Category: eRated

Trust in the Sharing Economy: In Conversation with the UK Gov’t

How do we keep users safe? What role should the government play as regulator? Can marketplaces really police themselves?

These were just some of the questions in a free-flowing discussion of the challenges and opportunities facing the sharing economy in the months and years ahead. On 17th October, the UK Department of Business, Innovation and Skills brought together a motley crew of savvy start-up entrepreneurs, passionate activists and keen government staff from a number of departments to talk about one thing: Trust in the sharing economy.

As engaged members of the sharing economy, the British government wanted to know how we envisioned this space in 2025. We dreamed of a perfect world where there were clear laws and regulations from the government; where working systems of redress kicked in when trust breaks down; where the sharing economy is the “new normal”, and where millions of users behaved according to an agreed code of conduct. One cheeky participant asked: Why wait until 2025?

We love lists in the 21st century and, as it turns out, so does the British government. They asked us to list what we thought were the biggest challenges facing the sharing economy. In no particular order, we listed safety, transparency, privacy, verification, insurance and digital inclusion. Can we ever be certain of a person’s identity online? How do we engage pensioners and those from less advantageous economic backgrounds in collaborative consumption? Is it time to rethink consumer rights legislation for the sharing economy?

As a reputation aggregator in the sharing economy, eRated was especially interested in how we can bring together the history and reputation of sharers online to make their lives easier in every marketplace. I was of course delighted to hear one participant ask: Why can’t there be a universal reputation score for every user? Well, that’s what keeps us at eRated up at night!

There was a pretty clear consensus that, for all its risks, collaborative consumers are making the sharing economy a safe place. One insightful comment from a Blablacar staff member noted that drivers are working harder to drive safe in their marketplace because it’s not just the police watching anymore, but thousands of fellow marketplace motorists. Daniel from BIS said his place is never cleaner then when he’s about to AirBnB it! There’s no doubt that intervention from the government can be a positive force, but the people who share are a pretty responsible bunch. We care about our sharing communities.

Turning strangers into friends is something we can all get behind. By strengthening our sharing communities with clearer regulations and codes of conduct, opening new roles for insurance companies, bringing together our various online reputations and protecting our data, we can help make sharing easier, safer and more transparent.

We are delighted to see the sharing economy at the top of the British government’s agenda. This is one sure sign that the sharing economy is far from being a fad and, at least for this small group, is undoubtedly the future.

Do you sell online? If so, READ THIS

Like more than 100 million people, you sell in online marketplaces. Whether its shoes or technology, what’s in the back of your closest or in the top drawer of your chest, you want to make money and help buyers meet their needs.

At eRated, we have been meeting with online sellers to find out what makes you tick. We want to hear from you. You can earn money just by telling us what would make you a better online seller. Please get in touch with us at erated.co.

So what can make you a better seller? Here are some insights from our interviews with sellers:

    1. Join a community. In the Sharing Economy, like-minded sellers and buyers are joining communities online and in person. By becoming a member of the community, you’ll gain the trust of other members. There is one, indisputable fact of online sales: When more people trust you, the more you will sell. If you want to sell that whole wardrobe instead just a few pairs of heels, join a community or get looped into a small online marketplace like SnobSwap.
    2. Look to the Stars. Almost every online marketplace has a means for you to track your transaction history and view your reputation. Normally, it’s summed up by the number of stars you have, in addition to verbal feedback from buyers. Your reputation determines, more than anything else, the amount you sell. Never overlook your reputation. If you don’t have the reputation you want, be more responsive, make sure you deliver everything as soon as possible and ensure your stuff is the same quality as advertised.You are your reputation – own it.
    3. Get to know your buyers. When most people make a sale, that’s usually the end of their relationship with a buyer. Do yourself a favour, get to know them. Send them a follow-up message to get more info. Why did they buy from you and not someone else? What else are they looking for? Can they suggest ways for you to improve your profile and up your sales? Advice is often free, but sadly just as often ignored. Seek advice from your buyers.
    4. Try new marketplaces. 90% of all sellers are selling in more than one platform. There’s no secret, the more platforms you use, the more you’ll sell. In particular, seek out niche marketplaces for those special products. If you sell on eBay, don’t be afraid to use Bonanaza or amazon … be more visible on the internet.
    5. Use social media. Research shows the vast majority of people buying and selling online also have multiple social media accounts. Social media users and e-commerce buyers are the same people. Using social media is another way to connect to buyers. Use your account to promote your sales and get to know product and service communities. It’s free!
    6. Join eRated. Of course, we have to stick in a shameless plug. eRated is free for sellers and has proven to increase conversion rates 10-30%. It’s so easy to adopt and use. There’s just no way we can’t help you.If you would like to get paid to tell us what it’s like to be a seller, get in touch now: [email protected]. We can help you help yourself.

