
 Rate my new startup, Appointment Reminder - patio11
http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/05/14/unveiling-my-second-product-demo-included/
======
patio11
Clickable link: <http://www.appointmentreminder.org>

A funny HN story here: back in my last month or so at the company, when the
seeds of this idea were germinating, I was going to call this NotiPhone, but
had some minor worries about Apple going after be for selling something that
was not iPhones. I had mentally gotten over that and was going to register the
domains as soon as I got back a three day stint at the office... and on the
last day, Notifo (YC10) launched. Going with NotiPhone struck me as
professionally discourteous so I went back to my old trusty generic.

(I did end up buying the domains eventually because, hey, you never know.)

~~~
dpcan
I don't like this Patrick, sorry. No "congrats" and "pat on the back" here.

You know, I do get a personal call from my dentist, carpet cleaner, and my
kids' doctor before an appointment. I call my customers before meeting with
them too.

But what a waste of time for all of us right? Why not send out this automated
voice mail message instead:

"Don't be late! I don't have time to call you, but you better have time to
meet and PAY me."

Nice.

I think you'll be able to sell it, but it seems like a DIS-service to me.

Also, NOTHING pisses my wife off more than a voice mail from an automated
system.

Just yesterday she got one from a local service we donate clothes to (pretty
sure it was them again), and she let out a throaty roar in the kitchen because
she hates them so much, she wants a different service now.

~~~
tptacek
I upmodded you from zero, because negative feedback is even more valuable than
positive feedback, and it probably does Patrick a disservice to try to filter
out the negative stuff.

That said: we get automated calls from a couple of different things in our
life, and while I can't say that I love the calls, they are _effective_ \---
they actually change behavior.

~~~
enjo
Ya.. I wonder if you could crowdsource something like this? Pay folks a
smallish commission to place the calls for you through a Twilio interface. I
know of some answering services that work more or less that way, and they seem
to do well. I'd imagine you can get a $2-$4 (somewhere in that range) per
call, so pay a $1 commission per call. Use Twilio to record the calls to audit
quality.

~~~
tptacek
"Crowdsourcing" works well when workers can vote on a best solution. But you
only get one crack at a customer contact.

~~~
olefoo
How many customers are we talking?

If you get 10 customers a day, you treat each one like they're a duke; if 100
a day, each one is made to feel like a person. 1000 customers per day are a
vague blur, an avalanche of humanity of whom only occasional glimpses are
clear, 10,000 customers a day is statistics, and 10 Million per day is an
abstraction.

Different businesses deal with different customers and different customer
volumes change the shape and functionality of the organizations that serve
them.

The question for you is, at what scale does a business built on somewhat
random customer service experiences work?

------
sachinag
Patrick, first of all, congrats!

One thought - this is something that's very valuable, but I do hope that
you've considered selling this (at full price) as an addition to existing
reservation systems. Asking service professionals to switch reservation
systems is a very large ask; perhaps your $669/mo plan overlaps with that
segment enough that it's not an issue. Even outside healthcare, my barbershop
has a pretty tricked out system installed already. So I think you're going to
have more $9/mo in your mix than you do, but I'm excited to see the data.

Also, I think there are many, many people who would love to fete you at a
meetup. Please do consider publishing your American travel plans to us HNers
so that we may ply you with beer and learn the dark arts of keyword research
and other internet marketing ephemera.

------
vaksel
I think a .org is a bad idea. I know you are getting it for the exact match
bonus, but noone clicks .org expecting to pay. Most people will probably just
think you are an organization of appointment reminders

Here are a few available .net/.com domains that you can get now, w/ # of exact
match searches per month:

appointmentletter.net - 9,900

appointmentcard.net - 1,000

salonappointmentbook.com/.net - 1,000

appointmentremindersoftware.net - 1,000

appointmentletters.net - 880

appointmentpower.net - 880

salonappointmentsoftware.com/.net - 880

appointmentreminderservice.net - 880

onlineappointmentscheduler.net - 880

appointmentsystem.net - 720

appointmentbooksoftware.net - 590

automatedappointmentreminder.com/.net - 390

~~~
patio11
_no one clicks .org expecting to pay_

The next time you get a haircut, can you do me a favor? Ask your stylist "What
is a domain name?" and "What is the difference between dot com and dot O R G?"

~~~
vaksel
Try naming 10-20 commercial websites(sites actually selling things) that are
successful on a .org domain name. Can't? There is probably a reason for that.

It's not hairdressers you need to worry about, it's Google...who simply won't
rank you in top positions.

~~~
patio11
_It's not hairdressers you need to worry about, it's Google...who simply won't
rank you in top positions._

Like saying there is carbon in a water molecule, this is simply not correct.
com, net, and org domains all get the exact match bonus in the US, and orgs
are not noticeably weaker than coms given equivalent link equity.

~~~
vaksel
how many .net and .org websites have you launched? A .com gets a HUGE bonus
over those.

A .com with 0 link building will almost always start off on page 1 or 2. Even
for a competitive keyword, at worst you are looking at page 3.

A .net or .org will usually start off on page 40.

After 2-3 weeks of link building, with a .com you are looking at a top 3
position. With a .org, after 2-3 weeks of link building you'll be lucky to
climb up to page 2.

A .com will always be king, it's the most valuable domain name for a reason.

~~~
jasonkester
Here's a quick disproof of your hypothesis. Find travelblog.com (singular) on
the first page of this query:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=travel+blog>

Now find travelblog.org on that page.

~~~
vaksel
bad example, the travelblog.com is a british site.

Go search for travelblog on google.co.uk, and it's in the top 3 position.

And sure travelblog.org is #1 there too, but the .org is a PR6 website, while
the .com is a PR4 website. That's orders of magnitude higher.

~~~
jasonkester
No, it's a good example, for all the reasons you state.

The fact that a .com often ranks higher than its .org equivalent has nothing
to do with it being a .com, but rather that its owners have done a better job
of building it into a relevant site. You're seeing correlation, but not
causation. As you correctly observe, PageRank and other SEO factors are the
important thing.

Here are a few more examples of the same principle in action:

<http://www.google.com/search?q=wikipedia>
<http://www.google.com/search?q=slashdot> <http://www.google.com/search?q=php>

~~~
vaksel
it has everything to do with a .com.

Same SEO methods on a .com and .net, will always have .com beating out the
.net.

All those examples you give, there is no competition, those are BRANDS that
choose to reside on a .net/.org domains, there is no wikipedia.com trying to
outrank the .org.

We are not talking about brands here. We are talking about keyword centric
domains that are targeting keywords people actually search for. So to give you
an example, you should be trying to find a bluewidgets.org that outranks a
bluewidgets.com, where bluewidgets.org has the same or lower page rank.

~~~
inerte
You are right, do not mind the downmods.

Simple experiment, buy these three domains:

hgjhsushrdksjhfkshfkshf.com hgjhsushrdksjhfkshfkshf.org
hgjhsushrdksjhfkshfkshf.net

Link them on a single page somewhere, wait Google to index it, and search for
"hgjhsushrdksjhfkshfkshf". What tld will Google show first?

But if the .org or .net have a couple good links from somewhere else, they
will rank higher. So, you're right on your pure domain keyword ranking, but I
am from the opinion that it doesn't matter if you're going to use additional
SEO techniques.

------
richcollins
IMO the page is too busy. The value proposition is lost in a sea of text.
Maybe try something simple and straightforward:

<http://www.apple.com/macbookair/>

Using your value prop: "Stop losing money on missed appointments"

~~~
petervandijck
Agree with that. Something like: "(value:) Stop losing money on missed
appointments (large font). (how it works:) Send automatic phonecall reminders
to your clients."

------
tptacek
My brother has exactly this problem with a small suburban music school he
runs, so much so that I almost wrote something like this for him.

The biggest problem he seemed to have wasn't reminding people to show up; it
was having a streamlined process for handling people rescheduling. Scheduling
changes create drama for him by forcing him to renegotiate lesson times, and
of course it creates bubbles in the schedule.

~~~
natrius
If rescheduling is the biggest problem, this site I used to work on might
help: <http://hourville.com/online-scheduling/>

~~~
tptacek
How does it handle the rescheduling problem? It's not the "writing down the
new appointment" part of rescheduling that is the problem.

~~~
natrius
People can pick their own new spot in the schedule without having to go back
and forth to find available times that work for both parties. The empty
bubbles can still be a problem.

I might not completely understand the problems he runs into, but I think it
could help.

~~~
tptacek
When someone books an appointment for Monday and then later reschedules it for
Friday, a Monday booking is lost. Every time that happens you give up a
booking for free.

~~~
natrius
Ah, so it's not the process, just the fact that a rescheduling happens at all.
That sounds like a problem that technology can't fix.

~~~
tptacek
Sure it can. Here's a simple response: you have can book an appointment for
any available time slot, but you can reschedule only within a limited number
of slots.

