The Coming 'Experetail' Boom

[ Nespresso Boutique in San Francisco - photo via Yelp ]

Retail is fracked.

It's so obvious to those of us with Amazon Prime accounts, Zappos on our iPhones and Fab.com bookmarked.

Marc Andreessen said all retail will be gone, and that's not as earth-shattering a prediction as it seems.

If you can save time or money you're probably going to do it -- if you can do both? Game over.

I haven't had to pick up coffee, razors, deodorant, shoes or shirts in a couple of years.

The only time we go shopping any more is for perishables or an 'emergency run' as we call it. I'm guessing if you're on this list, you're like us.

However, I took my daughter to the Disney Store last month, and we had a blast looking at everything. Her favorites were the mirrors from Snow White and the video jukebox. She didn't want to buy anything, even after I gave her multiple choices of her favorite characters. I bought a Peter Pan playset out of guilt for the mouse company. Sympathy buy since we were there for an hour playing with stuff.

She had enough of an experience that she didn't need to purchase anything.

I find myself doing that as well at shoe stores, the Apple store or Saks. In fact, I looked for a new wallet at Saks, and they were so overpriced ($100?!), that I pulled up the top wallets on Amazon while in the store and ranked them by popularity. They were all $10-$25. I bought three of the top 10 for < $50. I have two backup wallets now in my valet. I'm done for the next 10 years -- at least.

Everything will come crashing down and Amazon will win it all -- it's certain -- what then?

In other words, working backwards from Sequoia's 'Why now?', what founder with what product would answer 'because retail is dead and everyone orders online!'

The answer?

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The 2nd Annual LAUNCH Education & Kids Conference Set for June 26 & 27!

We're excited to announce the 2nd annual LAUNCH Education & Kids conference, June 26 & 27, 2013 at Microsoft's campus in Mountain View. In addition, this year we’ve partnered with Pearson for a bigger and better 2nd year of the conference!

We want to make sure we get as many awesome teachers and administrators involved as possible this year, so if you'd like to attend or know someone who should, please leave your email here.

Check http://launchedu.co/ for updates.

Last year, we showcased 30 edtech startups targeting everyone from preschoolers to adult learners, parents to school administrators, plus we had inspiring talks from Marshall Tuck of the Partnership for Los Angeles Schools and Atari founder & BrainRush founder Nolan Bushnell. Watch these keynotes on 'This Week in Startups.'

Highlights from the 2012 event:
http://blog.launch.co/blog/live-blogging-launch-education-kids-day-one.html
http://blog.launch.co/blog/live-blogging-launch-education-kids-day-two.html

Support LAUNCH Education & Kids by sponsoring lunch ($15k), dinner ($20k), breakfast ($10k) or coffee ($7.5k)... all come with an exhibition table. Or just an exhibition table ($3k). Email partners@launch.co for more info.

Catch Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya at the LAUNCH Festival, Plus over $300k in Investment Prizes!

It's just 17 days till LAUNCH Festival 2013 (#Launch2013) at the San Francisco Design Center, March 4-6 -- eek! @Jason and Tyler rehearsed with 25 of the 35 selected companies this week at Sequoia, now we just need to choose the final 15 startups for the stage from hundreds of applicants. If you applied, you'll hear from us by Friday, Feb 15.

Other awesome news to share with you:

1) Fireside chats with Ev Williams and Chamath Palihapitiya

We are honored that Ev (co-founder of Twitter, CEO at The Obvious Corporation) and Chamath (former FB exec & partner, The Social + Capital Partnership) will sit down with Jason for fireside chats!

You can catch Chamath at 9:15am on March 4, and Ev right after lunch on March 5.

Their bios are at http://festival.launch.co/keynotes.html

2) Wow, more than $300k in investment prizes!

Once again, a number of angel investors and funds have earmarked investments for LAUNCH Festival startups. These investments will be announced on stage, and of course are pending post-conference due diligence and paperwork.

 * Altimeter Capital (http://www.altimetercapital.com/) - $125k
 * TechStars (http://www.techstars.com/) - $118k
 * Attractor (http://www.attractor.com/) - $25k
 * Persefon (http://www.persefon.com) - $25k
 * Steve Chen (https://twitter.com/a5steve) - $25k

If you're interested in putting up a prize of $25k or more, please contact partners@launch.co.

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That Was Interesting

Wow.

Now I know why so many intelligent, considered and honest folks told me to not blog about race.

Over the last 24 hours I've been savaged by folks calling me clueless, "the problem" and a  racist.

I've also had 100+ emails from minorities telling me I was 100% right and that they were happy I had joined the discussion.

In other words, the feedback has been polarized -- but not along racial lines. Some of the most brutal commentary has come from white males in the media business. Some of the most supportive emails have come from African Americans, Latinos, Indians and Asian-Americans.

Man did I try to write a balanced piece. I really did. I've never had so many folks tell me I got it so right and so wrong at the same time.

My friend Anil Dash pointed out to me why some responded so passionately: my experience and views do not give enough focus to the fact that many people have actually experienced horrible bias in their lives.

He says I'm denying folks their own experience.

I never intended to deny anyone's individual experience. Sorry if that's the way it came across.

My main premise is that we're shifting from a world in which race drives people's behavior to a "post-race" world. Not that there is no racism or that we have reached the post-race world.

I also was super clear that I was only speaking only about the tech industry and tech blogs -- not all of society. I'm an expert on the former and a neophyte on the later.

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Doing the Right Things

‘When he came, in the game, he made his own lane
Now all I need is y'all to pronounce my name’
-- Mr. West

I’m a white guy so I’m not allowed to talk about race.

At least that’s what they tell me.

Don’t talk about it because it’s a zero-sum game -- and you’ll lose. White guys get all the breaks, and as such we can’t contribute to the discourse.

But I believe we’re on the precipice of a post-race world, and many of us took the leap long ago. We have mixed-race families, diverse startups and we -- gasp! -- select our music based on how it sounds, not the ethnicity of the performer.

We don’t have hatred in our hearts for people, except maybe for inefficient people. Oh yeah, and for the people who build bad products -- we have a lot of hate for them!

Sadly, we live in a world where race still is an issue because some folks haven’t made the leap. Those folks are old and dying in many, perhaps most, cases.

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