 

eRated: A More Human Way to Trade

Want to be a part of the sharing economy? Start by joining eRated.

For centuries, sellers and buyers wouldn’t dream of buying or selling products, or using services they couldn’t see, touch and smell. Fish was smelled, fruit was squeezed and services were provided by the people you knew, almost always in the same town market. Trust between sellers was built on familiarity, rather than on a brand or corporate emblem.

This changed in the 20th century when the vast majority of goods and services purchased by the average consumer came with a corporate tag. The “marketplace” narrowed to the consumer and a small collection of corporate providers. You bought from “trusted brands”. Brands were trusted because they came with history, a history of quality and the confidence that comes with scale.

In the 21st century, we’re harkening back. Collaborative consumption is returning consumers and sellers to marketplaces again. The difference now is we’re not confined by geography, as in the past, but by the anonymity that comes with the online marketplace. We can’t touch our goods and we don’t know our sellers. Additionally, individuals and small enterprises don’t come with global corporate brands. So, in the shared economy, where does trust come from?

Trust can only be built in one way: Reputation. eRated is the world’s first tool built to bring the trust of town marketplaces to the global, online shared economy. eRated spans the divide between hundreds of marketplaces, large and small. It works for first-time sellers and large-scale buyers. eRated is free because it’s filling a crucial need: The need to establish trust between tens of millions of sellers who don’t live in the same town and don’t shop in the same marketplaces. It’s the friend of a friend who told you, “You can trust this woman because I’ve bought from her before.”

Collaborative consumption is returning us to the way exchange should be – between people who care about their products and a marketplace where quality is guaranteed by reputation, not by a corporate brand. eRated is offering the world a more human way to trade.

Be a part of the collaborative consumption movement by telling your friends about eRated:

Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/erated.co?fref=ts

Share us: http://vimeo.com/105763293

Visit us our website: erated.co

Hiring Awesome Engineers

We are finally branching out and starting to expand our warm and cozy family. From a tight group of 4 individuals, we have reached a point where we need to bring in strangers-soon-to-be-family (like you) to share this vision of ours of building something grand that can change the world.

So…we sat down as a team and started thinking – how do we bring individuals that not only we trust and admire them for their brilliance, but that can also match our company’s culture and responsibilities?

We are looking to build a relationship here and every relationship is about buying and selling. We buy your productivity and creativity and we sell you a salary and sense of belonging.

In every relationship, you always give and take. Relationships are best when there’s a lot of trading going on. An interview is very much like that. It’s about both of the parties involved evaluating the worth of the trade. Most companies out there focus on how the employee can better and improve the company, but as with any trade, if it’s one-sided, one sided will feel neglected.

In this blog post we’ll put out offer on the table.

The basic process that an interviewee will go through in our company is:

  1. Research: CV, referral or Linkedin hunt.
  2. Flirting: We do 2 Skype/Google Hangout interviews-
  • Attraction – An initial call with one of us.
  • Going out with our friends – A second call with a CTO friend.

3. Homework: We give you a challenge that fits your skillset.

4. Dating: We bring you in for an in-person interview and fun day with us.

Selling:

Research Phase

We like to give you, our candidates as many opportunities to research us and our company.

  • Our Linkedin profiles can be found here: Dan, Yoav, Boaz, Guy.
  • In this blog you can read about our experience through TechStars.
  • You can read about our technology stack (bit further below) and identify what you are already familiar with and what you’ll need to catch up upon if we both decide it’s a fit.
  • In the informational document we provided you with, you can get up to speed with our vision, product, market and competition.

