MyPunchblog

Well, it’s that time of year…again. Time to urge a little furry rodent from Punxsutawney, PA out of his burrow and hope that spring is right around the corner. If you live on the East Coast, you know that we could really use an early spring this year.

Those who know me, understand that some of the inspiration for MyPunchbowl.com came from my fascination with Groundhog Day. It’s a long story, and best told over a few beers: suffice to say that it involved a 12 hour car ride, an AP reporter, entrance into the “Inner Circle”, and a chicken factory. Yes, a chicken factory. The boneless skinless kind.

So it began in 1997. Fast forward to 2008, and my wife and I are planning our 12th annual Groundhog Day party. That’s right, 12th. This year will be particularly fun, as all of the Punchbowlers and friends will be gathering for an evening of raucous debauchery.

I sent out my Groundhog Save the Date a few weeks ago, the full online invitation to follow very soon. If you didn’t get an invite….well, I probably didn’t want you to see me drunk on tequila. Sorry about that.

If you’re looking for an excuse to get people together, I’d highly recommend Groundhog Day. This year it falls on a Saturday– even better. Why should you celebrate Groundhog Day? Well, can you think of a better way to worship a furry rodent who has been accurately predicting the weather for over 100 years? I didn’t think so. Oh, and I’d recommend using MyPunchbowl.com — they have some great Groundhog Party themes
If you’re having a Groundhog Day party, please make a comment on this blog post– I’d love to hear from you.

Phil! Phil! Phil! Isn’t he cute?

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

Some of you may have noticed the new home page on MyPunchbowl.com. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I’d encourage you to do so before reading this post.

I have many thoughts about the new home page design, but there’s one that keeps creeping to the front of my brain. Design is hard. Really, really hard. If you’ve never done it before, you’ll probably look at the new home page and say “yeah, that makes sense, looks pretty easy.” If you have done design before, you’ll notice the 100 little things that make this design look so right.

I think back to the first home page design of MyPunchbowl.com and just how far we’ve come. I’m thrilled with what we’ve learned about good design, and really proud of our new home page. And that’s not all: since we launched our new home page, our signup traffic is up by more than 40%. Ultimately, this is the true measure of success.

So take a look and notice the 100 little things: and then email your friends and tell them to check it out. Thanks.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

One year ago today, we launched MyPunchbowl.com. What a year it has been….

Someone asked me, “What’s the one thing you’ve learned over the past year?” My answer: “Everything takes longer than I thought it would. We’ve made great progress, and I’m proud of what we’ve accomplished. But everything — from business development, to fund-raising, to marketing activities — takes longer than I’d like it to. Maybe that’s the nature of an entrepreneur; always impatient and never quite satisfied. Even so, I’m really proud and happy with what we’ve built over the last year.”

Thanks to all of you: our users, our investors, our partners — and our significant others, for making the last year such as success.

Happy Birthday MyPunchbowl!

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

As I mentioned in a post last week, we have a lot in store for 2008. We’re starting off with two important announcements today, and we’re excited to share both of them with you.

First, we’re excited for the start of a promotional partnership with Celebrations.com, a new site in Beta from 1-800-Flowers. Celebrations is a site full of great party ideas– from experts and the community –for everything from birthday parties to tailgating. Right now they are running a contest, giving away a dream super bowl party to the contest entrant that submits the most creative party idea. If you are a MyPunchbowl user, we hope you’ll be inspired by ideas from the Celebrations community. We encourage you to check out the site, submit your ideas, and then head back to MyPunchbowl for your Super Bowl party planning needs.

We’re thrilled about working with Celebrations.com and the folks at 1-800-Flowers. I’ll have more to say about our “budding” relationship in future posts.

Second, we’re happy to announce “Share on Facebook” support within MyPunchbowl.com. This useful feature enables MyPunchbowl users to easily publicize their MyPunchbowl events on Facebook. From MyPunchbowl, Facebook users can choose to either post the event on their profile or send the event as a message to their Facebook friends. It’s really the best of both worlds: use the sophisticated event-planning features on MyPunchbowl to plan your event or party and then publish to Facebook to share it with your social network. We encourage you to create an account on MyPunchbowl.com and give our new “Share on Facebook” a try for your next event.

These two announcements further our goal to offer the most sophisticated event and party planning website while partnering with the best companies in the world. We hope you share our excitement.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a very happy new year. Thanks for reading this blog, sharing your thoughts, and being part of the Punchbowl community.

MyPunchbowl launched in 2007, and it was a very good year for us. But you haven’t seen anything yet. We have some great things in store for 2008 — we’re very excited about what the future holds.

The reason that we do this everyday is to deliver the best possible website to plan an event or party. Our goal is to make everyone who uses MyPunchbowl feel like the “World’s Greatest Host.” We’ll continue to work everyday this year to earn your trust and make you a satisfied MyPunchbowl user.

