While pulling out may look like a signal, it doesn’t seem that Fashion For Home is a failure. Indeed, it was one of the few Rocket ventures that was active in the U.S. market, and the sale of shares to Holtzbrinck Ventures and new investor Acton Capital was announced along with a new “lower double-digit millions” funding round for the site.

So why pull out?

Fashion For Home is a designer furniture company. So, to some extent, was Bamarang, the Fab.com clone that Rocket culled last month. Ironically, Ollie Samwer’s infamous ‘Blitzkrieg’ email from December highlighted furniture retail as one of the few e-commerce areas worth focusing on.

So what does Rocket still have in the way of furniture retailers? Lots.

Most relevantly, there’s Home24, which reportedly got major new financing in May (hello again, Rocket regulars Holtzbrinck and Kinnevik). Then we have Westwing/Dalani/Heaven and Home – the same store with different names for different territories – which, like Bamarang, is mainly a flash sale operation, but one that often deals in furniture (and is yet again financed with the assistance of Holtzbrinck and Kinnevik). Also don’t forget Mobly, Rocket’s Brazilian furniture venture.

While a big portfolio is impressive in its own way, redundancy makes little sense. In the cases of both Fashions For Home and Bamarang, Rocket’s withdrawal came in the context of having potentially stronger alternatives to concentrate on instead.

This approach stands in sharp contrast to some other Rocket plays, such as Pinterest copycat Pinspire that are not so much about e-commerce and more about chasing and ripping off the latest fad. That particular experiment is reportedly failing, raising the question of how good Rocket is at doing stuff that falls outside of its core competencies.

I’m talking about businesses that can’t simply be tacked onto Rocket’s international distribution network, which works so well for straight e-commerce. Yes, in the past it’s done well with CityDeal, but how much of that was to do with selling it to clonee Groupon within half a year of launch? There is also eDarling, but that business has also benefited from a partnership with the site it copied, eHarmony.

In other words, let’s see how plays such as Square clone Payleven pan out. In that kind of territory, the Samwers are yet to prove themselves.

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German media has reported that the site, which was launched by the brothers’ Rocket Internet incubator and operated across a number of European countries, will be shutting down immediately as the investors switch their focus. It’s a swift execution for the site, which caused Fab.com founder Jason Goldberg to angrily label it a “complete rip-off” when it appeared in January — copying not just Fab’s business model, but also the site’s design.

But even though Bamarang is being shut down, it won’t be going away exactly.

According to conversations reported by Deutsche Startups, the energy that went into Bamarang is now being transferred to WestWing, another Rocket-funded entity focused on home decor sales that recently took $50 million in funding.

“We have decided to concentrate on WestWing’s business model, where we have established clear No1 positions in key markets like Germany, Brazil, Italy and Russia,” said WestWing founder Stefan Smalla.

“As a consequence we will phase out Bamarang and focus 100 percent of our resources on WestWing, which we see as the stronger of the two business models. This will allow us to build unassailable market positions in the emerging home and living e-commerce market, and deploy our substantial new funding on the largest growth opportunities.”

German startup site Gruenderszene reports that most of the staff of Bamarang are expected to move to WestWing, with many staff taking part in interviews on Monday to help decide their fate.

Anyone thinking this says anything about the death of cloning should beware, however — not least because WestWing is a copycat of the flash sales site OneKingsLane. Ultimately, it looks like a hard-headed business decision from one of the most hard-headed investing teams around: Bamarang faced too much competition, but WestWing is having an easier ride of it, so they decided to follow the money.

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In recent days, Berlin clone factory Rocket Internet has had a register-your-interest page up for its new Nigerian site, Sabunta. It’s a clothing store and, once launched, it will probably look like Rocket’s many other Zappos clones.

I know it was there – I looked at it this morning, along with the still-up Facebook page. But then I looked again later and it was gone. And then I realised why.

The Samwer brothers’ favourite sources of, ahem, “inspiration” include not only Zappos and Amazon but also Fab.com. And wouldn’t you know it, today the German publication Gruenderszene outed the fact that the Sabunta landing page actually contained Fab.com code.

Happily, although the Sabunta page has vanished, the cached version has not. Here’s some of the offending code:

As Gruenderszene quite correctly pointed out, it’s a mystery why Rocket needed to copy this stuff. After all, its own copy of Fab, Bamarang has been in operation for a while now, so why not just take the code from there?

You’d also think Rocket might have learned from the last time this happened.

Two months ago, an eagle-eyed reader of the terms and conditions attached to Rocket’s Pinterest clone, Pinspire, noted that one section of the cut’n'paste job still referred to Pinterest.

