SuperOyster.com, Inc. Official Blog

2006-11-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

ps3 SPOT IN LINE WANTED

Yet more evidence of your positions being valuable.

PlayStation 3 Launch - Sell your position in line

2006-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I’m on the East Coast meeting with a few teams regarding the SuperOyster platform. As luck would have it, the PS3 was released in the US today. Funny, our platform is designed to facilitate the exact phenomena I am witnessing here in mid-town Manhattan – people are being paid for their physical position in line at game retail outlets for the right to purchase the PlayStation 3. I didn’t believe the news articles at first, so I went down to GameStop in Herald Square to confirm that yes, the going rate for a position in line was $500. The same thing happened for the XBOX 360 launch, so I’m not surprised that it’s happening again.

Many people have asked me if this is ethical? My response is that I don’t know, nor do I really need to have an opinion. The market is real, and we are the only platform designed to take advantage of it. In our platform, the merchant even has an opportunity to participate, thus it’s a win-win-win situation. This whole scenario can be leveraged by the masses to generate profit for the merchant, and we have the pending patents to make it happen.

So this goes out to all perspective merchants… why not take participate in this market? Facilitate and embrace this market, and your customers will be happier. This market will exist whether or not you choose to embrace it, so why not help your customers and make a little bit of money for yourself?

Financing Fourm

2006-11-16T20:07:00.000-08:00

Another day on the road for SuperOyster. I’m on another plane right now, heading out to the East Coast to meet with a couple east coast professional sports teams about our great platform.

I spent the last 2 days at the Vancouver Financing Forum in BC, where I swear animals were lining up two by two looking for the ark. I haven’t seen it rain that much in a very long time.

Now on to the forum – this event was really targeted at later stage companies who were looking for large Series B investment, so SuperOyster was a little out of place. Most companies were focused on biotech and IT so, it felt a bit stodgy. I decided to play it up a little and do something different. I went out and bought a Toronto Maple Leaf’s hockey jersey the day before. As you know, the Leaf’s have a 10+ year season ticket waiting list, and is probably the most popular hockey team in the world. I wore the jersey for the entire forum, even during my presentation. It was fairly well received, but I did have a bunch a people give me grief for wearing it. Anyway, we made a great number of contacts at the meeting, but it wasn’t as good of a forum as we had hoped. Above all though, I did have fun wearing the jersey – really, honest I’m not a Maple Leaf’s fan. (

More updates as things happen…just got word that it’s raining in NYC as well. Ugh.

Ticketing "Pre-Sales"

2006-11-14T07:34:00.000-08:00

As I’m stuck on another plane, I figured I’d take a few minutes to discuss how the SuperOyster platform is being evangelized to our first market – sports ticketing.

In the past, there has really only been 2 main ticketing sales categories, primary and secondary. These terms can be applied to most types of seats, regardless of location. “Primary ticket sales” is a term applied to tickets which are sold by a sports team or promoter directly to the fans. The sales intervals can be annual (season tickets) or individual (per event), and each sport entity will impose rules regarding how fans can access these tickets. Ticketmaster and other groups usually mediate these sales, for which they charge a processing fee.

“Secondary ticket sales” occur when tickets are sold for a “second” time between two parties. The tickets were originally purchased by an individual thru the sports team and then resold to another individual, sometimes for a profit. Some people also refer to this as scalping, and many states have laws which regulate how these tickets can be resold. There are thousands of legit ticket resellers (or ticket brokers as they are known in the industry) and plenty of not-so-legit sellers. There are at least 6 different software services which can help these brokers find and resell tickets – the most prominent one available is from TicketsNow.

A sub category of ticket brokers has recently been born, which I’ll refer to as “sponsored” secondary ticket brokers.  These are resellers who are sponsored by a sports team, whereas a marketing agreement has been signed between the broker and the team.  The team directs its fans to use a specific secondary ticket broker in return for a small percentage of the revenue. There are many benefits to all parties in one of these transactions -- guaranteed sales, new revenue, controlled inventory, etc. The most prominent players in this category are StubHub, TicketsNow, and RazorGator. Ticketmaster recently announced that they are targeting this area as well, but they are very distant fourth.

The SuperOyster platform disrupts this playing field by establishing a new market for “pre-sales”. We work with teams who have such huge fan demand, that people are queuing up for access to the primary ticket sales. Many teams have waiting lists for tickets today and it’s expected that many more teams will have waiting lists in the future. We can take that “pre-sales” demand and turn it into a marketplace that harnesses the power of the internet to build hype around primary ticket sales.  As is mentioned on our website, we also participate in revenue sharing with the sports team, so that both teams and fans can benefit.

