TWiST, Loren Bendele of Savings.com

Posted by SRSimko on July 19, 2009 · View Comments

Date: July 18, 2009

Guest: Loren Bendele, CEO, Savings.com

Our Mission: Simply put, our mission is to help you save money everyday. Built on best-of-breed technology, we offer the best collection of coupons available online to help you find the best savings opportunities. At Savings.com, you are in control of a vast array of resources to help you find coupons and save money. From big ticket items like desktop computers and jewelry to electronics, toys and gifts – we help you search for the best deals available on the products and services you want. It’s that simple.

Pure and Simple

We are 100% dedicated to keeping this site Pure&Simple. What do we mean by this?

Pure: We do not decide which coupons are the best coupons – our members do. Our members and our coupon hunters find the best coupons on the net and then the Savings.com community decides which coupons are the best coupons. If the community uses a coupon a lot and rates it highly it will rise to the top. If the community does not like a coupon it will die a miserable death. Ok, that’s being melodramatic, but it will at least fall to the bottom of the list and not be seen very often. We do not accept payments or any types of incentives from stores to make their coupons rise to the top. If a merchant wants their coupons and promotional offers to rise to the top, they have to create the best coupons.

So how do we get paid? We do get affiliate commissions from some of our merchants for some sales we send their way. However, our Pure engine does not take this into account when sorting and prioritizing the coupons. If a member submits a coupon for a merchant that does not pay Savings.com a commission, we still treat this coupon like any other coupon on our site. If that coupon becomes the most popular coupon on the site it will be the first coupon on the first page ahead of other coupons that do pay us commissions. By using member ratings and usage as our voting system, we let our members decide which coupons are the best coupons. This is what we mean by Pure.

Simple: What good is a community driven site if it is difficult to use? Instead of creating a forum where our users post traditional threads to talk about coupons, we created a simple search engine and category list so you can quickly and easily find exactly what you’re looking for. Members can leave comments on our coupons and promotions but we have those comment sections directly on the coupons to keep the site as user-friendly as possible. You don’t have to search through pages of forums to find a great coupon. Our goal is to have Savings.com be the first and last place you look to find the best available coupons for whatever it is you’re looking for. You can type in what you’re looking for, browse categories or browse your favorite stores to quickly see the best coupons as rated by our member community.

‘Pure and Simple. It’s not just a catch phrase, it’s our boss and it dictates all we do.’

Special Announcement:

Jason joined the Full Tilt Poker Team, Jason feels online Poker should be legalized and brought into the US and that it would help balance the budget. He placed 3,000 out of 6,500 he is extremely frustrated about being bounced out of WSOP 2009, the games man ship was amazing. Full Tilt may become a sponsor.

Ask Jason: (18 min.)

Nathon Stobezki, runs a fashion website (www.myownrunway.com) and is a college student. What is best way to fund a beta phase? Network at events meet VC’s and Angel Investors , start following VC blogs, post intelligent comments, product must be worth investing in, Understand what your product is and put numbers to idea to show grow / potential, try a soft sell approach, try an affiliate type product, iterate and change things if necessary(20 min)
Pete Jimison, Started a venture with brother about 6 months ago a Social Media Application (about 1,000 users).
1. How should I prioritize, should I be protecting my idea or focusing on the business instead? If it is web based it will be tough to protect your idea (if the idea is good it will be copied), focus on business, momentum and scale, listen to customers, figure out how to grow the product, create a long term strategy, what is end goal, ask Angel and VC investors for advice not money. Error on the side of being open instead of trying to hide your idea from investors. It is all about execution. Try figure out the numbers around your business model and tell a compelling story.
Gabrielle Pascoe
1. What is an acceptable salary for a CEO in the investor’s eyes? Be very careful, some VC’s believe a big salary is a big red flag. No VC will want their CEO to have to worry about their family. $100,000 to about $350,000 depends on how backed the company is, if investor is an Angel they may expect a smaller amount but if in a venture round it will be higher. Have the conversation with the VC. They will look at your previous salaries.
2. When you start to engage an investor how long till you get the money? It depends on the economy your network, track record, it will probably take three or four meetings. More than likely take longer than you think, be able to prove the money and growth be ready to bootstrap, if necessary. Be persistent.

Discussion: (48 min.)

Jason feels Loren’s business is unique and he has learned a lot from their friendship.
Grew 400% last year and on track to grow 400% this year.
Raised Venture capital last year (USVP).
Deals come from across the board (community, companies, aggregator, users and affiliate networks).
Re-launching in 2 weeks, adding community element to get more deals.
Primarily paid if they are driving a sale.
Value is the new black; it is cool to save money.
What is more powerful for building a brand? A social or financial contract – Social once people start getting paid for content they do it for the money, fastest way to ruin a community is to pay them.

Questions: (1:10)

To Loren:

Twitinerate (sp), How much was the domain? 2 million, really good terms, name helped a lot in the early days.
Rpaskin, What do you think is the value of startups focusing on “cool” new “buzz” full technologies like Twitter or iPhone apps? Everything needs to be risk adjusted analysis (what is value of idea times what is likelihood of success ex. $1,000,000 x 50% =$ 500,000 opportunity, good gut check) becomes a prioritization que.
Robertrasmussen, Where do you see savings.com in the next 5 years and do you aim for certain vertical categories/industries? In 2 years they are, one of the top 10 in coupon field by next year he wants to be in top 3, more concerned with creating “deal pro” relationships.
Mask, Who will get to 1 billion users/visitors Twitter or YouTube? YouTube (Tyler’s audio too low too hear)

The News: (1:21) Lon Harris

Twitter / TechCrunch document leak – We have free press and it is better to have that than not, TechCrunch didn’t steal documents, just reported information.
Piper Jaffray, wrote a proposal to Google that YouTube should charge for a nominal fee for some content, a tier system – bad idea, YouTube will be profitable, they need to preserve user experience.
Blackbox Republic raised million in funding for a sex positive social network – Jason doesn’t think it will work.
National Institute of Health wants health experts to update Wikipedia – do you think this will make Wikipedia a place to go for health information? The internet is the place to start and then you go to a Doctor and fact check.

Dead Pool: (1:42)

The Printed Blog
- A compilation may have been a better idea.
- Blogs are too diverse to narrow down to print, unless you focus on one topic area.

Notable Quotes:

(26 min) Loren, Persistence, don’t forget you are going to get a lot of no’s so every no you get is one closer to a yes.
(46 min) Jason, In the early stages Angel investors in the first round, VC’s call it they want the juicy white meat they want to be the first person to the turkey, they want to be the first person to the chicken, they want the low valuation they want to get a nice 20, 30, 40% slice of that pie so that when you raise subsequent rounds they’ve already got 30% of the company a million bucks, 3 million bucks, or 500,000 whatever they got, so the next guy who comes along who wants 5% has to pay 5 million or 2 million or 1 million to get a smaller piece of the pie.
(1:48) Jason, Dear stupid people of the world, do not trust any information you find on the internet, any information you find in the library and newspaper when it comes to life and death decisions if somebody in your family is sick or you’re sick go to the emergency room do not look for the solution to your swine flu on the interwebs, go to the doctors if you feel sick, it’s not the end of the world, there are walk-in clinics that cost what 50 bucks? What is the problem with the stupid people of the world who refuse to go to the Doctor.

Homework: