July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Sometimes the process of scheduling meetings takes up more time than the meetings themselves. Atlas launched a mobile scheduling app today that seeks to streamline this process.

The apps for iPhone cut down on all the back-and-forth communication and toggling between tabs that people often resort to when setting up meetings. The goal is to stay out of your inbox as much as possible while scheduling. Atlas integrates with your existing calendar products and presents you with available meeting times. You can send someone the times that work for you and they click on the time that works best for them. Appointment made.

“Scheduling right now is a two-screen nightmare for people on all sides,” said CEO Hunter Gray in an interview with VentureBeat. “We’ve taken email, the mode of communication, and the calendar, the hub of context, and put them together on one screen. Atlas fits nicely between mobile calendars and web scheduling products. It is appointment sharing, rather than calendar sharing. We think we can own that market.”

Gray graduated from Yale University and entered the realm of direct sales. He lead a force of 10,000 people and observed “massive” inefficiencies in scheduling. Salespeople out in the field were always on their mobile devices, but they waited until arriving back at their desk to figure out appointment times because it was too much of a hassle on mobile. By then, the moment had passed and people were less inclined to follow up. Along with cofounder Michel Bayan, he set out to build a better system.

In addition to appointment sharing, other features include group scheduling, where you invite people to an event and everyone checks yes, no, or maybe to find the optimal time. Users can also make themselves available, prompting others to schedule a meeting with them. Atlas has productivity features as well, like assigning tasks and notifications when others complete them.

There is a lot of activity in the mobile productivity space. Sunrise, Fantastical, Tempo, not to mention the mobile presence of companies like Asana and web schedulers like Tungle.me. Despite the competition, the founders are confident that their product addresses many of the pain points that these other applications don’t and that the technology provides a superior, cross-platform method for scheduling. Atlas isn’t trying to change the behavior of people who typically make appointments while sitting at a computer. It is for people who schedule on-the-go and want a more efficient way to do it. The app will operate on a freemium model, with a monthly subscription fee for a pro account with added features.

Atlas participated in Launchpad LA and has raised $700K from angel investors.

Photo Credit: Atlas

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Twist promised to be the perfect app for the perpetually late when it hit the iPhone in July – instead of shooting an “OMW” (on my way) text, the app lets you automatically ping friends with updates on your location. It may not prevent you from being late, but at least your friends know how far away you are.

Today the company is bringing Twist to Android, as it aims to double-down on solving the “when” dilemma (as in, when the heck are you getting here) for mobile services.

“I think that the next generation of web applications and apps will all have a time component,” said Bill Lee, chief executive of Twist and noted serial investor. For the most part, the current trends in apps have focused mostly on social and location aspects, but haven’t dealt much with time.

Lee, an early investor in companies like Yammer, Hootsuite, and Tweetdeck, leveraged his own frustrations with meetings to create Twist. With his experience dealing with hot young companies, he was eager to get ahead of a potential trend. Twist competes with the location tracking company Glympse, as well as some recent features added to Waze, but Lee is quick to point out that he thinks Twist offers a far simpler experience.

Twist’s Android app works just like its iPhone sibling: Simply create a Twist from within the app by choosing where you’re going and who you’re meeting. When you leave your starting point, the app sends your location progress to your contact, and it also includes information about potential traffic snarls. Best of all, Twist works even if the recipient doesn’t have the app — you can also send a text or e-mail to a Twist web app.

Instead of building a native app, Twist decided to rely on HTML5 for Android, co-founder Mike Belshe noted. “HTML5 is not where it needs to be today, but we do want to put our bets and chips behind that,” he said.

Twist’s  iPhone app is currently native, but Belshe, who also invented the SPDY protocol while part of the Google Chrome team, is looking forward to the day when he can power it with HTML5 as well. At that point, the company will easily be able to develop and update Twist more easily (which is the typical mantra of HTML5 fans).

The company has also developed some patent-pending methods to reduce battery consumption while using its apps, Bershe said. That’s important, because the Twist app needs to run in the background as you travel to your next meeting.

Twist is based in San Francisco, Calif. and has raised $6 million in funding from Bridgescale Partners, eBay co-founder Jeff Skoll, former Netscape CTO Eric Hahn, Yammer CEO David Sacks, and others.

Figuring out what events you want to attend has only gotten more complex in the age of social media, something new startup Sched.it is keenly aware of.

Describing itself as “Twitter for events,” Sched.it offers an event discovery service that goes beyond a simple calendar listing. Users are presented with a stream of event activity that’s based on overall popularity and their social circle. The basic idea is that you’ll be able to more easily see the hottest events in the area, as well as which of your friends are attending.  You can follow specific venues that you like, such as a nightclub or a performance hall. And as you’ve probably guessed by the company’s name, Sched.it helps you keep track of the events that you do plan on attending.