Please keep your feedback and suggestions coming. We love hearing from you.

Have a healthy, happy, and prosperous year.

- The team at Punchbowl Software

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

Before the TechCrunch Boston Meetup, I had never met Michael Arrington. (For those of you who don’t know, TechCrunch is a very popular blog in the startup world, and Mike is the founder. As a result, he enjoys “celebrity” status in the startup world and also has his share of detractors).

Now before you read further, you should know a few things. First, I’m not personal friends with Mike — in fact, I don’t know him very well at all. Like most startup entrepreneurs, I simply sent TechCrunch information about MyPunchbowl.com a few days before we launched. I have some experience in PR, so I wrote Mike a pointed email telling him why he should care about MyPunchbowl. Of course, I was very happy when he emailed me back to say that TechCrunch was interested in taking a look. A few days later, I met with Nick Gonzales. Nick is a great person and he really took the time to understand why MyPunchbowl is different. TechCrunch covered our initial launch and again when we launched “Pick a Date.”

Throughout my dealings with TechCrunch, I’ve mostly dealt directly with Nick, but Mike and I have traded a few emails and spoke on the phone once. No interactions of consequence.

Fast forward to the TechCrunch Boston Meetup. I spent most of the night around our demo area talking to users, VCs, and press folks. One of Punchbowl’s board members is Don Dodge, and at one point towards the beginning of the night, Don pulled me aside to introduce me to Mike. We said our pleasantries, I thanked him for inviting us to sponsor, and I moved on. What transpired after our initial introduction was amusing to say the least.

The announcement podium was near our demo area, so Mike was back and forth near our demo area throughout the night. We were very crowded, so it was a tight fit to get by. At one point, as Mike walked by, I put a MyPunchbowl “World’s Greatest Host” sticker on him. With a smirk and a sarcastic comment, he accepted. Here’s Mike sporting the MyPunchbowl sticker:

Later, Mike inadvertently bumped into me as he passed by our demo area. He jokingly asked, “Who are you? Have we met?” Apparently Mike didn’t know I’m from New York. I pushed him back, pretty hard. Mike’s a big guy, and he was pretty amused at all 155lbs of me leaning into his shoulder. He smiled, and continued on.

20 minutes later, the scene repeated (Like I said, it was pretty crowded…). A smile, a smirk, a slightly harder bump — and he moved on. I’m pretty sure I talked trash and said something to rile him up, but I don’t remember what it was.

About an hour later, the scene repeated yet again. This time he leaned his shoulder into me pretty hard as he passed by. And then we had this exchange:

Matt: (I got in his face.) “Hey Mike, I’m going to kick your ass.” He seemed to liked the challenge.

Mike: “When are you going to stop busting my balls?” He towered over me.

Matt: “When the %^$* are you going to actually look at my site?” (note: although TechCrunch has reviewed the site and we sponsored their event, Mike has never actually registered on the site as far as I know).

Mike: “Give me one reason I should bother.”

Matt: “Because I spent the last 3 years of my life and most of my savings on this startup.”

Mike: (Thinks for a second, takes my card and puts it into his shirt pocket) “Yeah, ok.”

And then….. Mike hugs me. It was a kind of sarcastic “I feel your pain” hug, and he held on as if to prove his point. I laugh and tell him that I won’t let him forget that moment…

Later, I’m downstairs and I tell Don Dodge about what happened upstairs earlier. And he insists on a picture between Mike and I to reenact the moment.

I’m sure Mike gets hundreds of emails a day — and my guess is that at least 80% of them are people kissing his ass and pitching for coverage on TechCrunch. I don’t know exactly what that’s like, but I have a good idea. When I was at Adobe, I got hundreds of emails a day. It was a constant battle to separate the noise from the gems. Eventually you turn cynical to just about everybody — that is, unless they do something to show you that they are different.

So what have I learned about what Mike Arrington and Matt Douglas have in common? Like me, Mike has a sarcastic sense of humor and enjoys a challenge. He’s got a soft spot for the “truth” about what it takes to start from nothing and build a startup. And while he geninuely enjoys recognition, he can laugh at himself and the absurdity of it all.

I’m not friends with Mike– but get us away from the tech/startup world and I think he and I would enjoy having a few beers and playing competitive air hockey. Just for the record, I’d win.

Here’s another shot of Mike and I at the end of the night:

So Mike… if you’ve read this far: when are you going to create an account and let me know what you think about MyPunchbowl.com? Don’t make me hunt you down — I may be small, but I pack a hell of a punch.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

We’re hiring — and we are excited about finding the right person to fill this new role. If you know anyone who might be a good fit, please pass along this post. Thanks!

Customer Support Specialist

Punchbowl Software is looking for a person to join our growing team. This new role is a hybrid role of customer support and product testing. We’re looking for an energetic person who is ready for a new challenge and is interested in the party planning market.

