of human expert authenticators with a patent-pending process to ensure that the goods on the site are real. For now, Lollipuff focuses on three of the most designer brands on auction sites: Chanel bags, Christian Louboutin shoes, and Herve Leger dresses. When a seller applies to sell on the site, the startup asks for specific photos that will be able to show whether a dress, bag or pair of shoes is a fake. All the items sold are either lightly used or brand new.

Often times, scammers will upload fake pictures to their eBay listings, so that buyers will believe what they are purchasing is the real deal. But on Lollipuff all pictures have a specialized code number that ensures that seller took the photos themselves. The startup also asks for specific, detailed photos that would not be able to to be found on a fake bag.

Lollipuff takes around 7 percent of every transaction. Lollipuff launched in December in beta and with no marketing, is now seeing over $15,000 worth of clothing and accessories sold every month.

The idea for Lollipuff grew out of founder Fei Deyle’s fashion blog where she would write guides about avoiding counterfeit items, and the industry in general. Many consignment stores started coming to her to authenticate resale items, and readers began to ask to purchase and sell the clothes she was blogging about on her site. The idea to provide an authenticated site for designer goods was born.

The market for designer goods amounts to around $50 billion in the US. Many brands like Chanel and Christian Louboutin hold their value extremely well, making the resale market also significant. In fact, some designer goods actually appreciate. For example, Chanel bags have historically gained about 20% in value annually.

And despite the efforts made by eBay to crack down on counterfeit items being listed, it still does happen. Deyle says she recently saw a fake Chanel bag selling for $2,900, and still had a day left for bidding.

The startup’s other founders include Travis Deyle, who holds a PhD in Robotics from Georgia Tech and David Mohs, a former software engineer at Google.

Fei says that she and her co-founders will soon expand to verifying and selling other designer goods.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

BeauCoo, the Calgary, Canada-based startup that wants to make it easier for women to discover new styles, brands and stores and shop for clothes online by matching them with other women who have a similar body type, just launched its Android app. The service started out as an iPhone app and recently expanded to the web.

The basic idea behind BeauCoo is that “women are naturally drawn to one another in their search for fashion advice and styles, despite the fact that very few women are truly alike in shape or size.” If finding the right fit is hard in a regular store, it’s obviously even harder online, so if BeauCoo can help shoppers connect with others who share their body type, brands could potentially tap into this and use it to drive sales and reduce returns.

The service uses Facebook logins to ensure that only women can sign up in order to ensure that they can feel comfortable about sharing photos of the clothes they try on and talking about their body types.

As BeauCoo co-founders Christian and Victoria MacLean told me earlier this week, the site is currently growing at an average of about 200 percent a month since launch. though they weren’t quite ready to announce any concrete user numbers yet. On the web, the average user now spends about five minutes per session on the site (mobile sessions tend to be shorter).

The team of co-founders, which also includes Rick Cotter and Cory Smith, puts a strong emphasis on what they call ‘body positivity.’”

“Women need to actively see other women their size looking beautiful,” explains Victoria MacLean. “BeauCoo is all about women inspiring other women. To be [body positive] is to believe in yourself and love your body – no matter the size.”

For the Android launch, the MacLeans told me, the team decided to leave out a few underused features. BeauCoo’s users, for example, didn’t really want to share their photos outside of the app on Facebook and other social networks, so the Android app doesn’t have this functionality.

The Android app is now available in the Google Play store.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

KinderStuff is launching today in the U.S. with a new take on e-commerce – no, not subscription commerce – but an online store for kids’ clothes which you can buy new, then return when the clothes are outgrown for a credit towards future purchases. The gently worn clothes will be resold on a separate section of the website, while those that were worn a little less than gently are donated to charity.

The site actually soft-launched four months ago in Germany, and the startup, now based both in Munich and L.A., plans to operate its European and U.S. version simultaneously, According to co-founder Robert Rebholz, who built KinderStuff alongside Sebastian Schmoeger and Dr. Alexander Reichhuber.

He says they saw the big opportunity here in the U.S. to make this model work. ”Parents in the U.S. are a lot more engaged online,” he explains. “People are buying more stuff – especially in the kids’ fashion space. And nobody has created an online brand in the kids’ fashion space here yet.”

