Panel: Bridging the Online/Offline Disconnect

Bridging the Online/Offline Disconnect Panelists

Sponsored by:

Groupon

Moderator:

Matt Witheiler, Principal, Flybridge Capital Partners

Panelists:

Peter Boyce II, Community and Business Director, Skillshare

Rob Eroh, Head of Product, eBay Local

Vipin Goyal, Company Co-Founder & CEO, SideTour

Alex Leichtman, Groupon

Heard @Cyberposium:

• Tickemaster has been doing online/offline for 15 years.  But the events have changed themselves.  So now EventBrite has allowed smaller venues and individuals to find a market for themselves.  Airbnb is a good example of that.
• Unlocking a new inventory of skills
• Tracking online behavior with offline transaction
• TaskRabbit - marketplace for tasks - microtransactions on your phone for $6, $7, $8.
• PayPal will be rolling out into stores
• Challenge of creating a reputation system across platforms as a buyer and seller across eBay, Etsy, and others.  How do we make this scalable?
• The depth of local business is much greater than we expect.  We all go to the 10 places we always go to, but it's hard for us to discover new places.  Things like Groupon allow for the small business discovery process today that doesn't exist anywhere else. 
• There are a lot of things besides just bring a customer into the door.  We can do buy and shopping in a lot of ways.  One of the hopes is that we can let the shopowner who loves framing art to spend more time framing art, and we as online/offline businesses can take care of the rest.
• In any commerce site, there is a user funnel.  We pay attention to the velocity of new users we bring onto a platform.  We try to move inventory faster online than it can do offline.
• Many businesses set up a facebook page for the first time when they run a Groupon because it's a new way to introduce themselves to customers.
• Unlocking customer recommendation value.  You may be spending half your money on things you don't love - but bridging the disconnect will help you spend 100% of your money on things you love.

Want to continue the conversation?  Tweet @cyberposium and the panelists: @flybridgecap, @badboyboyce, @roberteroh, @vipingoyal, @groupon