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<p><div class="image-container float_right" style="width:400px"><div class="image"></div><p class="source">YouTube</p><p class="caption">The <keyword id="6357395" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="eBay">eBay</keyword> store in 2005's "40-Year-Old Virgin" seems dated-but it may just be retro.</p></div>What keeps eBay's top executives awake at night?</p>
<p>CEO <keyword id="789080" type="PERSON" weightage="60" keywordseo="John-Donahoe">John Donahoe</keyword> hasn't shared his dream diary with us. But we have a pretty good read nonetheless, based on eBay's actions: The company is terrified about losing its sellers.</p>
<p>And the companies with the best prospects of stealing them away aren't Google or Amazon, but a host of startups.</p>
<h2>Good times for eBay</h2>
<p>Right now, things look golden for eBay, with the stock up 400 percent from its $10 nadir in March 2009. It is now breathtakingly close to matching the high of $58 it set in late 2004. Its core marketplace, eBay.com, is growing again, having recently crossed 100 million active users. Holiday sales were up 20 to 30 percent over 2011, <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/01/08/us-amazon-ebay-holiday-idUSBRE9070X620130108">by some estimates</a>.</p>
<p>One can and should credit Donahoe's turnaround of the company, with an emphasis on innovation and an early bet on mobile. But there are also phenomenal tailwinds behind e-commerce right now. The growth of an Internet-connected global middle class, the ubiquitous availability of broadband, and the adoption of tablets and smartphones have made a friendly environment for eBay.</p>
<h2>An armada of competitors</h2>
<p>That same friendly environment has birthed a host of potential rivals. Their strategies vary, but they generally involve peeling off sellers in a specific category, tackling frustrations in eBay's selling process, or both.</p>
<p>The largest and perhaps most threatening is <keyword id="279712" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Etsy">Etsy</keyword>, which <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/etsy-just-raised-40-million-2012-5">raised $40 million last year</a> and is expanding internationally, targeting makers of handicrafts and other homey goods. Where Etsy is particularly strong is capturing that feeling of personal commerce—buying something from a real human being, with a connection to the item sold—that characterized eBay's earliest years.</p>
<p>A far less known rival is <keyword id="27550" type="CITY" weightage="60" keywordseo="bonanza">Bonanza</keyword>, a Seattle-based company. CEO Bill Harding tells me that revenues are up 60 percent year over year, and it <a href="http://www.bonanza.com/">now lists 4 million items</a>—a fraction of eBay's <a href="http://www.powersellersunite.com/auctionsitewatch.php">estimated 180 million listings</a>, but enough to provide a meaningful level of inventory for shoppers.</p>
<p>"Our emphasis is on stuff that doesn't have a barcode on it:  home &amp; garden, jewelry, health &amp; beauty, fashion, collectibles," Harding says. "Items where taste matters."</p>
<p>Taste matters to consumers, but fees and ease of listing matter to merchants. Bonanza charges lower fees, Harding says, which merchants typically pass on to shoppers in the form of lower prices. Bonanaza has also launched a one-page listing form, which Harding thinks spurred eBay to simplify its own listing process. But he's pushing the envelope with tools like the Background Burner, a photo-editing tool which eliminates backgrounds from photos of items for sale. (Just Google "eBay fail" to see why this matters.)</p>
<p>There's likewise <a href="http://modcloth.com/">ModCloth</a> in apparel, <a href="http://yardsellr.com/">Yardsellr</a> in collectibles, <a href="http://gazelle.com/">Gazelle</a> in consumer electronics, <a href="http://fab.com/">Fab</a> in high-design objects, <a href="http://onekingslane.com/">One Kings Lane</a> in housewares, and <a href="http://www.bstocksolutions.com/">B-Stock Solutions</a> in overstocked goods. Some of this competition is coming straight from eBay veterans: <keyword id="1737728" type="COMPANY" weightage="60" keywordseo="Yardsellr">Yardsellr</keyword>, Gazelle, and B-Stock were started by former eBay executives, and <keyword id="1497560" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="One-Kings-Lane">One Kings Lane</keyword>'s CFO and CMO hail from eBay.</p>
<p>They all tackle very different categories and customer segments. But what they have in common is an emphasis on unique ways of sourcing merchandise, pulling potential inventory out of eBay's orbit.</p>
<h2>Highly mobile challengers</h2>
<p>Then there are the startups born from the mobile wave, which are trying to capture goods that might never have made it to eBay in the old days.</p>
<p><span>SellSimple, a </span><a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sellsimple-sell-everywhere/id564844291?mt=8">freshly launched iPhone app</a><span>, is working on the listing process directly, promising to make it easier to list on eBay—or Etsy, or a long list of competing venues for sale, including SellSimple's own storefront.</span></p>
<p><span></span><keyword id="1776597" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Poshmark">Poshmark</keyword> and <keyword id="1780249" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Threadflip">Threadflip</keyword>, for example, <a href="http://articles.marketwatch.com/2012-11-15/commentary/35120009_1_mobile-apps-ipad-and-android-apps-iphone-app">let you take a photo of your unwanted clothes</a> and sell them online—things that sellers probably would never have bothered to list on eBay.</p>
<p>Yardsale, a <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/meet-yardsale-the-startup-that-wants-to-give-you-an-easy-way-to-make-money-selling-your-old-stuff-2012-8">relatively new app</a> we profiled in August, is similarly photo-focused. Its founders say it's been successful at getting people to unload everything from motorcycles to office furniture.</p>
<p>"On mobile at least, it's a lot easier to get inventory than it is to get buyers," says cofounder Ed McManus. "One thing we realized is that many of the people who love Yardsale used to sell on eBay, but they left for a reason. They don't want to compete with the supersellers with feedback ratings and warehouses of cheap items. They want an easy way to sell and a fair price."</p>
<p>As a mobile app, aware of buyers' and sellers' locations, Yardseller is designed to broker sales between people near each other. That makes it more personal, too, says Yardsale CEO Ryan Mickle.</p>
<p>"People tell us they appreciate the people that they meet," Mickle says.</p>
<h2>How eBay's firing back</h2>
<p>eBay is not sitting back while these startups are nibbling at its edges. It's created a dedicated mobile fashion app, for example. And it recently <a href="http://www.ecommercebytes.com/cab/cab/abn/y13/m01/i09/s02">revamped its iPhone app</a> to allow direct photo uploads into listings.</p>
<p>It has also experimented with promotions where it's waiving listing fees in specific categories to encourage more selling. Right now, for example, it's <a href="http://announcements.ebay.com/2012/12/sellers-gear-up-for-next-year-list-free-in-outdoor-sports-winter-sports-and-golf-categories-from-january-1-february-28-2013/">running one for outdoor sports gear</a>.</p>
<p>More intriguing are its efforts to revive seller-focused initiatives it had tried and abandoned in the past decade.</p>
<p>We've noticed, for example, a wave of new job listings focused on seller management, including a position for a <a href="http://jobs.ebaycareers.com/silicon-valley/marketing-and-sales/jobid2630692-director-consumer-seller-marketing-ebay-jobs">director of consumer seller marketing</a>. (A former eBay executive tells us eBay eliminated many of its seller account management positions in the middle of the previous decade.)</p>
<p>eBay also appears to be reviving its long-neglected Trading Assistant program—sellers who register to operate storefronts or operate pick-up services to sell goods on consignment.</p>
<p>These drop-off stores once seemed to litter the urban landscape—remember the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6qJ9yqFU_rI">scene in the "40 Year-Old Virgin"</a> where Jonah Hill's character attempts to buy something, only to be told that the goods in the store are only sold on eBay?</p>
<p>That was only seven years ago, but now they seem like remnants of a bygone era. San Francisco, for example, has one lone eBay drop-off store in operation.</p>
<p>Nevertheless, eBay appears to be pumping new life into the operation. In September, we heard rumors that eBay was approaching sellers to pick up goods for them. And sure enough, in its hometown of San Jose, Calif., and in Topeka, Kansas, eBay is running a formal trial where it's sending vans to pick up goods from buyers and take them to sellers.</p>
<p>As AllThingsD <a href="http://allthingsd.com/20130102/ebay-tries-two-new-ways-to-sell-drop-off-points-and-home-pick-up/">reported earlier this month</a>, eBay's also having sellers operate drop-off points in malls, where they're evaluating goods for sale on the spot.</p>
<p>These efforts seem like a seller-focused flipside to <keyword id="1176722" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="EBay-Now">eBay Now</keyword>, eBay's new <keyword id="1659698" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="60" keywordseo="Same-day-delivery">same-day delivery</keyword> service operating in San Francisco and Manhattan.</p>
<p>It's fascinating to think how eBay might eventually combine the delivery infrastructure for its pick-up and delivery services, though for now they seem to be quite separate initiatives. (eBay Now delivers goods from big, brand-name merchants, not small sellers.)</p>
<h2>Why eBay has to deliver for sellers</h2>
<p>Every marketplace operates in a delicate balance of supply and demand. Right now, eBay has a few great strengths going for it: a well-known consumer brand; a highly liquid marketplace; and huge, organic demand from a population that's spending more and more of its budget online.</p>
<p>That growing demand means that eBay's risks have now swung to the supply side. And unlike Amazon, which can buy and stock its own inventory—or even create entirely new things to sell, like the Kindle tablet—eBay depends on sellers for supply.</p>
<p>In the past decade, eBay made the mistake of resting on the laurels of its brand, buyers, and volume. The result was stagnant growth and a punishing stock crash. eBay got boring, stocking the same stuff everyone else had, with a shopping experience leached of the personality that infused the site in its early days.</p>
<p>eBay's personality gap seems like the most intractible challenge for Donahoe and company. Mobile apps are easy enough to build, and eBay has gone on a shopping spree for design and engineering talent.</p>
<p>But a sense of community is the most intangible asset of all, and not one that can be bought or sold, only carefully built over time. That sense of fun, of delight, of human interaction is the ultimate thing eBay has to reinvent—not just for shoppers, but for sellers as well.</p>
<p>The post-2005 implosion of eBay's amazing growth story is a living memory for Donahoe, who joined eBay right as things started to come apart. We have to think he's determined not to let it happen again. But it may be a bigger challenge than it seems.</p>