However, the feed of activity is what sets it apart from other, more notable event services like Facebook, Google Places, and Yelp.

Ultimately, Sched.it wants to improve the social lives of people when they actually get off the computer, according to founder and CEO Omar Tellez, who says the service is all about “connecting you with the right people, right places at the right time.”

“I would like to think that we are shifting the paradigm of the event discovery process,” Tellez said onstage at DEMO Spring 2012 today.

The service, which launched in February, is currently only available in Boston — an ideal area for what Sched.it is trying to accomplish.

“We live in between two of the most event active cities in the world (NYC and Philly). Figuring out what’s going on in these cities is a complicated task,” Tellez told VentureBeat earlier.

It has been incorporated into Boston.com, the New York Times-owned website of the Boston Globe. Since the launch 8 weeks ago, Sched.it has delivered information on over 6,000 events and has processed 4,000 transactions, Tellez said. (Transactions include scheduling an event, favoriting an event, or buying tickets for an event). The company said its bringing in about half a million monthly impressions.

Last week, the company also launched Sched.it Sports, a version of the service that’s focused solely on sporting events.

“It looks like a very complex flow,” said Jeff Clavier, a managing director at SoftTech VC, who spoke on a panel after Sched.it’s presentation. “I think it’s interesting, but there’s a lot of work to do on the product side.”

Founded in 2011, the startup has four employees based in Princeton, NJ. Sched.it has raised a total of $500,000 to date from a handful of angel investors, including Dennis Phelps, John Hanke, Jonathan Harris, Ashim Mehra, and Ed Ruben.

Sched.it is one of 80 companies chosen by VentureBeat to launch at the DEMO Spring 2012 event taking place this week in Silicon Valley. After we make our selections, the chosen companies pay a fee to present. Our coverage of them remains objective.

Photo credit: Heather Kelly/VentureBeat

Groupon today launched a wide beta of its Groupon Scheduler product. The Scheduler is an online calendaring tool that allows service businesses such as spas, yoga studios, contractors and photographers to take reservations online. It’s open to all merchants, not just companies that run deals with Groupon. The daily deals company is billing it as a “free trial,” and it’s unclear whether Groupon will eventually charge for the service. Groupon did not respond to two requests for comment on this story.

How the Groupon Scheduler works

Scheduler allows customers to see availability, book a reservation, and get a confirmation email. I created a dummy spa business that lets consumers schedule massage appointments with “Jill.” Feel free to schedule an appointment (but you won’t get a massage.) Scoll down and click the “Book Now!” link at the bottom left side of the page to trigger Scheduler.

Overall, the product is fairly competent and handles simple-use cases well for a beta product. I generally like the management screens on the merchant side as well. The big complaint I had about the product’s user interface was that I couldn’t find a way to point people directly at a booking screen; it seems that Groupon only provides a script link that merchants can embed in their own sites. (That’s why my fake salon has such a clumsy Web page to trigger the booking process.) Many merchants won’t have the technical expertise or resources to do this.

For those that do, Groupon Scheduler provides a “good enough” solution that tackles the basics. More established businesses will likely want to use a dedicated system from a vertical solutions provider like MINDBODY for yoga studios.

But there are a couple of big IFs that need to be answered before I’d recommend businesses start using Scheduler.

Who owns the data?

It’s not clear who owns the data that is in Groupon Scheduler. Can Groupon take a spa’s entire customer database and start marketing competing spa deals from other providers? That would be wrong, but I couldn’t find any terms and conditions that say it won’t. Groupon PR did not respond, and I haven’t yet heard back on a request I sent to customer service.

For a service that is as essential to a business as scheduling and captures personal data, I found it extremely unusual that I couldn’t find an agreement anywhere on the Scheduler site that explains Groupon’s rights and responsibilities.

Until Groupon clarifies what it will do with the data that merchants and their customers enter, I recommend against companies adopting Scheduler.

Will it benefit Groupon customers and hurt regulars?

The other important question is whether Groupon Scheduler just ends up as a boon to regular Groupon customers at the expense of a merchant’s regular customers. As I wrote when discussing Groupon’s whale problem, the business needs of Groupon are often fundamentally at odds with the business needs of the merchant proving the service.

The optimal scenario for a merchant is to make fewer spaces available to discounted customers than full-price customers. In Groupon’s case, this would mean the best product for its merchant customers would treat its deal customers like second-class citizens. I couldn’t find a way to do this in the Groupon Scheduler interface. (The help files do suggest that businesses could use pen-and-paper for regular appointments and only make Groupon inventory available online.) That’s a fundamental conflict that is hard to reconcile.

One of the bigger complaints about Groupon and daily deals in general is that it can sometimes be hard to redeem offers because businesses are too busy. I’ve heard complaints that the next available slot for a house cleaning daily deal was four months later. Groupon Scheduler would make it more efficient to make those appointments. But because Groupon regulars are more likely to know about these tools then a merchant’s regulars, it has a high likelihood of displacing full-priced customers. Groupon could advise merchants to block off space in advance of a Groupon run (as I do in my best practices for running a daily deal), but that goes against Groupon’s interests.

The first of these concerns is resolvable; Groupon needs to make it clear to businesses that the data they enter about customers and their activity will not be used for Groupon’s other businesses. The second concern is a lot trickier.

Until these concerns are resolved, it’s best that merchants hold off on a booking a date with Groupon Scheduler.

Click for a larger view of the back-end interface for the Groupon Scheduler.

Several companies have taken on the service of scheduling tweets and Facebook updates, letting you choose which date and time an update goes out. Instead of letting you decide when to push out an update, Buffer takes the scheduling into its own hands and sends out updates at “optimal times.”

Buffer conducted a survey of 2,000 Twitter users last August and found that engagement was up 200 percent for users who scheduled tweets with Buffer, The Next Web reported. The company claims that there are optimal times to send out tweets and other status updates, times when people are more likely to see the content and click on shared links.

Hootsuite, Tweetdeck, and so many other services have popped up that let you schedule tweets and status updates for later, though all of them focus on scheduling at a specific time. Services like Hootsuite are more suited to people who want complete control over their status updates, where those who use Buffer are more willing to turn that control over to a piece of software to do it for them.

Buffer was founded in 2011 and is run by a three-man team. The company raised a seed round of $400,000 in December from 19 angel investors including Huddle co-founder Andy McLoughlin, and Thomas Korte and Gokul Rajaram from AngelPad.

Beyond funding support, the company plans to turn a profit by charging for premium services. Buffer is free for up to 10 posts per month, but you can upgrade to the Pro or Premium plans. Pro is $10 per month for several social media accounts and 50 Buffer posts, Premium is aimed at businesses, costs $100 per month, and offers unlimited Buffer services.

Talking on the phone is so 2009, but every so often you must power through the pain, pick up the phone and schedule an appointment. And so, newly public Groupon is piloting an online scheduling tool to take the pain away for merchants and their customers.

Groupon Scheduler, as the new tool is called, gives merchants in Sacramento and Miami the ability to accept appointments on the web, so that phone-phobic patrons can skip the hassle of talking to a person and immediately book a date after buying a deal.

Both merchant and customer receive confirmation emails when an appointment is booked via Scheduler, and automated email reminders are sent out 24 hours before scheduled bookings.

The product is currently free for merchants, and integrated into the Groupon experience, but merchants can also optionally use the scheduling tool and “Book Now” buttons to manage their entire calendar, and all of their services (not just the services they’re offering via Groupon), on their own sites.

“We wanted to create a tool that would not only make the Groupon feature process easier for merchants, but also help them run their businesses on an ongoing basis beyond their Groupon deal,” Mihir Shah, vice president of product, said.

Groupon Scheduler actually comes from a small, Vancouver-based company called OpenCal. Groupon acquired the startup in September for an undisclosed sum and waited until yesterday to announce its new purchase.

The new feature certainly fills a small hole in the Groupon experience, but with limited availability, Scheduler will do little to boost Groupon sales or calm investor trepidation. Or maybe it will. The market is showing renewed faith in the company. Groupon opened at $20 a share in November, saw share prices plummet shortly thereafter, but is once again trading slightly above its initial asking price.

[Image via sunface13/Flickr]

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) announced this morning that it has acquired Tungle.me, a calendar scheduling application, for an undisclosed sum of money.

Tungle.me, which launched at DEMO in 2007, offers a service to synchronize and schedule meetings across various calendaring applications — including Microsoft’s Outlook, Google Calendar, and Apple iCal. Additionally, it helps prevent timezone and double-booking conflicts, and integrates with devices such as Apple’s iPhone and RIM’s own BlackBerry.

The service has managed to build a fair amount of traction since launching, currently put into use by 40 percent of Fortune 1000 companies and over 800 universities around the world.

While RIM has yet to mention what it plans to do with the service, the company is most likely going to keep it running in its current form, going by its similar past acquisitions of Gist, an e-mail contact manager, and DataViz, a document platform for Outllook.

The Montreal, Canada-based startup was founded by Marc Gingras. It raised $6.36 million over two funding rounds, with investors that included Desjardins Venture Capital, Commonwealth Capital Ventures, and JLA Ventures.

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