Someone Calculated How Many Calories A Mouse Click Burns
Video gaming for hours is exhausting, so surely it counts as some sort of workout too, right? One publication from Japan just estimated how many calories it takes to click a mouse button once.
‘Convert Anything To Calories’, published by PHP Science World Shinsho, has narrowed down a mouse click to 1.4 calories. This is based on an index finger at a volume of 10.8 cubic centimeters, with a weight of 11.7 grams, taking 195 micromoles of ATP (Adenosine Triphosphase) to move the index finger muscles per click.
Um, okay. With the average daily calorie consumption of an adult male and female estimated at 2,000 kcal and 1,700 kcal, respectively, it’s time to get clicking if you want to make any dent in that amount.
(via Rocketnews24 and Yahoo! Japan)
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Business Of Fashion Gets $2.1M Seed Funding From Index, LVMH And More For Its No-Nonsense B2B Fashion Blog
We’ve seen a lot of fashion tech and fashion e-commerce startups pick up steam in the form of users, revenues, and venture backing. But because content remains king, it looks like less tech-tastic sites, working in the area of amassing intelligent data, are also growing: Business of Fashion, a London-based B2B blog that chronicles the ins and outs of the fashion industry, is today announcing that it is picking up a seed round of $2.1 million led by Index Ventures and with participation from a number of movers and shakers in the fashion, online and media industries, including LVMH, Betfair, online shopping site Ocado, Samos Investments; Carmen Busquets; Novel TMT Ventures; and Advancit Capital, an early stage media, entertainment and tech fund launched by CBS/Viacom’s vice chairman Shari Redstone.
Prior to this, BoF had been bootstrapped by its founder Imran Amed, who tells TechCrunch that he first founded the site six years ago “on my sofa” after deciding to take a break from consulting at McKinsey. “I decided to become a fashion polyglot,” he says. BoF was a natural extension of that knowledge. Today’s announcement, appropriately, is being made as the site relaunches with a new design, and coincides with London Fashion Week.
The funding will be used to further build out the site — until a few weeks ago BoF only had 1.5 employees in addition to a network of blogging contributors worldwide, says Amed; now it has five.
While so far the site’s straight purpose has been to publish analysis and news about the fashion industry, it will also start to explore new business models, including launching events, analytics services and premium content. But it will not delve into affiliate marketing or e-commerce, which Amed calls “low-hanging fruit” that grew out of Fashion 2.0.
Indeed, that is a space that has been explored by a number of others, some successfully and others not so much, so staying away from that moving target, and focusing instead on delivering strong fashion editorial, is perhaps the best way of remaining distinct.
This is also what attracted investors like Index.
“At a time when the fashion industry is grappling with the challenges and the opportunities that the digital revolution is presenting, BoF is providing insight and information in a way that is vital in meeting these challenges” said Robin Klein, partner at Index Ventures, in a statement announcing the news. “BoF is founded on the principle that the highest quality information and content is as essential to the business of fashion as to the business of anything. Imran is a fantastic entrepreneur and we are looking forward to working with him as he continues to build this important next generation media company.” Index has invested in a number of other fashion startups including leading a $40 million round in LA’s Nasty Gal.
Of course, there are a number of other fashion blogs out there, both strong offerings from small, lone-gun outfits; and those from major fashion powerhouses like Vogue. BoF has had a number of people approach it for acquisition, Amed admits, but it has so far chosen to keep itself independent. “Business of Fashion is at such an early stage of its development that selling at such an early stage would be detrimental,” he says. “Part of our success has been to be nimble, but part of being in a large structure is that you’re limited in what you’re able to do. On your own means less resources, but it’s my preference at this stage. My mission is to create something that will be around for a long time.”
That independents goes in another direction, too. Like the strongest blogs covering other industries, BoF’s strength has come from maintaining editorial independence from the companies that it covers. Amed says that will be even more the case with companies like LVMH as backers. “We’ve been clear on editorial independence being critical to our success. It’s why we’ve been so successful so we maintain it, but having the expertise of LVMH is important because we’ve been looking for investors who know the area that we cover,” he says. Having said that, he adds that LVMH doesn’t have any input into what BoF covers. “We have it enshrined in our company documents and every investor had to sign that,” he says. “The general response is, “of course that makes sense. If we jeapordize that, we jeapordize our investment.’”
