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 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:
Should we change our name to CreLosign?
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40 is a big number, non manageable, remember, in computer matters, the workable number is 7 +-2 … on the other hand, your original idea is what it brought you to where you are, everybody does CC (Credit Control) and it has many shapes and forms, I think Credit is the past, and Reputation is the future, be careful of diversing from your original lane. Because the guy’s name is Diego Maradona it doesn’t mean he is right (well, if it is Maradona … he IS right, but I do not suppose he is a mentor over there). Last, but not least, I read an interesting article about new kind of businesses that are going web, bypassing the bureaucracy and the establishment, car rental, accomodation … you name it … and the key word here is Reputation … Cheers laddy!
after reading about your Techstars selection, I googled for erated and clicked the first match..which was erated.me…..and it was very embarrassing as all my LinkedIn contacts got emails asking for my profile review. While it was my mistake to confuse you with erated.me, I am sure 80% others will do the same. You need to change from eRated or get erated.me out!
Vikas, Sorry to hear about your bad experience with erated.me. We are growing quickly in traffic, so hopefully we will pass them as the number one search result soon.