We believe that the more information we provide you with to get to know us, the better. We expect you to use this information as a basis for discussion points in the later interview phases. We expect you to know a little bit about what eRated does and the kind of culture we expect to maintain. We have written this blog so we can make things public because we want the candidate to be armed with questions, concerns, or ideas for improvements. We want you to have an idea of what we’re selling.

Flirting Phase

This phase will include 2 sessions - one with one of us and one with one of our CTO friends (we’ll explain the rationale behind this below).

First session (‘Attraction’) – In this session, it is our job to clarify all the muddled points that we couldn’t convey properly in the information we sent over about our product, hiring process, vision, culture, our and your expectations. We’ll ask you about your background in the various companies you worked in, what you think you have accomplished and what you’re still trying to achieve, we’ll ask you to elaborate about a problem or two you were faced with and expect you to explain how you solved it. Essentially, we’ll do everything that you’ll typically do in a first date condensed into a 30-45 minute conversation.

It is your goal making sure eRated fits what you’re looking for and it is our goal in this conversation to make sure you fit our company culture. So what is our culture you ask?

Well, our ideal employee is an employee that always pushes himself forward and tries to do the maximum he can instead of thinking about just accomplishing the structured set of tasks we allocated for the sprint. Our ideal employee is an optimist and has a positive attitude. Our ideal employee is one that puts the team’s interest above his own. We’re looking for people with an entrepreneurial mindset and not small minded employees (worked in a startup? even better). We’re looking for managers, individuals that can manage themselves and in the future – others as well. We’re looking for people that love what they do and loving educating themselves on new topics (when you learn, we learn – your ideas are essential for our growth). And last, but definitely not least, we’re looking for people whom we’d love to hang out with in the office and outside of it (Tuesday team night out!).

Second Session (Interview with a CTO from our circle of friends) – The rationale behind this interview is that we as a team are very much biased to look for exactly what we need. By outsourcing this interview to a person whom we totally trust, we are able to have a neutral person do an in-depth tech interview and point out your strengths and weakness (we all have those) so we can take notice of them in later stages.

Homework Phase

If both interviews went well, as a next step we give out a take home quiz. This is reflective of the kind of job you’re going to be doing at eRated. If you’re a full stack guy or gal, we’ll ask for a small project that does one difficult thing, then we tell you that you can add all the bells and whistles you want in order to showcase your abilities. We make the challenge vague enough to have you interpret it on your own and build something fun and interesting. This is another selling point - that we don’t tell you how to complete your work. You should research and decide for yourself the best course of action. That’s how startup world is. Specs are meant to be broken, cut down, expanded upon, or even thrown away sometimes. We’re selling you that you’re not followers, but leaders. You have a brain - and you will use it.

When the homework comes back, we’ll have one of us take look at it. If it’s worthwhile, we’ll show it to the team. They’ll comment and critique and we can move forward to the dating phase J

Dating Phase

The dating phase is our last step in the process. We need to make sure we feel comfortable working with you and you feel at home working with us. In this session, you will essentially have some alone time with every single person in the company. An example day can look like:

1000 Intro Meeting with Boaz

1020 Homework walkthrough with Guy

1130 Breakfast or lunch with Dan regarding business, sales and technology

1230 Beer with Yoav - talking about product and design.

1330 Company vision and next steps with Boaz over some good Italian coffee.

We believe it’s just common courtesy to give people an idea of what they’re walking into. Plus it helps to align the team so they don’t overlap questions or waste time by asking “fluffy” questions.

Finally, you, the candidate know the entire team, you’ve seen how we work and you’ve asked your questions. We’ve sold you all we have to offer. And that’s all we can do.

Eventually, our goal is to have you leave the eRated office thinking, “I’m so excited about building and hacking with these guys!”

Buying:

Essentially we’re trying to buy three things from a candidate: 1. Technical abilities. 2. Ambition. 3. Culture.