Currently BoF’s readership — which is not a scale play at this point, numbering at only in the hundreds of thousands — is about 60% fashion industry people, 30% “affluent prosumers” obsessed with fashion but not directly working in the area, and 10% students — the site features prominently on fashion school reading lists. Amed says he’s looking to build out in all of those areas.
Release below.
* THE BUSINESS OF FASHION ANNOUNCES $2.1m IN SEED FUNDING TO BUILD NEXT GENERATION FASHION MEDIA COMPANY CONCEIVED FOR TODAY’S GLOBAL, DIGITAL AND CONNECTED WORLD *
* INVESTORS SPAN THE FASHION, MEDIA & TECHNOLOGY SECTORS, AND INCLUDE INDEX VENTURES AND LVMH *
LONDON – 18 FEBRUARY 2013 – The Business of Fashion (BoF) announced today that it has raised $2.1m in seed funding, securing a minority investment from a group of prestigious global investors spanning the worlds of fashion, media and technology.
The investment round was led by Index Ventures (investors in groundbreaking fashion sites Net--a--Porter, ASOS, Etsy and Nasty Gal), and included participation from French luxury goods group LVMH Moe?t Hennessy--Louis Vuitton; Investors in leading online businesses, Betfair and Ocado, Samos Investments; major founding investor in Net--a--Porter, Carmen Busquets; the technology and media investment firm of Hong Kong--based Novel Group, Novel TMT Ventures; and Advancit Capital, an early stage media, entertainment and technology fund launched by CBS/Viacom’s vice chairman Shari Redstone.
Founded by Imran Amed in 2007 as a personal blog delivering sharp insight and analysis on the global fashion industry, BoF has since been bootstrapped by Amed and grown to become an indispensable professional resource for hundreds of thousands of fashion executives, creatives and entrepreneurs in more than 200 countries and territories. BoF content has been incorporated into the curricula of leading fashion and business schools around the world and has also attracted a growing audience of affluent and highly--educated consumers who are fascinated by the global fashion industry and crave access to BoF’s authentic, insider perspective.
“Over the past decade, the fashion industry has been radically reshaped by the forces of rapid globalisation, disruptive technology and a post--recessionary economy, which has created a dramatically changed landscape for executives, investors and other industry professionals to navigate each day,” said Imran Amed, BoF’s founder and CEO. “Our mission is to inform, stimulate and arm these individuals with a forward thinking, globally--minded resource for everything they need to perform in today’s fast--paced, high--stakes fashion world.”
BoF’s highly respected and influential voice, sitting at the very heart of the $1.5 trillion global fashion, luxury and apparel industry, will enable the company to expand into new products and services for the sector. The new funding will be used to build the team and technology platform required to realise this potential.
“Today, BoF enters a new phase of growth, with a great group of investors to support us,” said Amed. “Each investor brings real strategic value to the table, and will be able to assist us in building a model for a next generation fashion media company suited for our increasingly global, digital and connected world.”
“At a time when the fashion industry is grappling with the challenges and the opportunities that the digital revolution is presenting, BoF is providing insight and information in a way that is vital in meeting these challenges” said Robin Klein, partner at Index Ventures. “BoF is founded on the principle that the highest quality information and content is as essential to the business of fashion as to the business of anything. Imran is a fantastic entrepreneur and we are looking forward to working with him as he continues to build this important next generation media company.”
As a first step in this journey, today BoF launches a brand new website, with responsive design for easy consumption on mobile, tablet and web. www.businessoffashion.com
Risk of a ‘Pando problem’? The Business of Fashion blog lands $2.1m from LVMH, Index Ventures and more
In these harsh economic times where B2B enterprise plays make the safest bets, newly venture-backed media companies are a rarity. That’s why it’s interesting to see that fashion blog The Business of Fashion has today announced a $2.1 million seed round led by Index Ventures and including investors in the media and technology spheres. It’s the appearance on the list of a certain big name in the fashion industry that may raise a few eyebrows though.
London-based The Business of Fashion covers news and analysis about exactly that – business developments and trends in the fashion industry. Launched by Imran Amed in 2007, it has taken the same route that many a personal blog has to now hold an important role in its niche while being bootstrapped by its founder. The site has been described as “an industry authority” by Vogue Italia and ”The Economist of Fashion” by Maclean’s Magazine of Canada.
