Brilliant Shopper

Funding for BrilliantShopper.com

"Aug. 4 /PRNewswire/ -- Brilliant Shopper, Inc., an emerging leader in shopping search technology, announced today the completion of its Series A funding. Led by high-tech pioneers Donald Scifres and Michael Foster of SDL Ventures, this additional financing will accelerate development of Brilliant Shopper's proprietary e-commerce search functionality."
source: press release

more details and analysis at SiliconValley.com

Funding for BrilliantShopper.com comments(1)
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on August 10, 2005 at 9:25 AM
Archived at Brilliant Shopper

Q&A with BrilliantShopper CEO at SearchViews

A nice Q&A session with Phillip Lan of BrilliantShopper, including follow-up on issues raised by SearchViews and Search Engine Watch.

Q&A with BrilliantShopper CEO at SearchViews
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on June 2, 2005 at 6:48 PM
Archived at Brilliant Shopper

Interview with Phillip Lan, CEO of Brilliant Shopper

Last week, I got to talk to Phillip Lan, CEO and Co-Founder of Brilliant Shopper, a metasearch comparison shopping site.

Metasearch engines, which aggregate multiple search sources, have been around for years in the area of general web search. Currently, the Open Directory Project lists 49 metasearch sites and 36 multi-search sites, while the Yahoo Directory has 96 all-in-one search listings. But in the area of shopping comparison, this is a new development.

Like many people in shopping comparison, Phillip cited "opportunity from frustration" as motivation for starting his company. They key to making shopping easy, he said, is to focus on an intuitive interface. (Disclaimer: I agree.) He added that comparison shopping engines need to find a way to scale better, to leverage crawling technology better. So far, so good.

Now, for all the philisophical agreement during the interview, honestly, the week before the interview, I did not know what to think of this site. At the time, it appeared to be a straightforward integration of two feeds, with no hint of the evolution of shopping. But since that time, Brilliant Shopper has added several feeds, including Coupons, Product Reviews and Product Forums. Now that is what I'm talking about!

As for its its overall effectiveness as a shopping tool, I think it is much too early to evaluate. The point is they appear to be moving in the right direction, towards an integration of diverse shopping sources. That, coupled with an explosion of syndication technology, could make Brilliant Shopper a site to watch. "The site comes along every hour," Phillip says.

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Question & Answer

Q: What do you say to arguments that this is not a sustainable business model... that is would be easy to duplicate?

A: (bulleted summary)
(1) focus on the user experience
(2) a combination of external feeds and proprietary algorithm
(3) a partner list that is expanding as we speak
(4) this is beta, proprietary developments will be expanding

Q: Do you plan to support browsers like Firefox, post-beta?

A: Yes, definitely, it is in the works.

Q: When do you plan to leave beta?

A: Q3

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see also:
Products | Services | Coupons | Gift Ideas | About

coverage:
MarketingShift | Search Engine Watch | SearchViews | SiliconBeat

Interview with Phillip Lan, CEO of Brilliant Shopper
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on May 5, 2005 at 8:50 AM
Archived at Brilliant Shopper

re: Brilliant Shopper

About a month ago, I was asked to cover a new shopping company called Brilliant Shopper. It sounded promising, but it also sounded similar to my new hobby of shopping interface design. I alerted them to a post on the subject and we agreed to wait and talk when they were near launch.

They might end up doing what I want to do before I am able to do it, but that won't stop me from giving them a chance to tell their story. Anything that helps people to become better shoppers makes things more interesting for everyone in this space. And if they perfect this concept, I'll have more time to work on Projects B, C, D through X, Y, Z. :-)

Anyone who wants to play with the beta site can find it @ http://www.brilliantshopper.com

re: Brilliant Shopper
Posted by Sean O'Rourke on April 22, 2005 at 5:59 PM
Archived at Brilliant Shopper



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