Since our new version is complete, we’ve been spending a lot of time planning the next version(s) of MyPunchbowl. I’m fond of saying that “we have a feature list that extends from Boston to Los Angeles” Over the last week, I’ve been on the receiving end of a slew of feature requests from our customers, our friends & family, our employees, our partners, and our investors. It’s fascinating to hear from all of the various people. Each person explains why they believe that the feature they suggested should be the most important priority for MyPunchbowl. Everyone has “must-have” features or functionality, and everyone has a items on their list that are priority #1.

Here’s the problem: everything can’t be priority #1, In my years of managing software development teams, I’ve learned that you can’t just add more people to build software faster. The hard part of software development is thinking through the design issues, carefully considering how the feature will scale over time, and providing yourself enough time to adjust the implementation when you see the first iteration of the feature working. Great products are built carefully, with careful thought before implementation and ample time to test and iterate before unveiling it to customers.

I can always tell apart the people who have developed software in their past from the people who haven’t developed software. Those who haven’t ask questions like “Is it possible to do XYZ” (in software, it’s almost always possible to do anything with infinite time and talent). Those who haven’t ask for endless features and say things like “That feature shouldn’t be that hard.” Contrast that with those who have software development experience: They ask thoughtful questions about feature implementation — for example “How will this feature work for existing users?” and “How does this feature impact other features around it?”

Everything can’t be priority #1. Whether you have a small team or a large team, you have to make a priority list — an actual priority list, numbered 1-xxx. Force yourself to answer the question: what’s the most important thing on the list? What is 2nd most important?

Even the best development team can only work on one thing at a time. Each developer needs their own priority list — also numbered 1-xxx. Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that you can have more than one priority at a time. This is how we successfully developed the MyPunchbowl Design Studio: by creating a priority list of functionality for that feature. I’ve witnessed the difference between development teams that know how to make priority lists and those that don’t. Those that don’t take on too much too fast and end up shipping a product that isn’t ready for primetime.

If you’re on the receiving end of a feature request list that extends from Boston to LA (like I am these days), prioritize everything and make sure your team does the same. Remember: everything can’t be priority #1. Repeat that to yourself and keep repeating it to all of the people around you.

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Use MyPunchbowl for your Halloween party planning and Halloween party invitations

Like most people these days, I get a lot of email. Therefore, I’m careful about who I give my email address to, and I do my best to make sure I am not signed up for any lists or marketing promotions. I’m not over-zealous about it (I’ve never emailed a company demanding to be taken off of an email list) but I do my best to avoid getting surveys and marketing promotions.

Yesterday, I got an email from Marriott that was so funny that I had to share. Basically, they emailed me to ask if they could email me:

Because you are a valued customer and your opinion is important to us, we would like to periodically ask you to provide feedback regarding your experience with our hotels. The feedback we collect from our customers is used to make improvements to our hotels and processes so we can better serve you.

However, our records indicate that you have not given us permission to send customer survey invitations to you at this email address.

Yes, Marriott — that is correct. I didn’t give you permission to email me at this address! So what are you doing emailing me?!?

I know what I’ll do. I’m picking up the phone now… dialing 301.380.3000 (Marriott’s main phone number).

(Ringing)

Matt: Hi, Marriott! I’m calling to ask you if I can call you.

Operator: (laughs) I don’t understand.

Matt: Exactly.

Framingham, Mass. (PR Newswire) October 7, 2008 – MyPunchbowl, a critically acclaimed website to plan and organize parties and events, relaunched today and unveiled a groundbreaking new feature called Design Studio. MyPunchbowl Design Studio will enable hosts who crave customized save the dates and online invitations to replace their scissors and glue with the scroll of a mouse. Hosts can choose from a
variety of paperless paper options—invitation backgrounds that have the look of paper and envelopes—as well as ribbons and fonts, all of which can be personalized with the color of their choice. The result is elegant online save the dates and party invitations worthy of the biggest occasions.

