Continuations

This past weekend was the first annual Ecommerce Hack Day in New York organized by Dwolla and Etsy with support from many other companies. I was delighted to be a judge as there were a lot of talented folks working hard on building interesting ecommerce hacks. Here are some of my takeaways from the weekend. First, there are tons of exciting APIs that people can use to build new ecommerce experiences. Marketplaces such as Etsy and eBay have APISs. So do ecommerce sites such as Amazon and Zappo...

All of my China impressions are to be taken with a fairly big grain of salt as I only spent 12 days there and was mostly a tourist. I am sure people who have been living there for years and/or have started businesses will be more reliable sources of information. With that caveat out of the way here is one of my most important impressions. China has the opportunity to grow its Internet sector by leapfrogging development stages common in the US and other Western economies. This is particularly ...