GrubHub

Founders

Matt Maloney and Mike Evans founded GrubHub, an online restaurant delivery service, in Chicago in 2004. Since then, they’ve expanded into 300 cities, and raised $84 million in venture financing. Matt currently serves as an advisory board member for The University of Chicago Booth School of Business, Polsky Center for Entrepreneurship,

Office/Headquarters: Where is the company located? Do they have a single headquarters, or do they have locations throughout the country/world?

Headquarters in Chicago, New York City and London.

Investors:

During the startup phase from 2004 to late 2007 Matt and Mike did not have any venture capital funding.

In November 2007, GrubHub secured $1.1 million in Series A funding (led by Amicus Capital and Origin Ventures), which enabled market expansion into San Francisco and New York. In March 2009, GrubHub earned $2 million in Series B funding, led by Origin Ventures and Leo Capital, which was followed by $11 million in Series C funding, led by Benchmark Capital in November 2010. $20 million in Series D funding was raised (led by DAG Ventures) in March 2011.

Products/Services:  What does the company offer its users/subscribers? Services, products, consumer goods?

GrubHub Inc. is the nation’s leading online and mobile food ordering company dedicated to connecting hungry diners with local takeout restaurants. The company’s online and mobile ordering platforms allow diners to order directly from approximately 30,000 takeout restaurants in more than 800 U.S. cities and London. Every order is supported by the company’s 24/7 customer service teams. Serves approximately 5.03 million active diners

Method of Making Money

GrubHub charges the restaurant a small fee for each order provided to them. GrubHub charges an average commission of 13.5% for restaurant orders placed through their websites and apps.

Revenues: $60.0 million, a 48% year-over-year increase from $40.7 million in the second quarter of 2014.

Target Customers: Who are the target customers for this company?

Grub Hub targets everyone who loves food but dislikes dealing with phone calls or in person ordering.

Anyone who knows how to use an electronic device can access Grubhub.com or the mobile application

How many customers do they currently have?

The company’s online and mobile ordering platforms allow diners to order directly from approximately 30,000 takeout Restaurants.

How does the company advertise its product/services?

The company advertise its product threw placing ads on many restaurants doors, on neighborhood walls, online banners and threw visual ads place around public transportation.

Competitors/Competitive Advantage: What companies offer services/products that compete with your chosen company? What sets your chosen company apart from its competitors?

Grub Hub compared to its competition those not charge its clients for use of its service. Some Competitors like eat24.com and Delivery.com.

Works Cited: You must document all the websites and articles you use to find the above information. Simply include a list of websites at the end of the blog post.

http://www.inc.com/scotty-cadenhead-and-malachi-leopold/how-software-engineers-matt-maloney-mike-evans-built-grubhub.html

http://about.grubhub.com/about-us/executive-team/default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrubHub_Seamless

http://about.grubhub.com/about-us/what-is-grubhub/default.aspx

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GrubHub_Seamless

http://about.grubhub.com/about-us/what-is-grubhub/default.aspx

http://qz.com/182961/grubhub-and-seamless-take-a-13-5-cut-of-their-average-delivery-order/

Pentagram is a design studio that was founded in 1972 by Alan Fletcher, Theo Crosby, Colin Forbes, Kenneth Grange, Bob Gill, and Mervyn Kurlansky in Needham Road, West London, UK. They now have offices in London, New York, San Francisco, Austin and Berlin.

Pentagram was founded on the premise of collaborative interdisciplinary designers working together in an independently owned firm of equals.The firm currently comprises 19 partner-designers in 5 cities, each managing a team of designers and sharing in common overhead and staff resources. The partners in each office share incomes equally and all the partners own an equal portion of the total firm. This equality, along with the tradition of periodically inviting new members to join, renews the firm while giving even the newest members an equal footing with the partners of long standing. This ‘flat’ organization (there are no executive officers, CEO, CFO or board, other than the entire group) along with the self-capitalized finances of the business, allows equal participation and control of the group’s destiny by the members.

