wallabe

I never said he wasn't pushed, but I wouldn't make it sound like he was fired. The role didn't evolve as expected and so there's no reason for him to stay. Pretty simple.

backstory is simple: Rob was brought in as adult supervision in case Andrew Mason couldn't handle his shit. Everyone was worried about this with Andrew early on (this is why so many VCs passed on Groupon in '09). Now Andrew has consolidated his position and at least proven he can handle rapid growth. No need for Rob. Therefore, Rob (who doesn't like Chicago anyway) has no reason to stay because he's not going to be CEO.

That's all the backstory you need.

I don't think most consumers care about the technology they're using. They care about quality (does the phone work) and price. Discussions of GSM vs CDMA seem to obfuscate the main issue, which is that less competition will make the same service more expensive and quality worse. It wasn't until Verizon got the iphone that ATT started to care at all about quality, because they had the monopoly

Seems like you're arguing against gift cards in general. $100b worth of gift card spending suggests other people feel differently. Maybe you're not the target market?

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1005802

From your own link:

Free when the money comes from PayPal balance or bank account. 2.9% + $0.30 USD when the money comes from a debit or credit card or PayPal Credit (the sender decides who pays this fee).

True. But my point is that tons of people already use gift cards even though you and I can agree it may not be a rational choice. There's something about the psychology of giving/receiving cash that our culture has not really accepted. It's not thoughtful enough even if you suggest where the recipient spends the money. If they can make Gift Rocket socially acceptable (by playing on the inherent problems with gift cards today) then I think it could be big.

How many billions do people spend on gift cards each year? Must be a multi-billion market...and that's constrained by the fact that with normal gift cards merchants must actually opt-in to start offering gift cards. With this it seems like they're able to expand the market by offering "gift cards" to places that haven't opted in or signed up. That's brilliant.

It's no more ridiculous than a normal gift card: "Wait, you paid $25 so I can have $25 that can only be spent in one location?"

That's a cost right there...if flexibility had a price I'd bet it'd be >5%.

Gift cards have lots of costs...some hidden (expired cards, lost cards), some more explicit (shipping costs, service fees)

These dont expire. I think it's pretty cool.