Why I’m Bullish on Gumroad

Since SXSW I have been particularly interested in a San Francisco startup you may have not heard of: Gumroad.

Gumroad is an easy way to share and sell things that you create to your fans, friends and followers. It is perfect for the scores of independent artists and amateurs that hustle every day, just trying to make an impact and create things that resonate with people across the Internet and around the world.

How it works

First you create a new link. Give it a name, a description, a price and a picture. Gumroad will then generate a short URL for you to share, perfect for Facebook or Twitter. Your followers will see the link with a short description of the product and have the ability to buy your product off of the Gumroad page, there and then.

All the buyer have to do is enter a credit card number and Gumroad takes care of the fulfillment (assuming it’s a digital good).

Why is Gumroad important?

I look at Gumroad as a tool that puts even more power in the hands of the individual creator, whether they be a poet, a photographer or a graphic designer.

Gumroad makes selling something as easy as sharing a link - and we’ve gotten really good at sharing links in the past couple of years. (Zuckerberg’s Law says that our sharing is doubling year over year.) Since everyone is getting more and more familiar with short URLs, selling items easily though one just makes sense.

Every other solution is really messy. Creating some kind of a store or using Paypal for any purpose just seems like more trouble than it’s worth. If I want to sell a print of photo that I took, now I can throw it up on Gumroad with a few details, add a price and tweet it out to friends and fans. 

If you’re a creator of any kind, I encourage you to give Gumroad a try. It’s very flexible and easy to use on both sides of the transaction. I think you’re really going to like it. 

And if you really like this blog post, you can buy it on Gumroad here.

• April 3, 2012
• 4 notes
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• #Startups
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Sharing Location: How With Judo-flips Foursquare on its head

I was talking with some friends on Saturday night. I was telling them why Path’s new app With intrigues me and why I’m totally turned off by Foursquare.

Here was the summary of my argument:

With is all about people. You can add pictures and location to that if you want but first and foremost it’s about the company you keep.

Foursquare isn’t interesting to me because I don’t really have a changing bond with a place. Tagging the friends I’m with in Foursquare is optional; it’s about location first and people second.

I’ve said for a while that Foursquare and Gowalla were just the first step in location. I love how With turns that sharing model on its head, focusing on people rather than places. Very cool.

• June 13, 2011
• 2 notes
• #With
• #Path
• #Foursquare
• #Social
• #Apps
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