It has been a remarkable first 6 months in the life of OpenSky. Here’s are a few of my highlights:
Meeting with Dave Epstein at the Amtrak Station @ Route 128 outside of Boston. We didn’t have a website, a platform, an e-commerce solution, a tech team, or any vendors, but we met a great guy (Dave) who wanted to imagine a new way of building commerce with us. He said he needed OpenSky and wanted to work with us to develop the community. Big thank you to Alex for introducing us to Dave.
The conference call in June with all of our Summer 2009 interns dialing-in and listening as we went over the original OpenSky ppt. The questions asked were outstanding and I still think that group helped us create OpenSky more than anything.
Our first NYC Shopkeeper meetup and seeing Kenny, Shannon & Alison, Marta and Michael Ruhlman brainstorming about ways to make shopping human. We ate the worst meal ever, but no one seemed to care.
Our first product: The day Dave sold 10 Bee Houses in 24 hours and I think I may have cried at my desk. When my bee house was delivered to our office, I ran around with it over my head, like it was the Stanley Cup. We now use it to recognize amazing contributions by people on our team. It’s sitting on Adam Saks’ desk for the monster vendor outreach effort he’s done in the last 30 days.
The posts that Shopkeepers did to introduce their enthusiasm for partnering with OpenSky. Like this one from Ruhlman:
http://blog.ruhlman.com/2009/11/open-sky-a-new-ecommerce-idea-and-company.html
The meeting I had with Dr. Ruth (yes, the real Dr. Ruth) when she said she wanted to be a Shopkeeper. She’s so smart, so funny and incredibly real.
The day Matt Meeker, co-founder of MeetUp, came in to meet with me about a job he was considering at another company and I didn’t let him leave our office. Today he’s running OpenSky UX with his partner Chris Keane and they have a 2010 roadmap that is brilliant.
Agnieszka Gasparska and the brilliant Kiss Me I’m Polish design sessions in her store front on the lower east side.
Adam’s Holiday 2009 promotion, orchestrated brilliantly across 50 Shopkeepers, dozens of verticals and thousands of consumers.
Andy’s questions. Jolyn’s faith in teams and work ethic. Greg and Josh’s brilliant Shopkeeper talent scouting program and Barry’s relentless pursuit of fulfillment efficiency. Andy’s questions about his questions. Everyone doing fulfillment ops when our sales grew 10x in 24 hours. Brett moving from GSI Commerce into our office and sleeping under his desk 4 days a week. Bulat, Matt and Steve becoming the world’s experts in Magento.
Our bi-weekly Shopkeeper Town Hall conference calls. Especially the Open-mike call. Brilliant Shopkeeper questions, tremendous collaboration, common goals.
The Extranet. Shopkeeper Gateway. Live!
Welcome Wednesday & Live Friday.
A trip I had to LA, listening to big shot talent agents pitch me that only their talent should be allowed to leverage their twitter followers with OpenSky commerce.
Alan and I driving to work together every morning.
Mike’s distributed buyer network being born. Bringing more opportunity to more people.
Moving into 18west18th Street and raising a bottle of champagne together to toast our future.
The day we said it out loud: We will make relationship commerce available to everyone on the planet.
I can’t wait. Bring it on 2010. Bring it on.
- john caplan