I’ll be speaking February 4th in Palo Alto on entrepreneurship, PBwiki

January 31 No Comments latest by

As I’ve mentioned here before, I’m a co-founder the VP Community Marketing at PBwiki, an online startup in Silicon Valley.

This Monday Monday, February 4th, my co-founders and I will be speaking at an SDforum event on PBwiki and entrepreneurship. We’ll talk about how we grew, what the technical/organizational challenges were, and (my favorite part), how we spread the word about PBwiki.

If you want us to speak about anything in particular, just leave a comment here and I’ll make sure we cover it.

“At an all-night SuperHappyDevHouse event in May 2005, David Weekly spent 7 hours coding a simple hosted wiki service from concept to production-available. Within 48 hours of launching, PBwiki was adopted by over a thousand groups as news of the service spread on blogs like LifeHacker and BoingBoing. PBwiki is used by the SDForum Startup SIG, and is extremely easy to use: its name suggests it’s as easy as making a peanut butter sandwich.

Fast-forward 2.5 years and PBwiki:

• Runs 300,000 wikis for millions of montly users.
• Supports 20,000 businesses, including AT&T, Wal-Mart, and 1/3 of the Fortune 500.
• Has 11+ fulltime employees and several part-timers and contractors.
• Has received $2.5 million funding from Ron Conway, Seraph Group and Mohr Davidow.

We’re delighted to host PBwiki’s founders, David Weekly, Ramit Sethi, and Nathan Schmidt.”

SDforum charges $15 if you’re not a member (see their event calendar here).

Get the full details here.

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What happens when a coffee shop gets too popular?

January 30 67 Comments latest by matt yabsley

I ran into an interesting situation last weekend and I’m curious to know what you think. Budding entrepreneurs, here’s your chance to come up with a brilliant solution to a business problem.

First of all, if you disregard my 8 Stupid Frat-Boy Business Ideas post and start a coffee shop, you may one day encounter this problem. It’s a good problem to have, but a problem nonetheless.

Last weekend, I was writing at a coffee shop where lots of people bring their laptops for the free wifi and food.

As I was writing, one one of the staff began telling people with laptops that the wifi would be turned off from 11:30am - 1:00pm. “Why?” one woman asked.

The poor waiter. He explained that the manager had instituted a new policy of turning off the Internet during peak hours. I’m pretty sure this is to dissuade people from camping out for hours at their tables with laptops. I’ve personally seen people come in, look around, and leave because there were no tables available. (In fact, this happened to me the very next day.)

The woman was furious. “I wouldn’t have come here and bought all this food if I knew I couldn’t get my work done,” she said angrily. All the waiter could do was apologize.

I see both sides of this decision.

Clearly, the manager wants to maximize revenues and doesn’t want to turn away potential customers (with $) because all the tables are full of laptop users who won’t get up (or buy anything). They’re worried, in other words, about turnover, one of the reasons that even popular restaurants can go bankrupt. Like I said, I’ve personally seem them lose revenues when prospective customers left because there were no tables left. If you measure success on a $/minute metric per table, the laptop users are probably very low-value customers.

On the other hand, the customers who bring their laptops in are loyal customers who, I’m sure, tell their friends about this coffee shop. This new policy squarely affects these loyal customers. Worst of all, there’s no way to announce this policy without sounding like a real asshole. For example, I saw a guy with a laptop come in 11:20am. What happens when the Internet goes down 10 minutes after he sits down? What are you going to say? Is the management going to put out flyers on all the tables saying, “There will be no Internet from 11:30am - 1:00pm” (because we want you to leave)?

Here are some possible solutions:

• Continue allowing free access with no time limits. This maintains goodwill but you’ll probably bleed dry
• Charge for Internet access (Starbucks does this)
• Create a points system that gives people a variable amount of Internet access based on how much they’ve bought (”3 coffees = free week of Internet,” etc). My friend Chris Yeh came up with this one. As he said, “If you’re going to screw people, at least give them the impression there’s some way for them to avoid the shaft.” (Check out his brilliant blog)

What would you do?

[Update]: I told the coffee shop’s manager about this post and sent her a link. She responded by email: “Thank you so much for the link, and the feedback. It is a difficult balance to wanting to please the paying customer and the loyal regulars. I forwarded your blog to the owner, XXXXXX, in hopes that we can come up with a solution that everyone is happy with. I really appreciate you taking an interest, and enjoy talking to you on the weekends!”

67 Comments latest by matt yabsley

7-question survey: Are you spending less because of the economy?

January 29 8 Comments latest by cindy

[Update: This survey is now closed, data to be presented soon]

As I did with my research on gender and finance, I’m going to be collecting original data, analyzing it (with the help of a professional analyst), and presenting it on iwillteachyoutoberich.

Today, take a 7-question survey: Are you spending less because of the economy?

[Update: Oops, it’s actually 9 questions, heh.]

8 Comments latest by cindy

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