~~~
natrius
That's pretty good, but how do you distinguish a rescheduling from a new
appointment? Are most customers scheduled at the same time every week for long
periods of time? If so, that makes lots of sense.

~~~
tptacek
That's also just one idea.

It's very easy to track which customers are rescheduling. It may be the case
that a timely reminder prevents them from doing so. So that's another
technological response to the problem.

Here's another: it is probably the case that rescheduling well in advance is
better than rescheduling late. The earlier you reschedule the more economic
value your original time slot has. So, it may be that a nudge like this gets
you to free up your original spot while it's still saleable.

Those are just random thoughts off the top of my head. I just don't agree that
this basic business problem admits to no technical solutions.

------
mattyb
Looks great, Patrick. I just showed this to my boss, who was immediately
interested.

One small nit: <http://www.appointmentreminder.org/pricing> says 'HIPPA
compliance guaranteed'. It's 'HIPAA'.

~~~
spokey
"HIPAA Compliance Guaranteed" seems like a strong statement to make. Just out
of curiosity, can you explain what you mean by that? I mean, if you're
allowing "custom reminders" how do you know they aren't recording "Mr. Smith,
we have the results of your HIV test and it's positive." or "This a reminder
for you to come in for your colonoscopy" or something like that? Are your
custom reminders more templated than that?

~~~
patio11
_Just out of curiosity, can you explain what you mean by that?_

It means that, if you don't see a check in that column, you're on notice that
HIPAA compliance is _not_ guaranteed. (Looking at my competitors shows that
some invest a lot of effort into HIPAA compliance and some insist that it is
out of scope for simple appointment reminders. My approach is a little
different: I'll deal with the lawyers and regulatory angle, but not right
now.)

If in spite of the plain language of the table and eventual language in the
TOS folks insist on putting sensitive information on a service which is not
rated for sensitive information, I'll say the same thing Gmail or Facebook
would: I had no idea they were doing that, did not encourage it, and if you
want to sue someone please sue them.

~~~
spokey
I think you misunderstood my question. I'm asking: what are you doing to
guarantee HIPAA compliance? I.e., what's different about how you treat those
accounts than the others and/or what steps are you taking to ensure
compliance?

~~~
spokey
Patrick,

Reading over your response again it seems like you're saying that you're not
doing anything to ensure HIPAA compliance and possibly that the HIPAA
compliant premium option is only there to contrast with the other account
types.

Is that right? If that's the case, why not just cover this in the TOS or with
an on-page note like "NB: AppointmentReminder is not currently appropriate for
HIPAA sensitive information." (Or some rephrasing of that that makes more
sense.)

I'm confused why you're listing an account type you're not really willing to
sell, or if you're intending to sell it, I'm curious what you intend to do to
ensure compliance.

Of course, if you're not comfortable disclosing your plans here, or if you
haven't yet figured them out, by all means disregard this question. I don't
have any skin in this, I'm just curious.

------
johnrob
"I’m coming to the market several years behind most of my competitors and will
be playing catchup for quite some time"

Unless your competitors have significant secret sauce, playing catchup is a
lot more efficient than leading. The unfair advantage that you have is the
ability to ask your competitors' customers what they like and don't like about
their products. Unlike the competition, you can add/remove features without
pissing off existing users.

------
theycallmemorty
> I went to a small massage parlor

You may want to change your terminology there:
[http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=massage+parlo...](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=massage+parlor)

~~~
rays
maybe thats the kind of place he was referring to? :)

~~~
dnsworks
Oldest industry known to man, it could clearly benefit from being slapped on
the butt with the modernity stick.

------
alexcharlie
Warning ahead of time: this review will be critical. I understand this might
all be explained away by MVP, but I will give you the notes anyways.

I clicked first to your product site. It looks _terrible_. I almost thought it
was a Web 2.0 parody site because of how poor the assets look. The green color
of the background doesn't appeal to me at all. Try using a site like
<http://www.colourlovers.com/> to pick a proper color scheme. The gradients
all have visual banding. The rounded corners are too much. The header bar is
clearly influenced by Apple's website, but it looks worse - like a crappy
knockoff of a genuine article. There is no catchy wording that explains
(concisely) what is going to happen or what this site is. The typography is
bad (no headlines? why?).

I clicked Try Demo. First thing I noticed was the calendar. I clicked around a
bit on it and liked it, but I ditched the site right after that.

I went to read your blog post next. It all made sense, and I think you have a
good plan. I just didn't get close to entering my phone number or experiencing
the magic of having it ring. I know that would have impressed me a lot, and I
think its not front and center enough. I went back to your site afterwards and
I noticed that you have a big paragraph explaining the phone call demo on your
calendar page. I had never read the text, I just skipped it and my eyes
focused first on the pretty AJAXy calendar.

Try to emphasize the coolness of the phone call demo. Use nice typography and
a catchy headline to call my attention to it. Go look at 37signals landing
page again. "A better way to work". OK now I am intrigued. Definitely show off
your cool AJAX calendar, but don't let it steal the show. The phone call is
the magic. Emphasize that.

Hope this helps.