Insurgent Startups Are Attacking eBay From All Sides

<p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table float_right"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Reuters</span></p></div><p></p></div></div>At the end of July, Homejoy, a start-up company that used the Web to offer house cleaning, hung up its mops, leaving customers in the lurch and Google Ventures and other top-tier private equity backers out the more than $35 million they had sunk into the company.</p><p>Now, with public markets on a see-saw and venture capitalists thinking the turmoil may hit private markets, many investors are wondering if more Homejoys lie ahead. That is leading them to look extra hard at companies that hold similar characteristics to Homejoy: on-demand, logistics-heavy businesses that cater to consumers rather than businesses.</p><p>"They are caught on a treadmill" because to keep running requires more cash infusions, though often without an accompanying move to profitability, said Venky Ganesan, a venture capitalist at Menlo Ventures. He said he looked at about a half dozen such companies in the spring and early summer, passing on all of them, only to see all raise money elsewhere.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>YouTube</span></p><p class="caption">Adora Cheung, co-founder and former CEO of Homejoy.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>While the failure of one start-up might not seem like much, Homejoy's folding attracted outsized interest because it had already raised more than $35 million from high-caliber firms. Most start-ups fail, of course, but they generally do it at earlier stages and lower cost to their backers.</p><p>Homejoy is one of at least four high-profile collapses or retrenchments so far in 2015, counting those that raised at least as much cash, also from top firms. In recent years, among consumer-oriented tech companies, just one or two such start-ups have failed each year. </p><p>Earlier in 2015, assets of two onetime highflyers, social network Path and online retailer Fab, sold for a fraction of the money invested in them. In the world of venture, such sales are how most start-ups fail.</p><p>And in July, upscale grocery delivery service Good Eggs closed all locations except San Francisco, after raising more than $50 million from backers including Sequoia Capital.</p><p>Even would-be crowdfunders have reason to be careful with their mini-investments. In July, <a href="http://www.atg.wa.gov/news/news-releases/ag-makes-crowdfunded-company-pay-shady-deal">a Washington state court ruled against Altius Management</a>, ordering that the company pay nearly $55,000 after it failed to deliver on a 2012 Kickstarter campaign. Only $668 of that sum will go to restitution for 31 private donors from Washington, with the rest going to penalties for 31 violations of the state's Consumer Protection Act and legal fees.</p><p>The Washington State Office of the Attorney General, which brought the case against Altius, claims that this is the first consumer protection lawsuit over crowdfunding in the United States. As such, it may set a precedent for future suits against crowdfunded projects that fail to deliver. </p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>Good Eggs</span></p><p class="caption">Good Eggs, whose San Francisco </p></div><p></p></div></div>Still, venture capitalists say they don't expect an implosion in the startup industry given that many high-growth, no-profits companies have recently raised enough money to give them a cushion thick enough for months, if not years.</p><p>"It may not be a 10 percent correction overnight," said Roger Lee, general partner at Battery Ventures, describing one scenario for the valuations of those companies. "It may be a long steady correction over time."</p><p>And for certain categories of companies, including those seeking funding at their earliest stage, or top performers at the late stage of the start-up cycle, raising money is no problem. A few weeks ago, ride-hailing service Uber raised $1 billion for its China service.</p><p>RISING VALUATIONS</p><p>Rising valuations at those high-flying companies, including accommodation service Airbnb and data analysis company Palantir, helped venture funds attract $10 billion last quarter, more than any quarter in almost eight years. </p><p>For the start-ups, immediate challenges to fundraising face companies in between, including those with revenue in the low single digits that previously raised between $10 million and $20 million, venture capitalists said.</p><p>Six months or a year ago, that kind of performance might have quickly attracted another funding round on decent terms, but not today.