November is here and the holiday shopping season is swiftly approaching. This is the time of year where retailers are hoping to rev into high gear to make that sale through hard to resist deals.  How appropriate is it that our presenting company solves the problem of discovering the deals we are most interested in?  Join Vin Vacanti and Jim Moran for a discussion about Yipit.com.

Yipit.com

Overview

Yipit.com recommends sample sales and restaurant deals based on where you are and what you like. The service aggregates deals from blogs, twitter, daily emails and business newsletters, then emails you a custom newsletter every week built from your locations and shopping and dining preferences.

Yipit gets to know you better as you search, click, search and mark businesses as favorites – and thus can recommend more and more targeted deals. Yipit is currently in private preview, with 700 beta users, 15% CTR, <1% unsubscribe rate.

Discussion Points

- Partnerships. Our core goal is growing the membership for the custom email newsletter. However, there are other potential uses for our data. We're looking for help on how to think about our API as well as other other partnership channels. 

- Ways to gather and predict users' local business preferences. We've already implemented a Foursquare integration, a signup wizard, and a recommendation engine that gets smarter the more someone uses our system. There's a lot of room for improvement in terms of gathering more data and making the initial signup less painful.

- Monetization. Initially, our engagement will primarily be via email. This is a new area for us, one in which we'd love to benefit from the knowledge and experience of other entrepreneurs.

- Branding / Positioning. Looking for general feedback here as the sales & deals space ranges from the low end (direct mail coupons) to the high end (private sample sales).

Bios

Vin Vacanti and Jim Moran are co-founders of Yipit. Vin and Jim also created UnHub, a simple way to showcase your online web profiles, and 140it, which automatically reduces your twitter messages down to 140 characters. In a previous life, we worked on Wall Street at Blackstone and Quadrangle Group. More info on us can be found at UnHub.com/vacanti and UnHub.com/jdmoran or on our About page. 

Hosted by New Work City - @nwc 

This event is hosted by New Work City, a community coworking space in Manhattan. New Work City is a gathering spot for a community of like-minded individuals who need somewhere to work that’s both creative and social, and professional and conducive to working. Members use the workspace when they need it, and pay based on usage. That means you could just show up for a day and get to work!

Monday, November 30, 2009. 7PM - 9PM

New Work City

200 Varick St, Room 507B

New York, NY 10014 (map)

Nearest subway stops: 1 to Houston St, ACEBDFV to W. 4th St