Punchbowl Blog

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

This is a story about spunk and fight.

It begins with a job posting last week. We’re currently hiring for a marketing intern position. On Thursday afternoon, our Marketing Manager (Stephanie) posted the position on Craigslist. Later that same evening, I spent some time reviewing the emails from people who were interested in the internship. One particular email caught my eye — it was simple, but the subject line was different than others in my inbox. But as I opened the email, I realized that the same subject line that I liked so much had a glaring typo “Great Canidate for intern postion” Could I look beyond the typo? Did the person have the attention to detail that is critical to an internet startup? I pondered what to do.

I decided to send a quick email back to the candidate, to see how she would respond. Here is my email:

Your email subject caught my eye — but the spelling error causes me not to look at your resume further. Thought you might like to know for the future. All of that stuff matters.

- Matt

I know that I didn’t have to send that email, but this person had a great resume. I know I was being a little harsh, but I wanted to see what would happen. Would she ignore the email? Would she say thank you? Or would she apologize and ask for another chance? I can’t say I expected what happened next. Here’s the email that I received back:

Great Matt!  Thank you so much!!! After working an eleven hour double at my waitressing job then coming home only to jump online for two hours to continue  the job search, its people like you that make me wonder why I continue! Would it have been all that hard for you to simply hit delete??? Well let me tell you something mister, you lost one of the most dedicated,hard workers your little wanna be company could have had. So I hope you find your little Miss/Mr. Perfect that spelled the subject of their email correctly because Mommy and Daddy supports their butt, and were well rested and enthusiastic, not completely exhausted and burnt out from a day of serving rude people like you! And you know what if you did read the rest of my resume you would have seen that Public Relations was my core concentration. The experience was all I wanted, but nooooo because one little word was wrong, because I was tired as hell, because I busted my butt for four years, because I put my heart and soul into my studies,  I’m penalized. Thanks.

Wow. What brutal honesty. What fight. So I immediately wrote her back:

You’re the kind of person I want to hire.

Here’s why: I grew up in a large family that had little money. My first job was at age 12 — working everyday after school doing landscaping. By age 16 I was working most nights (managing a small movie theater). I put myself through college (and still have $50K in loans).I like your spunk, and I like your fight.

Now, that being said…. it’s important for me to know that if you were going to be representing the company (even on Facebook or MySpace) that you would indeed be well rested and not burnt out. As you can imagine, I got lots and lots of resumes for this position. If you were in my shoes, you would need some way of filtering them. Yes, I could have hit delete, but I liked your email. I wanted to see how you responded.

So, now it’s your choice. You can choose to hit the delete button and you can erase the potential opportunity. Or you can choose to face the  “rude person” that actually *does* understand what’s it’s like to work in a job where you are under-appreciated and over-worked. I’ll even let you continue your rant (complete with insults) right in my office. And hey, maybe I’ll even buy you lunch and we can decide the right tip amount together.

About an hour after I sent this email, she called my cell phone. We had a great conversation. She was well-spoken and personable and we both had a good laugh over our email exchange.

So she’s coming into the office for an interview this coming Tuesday. I don’t know if this story will have a happy ending, but I do know that a startup is all about kicking and screaming to stay alive. You have to have spunk and you have to have fight. Finding people who have this quality is rare. We’ll see what happens next.

This post written by Eric Peden, Director of Operations & Analytics

It’s always instructive when a friend or relative uses MyPunchbowl for the first time. We typically hear very positive comments about how our site makes planning a party easier and more enjoyable.  But our friends are also quick to suggest features that they wish we offered.

This anecdotal feedback is very valuable. We collect and contemplate our friends’ suggestions, and they invariably find their way into internal product discussions: The friend who wants Feature X; the aunt who is confused by Feature Y.

These suggestions provide a great starting point for internal discussion. If a friend has identified a problem area, how would that manifest itself in customer behavior? Can we find evidence of that behavior in our tracking data? Is there another company that might face a similar issue? How do they handle it?

Resources are scarce at a startup, and it’s important to know how to incorporate an informal product suggestion into the data-gathering and product improvement processes. We have to remember that a single suggestion, while valuable, is anecdotal. There is no need to go overboard in implementing new features on the basis of a single comment.

