Founded in 2008, lolligift is a new group gift buying service that enables consumers to quickly, easily and securely join together and make a group purchase. From holidays, birthdays, weddings and baby showers, to office events, graduations, and fund raising, lolligift takes the hassle out of organizing and collecting for a gift. Consumers collaborate and organize a group gift at lolligift and use it's simple process to make a secure contribution towards a gift. Content and gift suggestions on lolligift also make it easy to learn about and share gift recommendations. The lolligift service was created by technology development entrepreneurs Adam Sheppard and William Lai. Each are social media and web development experts that have more than 30 years combined experience building and bringing to market solutions for Microsoft properties. Sheppard was a founding member of Microsoft Live Labs, and Lai played an integral role on the team that created MSN Messenger and was nominated for the "Legendary Development Teams of Microsoft" award. Currently, lolligift is a privately held and privately funded company.
A consumer that wants to organize a group gift simply selects the type of event, creates a Gift Pool by estimating the gift cost and invites others to participate and make a contribution. Participants can chat with friends on the Gift Pool page, make a payment by credit card or PayPal, and sign an eCard that will be delivered when the target goal has been reached. The Organizer then closes the pool and lolligift mails the organizer a check or deposits funds into their account via PayPal. How and where they shop is totally up to the group. They have the flexibility to use the collected money to buy online or off. For more information visit our Guided Tour and FAQ.
As an individual with an insatiable curiosity and a knack for truly creative problem solving, Adam has spent most of his life using software and technology as a tool to explore the world and shape it the way he’d like it to be. His name is synonymous with innovation at Microsoft where his ‘Shep Report’ was one of the most eagerly anticipated sources of online trend analysis and blue sky thinking at the company, with readership extending to the most senior of leaders. Adam has shipped well over 15 new products and services at Microsoft primarily at MSN. In 2006 he was a founding member of Microsoft Live Labs, an applied research laboratory in the Office of the CTO. Live Labs has received critical acclaim for flagship products such as Microsoft Deepfish and Microsoft Photosynth with Adam establishing and leading product management, marketing and business development activities. When not behind a laptop screen Adam is behind a camera lens. His personal blog and photography can be found at www.adamsheppard.org.
William is a 20 year software industry veteran. In the last 13 years he has been focused on intrapreneuring in MSN, launching two products from concept formulation. The team he helped found, MSN Messenger v1.0 was nominated for the “Legendary Development Teams of Microsoft” award. His engineering analysis and architecture design for the Messenger server cloud has been time-tested and scale-proven from day one, and continues to form the basis 8 years later as the world’s largest instant messaging platform. Post Messenger, he proposed a product extension for Messenger, Microsoft Alerts, and was funded by executives as a separate team to capitalize on the asset built up by Messenger. In addition to his technical leadership roles, he was the business leader coordinating the marketing and business development effort, and served as the general manager of the 30-persons team during its first 18 months. Since leaving Microsoft, William has been exploring several social media concepts, fine tuning management, development, and operational techniques at the start-up scale.
In addition to his ongoing work for lolligift and 8ninths, he currently serves as technical contributor to literacybridge.org, a non-profit that is building a $5 MP3 device for literacy training for the one billion illiterate people around the world. He was appointed by the Bellevue City Council as a Planning Commissioner in 2007, working on policies to guide the city’s growth and development. His personal blog can be found at www.aintnolai.com.
lolligift is fortunate to work with some very talented photographers and bloggers to bring you unique inspiring ideas and tips for any special occasion.
Lolliblogger Katie T. is a Pacific Northwest girl currently living and studying in New York City. When she's not buried in grad school work, you can usually find her eating her way through the five boroughs, yoga-ing, rummaging through boxes of flea market treasures, and planning her next urban adventure ... she also has a soft spot for Gossip Girl (shh, don't tell anyone).
Photography used throughout the site comes to us from the very talented Steph Goralnick. Visit http://www.sgoralnick.com to see more of her excellent work. All work copyright Steph Goralnick (2008)
