New York Times Magazine gives some love to Etsy and the handmade movement they are built around. Etsy are like an eBay for unique products crafted by artsy folks.
The analogy in my own mind is that they are like an online version of the Young Designers Markets nearby where I live in New York.
Initially I dug the products and thought the site was beautifully designed and one of the best examples of usability on the web.
That low bar was the reason I decided to see Rob Kalin, their founder, speak at the Future of Web Apps conference in London a month or two ago.
Wow. I wasn’t expecting what I heard. Rob’s talk was philosophical, passionate and completely bizarre. But unlike 99% of ‘smart people’ who espouse on such things, the kid had purpose.
His talk included a Japanese childrens story about little fish aligning to emulate a bigger fish and his aim in being the ‘eye’ of the fish (he told the same story to the NY Times mag reporter). He talked about Walmart, the industrial revolution and seemingly everything other than his given topic (web design).
The funny thing is that I believed in him. As in, even though he had bizarre reasoning around certain things, what he is doing is utterly admirable and fantastic.
Rob is like a smarter, more worldly and likable version of Mark Zuckerberg. That is, he is swinging for the fences and the ball is already high in the air, sailing toward the seats in the upper deck.
Union Square Ventures may get a lot of street cred because of investments in Delicious and Twitter but this investment more than any other will deliver a huge return for their first fund.
Aside from the Japanese kids stories, the site itself is beautiful to interact with (I bought a few Christmas presents from it). They have a fantastic approach to storefronts and helping build the brand of the sellers. This may be a ‘niche site’ or in the words of Meg Whitman “a cute little business” but I have no doubt they will rip away a huge part of eBay’s business and be one of the most successful Internet companies to come out of New York.