Unoriginal but logical

Snarking aside, it is interesting to see Rocket finally make its Nigerian play. When I was researching our already-out-of-date map of the company’s global spread in April, I noticed several registrations of Rocket brand names as URLs for the country.

As I pointed out in the ensuing comments conversation, Rocket’s frenzy of activity in South Africa pointed to the establishment of a sub-Saharan base there. Now, apart from Sabunta’s coy appearance and hurried disappearance, reports are emerging of another Rocket Amazon clone getting set to launch in Nigeria this month.

Africa’s three biggest economies are South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt… and Rocket’s now in all three.

To some extent, the big names of e-commerce should not be surprised to see Rocket eating their African lunch when they themselves don’t bother to address the continent’s growing middle classes. But, on the other hand, they don’t deserve to see their code copied either.

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Two NBCUniversal execs — Lauren Zalaznick, chairman of entertainment and digital networks and integrated media, and Nick Lehman, president of digital — will co-chair the new digital advisory board. Board members include:

Amy Banse, Managing Director and Head of Funds at Comcast Ventures; LeahBusque, Founder, TaskRabbit; Beth Ferreira, COO of Fab.com;  Cindy Gallop, Founder & CEO of IfWeRanTheWorld; Megan Gardner, CEO of Plum District; Jennifer Hyman, CEO & Co-Founder of Rent the Runway;  Nancy Lublin, CEO of Do Something;  Nasreen Madhany, Global CEO of Neo@Ogilvy; Marissa Mayer, VP of Location and Local Services at Google ; Heidi S. Messer, Co-Founder & Chairman of Collective [i];  Alison Pincus, Co-Founder & Chief Partnership Officer of One Kings Lane; Amanda Richman, President, Digital of MediaVest USA; Jessica Schell, EVP of New Media and Digital Entertainment at Universal Pictures; Vivian Schiller, SVP & Chief Digital Officer at NBC News;  Chloe Sladden, VP of Media, Twitter; Colleen Soriano, SVP & Managing Partner, US Director of Digital Communications, Universal McCann; Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer for the City of New York; Alexa von Tobel, Founder and CEO of LearnVest.com; Joanne Zaiac, President of Digitas NY Region.

Women at NBCU board members Gilt Group Chairman, Susan Lyne; iVillage President, Jodi Kahn; tech entrepreneur/investor, Esther Dyson; and Monica Halpert, former CMO of Bluefly, are joining the digital extension as well.

Amy Banse, managing director and head of funds at Comcast Ventures, will be speaking at paidContent 2012: At The Crossroads in NYC on May 23. Register today.

Thumbnail image courtesy of Shutterstock user [Mehmet Dilhiz].

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The company has been trying to get its head around the impact of mobile shopping since it launched its first mobile apps in October 2011. It’s found that now 40 percent of daily visits come from its mobile apps on iPhone, iPad, and Androiddevices, up from 30 percent two months ago. But it’s the iPad that is standing out as the true money maker. Using software-as-a-service Custora to analyze historical user and order data, Fab created a model that found that 40 percent of iPad app users make a purchase within three months, and 70 percent will make their first transaction within seven months of joining.

Among non-iPad users, about 15 percent make their first purchase within four to five months, said Goldberg. He said while many retailers are happy if they can convert 10 percent of all visitors, 10 percent of Fab’s iPad app users buy their first product within their first week. That shows a clear willingness for iPad browsers to become buyers. Over a projected two-year time frame, Fab’s iPad app users are expected to bring in $700 each in revenue, twice that of non-iPad users, based on Custora’s predictive models.

Why the iPad is a shopping magnet

Goldberg believes iPad users are buying at a higher rate on Fab because of the more intimate and streamlined nature of buying on the iPad app, which presents one product at a time, compared to the desktop version which provides views of multiple items. And the ability to get up close to products and almost touch them using swipes and gestures makes it conducive to buying. The fact that iPad users are likely more design-conscious and probably have more disposable income also contributes, he said.

“It feels like you’re touching the product on the iPad,” he said. “It’s the closest thing to going into the store.”

This is not even counting iPad users who visit the store through the web. Fab tries to steer those users to its app. But there are indications from other retailers that the tablet web shoppers are also more likely to buy as well.

Goldberg said the iPad app is due for an update in the next couple months to make it even more tailored for tablet users. He said he doesn’t have the resources yet to make a dedicated tablet-optimized website but it’s something he’d like to tackle as well.

The numbers from Fab represent just one online retailer, but I think it’s indicative of a larger trend of shopping being transformed by tablets. The devices are really well suited for buying, especially for products that invite closer scrutiny and interaction. With iPad penetration expected to increase with the launch of the new iPad, it means even more opportunities for retailers.

