Vivino raises $20million (more) - or, how I'm doing it wrong...

[jnbrown]

I often use both CT and Vivino.

The Pros for Vivino:

The camera function that allows you to take a picture of a bottle, automatically recognize the wine and bring up the reviews is really cool when shopping. (I just now found out CT can now do this, will have to give it a try)

Often there may be no or few TNs for a wine on CT, but the same wine on Vivino has many reviews.

The reviews on Vivino tend to be more simplistic .

Pros for CT:

Is better for tracking your cellar (I don’t really do that, and when I do I just use Excel.)

The users tend to be more serious wine geeks and the TNs are more informative. Some reviews on Vivino might be a single word like “Great”. Often I can tell the person doesn’t know much about the wine or varietal they are reviewing and sometimes even says so. Sometimes I wonder if reviews on Vivino are legit as if they are paying for them or making them up.

I have never bought wine off of Vivino. Most of my wine buying is done at wineries, either in person or shipped and at well known shops.

[PHuff]

The Vivino App/Website sucks. It seems as if the software was written by an 8th grader for a science project. The reviews are typically below basic, and to me useless. I see a lot of “Good wine, need to get more”…

I love Cellartracker. It’s a very compact, complete, and easy to use interface, and the reviews are usually detailed and to me very useful. I use it almost every day.

[brigcampbell]

I think CT uses Vivino api for the label imaging.

[alan_weinberg]

I am happy with Delectable.

[R_Frankel]

Raising money isn’t the end-all and be-all. But Vivino is really different from WB. It’s basically less good versions of CT + Wine Searcher combined with a fancy recommendation engine (that probably is junk) all wrapped in a pretty app. I bet it never makes any money, just blows through the capital.

[M_A_T_T_H_A_R_T_L_E_Y]

@Eric LeVine

They have raised 57 million dollars to date, and their goal is to sell ONE BILLION dollars of wine by 2020.

Are they already at like $300m and we just don’t know about it or something?

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Todd F r e n c h

@Markus S

You’ve got beachfront property in the Golden State. I’d say your life is doing pretty good already!

I’m a few miles from the beach, and can’t see the ocean from anywhere in my neighborhood, but I’m within 10 minutes, I think…

Having 3 jobs and a wife who is a hard-working successful professional helps.

Baller!!

[Jorge_Henriquez]

Better than 3 wives and 1 yob, no?

[Robert.A.Jr]

@Jorge Henriquez

Better than 3 wives and 1 yob, no?

That would be called juggler, not baller.

[AndrewH]

@R. Frankel

Raising money isn’t the end-all and be-all. But Vivino is really different from WB. It’s basically less good versions of CT + Wine Searcher combined with a fancy recommendation engine (that probably is junk) all wrapped in a pretty app. I bet it never makes any money, just blows through the capital.

Yeah, but when they buy out CT from Eric . . .

[ToddFrench]

@AndrewH

@R. Frankel

Raising money isn’t the end-all and be-all. But Vivino is really different from WB. It’s basically less good versions of CT + Wine Searcher combined with a fancy recommendation engine (that probably is junk) all wrapped in a pretty app. I bet it never makes any money, just blows through the capital.

Yeah, but when they buy out CT from Eric . . .

Eric’s been offered buyouts dozens of times, I’m quite sure. Don’t think he’s interested

[Ian_H]

I tried Vivino for a couple months and gave up on it. I can see the mass appeal though. But, my issues were the lack of cellar tracking functionality and no comparison IMHO between the quality of the reviews on it versus CT which are much more informed.

[AndrewH]

@Todd F r e n c h

@AndrewH

@R. Frankel

Raising money isn’t the end-all and be-all. But Vivino is really different from WB. It’s basically less good versions of CT + Wine Searcher combined with a fancy recommendation engine (that probably is junk) all wrapped in a pretty app. I bet it never makes any money, just blows through the capital.

Yeah, but when they buy out CT from Eric . . .

Eric’s been offered buyouts dozens of times, I’m quite sure. Don’t think he’s interested

Just hasn’t been interested by the amount on offer!

(To be clear - that’s not a dig on Eric; rather, it’s respect that he’s a keen businessperson.)

[Jorge_Henriquez]

@Ian H

I tried Vivino for a couple months and gave up on it. I can see the mass appeal though. But, my issues were the lack of cellar tracking functionality and no comparison IMHO between the quality of the reviews on it versus CT which are much more informed.

Goes to show…when it comes to the masses, a pretty package beats content any day of the week.

[GregT]

But it’s like Yelp. On Yelp some kids rave about the best burrito in the world and all they know are the places in their towns. Or someone decides he or she is a “serious” reviewer and channels some cooking show critic. Or they had a bad time with the receptionist, came in on a birthday party, or whatever and consequently trash the establishment. Absolutely useless information for pretty much anything - car repair, dentists, shoe stores, restaurants, wineries.

For people who find that kind of information useful, Vivino is going to be a site to visit. I visited the site a couple times as a result of this thread and got recommendations for Meiomi and Conundrum, both with loads of happy reviews. So whether something has a lot of reviews or not, who cares?

I think their brilliant move was offering the products. They just need a small cut from each bottle, they can charge wineries more for better placement, and they can sell ads. Maybe it is more viable than I thought. But then isn’t that the Amazon model? Maybe that’s the game plan - attracting Amazon’s attention? But it’s a long shot.

[Nick_Ryan]

Inexplicable. Anyone buying large dollar amounts of wine on the Internet is surely smart enough to use Wine-Searcher to carefully price shop first, right? (Or already has a favorite retailer like K&L whose site they go to first.) What kind of idiot will drop thousands on the first force-fed boosted listing a wine app presents to them?

[M_A_T_T_H_A_R_T_L_E_Y]

@Todd F r e n c h

@AndrewH

@R. Frankel

Raising money isn’t the end-all and be-all. But Vivino is really different from WB. It’s basically less good versions of CT + Wine Searcher combined with a fancy recommendation engine (that probably is junk) all wrapped in a pretty app. I bet it never makes any money, just blows through the capital.

Yeah, but when they buy out CT from Eric . . .

Eric’s been offered buyouts dozens of times, I’m quite sure. Don’t think he’s interested

He’s probably hurting though since the launch of MYwines…