Notes for week #310

One of the things we used to do on our blog, mostly inspired by the brilliant folks at BERG, was maintain weekly notes about what was going on at the WBS offices. I last posted those about a year ago, and as you can imagine, lots has happened since. Since these weekly notes are great way to keep a finger on the pulse of the company and what we do, we’re bringing them back. These are, then, the notes for week 310.

For most of the last 9 months, we’ve been exploring several ideas in the social shopping and recommendation space, eventually culminating in the official launch of Bling, a platform where people share the things they’re buying and add things they want to a wishlist. In return, we’re able to provide users with all sorts of smarts regarding products they might like, what shops may have cheaper items, among other things. The amazing thing about Bling is that once you start uncovering the veil of possibility, it becomes immense.

Bling is also the first project where we’re considering bringing in external funds to help us grow our talent faster. I’m a big proponent of going all-in and bootstrapping businesses – mostly because it is a great way to keep your ass on the line and make people move -, so this is definitely a conflicting position for me personally and the company as a whole. We’re lucky enough to have had a couple of offers already, which we are considering, but they all depend on a visit to California in January (more on that below).

Parallel to Bling, we’ve been mulling a few other ideas for products and expansion. We’ve (very) quietly rolled out a private beta of a product we’ve had on the backburner for a while, that we rebuilt from the ground up with technologies we wanted to explore. More on project M – on which Fabio took lead development role, churning out exceptional stuff – soon, when it is closer to an actual launch.

Plans are being made for a company-wide trip to California in January. I’m sure we can all benefit from a few days in a different environment, and we’re taking the opportunity of the 500 Startups demo-day – I’ll be going as a mentor – to go over for two weeks. Resting, sightseeing and a bunch of meetings with smart people should definitely stir up things around here. Plus, this is something that has been long overdue.

More notes next week. Merry christmas!