We define our focus area as “Community Driven Commerce” startups which have the following attributes:
- Internet as primary business platform (mobile included)
- Leverage existing social platforms (pick the right social platforms for your business but you should at least leverage one of them)
- Commerce centric (focused on transactions not ad revenue)
We believe this area is exploding with innovation, but more importantly it’s just getting started. Here are a few recent statistics that we find encouraging:
- 67% of shoppers spend more online after receiving recommendations from their online community fo friends (Ad Age)
- 56% of in-store shoppers have gone online to do research or look at an item before purchasing it in a store. (eCommerce Times)
- Last holiday season social networking sites experienced the highest change among the upstream industries driving traffic to the Retail 500 increasing 27% when compared year-over-year. (Hitwise)