So, why is Index investing in a media business? Well, having previously put money into a number of fashion-focused companies such as Net-a-Porter, ASOS, Etsy and Nasty Gal, it should know a thing or two about the industry. In a press release to accompany today’s news, Robin Klein, partner at Index, describes Amed as “a fantastic entrepreneur… we are looking forward to working with him as he continues to build this important next generation media company.”
In a letter to the Business of Fashion community on the site today, Amed says “We are aiming to create a next generation B2B media company, designed to inform, stimulate and inspire today’s highly connected, globally-minded, fashion industry professionals.”
The ‘Pando problem’?
In addition to Index, the funding round included participation from Samos Investments, Carmen Busquets, Novel Group, Novel TMT Ventures; and Advancit Capital. However, it’s another name, LVMH, that may cause a problem for Business of Fashion. For those unfamiliar with it, LVMH stands for Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, a luxury products group with a number of fashion brands under the Louis Vuitton umbrella.
Can Business of Fashion cover its beat impartially when it’s partly owned by a company it needs to write about? A news site having investors from the industry it covers can be a convenient stick for rivals and critics to beat it with. Tech blog PandoDaily, for example, is backed by a number of tech VCs – a fact that is often brought out by those wanting to criticise the site’s content, regardless of whether that’s justified or not.
Today’s announcement from Business of Fashion includes a note on editorial independence, stating that the site “will retain complete editorial independence from its investors in order to maintain and protect the company’s reputation and value.” Still, Amed may face snipes from those who wish to undermine him any time his site says something complimentary about a Luis Vuitton brand or something negative about one of its rivals.
Image credit: AFP / Getty Images
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Local Business Sales Intelligence Platform Radius Raises $12.4M From American Express And Others
Radius (formerly Fwix), a startup that gives sales people the tools and data they need to scout local businesses, is announcing $12.4 million in new funding from American Express with Comcast Ventures, Western Technology Investment and BlueRun Ventures participating.
As we wrote last April, Radius was founded by Darian Shirazi, who took Fwix, a hyperlocal news aggregator, and pivoted his startup into local sales intelligence for businesses. As a side note, Shirazi was also one of Facebook’s first interns and joined the social network at the age of 17.
Radius has created a comprehensive index of information of over 20 million SMBs for marketers in industries such as business insurance, payment services, banking, credit cards, telecoms and more by pulling data from across the web (including social – Twitter, Yelp, Instagram, Facebook – and location-based content).
Radius takes the hyperlocal data Fwix used to pull together from Twitter, Facebook, Yelp, Localeze, Acxiom and CityGrid and turns it into a dashboard that a sales force can use to keep tabs on successful local shops. You can see news, tweets, reviews and events tied to the place. This data can also be fed into Salesforce and Microsoft’s CRM product, where companies can keep track of leads and follow through on potential opportunities.
So who needs this data? Shirazi explains that daily deal companies can access data like traffic and local reviews to determine whether they should run a business. Or they could see all the restaurants in a neighborhood who have run a Groupon deal. Or Farmer’s Insurance or State Farm could use Radius to find all the businesses who have a three-star rating on Yelp who are likely to be better bets when it comes to being insured. Or GoDaddy or another web hosting service could use Radius to see which small businesses in an area don’t have standalone websites. Payments companies like Square could see which small businesses in an area don’t yet accept credit cards by crawling Yelp and Citysearch.
American Express is an interesting investor and partner, says Shirazi, because the financial organization serves a lot of small businesses with its credit cards via its Open Forum for small businesses. “Good data around small businesses is hard to find,” says Shirazi. “Working with a company like AmEx could definitely help us.” Of course, AmEx could also use Radius to target small businesses to use their credit services as well.
Nearly a year into the pivot, Shirazi is very optimistic about Radius’ prospects as a long-term company. Radius is bringing in real revenue and serving 10 million sales professionals. He plans to use the funding towards expanding the sales, engineering and product teams. Specifically, Radius will expand its index of information about small- and medium-sized businesses.
There’s no doubt that mining the massive amount of data that is now on the web from local businesses is a great idea. As more businesses flock to the web, this data is only going to become more plentiful. There are competitors in the space (i.e. Dun & Bradstreet), but as Shirazi explains this could be a billion-dollar opportunity.
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