LMT's Profile

Thanks for your post. I have never used Mint before but I have been very tempted to try it on numerous occasions. Like others, I am also worried about the security. I recently came across a mobile bill payment company called Check (now renamed as Mint Bills) which was purchased by Intuit in 2014. Mint Bills automates the bill pay process and consolidates it into one place. With this acquisition, Mint is no longer just helping the consumer analyze their past financial history but also allowing them to transact. Automated bill pay is a good adjacency for Mint and I wonder what other acquisitions they could be looking at to further complete their already robust platform. Do you think they may enter the digital currency/mobile payments space? In terms of data usage, it seems that Mint is leaving a lot of value on the table and they are starting to be pushed out by big banks. The Wall Street Journal recently reported that Bank of America and others have temporarily cut off financial sites and mobile applications that look to aggregate consumer data. While their rationale was over security concerns, you know they feel threatened by the influx of tech start ups that are providing better ease and efficiencies to their customers.

Thanks for the post and the intel on IBETCHA’s next steps! IBETCHA is an incredibly fun game and the valuations that we are seeing on these new “hobby games” is a clear indicator that people do still value face-to-face interaction especially in the digital world where everything has become less-personal via texting, Facebook posting, etc. The power of network effects could be ideal for a game like IBETCHA but will you lose this personal, face-to-face interaction that you are trying to bring back plus I wonder if going online will decrease the amount that people are willing to share or the substance. What is the proportion of videos to pictures posted on Facebook? When it comes to self-promoting, it seems that people are willing to share a picture but do not go as far as sharing videos.

I played the pre-demo day game and found it quite fun since the questions on the cards pushed me to share things that I don’t normally share and thus got to learn things about my friends that I never knew before! If this is still the case, I wonder how many people will jump online to share video content with their friends without the trust building that the personal interaction allows for. Have you thought about somehow securing these videos in ‘Snapchat-like’ format so that they are somewhat secure with members of the group. Would this be possible with the length of the videos?

I like the idea of mitigating the free-riding element by limiting the amount of content viewable to the amount of content that you share!

Have you thought about the potential for indirect network effects or how you may be able to collect the data that people share through the platform. The data could prove incredibly valuable and useful for monetizing the product!

Look forward to hearing more.

Excellent post, JP. I can’t wait to visit this store! Like Kathryn, I am also excited about the value of the data that will be collected by the new dressing-room experience. I have often wondered if home closets will become digitized through RFID tags allowing the retail shopping experience to become more personalized — curated to the taste of the individual shopper based on their existing wardrobe. For example, I can match a new top to an existing pair of pants that I already own by being able to access my closet through my mobile phone. As a result, I think that bigger basket sizes could result from the cross-selling of new clothing pieces and accessories based on those that you already own to create truly stylized outfits. There are so many ways to expand on this premise to create more value for the customer — what about linking stores’ e-commerce sites to their retail stores and allow customers to try-on clothes that they have picked out online at a specific date/time? I’d be interested to know how these new digitized shopping experiences affect number of employees per shop and inventory levels. I would assume that stores would need to hire more employees to populate the dressing room and more inventory would be necessary as the technology allows a greater flow of clothes in and out of the dressing rooms.