SuperOyster wins 3rd Place!

2006-11-14T07:23:00.000-08:00

I’m writing this blog from the athletic director’s office of a well known college football powerhouse. It’s been an interesting week for sure.

Last Thursday, SuperOyster was one of only 7 companies chosen to present at the TiE Funding Forum. 50 companies had submitted entries to present, but only 7 of us made the cut. These 7 companies were then provided 5 minutes to pitch our business to an audience of 300 investors. Talk about stress! Five minutes is a extremely short period of time to discuss the disruptive platform we’ve developed! Well, as luck would have it, my presentation was good enough to earn us an honorable mention (3rd place!) for the event. That’s a huge win for us! Time will tell if that will actually turn into investment dollars – I’m hoping that it will. Most people say we have one of the best ideas for ticketing since StubHub and RazorGator broke ground.

I also met with the marketing director of well known NFL team today. That went really well, as we are now discussing how to pitch our concept to the rest of the organization.

Tomorrow, I’m back in the Northwest, but I’ll be in Vancouver BC at the Canadian Financing Forum. Hopefully that will go as well as last week’s event. 2 more pro teams, each from different leagues, have agreed to meet with us. So, I’ll be on another plane again in 48 hours. It’s been a real exciting time, and I expect it to continue to be a wild ride.

More from the road as it develops!

Website and Advisory Board

2006-11-02T15:56:00.000-08:00

SuperOyster is pleased to launch our new corporate website. The old site was great, but we’ve had so many things happen to us lately that we figured it was time to update the site with much more content. We even included a live demonstration of our code – there are few features that are crippled, but it is a good demonstration of how our system works.

Let me give you all a run down of some of the other things happening here recently.

We’ve retooled our advisory board with a number of highly influential people. If you think you’d be a good candidate for our advisory board, please let me know. So far, our advisory board consists of:

Michael Arrington – Editor of the widely read tech blog, TechCrunch. He was also the former COO of RazorGator.

Jim Goodman – Founder/Creator of Ticketmaster.com and former VP of Product Development and Strategy at Tickets.com. He has some great insight on his blog/website – http://www.jimgoodman.com

Charles H. Porter – former CTO and former CIO at Accenture. He is also a board member for Seattle University's Entrepreneurship Center.

We’ve also been working hard to promote and fund SuperOyster. We have been invited to present at the TiE Financing Forum on Nov 9th. SuperOyster is also pleased to be invited to the Vancouver Financing Forum (different than the TiE folks) on Nov 14th. Lastly, if you subscribe to CEO Magazine, you’ll be scared by my ugly mug in the startups section. Narcissism aside, it’s kind of cool to see oneself in a magazine. So, they didn’t put the pictures up on their website, but they did post the article. You can find it here.

If you're curious, here's the picture they used for the article.

We have some really neat customer meetings happening in the next couple weeks. I’ll let you all know how those all pan out.

First Official Customer!

2006-10-27T08:42:00.000-07:00

Hello All!

It’s been a long time since we left anything here, but sheesh have we been BUSY! Over the course of the last couple months, we spent a TON of time working on the first version of our platform and I’m happy to say that as of today we launched the very first version of our service!

Woo-Hoo!

Our first customer is The Boathouse of Fort Lauderdale . They’ve been a super partner who really understands the power of the internet. If you want to see our platform in action, go up to http://www.megaslips.com where you’ll find links to 4 waiting lists which are hosted by us.

Join Our Waiting List!

Please choose which size slip you need:

[80' Slips]
[100' Slips]
[130' Slips]
[150' Slips]

Funny, as we launched this site, NPR had a news story talking about the scarcity of slips in South Florida. I feel like we picked the exact right market for marinas.

Anyway, we are going thru a lot of changes here at SuperOyster. We’ll be relaunching our main website in a few days so stay tuned for more great info about us!

BTW, anyone want to buy me a beer? I need it. :-)

2006-05-31T14:38:00.000-07:00

Peter T. Brown here, Head of Web Development at Super Oyster Inc. This is the first of many posts I'll be making here on our corporate blog and wanted to introduce myself. Hello All!

Over the last week or so there has been great response to our first public release and disclosure of what Super Oyster is all about. I've noticed some interesting things in the ensuing discussions.

First off, there has been the common misconception that the Super Oyster process enables people to cut in line. I want to make it very clear that our patented method for improving queuing processes does not and never will enable anyone to cut in line. Instead, we enhance existing waiting lists by making it possible for people near the front to sell their positions to others -- we never create new positions. Thus, the amount of time it takes you to get to the front of the line is the same regardless of how much buying and selling is happening ahead of you. In the case that no one is willing to sell their spot in line, there will be no opportunities to buy a better position. Remember, you can only buy from others!

Secondly, some folks have speculated that SuperOyster enabled waiting lists will be susceptible to rampant speculation. It is important to note a few things. First, this already happens with high profile lines for high demand items. It was a common for people to join a waiting list to acquire an Xbox to only turn around and sell it for two or three times that cost on eBay. SuperOyster does not enhance nor retard this common practice. Second, in response to this common reality for high demand items, many resource owners take steps to mitigate this risk. Common tricks include charging a fee to be in line (common within the NFL for example). Others have those in line sign a contract that requires a purchase once the person had reached the front.

So, with a Super Oyster enhanced line, there could be some risk to getting in line if done only with the intention of re-selling your position. Since positions in waiting lists are susceptible to market changes -- just like stocks in companies -- there is the chance that the cost to be in line may be more than the cost for which a position may ultimately be sold. Imagine spending $50 a year to maintain a position in line for say, NHL Season Tickets, only to find that the team becomes progressively unpopular and your position at the front can only be sold for $10 after a few years.

It is very important to us to honor the effective, well tested, and equitable aspects of plain old lines. That being said, we think there is a lot of room for improvement in the process and we think we can dramatically improve the experience of both the resource owner and those waiting in line. And, as ever, please keep the comments coming!

Alpha feedback

2006-05-25T11:02:00.000-07:00

Kudos to all of you in the blogosphere who’ve been trying out our Alpha and providing feedback. We greatly appreciate it.

Exposure from this has been global, with discussions occurring in both China and Lithuania, not to mention the US. Our Alpha is simply just the beginning. We have a whole slew of things planned for the future, so keep your eyes on this blog for updates!

You too can play with our code

2006-05-23T09:43:00.000-07:00

Our Alpha has been out for a week or so, and we’ve decided to open it up to the rest of you all. Do you want to take a peak? Well here are the directions for trying it out. Keep in mind that this is an extremely early alpha and it is designed to just provide a snapshot of what we are doing. Nothing on this site is even close to being ready to ship.

This alpha is broken up into 3 separate parts to demonstrate how a merchant might utilize our system. The first part is a season ticket waiting list for a fictitious professional football team called the “L.A. Stars”. This list has over 200 people on it, and has an active marketplace. The second demonstration is a fictitious marina that has a multiyear wait to acquire a slip for permanent moorage. It’s a smaller list, but it works just the same but with a slightly modified shell. The final demonstration is a generic list that has no shell and no real activity. The point of the third demonstration is to show how our interface is designed to live within another merchant’s website. We have purposely left off the shell.

The workflow is such that a new user would arrive to our system via another merchant’s website. For example, if you were browsing the “L.A. Stars” football site, and you wanted to buy season tickets, you would be directed to our system to add yourself to the waiting list for season tickets. Thus, you’d either add yourself to the end of the line or perhaps buy a spot from someone else….etc.

As you’d expect with any Alpha, there’s a bunch of issues that we have yet to resolve. A lot of these will be fixed or redesigned within the next couple months. The latest set of release docs can be found at http://www.superoyster.com/alpha.htm . Please review this document BEFORE accessing our system.

You can log into our system at: http://alpha.superoyster.com/about .

Questions/Comments/Concerns? Direct them to info@superoyster.com

Ticketmaster validates our assumptions

2006-05-22T11:36:00.000-07:00

Ticketmaster is again validating our concept that positions in a line have value. They have always had a ticket auction service, but they are only now beginning to understand what they really had. SuperOyster’s service has a patented service that is analogous to this process, but our services are much more broader and can serve many markets that Ticketmaster is not involved in. What we find interesting is that Ticketmaster has not discovered a way to maximize revenue while sidestepping weird ticketing laws like we have. They have also realized something that StubHub, RazorGator and SuperOyster have been discussing for a while. If you partner with an entertainer, whereas you provide them a piece of the revenue you receive, you have much happier partners. They’ll want to work with you more often.

