Cameesa - The Blog

There’s an interesting new community platform and social network for fashion called Fashionspace. Started in the UK by Holly Bellm and Harry Bridgeman it is:

“A place to buy, sell or swap your independently designed, vintage or 2nd hand fashion and network with other designers, creatives and fashion-lovers”.

I think this was a niche just waiting to be filled, a community platform centered around fashion and specifically fashion designers. As VentureBeat reports, the platform launched last October and possesses a community of 22,000 active members and 800,000 monthly unique visits. Holly and Harry built the community by leveraging relationships with an initial group of designers that would provide credible content. Bellm’s hopes Fashionspace will help uncover new fashion design talent as MySpace has done for undiscovered music talent.

The one advantage I see over other community platforms that Fashionspace intelligently built in, is a commerce platform to allow community members to set up their own boutiques. The feature is very relevant for their niche community of independent designers. There are no fees to participate or to set up a shop. Fashionspace generates revenues by taking a 10% cut from sales transacted on their platform.

Out of curiosity I went to see what they had in their T-Shirt section. For the full story visit VentureBeat.

When trying to get a venture off the ground various options are available for evolving into a service that can serve many. Sometimes it is necessary to look to outside help such as Angels or Venture Capitalists. Rick Segal, a Canadian VC made an interesting post on his blog, “Everybody Deserves 100 Words”. I think it’s an excellent post for those seeking outside help to grow their business. The reason: not the challenge to put your elevator pitch into 100 words or less but the first couple of sentence that puts one in the shoes of the investor which some entrepreneurs find hard to do:

“It’s around 2am in Toronto, midnight here in Edmonton. 260 summaries, plans, ideas, and virtual napkins are staring at me with an evil grin. Grinning because on the flight over, I plowed through 150.”

Rick plowed through 150 plans in a single plane ride? Wow! It just goes to show you how much competition there is out there and how difficult it may be for a potential investor to decide who they’ll help. This is why it is important to have a compelling offering but more importantly the ability to communicate it effectively.

Does everybody deserve 100 words? Maybe, permitted that they have convinced others of the idea, spent time refining it, actually experimented with it to gauge it’s effectiveness, are committed to the idea and can put themselves in the shoes of an investor before wasting any of their time.

Our supplier of choice for T-Shirts, American Apparel has come out with an interesting clothing line that is in tune with their brand image, or as Tim Yu at Cool Hunting calls it: “70s soft-porn fashion aesthetic”. The clothing line is called California Selects, and is a selection of American Apparel’s vintage clothing finds from around the world. Find out more.

Story via Cool Hunting.

When sitting down and brainstorming a t-shirt design you can find inspiration from many places. One notable place I look to is street art due to its rawness and edge. I know many times when looking for the next t-shirt idea I do look at the work of Banksy, Faile and Shepard Fairy and other street artists to get the ball rolling. While searching for some inspiration and street art I came across the blog “Wooster Collective” that is dedicated to celebrating street art. There are lots of interesting works to get ideas from. (Image: Gunflower, in the streets of Paris, via Wooster Collective).

I have a tendency, I’m sure you probably do too, of starting one book and stopping half way through it to read another.

At the beginning of 2008 I swore to myself that I would stop swapping books, unless the current book was “a bit crap (Ali G voice.)” I began reading Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston about 2 months ago and am almost finished. The book consists of 30 interviews with the Founders of startups such as Hot or Not, 37Signals, Blogger, Craigslist and many more. I highly recommend this book for people that want to start their own company, as Vik recommended it to me.

Here is some great startup advice from an interview with Joel Spolsky, the author of a brilliant blog, Joel On Software :

Don’t start a company unless you can convince one other person to go along with you. If you don’t have two people that you’ve convinced to devote their lives to doing this, it’s just going to be a different thing. There are a lot of programmers that are very tentative about starting their own companies. There are a lot of working programmers doing something they hate, with some company that they hate, but they need money to pay the mortgage. So they figure, “I’ll develop something in my spare time. I’ll put in 1 hour every night and 2 hours on the weekends and I’ll start selling it by downloads.” And you say to them, “Who’s your co-founder?” And they say, “My significant other-husband or wife. My cat.”

But because they never really take the leap and quit their job, they can give up their dream at any time. And 99.9 percent of them will actually give up their dream. If they take the leap, quit their job, go do it full-time –no matter how much it sucks — and convince one other person to do the same thing with them, they’re going to have a much, much higher chance of actually getting somewhere. Because they either have to succeed or get a job. Sometimes, “succeed” seems like the easier path than actually getting a job, which is depressing. So quit your day job. Have one other founder, at least. I’d say that’s the minimum bar to getting anywhere.