In the Research Phase we’ll be looking to see that you have relevant experience in our field. We’ll be looking to see the products you built and the open sources projects you have contributed to. We don’t really care whether you went to university or not as in the past we’ve met engineers who were far superior developers than the PHDs we met. We’re looking for people who write code as a passion and not as a job. We’ll be looking for people who talk and breathe technology like we do.

In the Flirting Phase, we’ll ask you what kind of blogs you read and how do you stay up to date with your current technology stack and new and unfamiliar tech stacks. We’ll ask you who you’re code mentors are.

We’ll go over your cover letter and drill down into the listed topics until you can’t elaborate further or we feel that you know more than us about the topic and we ran out of smart questions. The point here is to invoke a good discussion between us.

We’ll ask you why you want to work with us at eRated. If you don’t have a compelling answer here, we’ll not buy into what you’re selling…

In the Homework Phase, we love seeing homework with a detailed readme that discusses the choices you have made. The homework should show that the candidate exerted effort and that you enjoyed it. Enjoyment shows in the work both in the quality and the attention to detail. Talk about your contemplations when building this project and why did you choose implementing it the way you did.

We prefer our candidates write their homework using our development stack (or at least some it):

App - Ruby on Rails, Postgresql, MongoDB, Redis (for Sidekiq), Memcached

We deploy with Capistrano and we are on AWS (EC2, RDS, Elasticache, S3)

Api - Ruby, Grape, Postgresql

We deploy with Capistrano and we are on AWS (EC2, RDS)

Widget - Backbone.js + Marionette

We deploy with http://dploy.io and it is hosted on S3 and Cloudfront

Dating Phase

If a candidate makes it all the way to the dating phase, there’s magic in the air. We want them to ask everyone on the team questions, about testing, process, design, new product ideas, hackathons. The more questions the better. In fact, the more questions the candidate asks, the less judgmental the team is. We’re so busy painting the picture of our ideal work environment and how we’re making a difference that we unconsciously blend all those good feelings and thoughts with the candidate’s presence. If the conversation is good, the team feels like the candidate understands and can help drive us forward.

Besides communication, the basics are checked. Is the candidate an asshole? Would they not fit in with the team? Can he cope with the Israeli mentality?

Trading Phase

After the Dating Phase, we meet as a team and see if we want to buy what the candidate is selling. We go through a quick debriefing and vote together (hire or no-hire). The entire team makes this choice, and we only hire individuals who are unanimously voted positively. If the trade happens, we all celebrate together and then of course, get back to work J

We want to give a big thank you to Buford Taylor from Shortcut with all the help writing this blog post and helping us refine our hiring process.

eRated 2.0

 

I am thrilled to announce the new version of the eRated widget has now been launched.

We have been working really closely with our partners to better adapt, enhance and customize our existing solution. Let’s take a look at a couple of the new features and enhancements now available:

Widget Face liftKeeping up with latest trends in the design world, our widget is now completely flat. Not only it’s beautiful, it also loads 40% faster from our brand new CDNs.

Localization

Our widget can now be localized to French, Italian, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Dutch and German.
New Slider and Horizontal modes

For sites where space is either scare or abundant, we offer two new widget presentation modes - the Horizontal mode and Slider mode. Neat isn’t it?
Fully Responsive

Our widget is now fully responsive and adapts itself automatically to different screen sizes (both on mobile).

Subscribe to Seller Updates - It’s hard when you have no data about a seller. That’s exactly why we created subscribe mode.

This mode allows buyers to subscribe to updates about the seller once he connects additional accounts, bringing traffic back to your site.
Last, but not least, we have created a super cool demo page which demonstrates the eRated plugin in it’s various states, from both the buyers’ and sellers’ point of view - Check it out at https://demo.erated.coWe’d like to finish by saying that your support keeps us going and motivated. So share some love, ask some questions, and let’s strengthen the ties of our partnership.
Dan & the eRated team

 

Customer Development, the Mom Test and GSD

Another week has passed, and once again we are left with more questions than answers. However, these are good questions, questions we can learn from – even by just observing our customers when posed with the same questions.