On the other hand, the plural of anecdote is data. As MyPunchbowl’s numbers guy, I especially try to remember this aphorism, commonly attributed to Raymond Wolfinger. Anecdotes often give us ideas that we can’t get through customer surveys or other formal methods. When several members of our team report similar friendly suggestions, it usually means we’ve found a new way to improve our product.

This post written by Sean Conta, Founder & CXO

We get a lot of feedback on the site and we try to respond to each and every email. This can be a lot of work, but the benefits are clear. Communicating with our users helps us keep a pulse on things that they find confusing or difficult to use on the site. We take that knowledge and use it to improve site design.

I was just recalling a nice and clean example of this “cycle” that involved the Invitation Options page. When you create an invitation on MyPunchbowl, we offer some great options for customizing how your guests view and interact with the invitation. These options are controlled on the host’s Invitation Options page.

Here’s what the page used to look like (click to enlarge):

This design got the job done, but I fielded a lot of questions from users such as “Can I show who’s invited on my invitation?”, or “I don’t want guests to bring other people, is there a way to turn that off?”.

These things were in the interface, but people were missing it.  So we came up with a better design (click to enlarge):

The questions all but stopped. Why is this design better?

• Sections - the settings are broken into major sections (Display, Guests, Reminders, etc). This makes it easier to digest the page as you glance over it.

• Wording - as opposed to a statement with a “true/false” checkbox we phrased the items as questions. This is more natural to read and easier to understand.

• Examples - see those “More Info” links on the right side? Those open a pop-up with an example picture of the setting. It always helps to see a picture, as most people are visual learners!

• Background - Dark text on a light background is easier to read, and I think you’ll agree this page looks nicer.

Hope you enjoyed this - keep the feedback coming!

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

I’ve been at MyPunchbowl for almost five months and I’m happy to say that I finally ordered my business cards–yesterday. You might be wondering what took so long…

It goes back to my first or second day when I asked Matt about my phone. Until only recently the company had just one phone with one line. Unfathomable, right? But with only a handful of employees, most of whom had no need for a phone, there wasn’t really much need for more than one line. And as an internet company, shouldn’t we do most of our business online anyway? Matt thought about my question, looked at me and said, “Now you know what it’s like to work at a start-up.”

While I’ve been able to manage without my own line, it was clear that we needed to resolve the issue of the phones. But who would do it? We don’t have a dedicated office manager to take care of these things. Should the CEO spend his time on this issue? Or the engineers whose time is precious. Somehow I ended up with the undesirable task of figuring out the company’s phone system.

After considering landlines, cell phones, and other services, we ended up choosing VoIP with Packet8. So far so good. We’re still working out the kinks regarding the number of lines we actually need, conference call needs, etc.  But it is nice to finally have a phone at my desk!

And I’m still learning what it means to work at a start-up but having this experience early on prepared me for what to expect.

This post written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

How do you judge your success? Do you value how others view your success or are you content with your own measuring stick for your accomplishments? I’ve been reading a book recently that deals with these questions, and I believe it’s an important concept for a startup like MyPunchbowl to consider. The book introduces the concept of an “Inner Scorecard” vs. an “Outer Scorecard.” Here’s my quick take on how this concept applies to our daily work on MyPunchbowl:

Inner Scorecard: How we judge ourselves, relative to our own goals:

• Satisfaction of our employees (in their daily work)
• Traffic and metrics relative to our plan (are we hitting our monthly and quarterly numbers?)
• Funding based on how much we need to run the company (Just enough and not too much)
• Costs and revenue according to our plan

Outer Scorecard: How we judge ourselves, relative to others:

• Employee satisfaction at other companies (Google has free lunch everyday!)
• Traffic comparisons to other companies (using tools such as Alexa or Compete)
• Press coverage and general internet buzz of MyPunchbowl relative to other sites (e.g. how many times your competitor appears on TechCrunch)
• Comparison to other companies who have raised money (e.g. How the ^%@&# did Chacha raise another $30M??)