“MyPunchbowl is turning the page on paper as the sole option for hosts who want to plan an important milestone event,” said Matt Douglas, CEO, Punchbowl Software. “The new Design Studio compliments MyPunchbowl’s existing party planning tools while providing a stylish
alternative to paper save the dates and invitations.” With party planners frequently looking for “green” alternatives, MyPunchbowl offers attractive, high quality save the dates and invitations for hosts who want to minimize their ecological footprint. By using MyPunchbowl Design Studio, hosts will see reductions in costs, paper consumption, and their personal impact on the environment.

“As a scrapbooker, I love that MyPunchbowl Design Studio gives me so many options to create an upscale theme for my event,” said Heather Woods, MyPunchbowl user. “It is so much fun to personalize a design to exactly what I want, and I’m glad I don’t have to spend money on stamps.”

Key features of MyPunchbowl include:

• Unique Pick a Date feature to drive group consensus to an event date
• “Save the Date” functionality to inform guests early in the planning process
• Design Studio with an attractive selection of paperless papers, ribbons, and fonts
• Ability to instantly customize the color and fade of any paperless paper, ribbon, or text
• Hundreds of pre-made free invitations that can be customized for any occasion, such as
birthday invitations and Halloween invitations
• Party checklist and potluck checklist to keep hosts on track
• Easy import of email addresses to manage guest lists
• Stress-free RSVP to ensure a more personal interaction between host and guest
• Party planning advice and tips from MyPunchbowl resident expert Penelope
• A party store locator to find local stores anywhere in the United States
• Numerous “after party” features to reminisce and share party memories

MyPunchbowl Design Studio culminates months of research and development and extensive customer input. This groundbreaking technology assures hosts won’t have to sacrifice quality to be eco-conscience when they want to organize and plan important parties and special events. MyPunchbowl Design Studio combines style and function allowing hosts to create a theme that matches their personal style.

The new Design Studio is the perfect complement to the extensive event planning capabilities available on MyPunchbowl. The “Pick a Date” feature helps drive group consensus and automates date selection for the host. The “Checklist” section offers an innovative way to organize party planning and a simple way to ask friends to bring something to a party. All of the features work together to help hosts plan events that matter with ease and confidence. With the relaunch of the site, MyPunchbowl secures its leadership position in the market as the most user friendly and sophisticated event and party planning site on the web.

To sign up for a free MyPunchbowl account, visit http://www.mypunchbowl.com.

Here’s the mention:

Web 2.0/Digital media - There’s no “pillar” company here yet, but rather lots of start-ups hoping their websites and Facebook applications will catch fire. Earlier this month, Punchbowl Software, which operates a website that aims to improve the way people plan parties, raised $2.1 million in funding; the company has just seven full-time employees, with an eighth starting soon.

One of the more amusing things for me about the article is that we are mentioned just before Bose Corporation. After four years working at Bose, it’s nice to be mentioned ahead of them!

My thanks to Scott Kirsner for including us in his Sunday Innovation Economy article. If you are in Boston and don’t read Scott’s blog yet — don’t waste another minute. It’s the blog for the innovation economy in Boston.

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Planning a Halloween party? MyPunchbowl has everything you need for Halloween party planning and Halloween online invitations.

As soon as I heard about this year’s challenge, I asked Fred Wilson to add one particular project to his list: “It’s a Small World After All.” This project is a classroom in Texas — and I know the teacher. The teacher is a woman named Bari — my sister-in-law. Bari moved to Texas because my brother is doing a clerkship at the 5th circuit court. So Bari found herself in Texas, looking for a new career start. She decided to spend the time and money to become a certified teacher in Texas. After a year of helping in the classroom, Bari now has her own class. It’s pretty sad to hear that the school doesn’t even provide the basics that a teacher needs such as chalk and erasers. Rather than complain about that, Bari purchased her own supplies but still wants to improve the classroom. Her project is to purchase a globe for the classroom so that the kids in the class can be taught about the world around them. I’m really excited that Fred has included this project on his list.

One important note about Donors Choose: when you donate money to a Donors Choose project, your money goes directly to purchase the items that the teacher needs. Rather than sending money, Donors Choose purchases the item and sends it directly to the teacher. It’s a fraud-free way to donate directly to schools.