Rebholz notes that they had seen the rise on online brands like Warby Parker for eyewear and MeUndies for undergarments, as well as interesting startups in the kids’ fashion space like subscription-based Wittlebee, but no online brands yet that sold their own private label. (Wittlebee is actually working on its own private label brand, following the acquisition of Cottonseed Clothing, but I think the point Rebholz was making is that its current business model is remarkably different from his. We should also point out that there are kids’ private labels manufacturers out there, but they generally don’t sell direct to consumers online.)

The clothing sold on the KinderStuff site at launch is aimed at those aged 0 to 2, but the plan is to quickly expand into the 2 to 6 range for both boys and girls. The site offers around 45 pieces on its German version, and 15 pieces in the U.S. including t-shirts, onesies, long-sleeve shirts, and more. New items are somewhat pricey – $15 to $25 each – but this is an organic, eco-friendly and sustainable line, built in collaboration with designers in some cases, so they feel they can ask higher price points than something you’d find at Target, for example. (Designers get a percentage of sales which varies, we’re told).

The online second-hand store will arrive in around three months, after the e-commerce side has time to ramp up.

The clothes are manufactured in local markets – Germany or just outside L.A., as the case may be – which Rebholz says actually works for the brand. In just four to six weeks, production can respond to they can move from the design process to selling, and respond quickly to demand.

“We don’t have any middleman, so we don’t have to build up huge inventories at traditional retailers,” Rebholz adds. “So we can actually see as we have demand for certain products, and we can then satisfy the demand on the go.”

The company, now a team of eight, had previously raised a $300,000 seed round and is in the final stages of closing $700,000 now, with mainly Germany angels participating and one VC.

TechCrunch readers can get a discount on their order using the code “TechCrunch” at checkout. Only standard shipping is available, and clothes will arrive within five days of ordering.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Stitch Fix, the San Francisco-based startup that provides a subscription-based personal shopping and delivery service for women’s clothing, has closed on $4.75 million in new funding, the company tells TechCrunch.

The round, which serves as Stitch Fix’s Series A, was co-led by Baseline Ventures and Lightspeed Venture Partners with the participation of Western Technology Investment.

Stitch Fix has experienced some serious organic growth since it was founded back in February 2011, the company’s founder and CEO Katrina Lake told me in an interview this week, which you can watch in the video embedded above. The company has now served more than 10,000 clients, and has grown its own team to a staff of 50. Meanwhile, its revenue growth has been on a tear, with its annual sales run rate today double what it was just two months ago, in December 2012.

The new funding is meant to put some more fuel on that fire, Lake said, enabling Stitch Fix to hire more staff and further grow its inventory, logistical components, product offerings, and general reach. The company currently has a waitlist of people who are keen to use the service, so this should help it scale up to accommodate the demand.

How it works

Personal styling has been around for a long time, but it’s typically a very expensive and high-friction thing, with each stylist spending hours on just one client. Stitch Fix has created a proprietary set of technology and tools that lets its small team be much more efficient, bringing the cost of personal styling much closer to earth. The average price point of Stitch Fix clothing is $65, Lake says.

Essentially, Stitch Fix operates like a clothing version of Pandora, the personalized radio app — the idea is it gets better the more you use it. It works like this: A new user goes to the Stitch Fix website and fills out a basic form with details about her body shape, size, personal style, and budget. She also rates photos of clothing items and accessories to give Stitch Fix even more of an idea of her taste.

Then, a Stitch Fix stylist uses the provided data to select and ship a box of five items for the user to try on. The user keeps and pays for the items she likes and sends back the ones that she doesn’t (a $20 per box styling fee goes toward any purchases, but is kept by Stitch Fix if the user sends everything back.) The company keeps track of what each user keeps and returns, to further hone its individual client profiles — hence the Pandora Radio analogy. Stitch Fix sources its products just like a department store does, with its own team of buyers and inventory.

It’s a really clever business model that has been embraced by the early-adopting fashion blogger set from the start. It’ll be exciting to see how the company grows further into the mainstream now that it has some nice outside funding in its coffers.

Katrina Lake swung by TechCrunch TV this week to discuss the new funding and Stitch Fix’s technology. She also gave me a hands-on look at how Stitch Fix works by bringing along a box that was put together just for me (although I didn’t actually keep the clothes — darn journalistic ethics!) You can check that out in the video embedded above.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

As hinted at following the raise of its $14.5 million in Series C financing this fall, online kids’ clothing consignment thredUP is now expanding into new verticals, starting with clothing for teens. While previously, the company was focused on clothes for younger children – boys and girls, ages 12 months and up – the new “juniors” category is starting out with a focus on teen girl clothing only.

