philsmy.com

Category: Toygaroo

  • BannersBroker – the old, its not me, its you, story.

    Recently on my blog post declaring BannersBroker a scam someone posted a comment giving a second-hand response from BB UK rep, Jamie Waters. Being the good netizen, I went over to Jamie’s blog and commented on his posting (and video) called Explaining Banners Broker Slightly Differently. I said: Hi jamie, I have heard that you have commented…

  • Toygaroo… the final chapter is numbered 7

    Sadly today Toygaroo announced that it was closing down. It has been an interesting and exciting ride for me. And I worked with some great people. But, not every business works. What seems good on paper doesn’t always pan out. Over the past 20 months I’ve received some great feedback from people who love the…

  • Choose your partners carefully

    When I say choose your partners carefully I am talking about in business. I think it is maybe more important in business than in your personal life! Rarely in your personal life is there a contract to think about. Each partner, no matter how big or small, has a role to play in a business.…

  • Toygaroo in TechCrunch – and growing up

    TechCrunch did a nice article about Toygaroo and the Shark Tank appearance… and the resulting investment from Mark Cuban and Kevin O’Leary. It looks like the company and the site are starting to get some traction and we are still getting some great traffic – even after the ridiculous original spike from being on the…

  • The word is out about Toygaroo and Shark Tank!

    So, now that the show has aired, and most people have watched it either live or via DVR, we can start talking about it! If you want some details on what transpired you can read: this article. Basically, we took $200k from Kevin O’Leary and Mark Cuban in exchange for 40% of the company. These…

  • The immediate aftermath of a Shark Tank appearance

    Last night my company, Toygaroo, was on Shark Tank (America’s version of Dragon’s Den). Our segment was around 8 minutes long. Let me say that we hadn’t really done any advertising before and our pageviews, pre-sharktank, were pretty close to 0, once you factor out employees and testing. Yesterday we had 70,000 page views. All…

  • My company Toygaroo on Shark Tank premiere.

    My new company is Toygaroo. Toygaroo is an innovation in the toy business. It is a rental company – similar to let’s say something like NetFlix – where you can rent toys instead of buying them. It was started by some great people out in California and I was brought on as CTO, bringing along…