Are you willing to risk everything, or are you part of that 99.9% and going to give up your dream?

Do the following :

1. Find someone else that believes in the same idea as you do, and is willing to devote themselves to it. (Cannot be your wife, girlfriend, or cat)
2. Get private health insurance.
3. Quit your job.
4. Start the company with your partner and try it out for one year.

If you are succeeding after one year :

A. Continue succeeding.

If you are failing after one year and want to give up :

A. Put the company on your resume and find a new job.

B. Continue paying your mortgage.

Here is how I look at it, I’d rather pursue my dream with 100% passion, and suffer financially in the short-term, then to give up my dream and keep paying my mortgage. You will have the rest of your life to pay your mortgage.

By the way, don’t quote me on this one, I think that your income may be higher when you pick up that second job after failing in a startup. Imagine the experience, knowledge, and connections that you will gain in that one year of starting a company. I think that all signs point to ‘quit your job and start a company.’

I am mesmerized by the work of Si Scott. I love the organic yet controlled forms that permeate each and every one of his compositions. Scott possesses a unique visual style that is clearly recognizable. One thing that also surprises me about Scott’s work is the ability to successfully integrate type in his commercial pieces. In the era of Adobe Illustrator and vector art it is refreshing to see that his intricate pieces are hand drawn. I am compelled to buy a print. The exchange rate hurts a little though. I would love to wear some of the artwork. How well do you think it would print on shirts?

“90% of any application takes about 10% of the time to complete. The last 10% of the application takes roughly 90% of the time to finish.”

This is an old IT adage that holds true for many projects, including Cameesa. So, your application core is done rather quickly, while the final intricate details take the remaining 90% to finish. I think that the last 10% of the application are the difference makers, and take the longest time to finish because they are constantly being tweaked and perfected.

Anyways, Cameesa is 99% complete. We’ve been working on the last 10% of the site for the past 2 months, but we are almost ready. We will be releasing Cameesa on Friday the 13th, ha….knock on wood. We originally wanted to put in some final features but decided to JUST FRACKIN’ LAUNCH.

Click the image below to see our first draft of Cameesa.

We’ve been programming since January 2007, so this June release has been long awaited. Usually people acknowledge others’ efforts once a product has been released, I’m gonna go out on a limb here and pre-acknowledge The Cameesa Team. Thanks for all of your hard work guys, let’s do this…..Leroy Jenkins.

We would like to say thank you to all of the users that gave us feedback on the Beta Site, and we’d also like to thank the artists for submitting their artwork. We are sorry if we didn’t choose your art to be printed, submit it on Cameesa.com once we launch. We have room for one last design when we launch, so let us know if you think your design is the ish (short for sh*t). If we choose your design pre-Cameesa.com-launch you will receive $250 cash, and will start earning $2 off of each shirt sale (after the 250th shirt sold.)

Contact me at kamil@cameesa.com if you would like to submit a design or have any questions comments or concerns.

I have noticed that quite a few of my friends read blogs, and actually have a blog of their own. I have also noticed that not many of them are familiar with a Blog Reader.

So, a Blog Reader is a single place where you can read all the Blogs you typically do.

How does this help you? Instead of having to type in 5 different website addresses to read 5 blogs, you can read ALL 5 blog sites from the Blog Reader. It takes 2 minutes to sign up, DO IT.

I use Google Reader.

Then there is also Bloglines which I don’t much about.

For a great video explanation check out : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

HappyBlogging

Think of all of the things that you love. In my case, i love anything that is challenging, and requires a team. A point in time where ideas are constantly flowing and the possibilities are endless. A team where everyone cares for one another and would give up anything for each other. Simply put, a family.

A place where there is no single dictator, everyone is equal, and any idea is a possible goldmine. Analogous to a green-light session, where every idea is plausible and NO does not exist. A concept of synergy amongst each other, a concept of encouragement and infinite strength.

For example, I felt this when I was getting my Masters degree at University of Chicago, and we were assigned a database project to model a professor evaluation survey. I remember sitting in a board room with two of my colleagues, Raja Bose and Carlos Rivera, and spending countless hours trying to figure out a database model. I remember thinking at this moment : “I love to be around brilliant people that are open and don’t bring others down”, it is much more energizing, and healthy for yourself and the others. Our model ended up being 20 pages taped next to each other, this is definitely something that I would have never designed on my own.

This where I visualize Cameesa in a very short period of time. I respect everyone on the team and I strongly feel that everyone brings something different to the table, I feel that once the ball gets rolling then the opportunities will be endless.

When was the last time you were part of a great team?