This week we have gone through a series of extremely interesting “Mini MBA” sessions taught by leading industry experts. Each session was completely different, but all were with the same purpose – cramming new tools and ideas to cope with these new questions. Whether it was pricing, recruiting or sales, in a startup of 4 people, you need to have all of them. And as Guy likes to say it, titles are insignificant – all of us are CGSDOs – “Chief Getting Shit Done Officers”.

Amazing business opportunities have surfaced or have come back to life with potential partners this week. One of these opportunities is with a market leader in the field of e-commerce. To better prepare we applied the Customer Development framework.

Customer Development is a four-step framework to discover and validate that you have identified the market for your product, built the right product features that solve customers’ needs, tested the correct methods for acquiring and converting customers, and deployed the right resources to scale the business.

[Brant Cooper & Patrick Vlaskovits]

Say what?
Essentially, Customer development is a tool that allows you to validate quickly with your customers that you’re not going in the wrong direction and your business assumptions are correct.

A key idea emphasized in this method is the “Mom Test”.
They key principal is that any question you ask your customer (in the process of a customer interview) should be open for the “wrong answer” on his end without him knowing that he is hurting your feelings.

Going back to the analogy: If you ask your mom a question and she knows that you’ll be hurt provided her honest answer, she wouldn’t answer the truth.

Meaning, any question should be phrased in a manner that even if you ask your mom this question, she should be able to answer truthfully without knowing she is hurting your feelings.

“What do you think about our solution to your problem?” = BAD
“What do you think if one were to employ this kind of a solution to your problem?” = Better

Honest answers, however brutally painful they can be, are much more interesting for you and your business than having a sugar coated response and patting yourself on the back.

—

This week we are going to have an important discussion with this market leader. To be honest, we are not yet sure on how it will go or how good our solution fits his needs. However, we do feel a bit more confident, employing this method to getting an initial validation to our assumptions.

Happy Passover and Easter!

Surviving our first Mentor Whiplash

Week 2 of TechStars, formally known as mentor whiplash in the TechStars community is over. And again, same as every week, we sat down as a team to reflect and think about our accomplishments and the approach we should take to filter, pick and incorporate the advice we received about our product.

A ****load of Mentors

Our first mentor week was a series of 40 back to back mentor meetings. Our mentor list was composed of 10 angel investors, 11 venture capitalists, 5 marketing gurus, 5 startup founders and 9 other specialists (UK’s crème of the crop experts in startups and tech).

Off-course, 40 meetings also meant receiving 40 different opinions about our business in 5 days’ time. It’s safe to say that we got some excellent advice, but I’ll focus on thing that resonated with us.

Be the Champion

Be the champion of the sellers, the marketplaces will come on their own
eRated provides value to all parties involved in a transaction: buyers, sellers and the marketplace.

The buyer receives additional information about the seller and gains confidence to make a transaction with an anonymous, semi-reputable seller (who has been vetted in the past by other buyers).
The seller, by merging his online identities into one score (eRated’s widget), is now able to prove his identity to the buyer, thereby increasing his sales.
The marketplace earns more money by increasing the number of transactions on its platform.

By focusing on the seller, the goods or services provider, and making him/her a happy user, eRated will indeed lead to better results. Happy sellers will encourage their marketplace to use their eRated scores, introduce eRated to other sellers and build our brand as the ultimate source of seller reputation online.
Very soon, we will start publishing our eRated sellers’ success stories. In these stories we will show how using eRated has changed the lives of our sellers and has increased their profitability. STAY TUNED!

This week has been extremely useful. Mostly, we truly enjoyed the associations each of the mentors assigned to our business:

“The Credit Score for e-commerce merchants”

“The Klout of e-commerce”

“The Verisign for people”

Should we change our name to CreLosign?

Week one of TechStars London is over – Lessons learned

Week one out of the 13 weeks of the TechStars program is over and we are thinking “what were we able to accomplish and what are the lessons learnt throughout the past week?”

TechStars is your family for the next 3 months
One of the first sentences Jon Bradford, the general manager of TechStars London said to us was: “Look at people surrounding you. These are going to be your family members for the next 3 months. This group contains former CEOs and CTOs of successful companies, lead designers from different fields, nuclear scientists (shout out to the Lingvist team) and PHD fellows (check out the awesome group from Madrid - Proximus).

