The Muse Factory
Innovation Endeavors, a venture capital firm backed by Eric Schmidt, chairman and former CEO of Google, invested in Tony Deifell and Dana Underwood to embark on an entrepreneurial journey.
Dana & Tony started by exploring how to help people be more thoughtful in a digital age and ended up focusing on re-designing gift giving. They used a "design-thinking" process — basically Anthropology meets entrepreneurship — to identify insights about people's needs. The insights from 100+ field-based interviews and emersion experiences nationwide led to "AwesomeBox" — a gift-giving platform that is social-by-design.
They began their journey at the "pre-idea" stage. Watch their first video — on the way to Innovation Endeavors in Palo Alto.
The quickest way to meet as many different people as possible from all over the world is to hang out in an airport. We conducted over 100+ interviews about gift giving, which became the foundation for the product we’re designing.
We just finished running our first hackathon last weekend: 7 hackers. 48 hours. 1 focus: build.
“When it comes to gifts, you always say ‘It’s the thought that counts’.”
– Stephen Colbert
Social Media Explained
mashup of Douglasray’s Instagram photo
The Valentine’s Day Gift Dilemma
Paul tells the Muse Factory about buying a 25th Anniversary ring for his wife. He wants it to be significant enough for her to feel proud about it, and to surprise her — to show “that her husband cared enough about her to do something that he would consider frivolous.”
We used a customer-behavior research technique called “ZMET” to uncover people’s thoughts and feelings about gift giving.
Is it true that giving a gift is good for your health?
WSJ’s Christina Tsuei looks into their health benefits.
Rational economists thus make a simple suggestion: Give cash or give nothing.
But behavioral economics, which draws on psychology as well as on economic theory, is much more appreciative of gift giving. Behavioral economics better understands why people (rightly, in my view) don’t want to give up the mystery, excitement and joy of gift giving. In this view, gifts aren’t irrational. It’s just that rational economists have failed to account for their genuine social utility.
The postal service identifies “Dear Santa” letters from people most in need and makes their wishes available to folks (like you) who may want to make a stranger’s Christmas a little brighter.
This letter is from a woman who has too little work to get all her kids and grand kids gifts this year.
If you write a “Dear Santa” letter, it won’t make it past your local US Postal Service branch. But, USPS identifies letters from those most in need and makes the wishes available (minus identifying info) to people who want to make someone’s Christmas a little brighter.
Here is a letter from a high schooler who wants to make her mom happy.
Tony hard at work.
