Amazon’s new twist on the order fulfillment business
Amazon continues to amaze as it innovates on taking products, services and processes that have already made it good money, and throws it out in the marketplace for other businesses and entrepreneurs to use.
The latest in its cache of outsourced products and services is a new API that is designed for its "Fulfillment by Amazon" pack and ship service that was introduced in 2006.
This is how it works. A business physically ships its inventory to Amazon to store. When a product is sold, the seller notifies Amazon where the product gets packaged and shipped to the customer. This is clearly a win-win strategy. The small-business owner outsources his warehousing and shipping (and some cost, of course) while Amazon gets a client into their ecosystem where they can cross sell everything from pay-per-click advertising to its storefront related services.
According to Amazon handling fees start at $0.50 per item plus $0.40 per pound with a storage fee of $0.45 per cubic feet per month and saves sellers the time and money needed to store, pick, pack, ship and provide customer service for the products sold online.
The new Fulfillment by Amazon API allows businesses to automate the order processing through Amazon. Order labeling, shipping and tracking and can now be followed with minimal human intervention.
What’s happening to all that money?
There have been many accounts recently about the implosion and explosion of the private equity, venture capital and hedge fund markets.
Given that there are few high-profile hedge funds and private equity funds that have imploded in a big way -including a few of those which were playing in mortgage backed securities. Many are viewing this as a necessary correction, and just desserts for funds that are not playing by the rules (wasn’t the whole idea behind hedge funds to be "hedged" in down markets?). But there are a large number of hedge funds that have not only survived the downturn of the market in the last quarter, but have generated positive returns.
By and large the amount of capital in the market is growing, but the distribution of the money is the big open question.
Venture capitalists raised 34.7 billion in funds in 2007, the highest amount raised since 2001 which was 38.8 billion according to Thomson financial and the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA).
So is all of that money going? As of last year, not a whole lot found its way into the pockets of entrepreneurs!
According to the Los Angeles Times, the VC investment into local companies fell to $689 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared to the $921 million during the same period in 2006. However the number of deals actually went up indicating that investors might be making smaller bets and waiting for the market to shakeout.
The New York Post (Private Equity Is Exploding) reports that the private equity boom in 2006 - 2007 is continuing through the early part of 2008. Despite a few spectacular flameouts, PE firms are continuing to raise tens of billions of dollars. Even with pension funds scaling back their investments, money has continued to flow in from foreign wealth funds.
For now much of the money in alternative investment funds seems to be sitting in the sidelines waiting out the crazy market dance.
As the gurus of Wall Street would say — "staying in cash is a perfectly acceptable market strategy". So the current wait-and-see-attitude where funds are not deploying all of their capital, might simply be a legitimate defensive position, and not the doom and gloom scenario that it is sometimes made out to be.
Microsoft unveils the worldwide telescope at TED
We were following the buzz about a revolutionary product that Microsoft was going to debut at the TED conference, which started on February 27th and will run till March 1st. We did our own speculation on what the product might or might not be.
Well the project is out! It is called the World Wide telescope and is an interactive tapestry that is stitched together with data from the Hubble and several terrestrial telescopes. During a demo at the conference, the project leaders Roy Gould from the Harvard Center for astrophysics and Curtis Wong from Microsoft, showed how users can zoom in on objects in the night sky, and look at incredibly detailed pictures as well as access information regarding the object from the web.
As with all good applications, the software has social networking woven into it. Anybody can design a virtual tour of their favorite part of the universe and share it with their friends.
The TED conference brings together thinkers from around the world and let them present their ideas in 18 minutes, at the conference. The big Ted prize (given to 3 people every year) is $100,000 cash plus the "granting of one wish to change the world". Winners get to unveil their wish at the award ceremony at the conference.
This year’s TED prize winners are:
Cosmologist Neil Turok, who has worked on the cosmic ray background in the universe, and its implications on the big bang theory.
Author Dave Eggers who has written the critically acclaimed "A heartbreaking work of staggering genius"
Former nun, comparative religion expert and author of "The spiral staircase", Karen Armstrong.
SimplyShe raises $600k in financing
Agility Capital recently closed a $600,000 financing to SimplyShe, Inc. The debt facility is in the form of a growth capital loan.
Located in San Francisco, California, SimplyShe, Inc. is a branded consumer products company providing fashion-based merchandise to the mass market. SimplyShe™ has multiple business units including: women’s apparel and accessories, children’s apparel 
and accessories, pet apparel and accessories, publishing and entertainment. The Company’s brands include: SimplyShe™, SimplyWee™, SimplyDog™, Lulu Pink™, Max-A-Million™, Big Paws™ and SimplySingle™. The Company is on a rapid growth path reporting over $20 million in sales in 2007.
Agility Capital provides innovative debt solutions to Venture Capital backed private companies and Small Cap public companies in the technology/ communications/ medical device and branded consumer products markets in the Western United States.
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