Here’s a link to the USA Today article discussing this very concept: USA Today and Ticketmaster

Alpha is RELEASED!

2006-05-16T16:44:00.000-07:00

Vamshi and I started writing code on a part time basis last year. By February, we had Peter working full time while Vamshi was filling in the gaps between rounds of golf. I’ve now been playing CEO / Program Manager /Product Manager/ HR Specialist /COO/ Accountant / Evangelist / Lawyer / Software Tester as well. There’s also been help from a myriad of others – too many to mention. Well, today all of that work can be seen by the world, as we finally released our Alpha. This release is a great stepping stone for the direction we are heading. We are all super ecstatic to achieve this milestone and move on to Beta. Whew!

Our Alpha demonstrates how the service can be “white labeled” for any merchant’s website. We demonstrate this in three manners. The first is simply a version of the service running without a shell – just the SuperOyster UI is present. The second demonstration exhibits the service within the realm of a fictitious professional football team that has hundreds of people on its season ticket waiting list. Finally, the third site shows how the service could be leverage by a marina which has a multiyear waiting list for permanent moorage.

This is another screenshot of the Alpha without a merchant’s web shell.

I’ll be stepping away from the code for a few days to focus more on customers, namely merchants. We have a few leads, and we have to generate a few more. I expect a whole slew of customer activity over the next month that should generate one or more LOI’s.

If you are interested in playing with the Alpha, or you want to talk to us about leveraging our service, please feel free to contact me (Matt Kowalczyk) at info@superoyster.com.

I think I need a vacation. :-)

Alpha is here!

2006-05-08T20:31:00.001-07:00

ok, ok…stop the shouting. I promised one or two screen shots of the alpha, well here you go. This screenshot is a picture of the trading UI also known as the “Marketplace”. Since this is an alpha, we are still playing with the design. We’ve discovered a whole set of issues with the design path we are taking, but these are all good healthy questions to be having.

Peter and I spent this afternoon closing out the remaining bugs that existed against the alpha. We’ve made some cuts and even added a few things. For those of you on our mailing list, you’ll be receiving instructions sometime this week that will tell you how to access the alpha build. Keep in mind that an Alpha build implies very rudimentary features, so don’t expect to be able to do much. A lot of time has been spent just simply creating a foundation for all the great work to come. If you haven’t been receiving SuperOyster emails from me, and you’d like to play with the alpha build, drop me a line at info@superoyster.com.

You have to wait for space

2006-05-04T17:03:00.000-07:00

Don’t know if you are into space travel or not. I think it’s pretty darn cool. Ever wonder what it would be like to travel in space? I dream of activities like that, though everyone already knows that I like to get high. Anyway, Virgin Galactic has been offering flights into space aboard their new fleet of spaceships. Yes, that sounds so Star Treky, but you know what…? They already have a waiting list of people who want to go into space. Sure, the flights don’t start til 2008, and you’ll have to mortgage the house if you want to go. However, what if you wanted to be part of the first Virgin flight into space? (sorry about the pun) The first flight or even the second promises to be historic! Well, considering that there is a waiting list, you’d have to find a way to purchase a spot from someone else at the top of the list. Unfortunately, Virgin does not implement SuperOyster’s patent pending service which helps people bid for positions on a waiting list. Too bad, you may just have to wait til the next historical event takes place.

For all of you who subscribed to this blog, could you do me a favor and resubscribe? I just hooked the blog feed up to Feedburner, so that I could track stats and whatnot. The new link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/Superoystercom or just simply copy the syndicate link found at the bottom of the page.

Exposure is good!

2006-05-03T14:55:00.000-07:00

Don’t know if you caught it, but Brady from O’Reilly Publishing (yep, the developer books with the animals on the cover) wrote a quick review of the SuperOyster service today in his blog. It’s great to see us grab a little exposure.

Meanwhile, I’m busy working with Peter and Vamshi testing the Alpha build of the product. We are close to being ready, but if any of you really know me, you know that I usually won’t settle for less than perfection when it comes to testing.

Stay tuned. I plan to put up a few screen shots of the Alpha build tomorrow!

The NFL Draft and position value

2006-05-01T15:25:00.000-07:00

SuperOyster’s software creates a market out of positions in a line. The value of any position in a line is dictated by particular market dynamics, thus optimizing the market for all parties involved. Our software helps regular merchants and individuals understand the economic benefits of any position in a waiting list.