Check out the job post and application instructions.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

A few weeks ago I was in New York City and met with Catherine Holohan, a writer at Business Week magazine. Catherine and I spent about an hour talking about MyPunchbowl. We talked about the market overall, and why MyPunchbowl is different than other event and party planning sites. However, this wasn’t a run-of-the-mill press meeting… Catherine is really nice person and we enjoyed chatting about our jobs and life too.

This morning I awoke to a very nice article in Business Week magazine. Here’s what Catherine wrote: “This year, MyPunchbowl.com launched an invitation site with party-planning tools. One is a date optimizer that chooses the best day for an event based on votes by those invited, even giving preference to the dates preferred by those invitees whom the host identifies as VIPs behind the scenes. “There is demand for sophisticated party planning online,” says founder Matt Douglas.”

I also like how Catherine clearly articulated the business opportunity for Punchbowl. Beyond the nearly $30 billion U.S. market for online ads, there’s another obvious financial opportunity for online invitation sites: the $10-billion-plus market for party supplies.

Thanks to Catherine for spending the time with me and covering MyPunchbowl.com. Business Week is one of the few publications I actually read consistently. It’s really nice to be recognized in such an important publication.

Read the article here.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

This past Saturday evening, my cell phone rang around 5pm. We had just spent the day with my over-energetic niece and nephew, so I was relaxing for a few quiet minutes poking around online. When my phone rang, I didn’t recognize the number — so I assumed it might be a user calling for customer support. With slight hesitation, I answered the call.

On the phone was a woman named Ruby. Although she started the phone call with pleasantries, it was clear within a minute or so that she was not happy at all. Ruby was hosting a big event in the upcoming week, and MyPunchbowl was giving her troubles.

As soon as Ruby began to explain her problem, I knew it was related to some changes we had made to the website on Thursday and Friday. You see, Ruby’s guest list was almost 600 people and she was describing problems with speed and performance of the site. I quickly knew that I wasn’t going to be able to help her right away, and that I would need to get one or more of our programmers involved. Keep in mind that it was 5pm on Saturday. Not the best time to bug your employees who have been putting in more than their share of hours during the week.

I tried to explain to Ruby that I didn’t have a solution for her — and that it was going to take some time. Understandably, she was not satisfied. She got short with me pretty quickly (Edit: Ruby says “obnoxious” not “short”), and I frankly wasn’t in the mood to take it. I tried to explain to her what I was going to do to fix her problem, but she kept interrupting me… and my patience was wearing thin. From her perspective, she thought that by calling customer service that she would get a instant solution to her problem. The reality was that the issue was going to take some time to fix. I put Ruby on hold, composed myself, and told her that I would do whatever it takes to fix the problem.

I took all of her contact info, got off of the phone, and immediately called Blake, one of our programmers. Blake was more than willing to dive in and fix the problem. A few hours later, he had a fix to the problem. I emailed Ruby with the information she needed, and provided her with relavent details. At the end of my note, I told her that my new goal was to make her one of the most ardent supporters of MyPunchbowl.com. I had no idea what to expect — was she lost as a customer forever?

On Monday, I received a response from Ruby: “hi matt, thanks so much! i couldn’t have asked for better customer service!”

Yesterday, I received this unsolicited follow-up from her: “just want to tell you that the excel spreadsheet is an awesome perk of using your site. We have someone coordinating the party for us on wed and she wanted the names of people coming so she could make a spreadsheet, but I told her that we already had one!”

So what’s the moral of the story:

1) Don’t answer the phone on Saturday at 5pm unless you are prepared to handle any type of customer service call. I thought it would be an easy call, and I would help a customer with a simple problem. It turned into a 3 hour affair that involved one of our engineers and our web hosting provider.

2) Try to be as empathetic with your customers as possible. Ruby was frustrated and wanted a solution fast. Even though I couldn’t provide a quick solution, the faster I became empathetic to her needs, the more I was able to see eye to eye with her.

3) Don’t act like a customer service robot when you answer the phone. I like customers to realize that I’m a person too — by being more personal, Ruby was less likely to stay angry with me. I tried to take the tone of “we’re having a beer together” rather than some idiot reading a script (note to self: this deserves a blog post in itself).

4) No reasonable customer is ever lost. The most angry, annoyed, fed-up customer can be turned around if you listen to what they need and do your best to respond (note: this does not mean that you should put up with abuse or people who try to take advantage of you).

Ruby contacted me again last night. She’s more than happy — “Matt, I’m definitely a punchbowl client for good!”

To Ruby: I’m really glad that we were able to help you. In a small way, I hope that we enabled your celebration. We’re building this software for people just like you. I’m glad to call you a customer.

Oh, and check the mail. We sent you a little something to say thanks for putting up with the website problem
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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl