Rahul Pathak : My Personal Blog

My apologies for the lack of posts over the past few days. I was in Napa for the weekend with some old friends for the Napa Marathon which was held on Sunday morning. Those of you who are marathoners know the pre-race day drill - stay off your feet, register, hydrate, get a good night’s sleep. For some reason, we decided that a day of wine-tasting was the perfect way to prepare. Not a good plan. The first 6 miles were a daze and the next 21.2 were a battle to keep Gatorade down (I failed) and to keep moving (I succeeded; barely.)

All being said, it was an amazing weekend, we managed to complete the run in 4:02 and the course was absolutely gorgeous. It was a sunny 55 degrees and the course was downhill most of the way through rolling vineyards, surrounded by mountains. I’ll be going back to run it again next year but if someone suggests wine tasting, there will be hell to pay.

As we’ve been spending time getting to know the deals/shopping space, it’s become clear that sticking deals on a page is not sufficient. You need to provide users with a reason to come back to your site. If you have to keep acquiring customers for the first time, every time you want them to visit, you’re going to have a problem. Arbitrage margins are narrowing and that trend is unlikely to reverse itself anytime soon. There are some great posts on this topic at Bronte Media and Jellyfish’s blog.