Certain entities have already realized that a position on a list has a tangible value. One such group is the National Football League. Ever wonder how pro football teams manage the complexity of the NFL Draft? If you aren’t familiar with professional football, let me take a second to describe what the NFL draft is all about. Each year, a special event is held in New York City (this year’s was in Radio City Music Hall) where teams take turns selecting eligible collegiate football players to join their club. The team with the worst record the previous season chooses first and the team with the best record chooses last. The selection process has multiple rounds thus providing each team anywhere between 7 and 10 picks. Essentially, this process is a line or waiting list with over 200 positions.

Since the draft is so important to the success of the team, each team has started placing a tangible value on their positions in the draft. The highest valued position is the first selection, the second highest valued position is the second selection and so on. Each team has their own “value chart” that establishes the value per position, though each team’s chart is usually pretty similar. This chart helps them assess whether or not a trade is worth making and also helps them determine how much they should be paying a particular draft selection. An example chart (complements of the redzone.org) can be found below:

The big surprise from this year’s NFL draft was Quarterback Matt Leinart. Originally, he was slated to be the #2 or #3 selection in last year’s draft. Matt decided to stay in school to help his team reach the NCAA Championship. Though it was an admirable decision on his part, it also detracted from long term value. Matt entered the NFL draft this year, and much to his chagrin, he was chosen as the 10th selection. His value depreciated by 50%, thus probably costing him over $10 million in salary. Note postion #2 was worth 2600 and position #10 is worth 1300 points in the chart above.

This is yet another example of how important it is to understand the true value of a position in a line. With software from SuperOyster, everyone – the merchant, the position holder and prospective customers all are better informed about the positions in a line.

Your position has value!

2006-04-28T11:59:00.000-07:00

Your position in line is valuable! Don't believe me? Check out this tid bit from the Pearl Jam fan club website.

Pearl Jam Ten Club News: pearljam.com tenclub.net: "Tower Midnight ticket giveaway (1)SECRET SHOW-TICKETS AT TOWER MIDNIGHT SALE 04.27.06 Secret Show NYC- Tower Records and J Records have teamed up to present a special show on Friday May 5th at a yet-undisclosed location in Manhattan. Be one of the first on line to purchase Pearl Jam at midnight at the Tower store on 4th and Broadway on Monday May 1st and receive a FREE ticket to the show. Supplies are limited, so get there early."

2006-04-27T16:52:00.000-07:00

Today we are excited to launch our new website to explain to the world what we are doing! Go take a peak here: http://www.superoyster.com.

The first iteration of this site was completed using flash. Make sure that you take a peak at the "Show" which is a smaller version of the flash demo we used at the CIE Trade Show last week. Also, there is a link to a one page spec sheet which we will be distributing to merchants intrested in our service. Here's a quick link to that spec sheet too: http://www.superoyster.com/spec.pdf

Stay tuned. In the next couple days I'll be giving you a sneak peak at our alpha site.

SuperOyster.com advances to CIE Sweet Sixteen!

2006-04-25T13:07:00.000-07:00

SuperOyster.com has moved into the sweet sixteen round of the Univesity of Washington CIE Business Plan Competition. On April 17th, Peter, Leo and myself participated in the CIE Trade Show where we presented to 125 investors. Each investor was given 1000 “CIE Dollars” which they had to invest in at least 5 different companies. The top 16 earning teams moved on to the next round where we do a full presentation to investors. This happens at the end of May at the Bell Harbor Conference Center.

To participate in the Business Plan Competition, we had to submit a full business plan. Then the judges picked the top 32 plans out of around 60 or 70 submissions. The teams that created those 32 plans then advanced to trade show.

For the trade show, we brought my 42” plasma display where we had a flash animation demonstrating the concept behind our business. We also brought props that signified potential markets that we could monetize, including an XBOX 360, a bottle of Leonetti wine, a NASCAR model, a Seattle Seahawks charter ticket holder football and a cabbage patch doll. Even though we didn’t have the flashiest booth we were able to gain a significant crowd. Here’s a blurry photo of the booth that I took with my phone.

Now that we have our official blog operational, I wanted to take a few moments to thank everyone who has been helping us over the last year. Investors and friends alike have been generous enough to spend time to give us a good start, now all we have to do is go out deliver.

2006-04-24T10:29:00.000-07:00

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Now The World Is Your Oyster