Salaries for Pentagram employees vary depending on job responsibilities, skills, and education, but they are competitive within the industry. Pentagram does not list salaries on its website. The salaries are reported anonymously by employers and employees. As of September 2011, Glassdoor.com reported an average annual salary of $76,000 for Pentagram employees. Salaries for several positions were reported including:

Graphic Designer: $38,000-$60,000

Industrial Designer: $48,000-$52,000

Information Designer: $48,000-$78,000

Graphic Design Intern: $1,918-$2,066/month

Graphic Designer (Hourly): $17-$18

The target audience for Pentagram would be interested in architecture, interiors, products, identities, publications, posters, books, exhibitions, websites, and digital installations. so basely they job is to designed packaging and products for different companies, so the advertise their need it just based on how success they work are. Also in the world there is many other excellent companies has offer services/products that competitors with pentagram, like Checkland Kindleysides,The Chase, Studio Dumbar, those are also some great Graphic Design Firms in the World and also doing with some same or different type of design like Retail design,brand communications, corporate branding and maybe some of print sectors. In general although many rivals, pentagram still have them own superiority, they work for a lot of famous company and create some success logo.

 

Works Cited:

http://www.animationcareerreview.com/articles/pentagram-career-profile

http://www.graphicdesigndegreehub.com/50-best-graphic-design-firms-in-the-world/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentagram_(design_studio)

Samy Acosta

Founder/Co-Founders: Who founded the company? Are they still involved in day to day operations?

Jan Koum and Brian Acton are the Founders of this millionaire app but it messaging app was bought by Mark Zuckerberg the owner of Facebook.

How does the company advertise its product/services?

This company doesn’t advertise itself because the founders didn’t want it app to be  just another ad clearinghouse. They wanted to build something that works and save people’s time.

 

Michael Yunatan

Office/Headquarters: Where is the company located? Do they have a single headquarters, or do they have locations throughout the country/world?

The company has their main headquarters in Mountain View, California. It is their corporate location where they hold all their conferences and meetings. Due to the company having a small amount of employees, they are not located throughout the world.

Investors: Who invested in the company when it was in its start up phase?

Of course, the 2 founders of the company, whose names are Jan Koum and Brian Acton were the first investors in the company prior to its birth in February of 2009. Koum relied on his $400,000 by working for Yahoo. In October, Acton persuaded five ex-Yahoo friends to invest $250,000 in seed funding, and as a result was granted co-founder status of the company. The founders, Koum and Acton agreed to take $7 million from Sequoia Capital on top of their $250,000 seed funding, after months of negotiation with Sequoia Headquarters.

Products/Services:  What does the company offer its users/subscribers? Services, products, consumer goods?

As we all know, Whatsapp offers a variety of services that almost every Smartphone user can find useful and convenient. Aside from the basic instant messaging that it offers, Whatsapp offers the option of sending Voice calls, much like VoIP, over the Data network. Meaning that you do not need to be a subscribed with a cell carrier to send messages. As long as you have WiFi. Also, as of January 2015 the application launched a Web Client that lets computer browser users send messages as well (not only for smartphone users). Additionally, the application lets users sync with other WhatsApp users via your contact list to make your WhatsApp experience more enjoyable. Users can post statuses and share their own profile picture, much like facebook. The application also has a wide variety of emoticons, used for expressing different emotions, ideas, and to add charisma to the conversation.

 

Works Cited- http://www.whatsapp.com/contact/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WhatsApp

Shehryar V  

Method of Making Money:  How does your company make money? Through advertising, subscribers, royalties, affiliate purchases, lead generation, selling data, or freemium payment models? Describe in detail.

WhatsApp makes money through both subscriptions and selling user data. The first year is free but afterwards there is a charge of  $1.00 per year for its users. Whatsapp sells user data to third party companies or uses it for itself. It also gets paid by the appstore and google play based upon how many downloads they have achieved.

 

Revenue: How much revenue did company earn in 2014? (Find the most recently available data. This might be difficult.)

