Web Masters

Amir Ashkenazi shares the story of building DealTime, the bargain hunting platform that evolved into Shopping.com, the popular comparison shopping website acquired by eBay.

Show Notes

Most of us do a significant chunk of our purchasing at Amazon.com. Or, at the very least, a site like it. Amazon may or may not be the cheapest, but we're pretty sure it'll have what we want, we know delivery will be quick, and the price will be competitive.

Even though we don't give online purchasing a second thought these days, it actually took a lot of years for early web users to get comfortable buying stuff from the internet. That's because E-commerce didn't begin as a better option for most retail purchases. In fact, in the beginning, E-commerce was pretty crummy. It was hard to navigate, shipping times were slow, and there was lots of fraud.

E-commerce had to evolve over time into becoming something that was clearly a better option than traditional, in-person commerce, and one of the people who had a big impact on that evolution was Amir Ashkenazi. He did it by helping people bargain hunt and comparison shop online, first through his DealTime platform, and then the company it became, which was Shopping.com.

For a complete transcript of the episode, click here.

What is Web Masters?

Web Masters is an original podcast that explores the history of the Internet through the stories of some of its most important innovators. In each episode, host Aaron Dinin, a serial entrepreneur and digital media scholar, talks with Internet entrepreneurs who created important websites, tools, services, and features. Some are hugely popular, some you’ve never heard of, and all of them have impacted everything you do online. You’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at how the Internet has enabled -- and continues to create -- some of the greatest business opportunities in history from the people who have proven they know how to build successful Internet businesses.