MyPunchblog

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

Kiva is an interesting company. They are in the business of “micro-lending.” Here’s the basic jist: individuals like you and me can donate small amounts of money (e.g. $10 or $25) directly to businesses in developing countries. Kiva processes the money, and connects to the organizations that provide financing to small (often entrepreneurial) businesses. It’s a great startup, and I’m proud that I’ve (finally) joined Kiva as a user.

But I’m even more proud that my cousin Sam is the Chief Technical Officer of Kiva. (For those keeping track at home, Sam is actually my cousin-in-law, but since I’ve known him for many years, I’ve now adopted him).

Sam is the perfect software engineer. He’s got the geek thing totally down: the type of programmer who talks to himself as he’s coding and who sees the best solution for any problem. The Kiva job is great for him too. It appeals to his sense of responsibility for the world and offers its fair share of technical challenges.

Sam is a very generous person. I’ve been to San Francisco four times already this year, and I’m going again this coming week. Sam not only picks me up and drops me at the airport, but he gives me a place to sleep at his apartment (usually for a week at a time). If that wasn’t enough, he provides me his car so I can shoot up and down the peninsula. Sam has literally saved me thousands of dollars in hotel stays, airport transfers, and car rentals. On my last trip, he wouldn’t even let me pay for gas. Well, sorry Sam—I’ve just made the first of many donations through Kiva in your honor. If you won’t let me pay it back, I’ll pay it forward.

I hope all of the readers of this blog will visit Kiva.org and sign up for a free account. And if you see any problems with the site, let me know. I know the guy who can fix them.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

A few of the leading tech blogs are sponsoring a new awards competition for 2007. The blogs involved are TechCrunch (thus the name “Crunchies”), GigaOm (we like them, although they’ve never written about MyPunchbowl), VentureBeat (great blog for any VC deal news), and Read/WriteWeb (good blog for up-to-date product news).

You can participate by nominating MyPunchbowl to one of the 20 categories. To nominate MyPunchbowl or yours truly, visit the Crunchies nomination page.

Thanks for your support of MyPunchbowl.com.

P.S. Shameless plug: Did you miss that?!? You can nominate me….

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

Scott Kirsner wrote an article this past weekend for his Innovation Economy column in the Boston Globe. In the article, he looks at the question of whether or not we are in a economic bubble. As is typical with Scott’s longer form pieces, he sought out opinions from both sides and he does a great job of interviewing people with many different opinions.

Along with the article, Scott produced a video with short interviews of people with opinions on the subject. I was lucky enough to be interviewed by Scott at the TechCrunch Boston event.

I’d like to take a moment to add to the few points I made in the video:

1. I believe that startups whose sole business model is advertising will have a hard time as we go deeper into 2008 and 2009. Although the market for online advertising is growing rapidly, there simply is not enough demand to fill the supply of startups who believe they can build a business solely on advertising revenue.
2. I believe that we are in a “startup bubble.” It seems everyday there is a new social network that launches and yet another website that aims at a specific vertical. They can’t all co-exist. At some point, the startup activity will slow down.
3. Companies (like Punchbowl Software) that have a hybrid business model will be able to adapt more quickly to any economic downturn. At this point, we have more business development opportunities for e-commerce partnerships than we can handle. While we believe that a large percentage of our future revenue will indeed come from advertising, we’re building a diverse business that we believe will help us weather the storm of any economic downturn.
4. I expect that merger and acquisition activity will pick up significantly during 2008 and 2009. As small companies feel less sure of their ability to survive in an uncertain market and large companies look to invest in new technology and services, I think we’ll see a lot of consolidation in the market. In the past, this would have fueled even more startup activity — over the next 1-2 years I think you’ll see this will have the short-term effect to dry up the startup community.
5. As always, the market is goes in cycles. A few years from now, everyone will be asking if we are in a recession. I believe that the cycles will be much shorter over the next decade– so we will see more highs and lows. In this kind of a market, timing is everything. Let’s hope Punchbowl Software is in the right place at the right time.

Whether or not we are in an economic bubble this time is debatable and maybe even laughable, but I think one thing we all agree on is that it is a great time to be an entrepreneur.

Thanks to Scott for including Punchbowl in his interview. Scott is great for Boston– he’s asking the hard questions and raising the consciousness of the entire community. As a journalist, I can’t imagine that there is anything more rewarding.

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

This morning, we announced a brand-new version of MyPunchbowl.com. We’re very excited about this new release — it’s a complete face-lift of the site and we’ve added a few new features as well. It’s been quite a team effort, and we’re all really proud of what we’ve accomplished. It’s hard to explain how good it feels to ship a new release after months of feature spec’ing and testing, and this one feels better than most. We would love to hear your feedback: particularly we would love to know what you think about the overall new look as well as the new theme selector. To send us feedback, click “Feedback/Support” at the bottom of any page on MyPunchbowl.com. So what are you waiting for? Go check out our new release and start your holiday party planning!

Follow the link for the press release….

MyPunchbowl gets a face-lift in time for holiday party planning

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Party Planning and Online Invitations with MyPunchbowl

On Friday night, Punchbowl was a sponsor of the TechCrunch Boston Meetup. It was a fantastic event for us — and by all accounts a big success for MyPunchbowl.com.

For Punchbowl, preparations for the event started a few weeks ago, and we really kicked it into high gear at the beginning of last week. Our goal was to elevate our visibility within the Boston TechCrunch crowd and clearly articulate the benefits of MyPunchbowl.com. At the event we launched our new marketing campaign: Use MyPunchbowl.com and you will be the “World’s Greatest Host.” We created t-shirts, big signs, and lots and lots of stickers. Oh, and we served the World’s Greatest Punch (yes, both alcoholic and non-alcoholic). Here’s a quick run-down of the MyPunchbowl presence at the event…

Our demonstration area was on the second floor. As people walked up the stairs, they saw this sign:

If you turned the corner to the right, you would see our demonstration area (note the beautiful monitor in the background showing off our brand new interface):

Here’s my co-founder Sean sporting our “World’s Greatest Host” t-shirt and listening intently to a potential user:

We had “World’s Greatest Host” stickers– and we applied them to anyone who stopped by our area. Here’s Mike Arrington (the real host of the event) showing his support for MyPunchbowl:

Last but not least– my brilliant wife came up with a name for the punch we served:

This event was truly a team effort– thanks to everyone who helped us make this happen. In no particular order, thanks to Jeanne, Dave, Blake, Jess, Sean, Mike — and anyone else I might have missed.

To read more about the event, see Don Dodge, Doug Levin (dude, where were you?), Center Networks, YoavShapira, Chris Herot, Jeff Bussgang and the official TechCrunch writeup.

We sponsored this event to help spread the word about MyPunchbowl. If you haven’t signed up for a free account and given MyPunchbowl.com a try yet, I’d like to invite you to take a minute and check it out: http://www.mypunchbowl.com.

Yesterday, I spent a good portion of the day writing down some thoughts about social media platforms. My goal is to set a course for Punchbowl Software as a company and articulate our strategy around the social media platforms.

Like most Web 2.0 startups, we dipped our toes in the murky waters of the Facebook platform. In September, we released a Facebook application called “Party Animal.” While it was interesting for us to learn about the Facebook platform, so far Party Animal has not become one of the really popular applications. I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised: as the O’Reilly group so eloquently pointed out, only 84 Facebook applications have 87% of the traffic. Maybe if we had gotten on board early we would have been more successful.

So after spending some of my day thinking about the social media platforms and debating about which platforms to support in the future, it was particularly good timing when I stopped by TechCrunch last night and saw the announcement from Google about OpenSocial. Here’s the deal: rather than companies like ours writing applications directly for the Facebook platform, we can now write to Google OpenSocial and connect with a “new universe of social networks all over the web.” This is interesting.

What does it mean for MyPunchbowl.com? Well, we still have a fundmental question to answer: how much effort and energy should we put towards supporting these social networks? The reality is that MyPunchbowl.com’s traffic is growing fast and our users want new features and functionality on the main site. We’re quickly establishing ourselves as one of the leaders in event and party planning, and we have more opportunities than we can handle right now. Like all startups, we have limited resources. So while this announcement from Google helps companies like ours by theoretically limiting the distraction, it is still a distraction from our core mission.

Once the dust settles from this most recent development, startups like mine still have the same question to answer: is it worth the distraction to develop for the social media sites or are we better off focusing our energy on our main app? From my perspective, Google’s OpenSocial doesn’t help answer this question. It’s just another option to consider.

Additional information and good reading on ZDNet, O’Reilly, Mashable, and GigaOm.

Today, MyPunchbowl.com is introducing a new line of themed online invitations for the gay, lesbian, transgender and bisexual (GLBT) community.

Over the past year, a significant number of people have asked us for GLBT templates. The common requests are for gay marriage and civil unions, but once in a while we get other requests like coming out or adoption.  We want MyPunchbowl.com to be a place for everyone who is planning a celebration, so we’re happy to oblige.

We’ve decided to introduce these new online invitations to coincide with National Coming Out Day, which is today, October 11th. We have over 25 new templates, including gay marriage, civil union, second parent adoption, coming out, gay pride, AIDS awareness among many others. We’ll be adding more everyday as users request them. Here is a screenshot of our “Choose a Design” page with the GLBT category selected:

To see these themes, and view a large preview, create an account on MyPunchbowl.com and create a new party.  

To all of you who asked for these new online invitations, we hope you like them. We would love to hear your thoughts and suggestions. To send us your thoughts, go to www.mypunchbowl.com and click Feedback/Support (on the bottom of the page).

We’re committed to do our part to celebrate equality and help spread lasting understanding and tolerance. To the millions of people who are pausing today to celebrate National Coming Out Day, we’re proud to join you.  We invite you to sign up for a MyPunchbowl account and take a look at our new gay and lesbian online invitations and party themes.

Our friends over at Reddit have a drinking problem…um, I mean they want to buy you a drink. You see, apparently when you get acquired it comes with a provision that you get to celebrate the anniversary by getting your acquirer to pay for beer. Not bad. So Conde Nast/Wired Magazine is paying for friends of Reddit to gather in a few cities across the country. And drink. For free. What are you waiting for? Check out the reddit blog and add your name to the guest list.

And I’ll see you at the Reddit open bar in Boston. Hey Reddit, when’s that one?

Yesterday I was interviewed by Dow Jones VentureWire. The article came out this morning in the VentureWire newsletter.  By far, it’s my favorite article that’s ever been written about MyPunchbowl. And the best part? It’s all true.

Read on….

VENTUREWIRE ALERT

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

THE DAILY WRAP:

Punchbowl Software Inc., which just secured its first round of funding, puts its product through a verification process like no other start-up does. It’s called “The Jessies Test.”

See, both founders of the company married women named Jessie, and when they need feedback on their event planning Web site, their party-planning spouses prove to be an ideal sample group.

“‘The Jessies Test’ is input from two educated, Internet-savvy women and all they care about the site is that it’s easy to use,” co-founder and Chief Executive Matt Douglas said.

Douglas said the company just closed a “traditional seed round” from Intel Capital and eCoast Angels that was less than $1 million. He said the funding will be used to help the team sort out its revenue model, hire developers and experiment with marketing efforts.

The company was launched in January by Douglas and Sean Conta, both of whom have experience developing user interfaces for software.

Natick, Mass-based Punchbowl Software is the company behind MyPunchbowl.com, an event-planning Web site. MyPunchbowl offers tools for the full cycle of party planning - helping planners coordinate a date, send invitations, secure party supplies and share pictures and videos after the party.