Launch Pad

Who shops at Stone and Strand? Founder Nadine McCarthy Kahane, WG’12 describes their customer: “The urban woman who buys jewelry for herself and cares about fashion. So she wants jewelry that fits into her wardrobe and looks beautiful.”

It’s an interesting spot in the market, and a relatively new one: “We're doing is, in a sense, bringing fast fashion to fine jewelry while keeping the quality that people expect from a higher end purchase.” Listen to Karl Ulrich and Nadine McCarthy Kahane discuss the changing landscape of jewelry, how to attract Millennials, and how Nadine used her Wharton MBA to switch careers, from healthcare marketing to jewelry entrepreneur.

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Back in 2006, Slava Rubin and his Indiegogo cofounders asked a very interesting question: “Why not just maybe use that ultimate democratization tool, which is the internet, to create a marketplace?”

Unfortunately, the Securities Act of 1933 made that impossible--then. So they found another path forward, and kicked off the crowdfunding industry (Kickstarter, in case you were wondering, launched in April 2009).

A decade later, the rules have changed, and Indiegogo is finally doing what Slava and his cofounders first envisioned: equity crowdfunding. Listen to Karl and Slava talk about equity crowdfunding, how Indiegogo is implementing it, and where he thinks companies will meet with the greatest successes using it. Plus everything you've ever wanted to know about the beginnings of crowdfunding.

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Your kid draws a picture (or you do). Or you take a picture of, say, a half eaten breakfast sandwich. You send that picture in to Budsies, and in just two weeks you get back a stuffed animal of the picture. You can imagine how adorable this gets. And if you can’t, check out Budsies.com, and you can see how awesome it truly is.

Listen to Alex Furmansky and his former Wharton prof, Karl Ulrich, talk about where the idea for Budsies came from, how he tested it—and what happened when, a month before Budsie’s first holiday season, the factory making the Budsies closed.

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What does Curalate do? It makes pictures shop-able.

Why is this awesome? Because unfortunately, as Curalate founder Apu Gupta, WG’05 says, “The pictures are not aware of the products that are inside of them.” This means that when you see a picture of a great microphone or a cute sweater online, you may have to do some serious sleuthing to find out exactly which microphone or sweater it is—let alone how to buy it. Curalate solves this problem. With Curalate, you can hover over the coveted item, and suddenly a “shop” button appears. Click; buy.

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“We hear from parents that their kids are literally putting down their iPads and running to the mailbox to get their package. They are incredibly engaged.” That’s how children respond when their monthly Little Passports envelope arrives, says Co-founder and Co-CEO Amy Norman.

Hear Karl and Amy talk about the growth spurt Little Passports has had over the past couple years--and how they're working to keep the company culture trust-based and family-friendly.

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