We get it. This group has a phenomenal skillset that together can create amazing companies.

To get this family feeling, the TechStars team organized 3 drinks events (warning: I may become an alcoholic at this pace), a stag-hunt across London and a show and tell event where each team discusses where they are at, what they hope to accomplish and how they can use us to help. These relationships and the bond we will create are definitely off to a good start!

Stop Using Vanity Metrics!
As an ongoing process in TechStars, companies have a weekly meeting with their managing directors (in our case, Jon Bradford and Jens Lapinski) to understand where the business is at, how to grow it and how to measure this growth.

As part of eRated’s first meeting, we discussed our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) for successful growth. Among the important KPIs we measure, we also listed “Number of Marketplaces” and “Number of Users”. These two KPIs are what Eric Ries (author of The Lean Startup) calls Vanity Metrics.

Vanity metrics are all those data points that make us feel good if they go up but don’t help us make decisions. In our case, the number of users in our system and the number of marketplaces using our platform will grow due to our business development efforts. But how can we act upon this growth? Wouldn’t measuring growth in the number of users per week make more sense?

After this meeting, we refactored and minimized the number of KPIs that make our business tick. In the next posts I’ll keep you posted as to how we are KPIS are doing.

What have we accomplished?
I am sure most of you had the chance to check out our new and beautifully designed website. This was a big win for Guy and Yoav and for us as a team. In addition, we plan to finish up our roadmap for the next 6 months and our design of the new API is set to launch next week.

What do we hope to accomplish next week?
First off, survive the first “mentor whiplash” (a process in which each team meets 20 different mentors and gets bombarded with opinions and comments). Second, complete the development of the new API and launch this new version so we can start testing it out with our users and marketplaces.

Thanks for reading and see you in a couple of days! For now, feel free to comment here with any thought, question or comment and/or send me an email at [email protected].

Dan

The eRated Team

So… We’re a day after launch and friends, investors and interested parties keep asking me to tell you all a little bit about my team. Well, it’s not every day that a team of Israelis get into TechStars.

So here goes -


CEO, Boaz Cohen

Boaz is an ex-basketball player gone business, ex-nerd gone cool and ex-product manager gone CEO.
A true passion for changing the world with a smile and his keyboard, Boaz holds an L.L.B from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and is an alumni of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program.
.


Product Manager, Yoav Artzi

Yoav is a beach-boy that somehow got coerced into a startup.
He holds a true eye for design and visuals, working in the past for 24me and approx. 50 other Israeli startups as creative lead.Yoav holds a BA in communications from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and is an alumni of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program.



CTO, Guy Maliar

Guy is a StackOverFlow Monster, a Jiu Jitsu fighter and a cat lover.Guy taught himself to code when he was 16, and does it ever since. He is passionate about DRY coding and Ruby On Rails.Fun Fact, Guy’s original name is Ermenegildo.




Business Development, Dan Benjamin

Dan is a corporate consultant who saw the light and joined the good guys. Dan has 8 years of experience in the world of software development working in a range of companies in the Israeli hi-tech scene. Dan holds a BA in computer science from the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzliya and is an alumni of the Zell Entrepreneurship Program. Fun fact: Dan is part Mexican, Indian, Iraqi and Polish.

I think it’s quite obvious that we are thrilled about the journey to come and about being part of the great TechStars family.

Till next time!

eRated, meet World. World, meet eRated

Hi everyone,

We are thrilled and excited to bring to life our passion and creation, eRated.

creates a single identity for e-commerce sites, allowing online buyers and sellers to utilize their already existing reputation everywhere they go.

By using a universal identity, you will now be able to operate in more marketplaces, reach more customers and increase your conversion rates and sales as you no longer need to re-build your reputation (ratings, reviews and comments) in each site you operate in.


eRated uses a reputation widget which is displayed in our partner sites. This widget aggregates and summarizes the ratings and feedbacks you have earned across various marketplaces, ultimately increasing your potential buyers’ trust.

We are launching our full system in a weeks time, working extremely hard on building the beautiful and intuitive widgets you will be able to utilize as your one and only e-commerce identity online:

Stay tuned!