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Fab.com co-founders Jason Goldberg and Bradford Shellhammer

A year ago, Fab.com got a new lease on life, pivoting to become a design sales site after a lackluster showing in its first incarnation as Fabulis, a gay social network. As you might have read, this year has been huge for Fab, which is now up to 2.5 million members and is on pace to bring in $100 million this year in revenue.

But what stood out to me was the backstory of the restart for Fab. Jason Goldberg, the founder and CEO said in a blog post that the company repositioned itself after realizing that it needed to focus on what the team was passionate about and was in a position to succeed at. And that, they decided after 20 minutes of discussion, was design. A social network was not, in fact, what they loved doing. It was yet another reminder for me that entrepreneurs, as skilled as they may be, need to care deeply about what they’re building to be able to build it.

It might seem intuitive or obvious that if you’re going to stake your life to a new startup, you might as well do what you love. But that lesson can get lost in the quest to build a successful start-up. That’s what happened with Fab, Goldberg told me. He said he initially built something for him and his friends but realized he was really just chasing an opportunity. Goldberg told me in an email:

It was driven from being opportunistic, not from pure passion. I think a lot of people often mistake opportunity for passion. Too many people are passionate about building a business vesus being passionate about building this business.

Not built to flip

Or as former AOL co-founder Steve Case told GigaOM in an interview last year, some entrepreneurs are looking at building businesses they can flip quickly, rather than committing to something they love. ”A lot of people are starting businesses because they think it’s an opportunity to make some money,” Case said. “You occasionally get lucky, but that doesn’t really work. You have to be passionate about it.”

Kickstarter co-founder Perry Chen

The misunderstanding can sometimes come from the signals entrepreneurs receive from investors. Charlie O’Donnell, a former principal at First Round Capital who started his own fund called Brooklyn Bridge Ventures, recalled his regret passing on Kickstarter when he first met co-founder Perry Chen in 2008. In a blog post, he said he was caught up on the murky details about how Kickstarter was going to build a business and a roadmap. But he didn’t key in on the “why” behind founder Chen’s quest to build Kickstarter. He said after hearing Simon Sinek’s TED Talk he realized that people don’t buy “what” you do, they buy “why” you do it. And Chen, to his credit, kept plugging away on his idea.

I didn’t understand how important that pattern was at the time, but now, four years later, I get it.  Nowadays, one of the first things I ask someone is why they do what they do.  I used to ask it out of curiousity, but now I get how important that is to the success of your business.

Getting the passion thing right can mean the difference between success and mediocrity — or even failure. Billy Chasen, founder of Turntable.fm, recounted the story in November behind his start-up, which began life as Stickybits, a QR-code provider. He said he made the decision after losing interest in QR codes and what the company was doing with it. But what really excited him was music, which led to Turntable.fm, even though Stickybits was a modest success.

When passion meets opportunity…

Simply having passion doesn’t guarantee anything. But the opposite can be true too. You can have a great opportunity and a solid team, but if you don’t have a burning passion and a vision, things can get muddled quickly and the drive can desert you. As Goldberg points out, he needed to find a place where his passion was matched with a market ripe for disruption and a belief that Fab could be the best at what it does.

Foursquare co-founder Dennis Crowley

Looking at companies like Twitter and Square under Jack Dorsey or Foursquare under Dennis Crowley, you can see founders who are locked in on a passionate goal. They may not know all the details of how it will unfold but they know what they want to see ultimately because they’ve been obsessing about their ideas for a long time. As Crowley told me recently, one of the reasons why Foursquare has been able to separate from other location-based rivals is because he and many others in the core team have been ruminating on location for years. This is built into the company’s DNA and guides its direction.

Again, passion is not the only ingredient to success, but trying to build a successful business without it is tough. If you can align work and passion, the payoff can be rewarding, said Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham in blog post several years ago:

Finding work you love is very difficult. Most people fail. Even if you succeed, it’s rare to be free to work on what you want till your thirties or forties. But if you have the destination in sight you’ll be more likely to arrive at it. If you know you can love work, you’re in the home stretch, and if you know what work you love, you’re practically there.

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Judging by the launch this week of Berlin’s Monoqi, not long. It was only last June that Fab.com began offering flash sales of design goods. That company is already talking about becoming the next Amazon, and its service is well liked enough that it has already been cloned by the notorious Samwer brothers into Bamarang.

Now Monoqi is keen to claim the most-genuine-design-credentials crown, at least within Europe. Founded in November, the company offers a “curated design platform” powered by an international army of scouts, who pass their recommendations back to the shop managers for flash sales — with the company’s management getting the right to veto over what gets included.