Currently, the service is in beta testing, and only for the “clean out” side of the business, while the “buy” side (the juniors online shop) will come later on after the company has built up inventory, and figured out how to overcome the challenges around sizing and merchandising that come with launching a new vertical.

ThredUP, which has raised $23 million to date in outside funding, pivoted from operating an online clothes swap back in spring 2012, to the more fully featured online consignment shop it has today. Parents send in their gently worn, high-quality kids’ clothing in a provided bag, and then receive either cash or credits to spend in thredUP’s online store. In July, the company added a couple of former Netflix execs to its team, in advance of plans to scale its business considerably.

This October, CEO James Reinhart told us that the company’s plans, starting in 2013, would involve new verticals beyond clothing for small children, including not only juniors, as is being introduced now, but also maternity, women’s and men’s consignment clothing.

As with the kids’ service, there are rules around what juniors’ clothes thredUP accepts. The model here is consignment, not hand-me-downs, so the clothes have to be in fairly good condition and from brands others would want to buy. For example, thredUP says it’s not accepting Walmart and Target brands into its forthcoming juniors clothing store, but will take things from Hollister, Aeropostale, American Rag, Roxy, Billabong, Volcom, Levis, Jolt, Celebrity Pink, Baby Phat, Tommy Girl, Bongo, Dollhouse, Union Bay and others, to give you an idea. Junior sizes include 00, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13 and 15.

At the time of its Series C, thredUP was averaging around 7,000 new paying customers per month, and had an online catalog between 65,000 and 70,000 items.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch

Editor’s note: James Altucher is an investor, programmer, author, and entrepreneur. He is an investor in about 25 startups and has written ten books. His latest books are I Was Blind But Now I See and 40 Alternatives to College. Please  follow him on Twitter @jaltucher. 

I was lonely and I wanted money. I was living in a one-bedroom apartment in Astoria, Queens, NYC in 1995. I knew nobody in the area. I would write my phone number on two dollar bills and tip waitresses with them. Nobody called me. Everyone in Astoria is Greek. And they pretty much stick to themselves. Nobody would talk to me. I would walk for miles in Astoria hoping that just one person would talk to me.

Weekends were the worst. I missed my friends at work. The Museum of the Moving Image was down the street so I would go there to watch various indie movies. Two things: the Hal Hartley retrospective was great. And the collection of Bill Cosby sweaters that he wore in his 80s show was prominently on display. The  woman taking the tickets didn’t like me because I always flashed my HBO ID to get in free.

I had about $20 in the bank and lived paycheck to paycheck. I would walk around every part of Manhattan and think to myself, “who are the millions of people who can afford to live here but I can’t?”

Adrian called me. “I have to do this diamond website. Can you help?” We went over to Shlomo’s on 47th Street (Known in NYC as the Diamond District; if you walk down 47th Street it’s all tourists and Hasidic Jews.) Shlomo told me that all the diamonds on 47th Street get smuggled into the U.S. to avoid taxes.

I asked him how they get smuggled. He said, “I will tell you a joke: Two Jews are coming back from Russia. One keeps squirming the whole plane ride. The other Jew finally asks him, ‘Moishe, why all the squirming?’ Moishe says, ‘Because I’m sorting the inventory!’”

Shlomo laughed. Adrian laughed. I thought to myself, I am never going to buy a diamond.

Shlomo wanted to put online his wholesale business, which he used to sell to all the diamond dealers on 47th Street and sell direct to the consumer. “I don’t want my name anywhere on this! If anyone on the street knew I was doing this they would kill me.” Arguably this would be the first diamond site on the Internet. Before Blue Nile, before Tiffany’s went online. Before anything.

He gave us a file, which was his entire database. Every diamond was one line on the file with all the features separated by commas: the shape of the diamond, the 4Cs (cut, clarity, carats, color), the number of the GIA certificate (since certification is the universal scam, even diamonds have to be certified by some bogus organization). He just wanted the database online and a simple design. People would select a diamond on the site and then send him an email and he would call them. Simple.