I hope you’re interested in reading more about “It’s a Small World After All” and Fred Wilson’s tech blogger challenge. Even a small $20 donation can really help teachers across this country.

When I joined Adobe in early 1998, I was given a IBM Thinkpad and I had a Mac desktop. The product I managed, Adobe Premiere, was a big success on the Mac. It was built on top of Apple Quicktime, so I got to know the team at Apple pretty well. During this time, I learned the basics of the Windows OS, but I was no expert. Even so, I was happy with my Thinkpad. After about 2 years at Adobe, I upgraded to the latest and greatest Thinkpad.

I left Adobe and went to business school at the University of North Carolina — and continued to use a Thinkpad. By this point, I had suffered lots of problems with configuration settings, internet connectivity and other Windows idiosyncrasies but I dealt with them. For Windows, it was par for the course. After business school, I joined Bose Corporation. Another Thinkpad.

Fast forward to when I bought my first computer for Punchbowl. By this point, I had been using Windows (and related applications) for more than 9 years. I had lots of data from various programs, and I didn’t even consider switching to a Mac. Even though I continued to have typical Windows problems that I couldn’t fix, I didn’t even give it much thought. So I bought a Lenovo Thinkpad T61.

Over the last several months, things have changed. Here’s a partial list of some of the problems I’ve had with my Lenovo Thinkpad:

1. Problems with docking station. Often when I undock and redock, I’ll get a blue screen of death (known issue)
2. Constant problems connecting to wireless networks (many times a day I have to repair my connection for no apparent reason)
3. Internet Explorer 7 crashes. A lot.
4. Display driver problems when connecting to an external monitor (everyday, I have to run the display wizard to get the resolutions correct)
5. External peripherals stop working (like my USB drive)
6. Battery problems: Replaced the battery after only 6 months. New battery runs hot.
7. Overall slowness and unusability (CPU idling very high even though nothing is running)
8. Increase in spyware and malicious viruses (virus software often interrupting my work)

Yesterday morning (Saturday) I sat down to do some work. As soon as I touched my computer, I got a blue screen. I have no idea why. So I restarted my machine, and attempted to undock it from its docking station. Another blue screen. After another restart, I got it working again. And then it struck me: I don’t want to put up with this anymore. With the whole day in front of me, I set out to do the unthinkable. I decided to switch back to the Mac.

Switching back to the Mac is not something I take lightly. In fact, over the past several weeks, I had been jotting down notes about what it would take for me to switch. I have thousands of contacts, many data files from various programs, and numerous peripherals. This was going to be a big task.

Armed with my list of information, I went to the Apple store in Natick, MA. I spent about an hour and a half with a well-trained salesperson as I went through all of my issues. He had excellent answers for some of my thorny issues. So I plunked down my credit card and walked out of the store with a brand new MacBook Pro. I was on my way.

What transpired over the next ~ 10 hours was a massive switch to the Mac. Here is a rundown of how it went down (and roughly how long it took to get everything working).

1. Initial Mac setup: Went very smoothly. Found my network quickly (20 min)
2. Internet browsers and bookmarks: Installed Firefox 3 and Yahoo Toolbar (15 min)
3. Installed Microsoft Office: Installation got hung on font installs, had to reinstall. (25 min)
4. Installed Glance for screen sharing (10 min)
5. Installed Adobe Web Collection (includes Acrobat Professional). Very slow install. (40 min)
6. Spent some more time configuring the Mac: personal settings etc (30 min)
7. Attach/reattach external monitor, configure settings. This worked really well, and I’m so happy that it will be easy to connect and reconnect quickly (20 min).
8. Installed Palm Desktop (for use with my Treo 650). Went smoothly, but software is very different so took some time getting use to it (45 min)
9. Office printer configuration: awesome (5 min)
10. Scansnap 510 (2.5 hours). This was much more difficult. The black version of this device was made ONLY for Windows. Through some internet searching, I found a site that explained how to get the Scansnap to work on the Mac. Sounds crazy, but the solution is to use a Japanese driver and then go through a crazy process to localize that driver into English. A few notes for anyone who is trying to make this work, and running into problems:

    - Make sure you use the correct version of the English driver as explained in the directions. DO NOT use the most recent version! The correct Scanscap Mac driver is English version 21.
    - If you still have Japanese menus and dialogs after you add in the English folder, you will need to find the English folder in EACH and EVERY component and replace EACH of these. There are 3 applications (Folder, Email, Print) and 6 bundles. Do not try and use the same English folder in all of the resources. It won’t work (and I found out the hard way).
    - Read this thread very carefully. It has more information that will get you through this.
11. Flickr Uploadr: easy (5 min)
12. Skype: easy (5 min)
13. Moving all documents from PC to Mac using USB drive (60 min)
14. Buffalo NAS Network Drive. Fairly easy, once I figured out how the Mac sees networks (30 min)
15. Home printer, Dymo Label maker, Photo printer. Easy. (20 min)
16. More personal configuration (1.5 hours)

So there you have it. I’m back on the Mac. I’m very happy with how things are working so far and I especially like how easily the computer wakes up from standby.

I have a few more items still to solve to make my Mac transition complete:

1. Mobile Broadband Card from Sprint (I hope they give me a new one that fits in my Mac)
2. Quicken for home
3. Quickbooks for work
4. Transitioning my iTunes library (it’s already on the network drive, so should be easy)
5. Waiting for Google Picasa to come out for the Mac (should be soon)
6. Carbonite Backup (I sent a note to the CEO of Carbonite asking to be added to the Mac beta program, we’ll see what comes of that)
7. I need an extra Mac power cord so I don’t have to move the powercord from work to home everyday.

I don’t know if “I’m a Mac” now, but I do know this: after all of the advertisements are over, a computer should just work. My laptop is the center of my work life, and it’s critical that I can rely on it. My new MacBook Pro gives me that confidence.

Here’s a screenshot of our updated MyPunchbowl home page greeting:

TechCrunch has an article this morning about other sites that are celebrating International Talk Like a Pirate Day. It’s nice to know that we’re in the company of Facebook, FriendFeed, and Google by celebrating this esteemed day. Check out Google’s Pirate search. Brrrrriliant!

It’s not too late to join in the festivities.  Head over to MyPunchbowl and bring your friends together tonight to celebrate this (important) day. Our resident party planning expert Penelope shares her favorite pirate party invitations but I’ve got mine (see below). Whatever you choose, have fun. Arrrrrr!

Framingham, Mass. (PR Newswire) September 16, 2008 – Punchbowl Software Inc. announced today that it has completed a $2.1 million Series A financing, led by Contour Venture Partners with participation from current investors Intel Capital and eCoast Angels. The new funding will be used to pursue strategic opportunities and grow the Punchbowl Software development team.

The Series A funding arrives at a key moment for the fast-growing company behind MyPunchbowl, a critically acclaimed event-planning website. MyPunchbowl serves up all of the key ingredients to effortlessly plan unforgettable celebrations. The site includes unique features for picking a date for the event, sending save-the-dates, finding supplies, communicating with guests, sending online invitations, and sharing photos and videos after the event has passed.

“We’ve seen explosive growth since our first round of funding last year,” said Matt Douglas, CEO, Punchbowl Software. “This new funding will enable us to grow our team and pursue numerous market opportunities.”

MyPunchbowl’s step-by-step, workflow-based interface makes it popular for key life milestone events such as baby showers, bridal showers, milestone birthdays, and retirement events. The site’s traffic has grown more than 20 percent each month over the past year. With helpful tools, great advice, and unique features, MyPunchbowl helps hosts and guests get from the planning to the celebration without the stress.

“We see great opportunity for MyPunchbowl to continue to grow its leadership position in the party and event planning market,” said Bob Greene, co-managing partner, Contour Venture Partners. “Its viral and word of mouth growth impressed us and attracted us to invest with this outstanding management team.”

