November 4, 2010

Window shopping on YouTube or TV?

During the playoffs, I saddled up at a bar in Palo Alto and somehow struck up a very bizarre conversation with a very bizarre entrepreneur. Strangeness aside, he had an interesting idea: He was looking for technology where a viewer of a video on YouTube or cable TV could point, click, or touch to buy items that are in videos. So, say I’m watching the Yankees and Mariano Rivera is pitching, and I wanted his jersey, it would be pretty cool to just buy it with a touch or click. Does this tech already exist?

Semil Shah

Semil founded Haystack, an early-stage investment firm now investing out of its sixth institutional fund, Haystack Ventures VI, with his colleagues Aashay Sanghvi and Divya Dhulipala. He is also a Venture Partner at Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to investing, Semil held various product and operational roles at earl-stage startups, the most recent one being acquired by Apple. In 2017, Semil was named to Midas Brink List by Forbes, and in 2022 and 2023, he was named to the Midas List for seed investors by Forbes. While working and investing, he has also been a long-time consistent writer about technology and investing at outlets such as Harvard Business Review, TechCrunch, and Quora.