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>REUTERS/Denis Balibouse</span></p><p class="caption">Brian Chesky, Chief Executive Officer of Airbnb smiles during a session at the annual meeting of the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos January 23, 2014.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Some start-ups that fit that middling profile - and thus in the current environment might take longer to raise money, on less generous terms - include laundry service Washio, now fundraising, and clothing exchange Threadflip.</p><p>Washio, with $16.8 million raised to date, has developed a strong business model that has led to steady growth and no trouble retaining customers, a spokesman said.</p><p>Threadflip, with $21.1 million raised so far, is increasingly focusing on its concierge model, which resells clothing on behalf of customers instead of depending on them to handle sales themselves. As a result, it is seeing improved growth and customer retention, said chief executive Manik Singh.</p><p>Longer-term trouble may lie ahead for companies that have recently raised $20 million or more but lack the profitability to attract more cash. They have more time, but will have to focus on profit to attract further rounds of venture money.</p><p>Start-ups that raised large sums this year while spending heavily for new customers include delivery-service Postmates, which raised $80 million in June from investors such as Spark Capital and Tiger Global Management.</p><p>Venture capitalists say they plan to watch startups in that category closely to see whether and how they reach profitability.</p><p>Postmates usually offers a few weeks of free delivery when it first enters a market and a $50 delivery credit for some new customers. Then, high charges kick in; earlier this week, ordering a $13 salad in San Francisco required fees of more than $6.</p><p>Chief executive Bastian Lehmann said his company grows largely through word-of-mouth, has just a small marketing budget, and is on the path to profitability.</p><p>"You've got to parse out, who are the ones who save people money in a downturn?" asked Paul Holland, a venture capitalist at Foundation Capital who recently backed Luxe, a valet-parking services company. "The ones that save people money are not going to be vulnerable."</p><p>Because using Luxe typically costs less than going to a parking garage, the company will thrive, he said. Other VCs flag the category for trouble, saying while they may be cheap for consumers, parking services cost too much to operate relative to fees charged.</p><p>In general, VCs search for companies offering a service that customers decide they can't live without rather than companies juicing sales through overly rapid expansion or deep discounts.</p><p>"The more you spend on customer acquisitions, the worse your customers are going to be," said Ann Miura-Ko of Floodgate Ventures.</p><p><div class="KonaFilter image-container display-table"><div><div class="image on-image"><p class="source"><span>HBO</span></p><p class="caption">The cast of HBO's Silicon Valley. The show takes a comedic look at the struggles of a software startup competing for funding in the Valley.</p></div><p></p></div></div></p><p>Homejoy, for example, offered an initial 2.5-hour house-cleaning for $19, leading to too many one-time-only customers.</p><p>At Good Eggs, "the single biggest mistake we made was growing too quickly, to multiple cities, before fully figuring out the challenges of building an entirely new food supply chain," wrote co-founder Rob Spiro in an early August blog post.</p><p>Still, the allure of growth at high cost continues to draw startups, in part because of the success of companies like Uber and Lyft.</p><p>One recent entry to the marketplace that is aiming to spend its way to success is Jet, a shopping service which delivers discounted products to members. It is currently offering new users a free six-month membership. Armed with the $140 million it raised earlier this year from backers such as Accel Partners and Andreessen Horowitz, it can afford the hit - for now.</p><p>A Jet spokesman said the company's business model would allow it to cover customer acquisition costs after its second year.</p><p>Of course, if enough customers return to fledgling startups, the discounts pay off.</p><p>"That is where the good businesses separate from the almost good businesses," said Tod Francis of Shasta Ventures.</p><p>(Reuters reporting by Sarah McBride. Reuters editing by Stephen R. Trousdale and John Pickering)</p>

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Insurgent Startups Are Attacking eBay From All Sides

Owen Thomas

Start-up investors are taking caution thanks to some expensive flops

Reuters,Dan Turkel

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