Here’s my take: if you are a person (or company) who constantly judges your success based on comparisons to others, my guess is that you spend a lot of your time unhappy. I try to have a clearly defined “Inner Scorecard” so that we measure our success by our own metrics. It’s fine to compare yourself to others once in a while, but if it dictates your decisions, it’s probably a sign that your internal goals are not clear enough.

So keep your head down, your goals clear, and stop judging yourself by what everyone else is doing. Take care of business using your Inner Scorecard, and you’ll be happier and more successful.

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

What a night! As I write this I’m breathing a sigh of relief as the act of writing this post is the last in a coordinated marketing effort that revolves around that “Big Game” two weeks from now that we’re not allowed to mention by name.

Yeah, that’s right. While everyone else was watching today’s division championship football games to see which teams are going to the Big Game, the MyPunchbowl team was watching to see which teams were going to be included in our newsletter that we purposefully decided to send when the second game ended. Deployed roughly 11 minutes following the end of game two, the focus of our January newsletter is Pittsburgh vs Arizona and how to plan your one-of-a-kind football party.

As our team worked together to put the finishing touches on the newsletter, I headed over to Twitter to see what was going on. Wow, were the fans tweeting tonight! First Arizona fans, then Pittsburgh fans. Of course I had to jump in and tell them about MyPunchbowl!

Our efforts didn’t stop there. Our resident party planning expert Penelope also wrote a party planning blog post about how to plan a one-of-a-kind football party. Then we updated our home page to reflect the Big Game (you’ll notice image and text). And we spread the word on Facebook.

Lastly, we are conducting a survey about the Big Game and we want your opinion! How are you going to celebrate the Big Game this year? Take our quick survey now and enter to win a $100 Amazon gift card.

All in all a very coordinated marketing effort around one of the biggest, if not the biggest, sporting events in the world. Phew.

This post was written by Matt Douglas, Founder & CEO

I was happily moving along in my day when Eric (our numbers guy) pulled me aside and asked “When was the date that you officially launched MyPunchbowl?” I didn’t hesitate to respond: we launched on January 15th, 2007 and we were featured on TechCrunch the night before we launched. Then he asked, “Matt, do you know what today’s date is?”

Wow. 2 years. It’s been quite a ride. If I could tell the Matt of 2 years ago some things about running an Internet startup, here are the top 5 things that I would tell him:

1. There’s no substitute for great employees. Find the best. Nurture them, help them grow, and your company will be rewarded more than you could ever imagine.
2. Always keep your pulse on your customers: 2 years later, I still take customer service calls on my cell phone. Yep, go ahead and try it. If I’m not in meeting, I will likely answer the phone.
3. Cash is king: Be very careful about how you spend cash. A dollar saved today is worth 10 tomorrow.
4. Great products win: Looking back, every time we decided to heavily invest in the product (like our great Design Studio feature), it’s always been worthwhile.
5. Be patient: There are very few startups that turn into overnight successes (like Facebook or Twitter). MyPunchbowl might take 5 years to really get off the ground. Be patient, and you’ll get there.

I’m humbled and honored by everyone who has put their faith in me and Punchbowl Software. To our investors, our board members, our partners, our employees, and our customers: thank you for a thrilling 2 years.

Happy Birthday MyPunchbowl.

This post written by Stephanie Fader, Marketing & PR Manager

With Barack Obama’s historic inauguration just a week away, there’s still time to host your own presidential celebration. While the idea of organizing a party in less than a week may be daunting, just look at what Obama is up against. Feel better?

So whether you invite just a few trusted advisors or your whole cabinet, your first order of business is to design and send party invitations like this one:

Once you’ve sent your invitations, order patriotic party supplies and have them delivered right to your door. This will leave more time to focus on the really important things like food and drinks!

MyPunchbowl’s resident party planning expert, Penelope, has some great ideas for how to make your inauguration party one-of-a-kind. Check out the “Party Planning” section of our site where you can search for themes, food/drink ideas, and more.

With everything covered, you’ll be able to celebrate the inauguration presidential-style: with everyone cheering your name.

Next task: world peace.