In 2012, Matt Salzberg, Ilia Papas, and Matt Wadiak founded Blue Apron, a cost-effective way for people to easily prepare meals without needing to scour the aisles of their supermarket looking for every single ingredient in a complex recipe. They began beta testing the product by sending their pre-assembled meal kits to friends. That was then. This is now: Blue Apron ships an estimated 8 million meal kits a month. It has also raised over $193.8M in venture capital...
If you want to look at America’s addictions, look at some of the biggest spenders on Display. We’re addicted to celebrity gossip. We’re addicted to sports and political news. We’re addicted to weight loss and beauty. And most of all: We’re addicted to credit. We received pre-approved credit card offers the day we turned 18. There are stories of dead dogs receiving credit cards and toddlers receiving cards with limits higher than those of their parents. Soon we discovered...
Many start-up founders dream of being acquired by a massive Fortune 500 company. Well, less than 2 years after launch, Jet has been acquired by Wal-Mart for ~$3 billion. This was a major power play for Wal-Mart, as it attempts to compete with eCommerce juggernaut Amazon.com. Wal-Mart may never catch up to Amazon even after acquiring Jet (the critics are unoptimistic), but there’s no doubt that Jet must have been doing something right if it was able to get...
Note: This is Part 2 in a two-part series that reveals the two presidential candidates’ Display strategies. Click here to see Part 1: Hillary Clinton. As of June 2016, there were rumors that the Trump campaign was running low on funds. Subsequently, Trump blatantly started asking for public donations from supporters. There have been a few controversies over who he is asking and who is giving Trump these funds. We’re not here to talk about those controversies. We’re here...
One of our most popular (and controversial) posts earlier this year revealed the display advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential candidates. Well, a lot has happened since then. The primaries are over, and only two contenders are left standing in the ring: Now it’s time to drill down into the current Display strategies for Clinton and Trump. First, if you go back in in time and read the original post, you’d see that Trump was not running any paid traffic...
In 1901, King C. Gillette had a revelation that would change the way products are sold forever. Gillette was a salesman at the Crown Cork and Seal Company (CCK). CCK sold the first disposable bottle cap; the “crown” style cap you find on most glass bottles. After seeing the success of the crown cap, Gillette realized there was potential for other disposable products. He specifically saw an opportunity in the razor blade market. Why? Because back in the olden days,...