Since the launch of MyPunchbowl, the site has added unique features for event planning and party invitations. The “Pick a Date” feature helps drive group consensus and automates date selection for the host. The “Checklist” section offers an innovative way to organize party planning and a simple way to ask friends to bring something to the party. Users of the site can expect to see ground-breaking new features on MyPunchbowl within the coming months.

“The MyPunchbowl website is a great example of how new technology can bring value to consumers,” said Lucy McQuilken, investment manager, Intel Capital. “Intel Capital is pleased to re-invest in Punchbowl Software.”

They say that the “quiet comes before the storm.” And indeed, in many cases that is true. Why is it that things are quiet before something big happens? Here are a few possible reasons:

• It’s nature’s way of preparing for what’s about to happen (for example, in the case of a hurricane)
• The human body auto-regulates to make sure it has enough energy to get through the excitement (part of the fight or flight response, but prior to the adrenaline kicking in).
• You specifically schedule a quiet period to give yourself time to prepare
• You shift your priorities temporarily (because you know that your full attention will soon be required)
• Life gets too damn busy to have much time for anything else

Over the last few weeks, it’s been a combination of all of the above for me. I haven’t had much time for blogging (thank you to the people who wrote to me asking me to post more). I’ve taken some time to rest, and luckily the world around me has cooperated. And in the lead up to this something big, I’ve been busy preparing. I shifted my priorities, scheduled quiet times in my life, and have also had periods of time where I was overwhelmed with all of the work and responsibilities that this job often brings. In particular, the last week has been pretty much all-consuming, but I can now see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our “something big” is soooo close.

So what is the “something big” that is about to happen for Punchbowl Software? You’ll have to wait to find out.

I’ve seen a lot of baseball games in my lifetime. So when I turned to my sister-in-law in the bottom of the third (with the score now 12-2) and proclaimed that the Red Sox would likely hold on and win the game, I don’t think it was unreasonable for me to jump to that conclusion. Boy was I wrong.

Apparently the Texas Rangers didn’t get that memo. In the top of the 5th inning, the Rangers put on a hitting display and scored 8 runs. The very next inning, they scored 5 more — to make the score 15-14 and take the lead. Stunning.

So how did it all end? The Red Sox battled back with 4 runs in the bottom of the 8th to reclaim the lead, and hung on (barely) to win the game 19-17. That’s 36 runs on 37 hits. It tied an American League record for most runs scored in one game. Take a look at the final box score to get a sense of the unbelieveable comeback by the Rangers — 13 runs in 2 innings!

Most reasonable people would have drawn the same conclusion as I did in the 3rd inning. The Red Sox had already pulled off an amazing feat — 10 runs in one inning — no one could possibly match them, right?

The same can be said about many web businesses. The pundits of the web have declared over and over again that certain websites have such a large lead on their competition that they will never be beat. I remember distinctly meeting some of the original employees of Google back in 1999 (I was living in Palo Alto at the time where Google was founded). My reaction was typical. “Why do we need another search engine?” I asked the guy with the Google t-shirt. With Yahoo, AltaVista, Lycos, AOL ahead of them, there is simply no way that Google could catch up… right?

In Google’s case, not only did they catch up, but they took the lead. However, the real moral of my story is this: although the Red Sox won the game, Texas scored a hell of a lot of runs. They played a great game, and were successful in their own right. Startups (and business in general) are the same. You don’t have to win the overall game to win. If you can follow the leader (and keep pace), you’ll build a very successful business and score a lot of “runs.” I’m sure that the Rangers wanted to win the game, but I’d bet that they were very pleased with the game that they played.  

If you have a startup, don’t listen to all of the %@#^* pundits who proclaim that the competition has such a huge lead that it’s not worth playing the game. Remember, the game is 9 innings long. Focus on what you need to do to be successful, and stop looking at the scoreboard. Who knows? You may find yourself successful in your own right — and maybe you’ll even take the lead.

What other examples on the web come to mind? Facebook and MySpace? Flickr and Kodak Easyshare? Who else? Add your thoughts to the comments.

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