My room in Astoria had one foam mattress in it, cockroaches in the bathroom, a phone, and a black and white TV about three inches in diagonal that never worked. I didn’t realize that in NYC you needed cable to get a TV to work. I had no chairs, no sheets, no plates or glasses, no food, no closet, and no dressers, and I kept all of my clothes in a garbage bag. Even if a waitress spoke to me, what was I going to do? I felt worthless. I needed the money.

The next day Chet called me and asked me what I was up to. I told him about the diamond project. “What programming language are you going to use?” I told him I thought I would use C++ but I wasn’t sure. I figured it would take me about a month with C++.

“James, James, nononono,” he said, “trust me on this. Go to the bookstore. G-g-g-get O’Reilly’s book on Perl. Trust me.” Chet had a slight stutter when he was excited. His mind was too fast for his words.

“What’s Perl?”

“Just trust me. Get the book. Then call me.”

I got the book, went into Adrian’s office and set up a simple Perl programming environment (downloadable from a dozen sources). Did the basic “Hello, world” program. Kept flipping through the book.

I called Chet later that day. “Did you get the book?” he asked.

“I finished the whole project,” I said. I even added an extra flourish. I found a Perl library for manipulating graphic images so I used it to create the GIA certificates on the fly as images. Perl became my favorite programming language for all Internet projects back then.

—

Here are the lessons I learned from this experience:

• Learn a programming language quickly by modifying other code. I found code for searching a database. I just modified that and fed in this database. As long as you know the basic tools: if, then, loops, recursion, the syntax of the language, functions, etc., you can learn any programming language by having a book for the basic syntax and modifying other code.
• Always add an extra flourish. ALWAYS. No matter what. This was my first client. Of the next five jobs I did, three of them offered me a full time job with double or triple the salary I was making at HBO. It’s because I always delivered the extra something. This is more than “underpromise and overdeliver.” This is using creativity to make the client’s life better. And to always have the element of surprise. They know that when you walk in the door magic will  happen. Doves will fly. I was the magician.
• Always talk to someone smarter than you are and get their advice on how to do a job.

We delivered to Shlomo. He couldn’t believe how fast we did it. He couldn’t believe we also did the GIA certificates the way we did. He paid us in cash — $35,000. I took, $17,500. He gave us more work.

I walked over to The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd Street and said I wanted to move in. They were known for only letting artists and writers live there. Arthur C. Clarke wrote “2001: A Space Odyssey” there. Madonna wrote “Sex” there. Dylan Thomas died on the steps in front. Nancy (of “Sid and Nancy”) was stabbed there. I was told to wait for Stanley Bard to see me. He owned the hotel. I waited for two hours, and then he took me into the office. I gave him the $17,500 in cash and asked if I could live there for a year.

He looked at the cash. It was in a paper bag from a supermarket, in hundreds. “What are you,” he said, “a drug dealer?” I should’ve added, the Chelsea Hotel was known for letting artists, writers, and drug dealers live there. And high-end prostitutes. And some not very high-end. I didn’t want to say I worked on the Internet. That was very uncool back then. It meant I was a “computer geek.” Not good.

I said, “I work at HBO.”

“Ok,” he said. And he took me up to the first floor, to the right, to the room where Nancy was stabbed (it had been divided into two rooms by then). “You can stay here,” he said. I later moved several times to different parts of the building. Every floor in the Chelsea had its own little subculture. I felt like an anthropologist as I moved up the different floors, studying the species that inhabited each one. There was art hanging everywhere. All of the art was awful.

A few years ago Adrian called me. He was still working on the site, diamondcutters.com. I think even now he’s still working on it.  ”Shlomo is dead,” he said. “What happened?” I asked.

“He was flying a plane around Russia. I guess looking for diamonds. The plane crashed.”

I thought of Shlomo’s joke about the squirming Jew flying back from Russia. I thought how Shlomo never really liked me. In 1999 I talked him into paying a million dollars to theknot.com to become the exclusive diamond dealer on their site but it resulted in almost no sales for him. He never spoke to me again after that.

I thought of the girl who worked in his office who had the huge scar down one side of her face. I thought of how I loved her and wanted to lick her scar and be the only one to tell her how beautiful she was.

Shlomo’s dead. I am still alive.

Article courtesy of TechCrunch