The company doesn’t charge much of a subscription fee and subsequently does not generate much revenue. The estimated revenue for 2014 is 144 million dollars. It is noteworthy that whatsapp was acquired by facebook for 22 Billion dollars.

 

Target Customers:  Who are the target customers for this company?

The target consumers are smartphone users and even some computer users.

Juan Lu

How many current users/customers, etc: How many customers do they currently have?

As of January 2015, WhatsApp had 700 million monthly active users, up from August 2014 when the company announced over 600 million MAU. The company’s growth in India is also pretty impressive at around 5 million. whatsapp is a company that is growing more and more everyday.

Competitors/Competitive Advantage: What companies offer services/products that compete with your chosen company? What sets your chosen company apart from its competitors?

Company :Hike

They offered text messaging, photos/videos sharing. 128 SSL encryption for security of messages.

What makes this company special is that they offered voice calling which are free calls in 2G, 3G and over WiFI. You also can share big file formats as .PDF . DOC . ZIP .AVI etc.

Works Cited:

http://get.hike.in/features.html

http://www.statista.com/statistics/260819/number-of-monthly-active-whatsapp-users/

http://www.whatsapp.com/legal/#Privacy

http://www.businessinsider.com/here-are-some-realistic-revenue-numbers-for-whatsapp-2014-2

Founder/Co-Founders: Who founded the company? Are they still involved in day to day operations?

 The site was launched on June 18, 2005, by iospace, a small company composed of Robert Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik. Later Jared Tarbell joined the team. Former NPR executive Maria Thomas joined as COO in 2008, was promoted to CEO and left Etsy in December 2009. Robert Kalin resumed his role as CEO from December 2009 until July 2011, when Chad Dickerson was named the company’s CEO.

Office/Headquarters: Where is the company located? Do they have a single headquarters, or do they have locations throughout the country/world?

The company is headquartered in the DUMBO area of Brooklyn. There are additional offices in Berlin, Dublin, London, Melbourne, Paris, San Francisco, Toronto, and Hudson, NY.

Investors: Who invested in the company when it was in its start up phase?

Investors include Sean Meenan,  Spencer and Judson Ain, Union Square Ventures, and founders of Flickr and Delicious. Union Square Ventures helped raised about $1 million in two rounds.

Products/Services:  What does the company offer its users/subscribers? Services, products, consumer goods?

Etsy provides a platform for crafters, and hobbyists to sell their goods. Registration is required for both sellers and buyers who want to engage in transactions on the website. Originally, items that could be sold on the site were required to be handmade and vintage by at least 20 years. However, recently the current CEO, Chad Dickerson, has altered some of the limitations on items listed for sale.

Method of making money:

 Etsy makes money by charging a listing fee of US$.20 for each item and getting 3.5% of every sale. The average sale is about $15 or $20.  Sale prices of products are determined by the shop owner. They are sent a bill at the end of every month payable by the 15th of the following month.

Revenue:

 Etsy’s revenue for 2014 was $195.59 million.

Target customers: Who are the target customers for the company?

Etsy targets creative entrepreneurs located worldwide. The company provides a place for people to make, sell, or buy unique items. Etsy customers can find unusual products which are not readily available elsewhere.

How many current users/customers, etc: How many customers do they currently have?

According to their website, Etsy has a global network of 1.4 million active sellers and 19.8 million active buyers.

How does the company advertise its product/services?

Etsy has created an online community where prospective and existing Etsy sellers are supported. Etsy advertises to enlist vendors to join their marketplace through its website, educational workshops/clinics hosted at the Etsy Labs, and events hosted by Etsy sellers sponsored by Etsy through its “Teams Fellowship Program.” This program provides “Etsy teams” with curated packages that are a great advertising opportunity. Educational workshops and team-produced pop-up shops or craft shows as well as direction and feedback for online promotional campaigns are some of the ways Etsy provides advertising support to its vendors.

