Thanks for you candid commentary here. lots to chew on.

1) you must understand where i will be getting a lot of sign ups. if it is through press - then the press already spins the story... these people show a VERY high conversion rate
http://www.luxandconcord.com/launching-today-reppio-new-way-...

now the problem is while we may get press, there's people coming from fb or tumblr or svppLy who get hooked on the items we feature, but don't know the whole story. so that's an iffy crowd; SOME SIGN UP SOME DON'T. there are techniques to solve that problem i.e. make sure click through from those channels link to the product page that is public. then word of mouth referrals are also super high conversion rate even with the wall right up front. but the last one is of course the toughest: someone like you who has no idea what this site is about. it's obvious that we have't done a good enough job in explaining the type of product / stores and what we're about. thanks for the insight.

2) i respectfully want to point out that you may be missing the point (or maybe i am so you should let me know if i am). you're focused on transactions. i'm focused on discovery and engagement. the transactions will inevitably come. your writing implies that you are a typical male shopper / or engage in "purposeful shopping behavior" and looking to always think about shopping in a utilitarian form. that means you prefer using filters and the search bar. this is in direct conflict with most of my beta users. most of them never use a single filter or search bar. that's funny because the way women shop is for the most part, not utility-driven at all. what you do on hacker news, they do on my site or pinterest or on wanelo. kill time. shopping is a hobby and they love to browse for long periods of time via tangential discovery mode. --> pinterest, polyvore, keep, wanelo.

wanelo proves that generic categories with mixtures of composition in items keeps engagement rates high for women population (just this month they finally came out with actual subcategories). my goal is not for purchasing optimization but engagement maximization. (the bad part of that focus is that it would be hard to make you happy - inherent conflict to your utility maximization - antithetical to most males' online shopping behavior. mens' goal of successful shopping is to get in and get out whereas for women it's to get in and get lost, hence why pinterest and wanelo is 80+% females... and investors in the valley were like "wtf. why would anyone use this pinterest thing"). ironically pinterest and wanelo both had walls to sign up for well over the initial inflection point (albeit i admit much better transparency than what my site provided - so maybe the solution is i allow users to get a glimpse of the site. the way i define business = why would you come to my site to continue to browse each and every day for cool unique lifestyle products (similar to browsing a magazine). if you do that there are numerous way to monetize besides transaction especially as i am focused on providing an omni-channel solution to local shopping experience. online discovery is just the beginning steps.

3) this brings me to "non-targeted product pictures." i can easily create a STYLEseek DNA game and set you as a certain type of user and give you exactly that type of items. you definitely don't have to be MIT kids to figure that simple algo out. however, FANCY with 10m users and 600m valuation has proven that that is not what aspirational lifstyle/tastemaker types like to do when they browse/shop. they like to a) sift through and collect their own, b) get lost into pages c) get introduced to new things in lifestyle/fashion that's happening. if you ask a girl to go on styleseek after 5 min they'll say i'm bored. if you ask a girl to use urban daddy to find bars they'll say this sucks bc "i don't get lost" that is why refinery 29 and bustle are all geared toward women getting lost in content that is loosely connected. at reppio, we connect by style tags. we've curated the initial set but if you want you can filter by style tags. otherwise, my counterargument is what's the difference between going on styleseek vs going to my favorite niche blog or just nordstrom.com? too much targeted discovery actually diminishes value to certain type of shoppers (majority of women and trendsetting men).

it's becoming clearer and clearer how hard the fusion is to accomplish and how tight in consequence the curation has to get. so perhaps you didn't like it because our curation wasn't tight enough. if you look at wanelo and why after wanelo already conquered social commerce for young females, keep popped up (this founder is not stupid by any means), you can tell that the curation is tighter on keep.

4) i would like to explain important of discovery. yes you can walk down the street. nyc has 2,000 mens' shops by the way - 90% crap. are you sure you know all of them? my partners and i spent over 10 years reading every fashion lifestyle magazine bc that is what we love doing and so yes i do know most of them. the chicago shops on our platform - they are not on michigan ave. they are spread out all over the city but still regarded as some of the best mens' shops in the country. there is opportunity cost of time and convenience built into the value proposition whether it online/offline shopping.

also the vision is not 3 cities. we're rolling out SF and Miami in 3 weeks. The goal is to aggregate all of the major cities around the world that's amazing for local shoppping. so how would you shop at tokyo's best paper denim jeans boutique or sao paolo's best sunglass shop? you can't. only at reppio will you be able to. that's exclusive access. that's convenience afforded by hyper local aggregation at a global scale. london, paris, hong kong, buenos aires, syndey, and montreal, and all the major shopping cities are plugged into a single platform with a single checkout process / no language translation and integrated user experience.

5) lastly, great point on SSL. very helpful.

hope i was able to answer some questions you had about the platform. let me know if you had any counter-points / other faults you saw with the product. thanks!