#an-inkling.com

Just under a year ago we announced our first seed funding, an investment in gift search engine Inkling. Since then there has been a lot of hard work, moments of success, moments of frustration, tears, laughs, ups and downs. All your standard wild-ride-of-the-entrepreneur start-up stuff. The team has pushed incredibly hard and learned an immense amount. The sum of that learning is that a stand alone gift recommendation engine faces a very difficult uphill struggle to become a viable business. While succeeding in attracting a loyal hard-core following, online retail is a brutally competitive place. It is not clear there is the time to find the path to profitability under the old search engine Inkling model.   

But as you may recall from a previous post, one of the core value propositions of the Inkling service was the expertise and taste of the editors - the bloggers and publishers - who used Inkling as a way to curate a list of thoughtful products in their area of expertise. What the team heard again and again is that these taste-makers were underserved for tools to offer their audiences compelling e-commerce content, and many of them were weary of the typical models for monetising their blogs. Though experts in their area of specialty, they are often not web wizards. The topics they specialise in are often niche, so they typically don't individually have the size to administer separate advertiser relationships, or navigate the systems of affiliate networks. And even if they do, affiliate networks typically cater to mass-market retailers, not the limited run, bespoke products that elicit an emotional response. These published would welcome with open arms a solution that allows them to place and profit from relevant and tasteful products in the right context of their content. So Inkling has spent the last few months building that, and they launched at this September's London Design Festival.

Given that the direction of the business has changed, it seemed fitting to also change the name. Introducing Showroom. If you are a publisher and would like to learn more, the Showroom team would love to show you their dead simple tool. Likewise if you are a retailer of non-mass market products who would like to get your product in front of the right audience and in the right context, please get in touch. That said, it is still early days, and the Showroom team will be rolling things out category by category, making sure they fine tune things as they go. As ever, it is important to move fast, but only if you're on the right path. 

The transformation to Showroom has been yet another testament to the key skill of the entrepreneur: not giving up. Sheer resilience and determination have characterised the efforts of the team, and we are proud to support them. Farewell Inkling, long live Showroom!     

Here are some screenshots of the new service. If you are a blogger and want to start using something like this, please get in touch.

On a final, more personal, note regarding Inkling the gift search engine, I'm not bitter that no one bought me any of the gifts off my wishlist. Really I'm not. Nothing to see here, just a grown man crying because no one gives him toys. Go about your business.

Yesterday I posted about our path forward here at Lokku. Today I'll go into the details of the third leg of our strategy: seed investing in entrepreneurs who can benefit from our areas of expertise. 

We're in the fortunate position of being able to channel seed level funding to other start-ups. While we don't bring years of investment experience, we are very knowledgeable in a few specific areas -  geo, aggregation, open data, and the economics of search (vertical search in particular). We are looking for businesses in these specific areas that could grow faster with an injection of funding and knowledge. Our goal in the next year is to do a handful of such investments. We'll do a detailed post about the types of start-ups we think could most benefit from collaborating with us in the near future.  

Last week we closed our first. We are delighted to be investors in, and advisors to, the gift finder Inkling.  

London-based Inkling was co-founded by Michelle Kingsley and Chloe Ross. Sophia Oliver, who joined as head of business development, rounds out the leadership team.

They each bring 10 or more years of professional experience in law, at major tech corporates like Microsoft, or the government (Sophia was Head of Open Data at the Cabinet office!). Like Javier and I before we started Lokku, they have lived the joy and pain of the corporate world. Now they want the excitement and accomplishment of building their own success. We're humbled that we can be part of the adventure. 

So, why did we invest in Inkling? 

Strong team -  besides an incredible leadership team, they have put together a great team of editors, with deep expertise and a refined sense of taste across diverse categories. 

Good product - with very limited resources the team has put together a compelling beta product. They focus on doing one simple thing well - helping busy people find thoughtful gifts. They are solving a problem they themselves are familiar with. 

Interesting model relevant to our skill set. For the last seven years we've worked to build Nestoria into the most compelling real estate aggregator. Time and time again we get the feedback that users love Nestoria because there are no ads, and yet Nestoria is a database of ads. Similarly, with their clean and simple approach Inkling creates a compelling shopping experience that removes the divide between content and commercial. The faster they help a consumer purchase the right gift, the better the business does. 

Compelling metrics - like us, the Inkling team takes an analytical approach. They've managed to attract a loyal, engaged, and growing user base.

One of the most interesting aspects of the service is the "gift list" feature. Rather than rely on the sometimes cruel hand of fate to determine what gifts you'll get, you can nudge potential gift givers in the right direction by sending them your list of desired gifts. My gift list is here (hint, hint!). 

We look forward to working closely with the Inkling team to help take their vision forward. You can stay up to date on their progress by reading the Inkling blog or following them on twitter. Please take the service for a spin (after all, there are only 48 days left until Christmas), make yourself a gift list, and let the team know what they could improve.

If you are the founder of a business in the aggregation, geo, vertical search, or open data space, and are interested in exploring if your vision might benefit from our support and investment please get in touch.