Etsy advertises to consumer buyers through its website by posting new product features in the site’s main showcase, blog posts and promotional listings by sellers in the community/forums section. Many Etsy shopping apps such as “Esty-fu,” “Etsy On Sale,” “Smart Etsy,” “Etsy fAn,” “Browsing for Etsy” as well as the “Sell on Etsy App” function as advertising/support tools for vendors and help prospective buyers navigate through the vast Etsy marketplace.

Etsy also has its own press team that works extensively with journalists around the world to share “compelling, unique stories,” provide press releases and special reports as well as create submissions to Etsy’s online News Blog.

Competitors/Competitive Advantage: What companies offer services/products that compete with your chosen company? What sets your chosen company apart from its competitors?

Hoovers has listed the following top three competitors for Etsy, Inc:

Amazon.com, Inc., Ebay Inc. and Craigslist, Inc.

Smaller competitors for Etsy include:

DaWanda, based in Germany, this company’s downside is the 5 percent closing fee on sold items, which is considerably higher than 3.5 percent charged by Etsy. Also all items are priced in euros resulting in foreign currency charges for domestic buyers.

Bonanza is a company that focuses on higher-end clothing and fashion but is considerably smaller than Etsy.

Zibbet, based in Australia and small in comparison, has the competitive disadvantage of all payments settled only through PayPal.

iCraft ,based in Canada, is exceedingly smaller and items are listed in Canadian or US dollars, depending on where the seller is located. Most sellers don’t ship across the border so shoppers must check each item to see if they can legitimately purchase it.

By encouraging “competitive positioning,” Etsy has set itself apart from its competitors by providing a community where “sellers of all kinds are continually trying to satisfy customer needs in innovative ways.” Unlike its competitors who house junk resellers to peddlers of mass produced knockoffs, Etsy has created an alternative marketplace devoted to the sale of handmade and vintage items only.

 

References:

https://www.etsy.com/about/?ref=ftr   “About Etsy”

https://www.etsy.com/careers/job/ooNy0fwt  “Seller Education Intern”

https://www.etsy.com/help/article/342 “Teams Fellowship Program”

https://www.etsy.com/community/events/?ref=ftr “Events”

http://www.hoovers.com/company-information/cs/competition.Etsy_Inc.f6a918ae255cc94d.html “Top Competitors for Etsy, Inc.”

https://blog.etsy.com/en/2013/5-steps-to-stand-out-from-the-competition/ “The Etsy Blog: 5 Steps to Stand Out From the Competition” Jeff Shah 3/12/13

http://www.pcworld.com/article/255698/the_5_best_online_marketplaces_for_selling_handmade_goods.html – “The 5 Best Online Marketplaces for Selling Handmade Goods.” Christopher Null, PCWorld 3/18/2012

https://www.etsy.com/press/?ref=ftr “Press,” “From the blog,” “Press Releases, “Reports,” “Press Coverage”

https://www.etsy.com/apps/?page=1 “Apps for Etsy”

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/16/business/media/etsys-success-raises-problems-of-credibility-and-scale.html

Etsy’s Success Gives Rise to Problems of Credibility and Scale By HIROKO TABUCHIMARCH 15, 2015

Gigaom

Om Malik (24 August 2013). “Meet the man behind New York’s other billion dollar internet company. This one makes money”.

https://gigaom.com/2013/08/23/meet-the-man-behind-new-yorks-other-billion-dollar-internet-company-this-one-makes-money/?utm_source=General+Users&utm_campaign=3ca142ef09-c%3Acln%2Cmob%2Ctec%2Cvid%2Capl+d%3A08-24&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_1dd83065c6-3ca142ef09-99463257

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Etsy

 Bloomberg.com

Miller, Kerry (2007-06-12). “Etsy: A Site for Artisans Takes Off”. BusinessWeek. Retrieved 2007-12-19.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2007-06-12/etsy-a-site-for-artisans-takes-offbusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice

 Etsy Prospectus

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1370637/000119312515077045/d806992ds1.htm