MyPunchblog

I’m really proud of the announcement we made this morning — Punchbowl and Kayak.com have teamed up to offer a party planning travel center on MyPunchbowl.com. The team at Kayak has been great to work with, and we’re really happy to offer travel services right alongside our event planning toolset.

Here’s the press release we issued this morning:

MyPunchbowl.com and Kayak.com Launch Party Planning Travel Center
MyPunchbowl adds Kayak.com travel search capabilities in time for graduation party planning.

Framingham, Mass (PRWEB) April 15, 2008 — According to the U.S Census, more than 6 million students will graduate from college and high school this academic year. For many families, a graduation provides a reason to celebrate - but it also presents coordination headaches to plan the party and get everyone to the event destination.

Today, MyPunchbowl.com a leader in online event and party planning, has answered these needs with the launch of a new party planning travel center powered by Kayak.com, the world’s largest travel site. Kayak.com’s award-winning search functionality has been added to MyPunchbowl and provides quick access to the most comprehensive travel search on the Web. Party planners and goers can now search prices and availability for hundreds of airlines, more than 100,000 hotels and all major rental car brands without ever leaving MyPunchbowl.com.

“Lots of our users are researching trips for events such as graduations and family reunions and we are pleased to bring the power of Kayak.com straight to the party planning source,” said Paul English, CTO and co-founder of Kayak.com. “In this difficult economic climate, many travelers may need to price a trip before replying to an online invitation and now these consumers simply and quickly use the Kayak.com search widget to research prices and availability without leaving MyPunchbowl.com.”

The MyPunchbowl Travel Center includes all of the core features that are available on Kayak.com, plus:
• Event hosts can search flights, cars, and hotels directly from their MyPunchbowl account
• Event guests have travel search capabilities directly within the MyPunchbowl save the date or online invitation
• A simple option enables hosts to choose whether or not to display the travel center on the guest view

“Our new travel center furthers our goal to be the leader in end to end party planning online by integrating Kayak.com’s travel search technology within the site,” said Matt Douglas, CEO, Punchbowl Software. “Like MyPunchbowl, Kayak.com makes planning travel easier by searching hundreds of travel sites for prices and availability, and providing all the tools and content a traveler needs to make an informed decision about their purchase. Together, Kayak.com and MyPunchbowl make attending an event even easier.”

MyPunchbowl offers a modern, user-friendly interface that adapts to the party planning needs of the host. Unique features such as “Pick a Date” and “Party Checklist” along with online invitations help hosts with coordination and logistics through every stage of party planning. MyPunchbowl is the perfect site for planning a graduation party, birthday party, or important life milestone celebration.

To view the MyPunchbowl Travel Center, signup for a free account at http://www.mypunchbowl.com

About Punchbowl Software
Punchbowl Software was founded by software and user interface experts Matt Douglas and Sean Conta. They were frustrated with the available methods for planning an event or party and knew there had to be a better way. Matt was previously in senior management positions at Bose Corporation and Adobe Systems. Sean has held positions at Zildjian Cymbals and Innoveer Solutions as a user-experience specialist. The company is located in Framingham, MA in the heart of the Metrowest technology center of Boston and is backed by Intel Capital. To learn more and sign up for a free account, visit http://www.mypunchbowl.com

About Kayak.com
Kayak.com, the largest Travel 2.0 site in the world, is a global Internet media company operating Kayak.com, Sidestep.com, TravelPost.com and TravelSearch.com. Kayak.com and SideStep.com display results from more than 400 travel sites, providing prices and itineraries for hundreds of airlines, more than 100,000 hotels, all leading rental car companies and 18 cruise lines. Kayak.com has won more awards since launch than any other travel site including “100 Best Products of 2007″ by PC World; “25 Sites We Can’t Live Without” by TIME Magazine; “Best Search Engine” by the Associated Press; and “Best of the Web” by BusinessWeek, Forbes.com and US News & World Report. Launched in 2005 by co-founders of Orbitz, Travelocity and Expedia, Kayak.com’s investors include General Catalyst Partners, Sequoia Capital, Accel Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Trident Capital, Oak Investment Partners, Lehman Brothers Venture Partners and America Online, Inc. Kayak.com has sites in the UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy. For more information, visit www.Kayak.com.

For more information about MyPunchbowl.com, please contact:
Matt Douglas
Punchbowl Software   
650-814-3393     

For more information about Kayak.com, please contact:
Kellie Pelletier   
Kayak.com   
203-899-3111   
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I’m in Redwood City, CA today after a late-night flight in from Boston. I’m speaking at the Dow Jones Web Venture Conference. We were invited to speak at this conference– one of only 50 or so startups around the world to be offered this opportunity.

I just finished my first talk– had a good crowd of around 25-30 people. While that doesn’t sound very large, keep in mind that the people who come to this conference are qualified venture investors. Getting in front of 25 of them at once is a very efficient way to tell the Punchbowl story.

The conference is very well organized — Charles is running from room to room making sure that everything runs on time. I really appreciate that, as it ensures that each presenter has ample time to speak.

One random story: in my jet-lagged state, I made a bagel in the toaster downstairs in the lobby. Soon after I put the bagel in the toaster, I was introduced to someone. A few minutes later, I smelled the burning toast… doh! I’m really glad I didn’t burn down the Sofitel Redwood City. I’m not sure if our insurance covers that.

I’ll be in the SF area today, Wed and Thurs. If you think it would be mutually beneficial to meet with me while I’m here, drop me a line.

I’m off to go do my talk again. Just need to rewind my brain and hit play.

I’ve been spending a lot of time recently discussing various partnerships with other companies. As an early startup, partnership/business development agreements are critical to the growth of the company. Right now, we have a good problem to deal with in this area: there are far more good partnership opportunties that are coming our way than we have time to handle. Therefore, we have to be selective, and make sure that any partnership we enter into helps us achieve our company’s goals.

I was talking about this with one of Punchbowl’s board members recently, and he passed on a gem that he heard from another one of our board members. “Beware of Barney partnerships” he said. As you can imagine, I was pretty confused. “What’s a Barney partnership?” I asked.

A Barney partnership is one where the companies declare that “I love you” and “You love me” but nothing of material significance transpires (often the signal of a Barney partnership is a press release that says very little). For those of you who don’t know, Barney is a purple dinosaur who sings the repetitive “I love you, you love me” lyrics on a popular children’s show (if you don’t know Barney, where have you been living?!).

It turns out that this is a fairly well-known concept. Here are a couple of interesting articles that discuss Barney partnerships.

If you’re working on a business development relationship, here are some quick questions to ask yourself before entering into a partnership agreement:

1) Does this partnership help you get closer to your company’s goals? How? In what way? Answer this question with specifics.

2) Is either party overly concerned with the press announcement about the partnership? Sure it has value, but the real value should be in the business relationship, not in a marketing activity.

3) Is there anything of material value changing hands in the partnership? If not, it’s a likely sign of a Barney partnership.

4) Is the partnership a distraction for your company or right in-line with the organization’s goals? If you’re hesitant to get your engineering team involved with the partnership, it likely because the partnership is more of a distraction than it is worth.

5) Can your company achieve its goals without the partnership? If so, it’s likely that external pressures are causing you to place too much emphasis on the partnership. Refer to questions 1-4. Wash, rinse, repeat.

Final note: If you currently considering a partnership with Punchbowl Software, how does the potential partnership stack up against these questions for you?

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl