Nick's Blog

Nor-Cal Life and Adventures in Entrepreneurship

Entries Tagged ‘Entrepreneurship’

Funny Usernames

The following are the best of the best of Shoes ‘R Us member usernames.  These are not personally identifying in any way.  I’ve made some slight edits, and inserted the text as images to protect them from spiders/spambots/other bad guys, and to maintain their privacy as outlined in our privacy policy.
And just like the list [...]

Book Review: The Accidental Billionaires

Last week I finished The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich.  It sounded interesting, and I really liked his other book, Bringing Down the House.
Mezrich tells the story of how Facebook got its start, from a Harvard dorm-room operation in early 2004, to the [...]

Knocking Down Walls

I think this is a cute story, and appropriate this week after Ford’s $1 billion Q3 profit.  Nice job guys!
Over 100 years ago, Henry Ford was tinkering in the shed out behind his house.  He was building his first car.  But when he finished, he realized he’d made one critical mistake: it was too big [...]

Announcing CarryMyStuff.com

CarryMyStuff.com, a new comparison shopping site for handbags, luggage, backpacks, wallets, laptop bags, and more is now live.  I’ve still got some work to do to get it fully operational, but most of the functionality is there.
We have tons of products from more than 1000 name brand manufacturers at all the top stores.

Automation Domination

I had a small victory this week in my ongoing effort to automate and simplify day-to-day tasks.  Because shoe inventory is always changing, one of my biggest challenges is keeping all the product links up-to-date.
Up until about 15 months ago, I was doing all this manually, individually checking each link.  It was a very slow, [...]

On Entrepreneurship

“Running a start-up is like being punched in the face repeatedly.  But working for a large corporation is like being waterboarded.” –Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator
This quote was from a recent issue of Inc. magazine, but I don’t really like it that much.  It takes a pretty negative outlook on both start-ups and “normal” [...]

Celebrating One Year of “Retirement”

It’s pretty exciting to have made it a full year on my own without having to look for another job.  Still, with the Internet and the economy changing so fast, nothing is certain.
Last summer for example, I fell victim to the “Google Slap” and lost 75%+ of my traffic and revenue for three months.  Stressful.  [...]

Actual Customer Service Emails From Shoes ‘R Us Customers

For a little bit of background, I run ShoesRUs.net, a comparison shopping site for shoes.  We carry no inventory, process no orders, and ship nothing.  Instead, we refer customers to our retail partners in exchange for a portion of the proceeds.  These are actual customer service emails I’ve received over the past few years.  They [...]

New Toy

I’m the proud owner of the new Verizon LG enV Touch.  It’s no iPhone but it’s pretty slick.  Looking forward to being better able to keep tabs on the biz from the road.

Zappos Tour

During last weekend’s Las Vegas trip, I had the opportunity to visit the Zappos headquarters in nearby Henderson.  It was good timing, as I’d just finished reading this article in Inc. magazine about their CEO Tony Hsieh, their history, and their company culture.

Since Zappos is the largest online shoe-seller, it follows that they are [...]