At launch, the site will feature two designers’ sets per day — the first names on the agenda include Pia Wüstenberg, Boomwehmeyer, Komat and Shanghai Trio. New flash sales will be launched daily and each will stay live for 72 hours. Shipping depends on the designer’s professionalism – if they are sufficiently trusted, they can ship the goods themselves, otherwise Monoqi has its own warehouse for distribution.

The service is available as of Monday for people who signed up beforehand and got three friends to do likewise, although this link will get you the same access. A wider launch will follow around the middle of this week.

Monoqi CEO Simon Fabich told GigaOM last week that his company was conscious of the inevitable Fab.com and Bamarang comparisons, but it was “trying to be different” and – take that, clone artists – “difficult to copy.”

“The product selection is things we would love, and that would surprise people,” he said. Given that the interview took place in a disused bank vault, complete with safety deposit boxes and a warship’s worth of steel (it’s a Berlin thing), surprise and idiosyncrasy are certainly traits that can be associated with Monoqi.

For now, the company will ship anywhere in Europe. As for the future, that’s something Fabich and his colleagues are keeping under wraps.

But will growth change Monoqi’s highly personal touch?

“That depends on the company culture – it’s something you can create,” Fabich said, adding that whatever happens, Monoqi’s “core taste will live on.”

Fab.com grew really quickly – it gained 600,000 users in its first 12 weeks and is now talking about achieving serious scale. It will be interesting to see whether Monoqi can manage comparable growth, and whether it can hang on to that all-important design cred while doing so.

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Marc Andreessen

There’s no question that Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm headed up by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, has become a major force since it was founded back in 2009. The young VC firm has funded some of the best and brightest companies in the tech industry: Facebook, Twitter, Zynga, Groupon, Airbnb, Box, Fab.com and Pinterest, to name just a few. And this is just the beginning — Andreessen Horowitz just announced it has raised $1.5 billion in fresh funding to invest in even more startups.

I talked to Marc Andreessen this week to get his thoughts on Silicon Valley, the startup ecosystem, and where the larger tech world is headed in 2012. Here’s what he had to say:

Silicon Valley is still tech’s ground zero

“Our firm is very Silicon Valley focused. Now, we’re not religious about it. We’ll go far and wide to find the best companies and fund them. But there is a magic to Silicon Valley. It’s a lot like Los Angeles with film, New York City with finance or fashion, and Washington D.C. with politics. A lot of people want to work where there’s a critical mass of other people in their field; it’s like a natural force of gravity.

Because the best people in technology keep coming to the Valley, there tends to be a self-renewing property to it. It’s become a place where great technology franchises have been built repeatedly. I would love for there to be a dozen Silicon Valleys around the world. But it’s a very hard thing to replicate.”

When running a VC fund, it pays to walk the walk

“Closing this latest [$1.5 billion] round from our investors was a pretty straightforward process. The key thing is, we’re really focused on the alignment of our interests with the people who invest in us. Each of us at Andreessen Horowitz has a significant personal investment in the firm ourselves. We each pay full management fees and carried interest, so we’re exactly side-by-side with our investors.

We also have a hard commitment that none of our partners will make private technology investments outside of Andreessen Horowitz — you won’t see me investing in a startup as an individual. Our investors really like that, it makes them feel that we’re real partners.”

Tech should learn the language of Washington

“Ever since I arrived in the Valley, there’s been a debate about how the tech industry should approach government and legislation. There’s one school of thought that says we should just ignore Washington and build the future on our own, the idea that we’re going to invent our way out of any problem that comes up. Then there’s the other school of thought, that it’s very important to engage with Washington on their terms, because the industries that are threatened by technology are very good at lobbying. I’ve always been more in the second camp.

Technology is very important and it has a big impact on the world. Politicians are naturally going to want to be involved in something that is that important, and they’re going to try to make laws about it. For every exciting advance we make, there’s someone on the other side that is threatened by it. The oldest and most entrenched industries are lobbying like crazy, so for the tech industry to not participate is just handing the ground to them.

On top of the traditional methods, we can also do new stuff like the SOPA/PIPA blackout, which was a whole new form of engagement and protest. I know that a lot of people in Hollywood were absolutely shocked at the effectiveness of that.”

A startup shakeout is coming, but that’s OK

“There has been a lot more seed funding in the past two to three years. In terms of our own self interest as a VC firm, we want as much seed funding as possible — it presents us with a lot of great opportunities to evaluate for a venture round.

There is going to be a shakeout at the seed stage. A lot of companies will come up for Series A funding at some point, and there are just too many of them to really raise what they’ll need. But that’s not a bad thing. It’s a very small amount of funding they’ve taken on so far, and nowadays a lot of them will have the opportunity to sell as a talent acquisition. It’ll work out fine for them. In the long run, imagination tends to be rewarded, not penalized.”

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