~~~
evanrmurphy
> It looks _terrible._

I was actually impressed by the appearance, and I don't see many other
commenters italicizing their disgust, so this is probably an overstatement.

~~~
cemregr
The pastel green gradient doesn't work at all as the background color.

------
mmelin
Very cool. What you do best: providing actual value to real people from
customer #1, not fancy high-tech services. I do wonder about your marketing
plans, though. Are enough small business owners actively looking for this kind
of service that AdWords is going to be a viable option?

And one tech question: what are you using for the calendar? It looks
beautiful, like a simple iCal.

And lastly: international phone numbers don't seem to work. I'm sure that's
intentional, I just hope I didn't freak out some random person in Iowa
reminding them about a fake appointment.

~~~
mattyb
The calendar seems to be this one:

<http://github.com/robmonie/jquery-week-calendar>

------
jackowayed
I would bump up the appointments on the $79 plan or add another plan well
below the Enterprise plan with many more appointments.

If I were a potential customer that were near that many (and that's only not
even 40/day even with weekends factored in), I'd look at that and say "if we
expand a little and cross 300/month, we're going to be forced into a plan that
costs 7x as much and doesn't exist right now. That's really bad."

That or do some kind of "overage" deal where they can pay n cents per extra.

I'm also not sure how I feel about you not having the .com

------
mrshoe
My biggest concern:

Small businesses already have appointment scheduling systems. Do you plan on
integrating with them? Or is Appointment Reminder meant to replace them
completely? Or do you expect your users to manually input their appointments
into two separate systems?

~~~
patio11
Some small businesses certainly have appointment scheduling systems. One thing
I have heard a few times from folks is that they're using Pencil and Paper
v1.0. I plan on listening to my customers and iterating appropriately. If it
is obvious that their needs include interop or importing, then there will be
interop or importing.

In my wildest of fever dreams, solving a revenue-draining pain point is enough
to establish a beachhead in the B2smallB mini-enterprise environment, and then
I get to eat the elephant from within. ("Since you're already using me for
scheduling..." Basically, a 37Signals style approach where each additional
product adds synergistic effects from existing customers plus marginal
revenue.)

------
lakeeffect
It says under pricing only 10 appointments per month.

Who only has 10 appointments per month. And does a person with only ten
appointments per month need a service to remind them of their ten
appointments. Better yet does a person with only ten appointments have enough
money to spend ten bucks on your service.

I can see charging extra for additional users, but the second user should be a
discount not 20 dollars on top of the price for the first user. Your argument
would be well they get more appointments.

Your appointment reminders give them unlimited appointments that are very low
cost to your company. Then limit the amount expensive features per account
like sms messages.

~~~
patio11
_Who only has 10 appointments per month._

A teacher who does tutoring twice a week for extra cash. Typical rates at
suburban schools last time I was in them were about $40 an hour. You can do
the math from here.

Alternatively, a young professional who wants to put in reminders for himself.

 _the second user should be a discount_

Why do you believe this? I get the sense that you're thinking there is some
moral significance to a pricing table. I do not believe there is moral
significance to a pricing table -- this is simply a pricing discrimination
question, and if you have two people who need access to the same account you
have just graduated to Definitely A Business and by implication have things
like revenue, payroll, accountants, and _money to spend_ on solving business
problems which I am happy to take.

 _unlimited appointments that are very low cost to your company_

I charge based on value, not based on cost. My customers perceive value from
making appointments and having them kept. This is similar to bingo cards: the
marginal cost of a bingo card is zero, but the difference in 15 cards versus
30 cards segments the market, ergo I charge to go from 15 to 30.

------
robbiecanuck
This particular product is very big in the orthodontic community and has been
for quite a while. Televox (<http://www.televox.com>) is one company to check
out. Back in the day they sold orthodontists an expensive telephony board and
their software used the doctor's own phone system to call all the patients.
They now offer reminder calls as an online service.

There are many other companies offering the same services to orthodontists,
Televox is just one that I'm familiar with as my customers use them.

So - whether you hate getting these sorts of calls or not there's definitely
an existing market for them.

------
michaelfairley
Patrick, how did you hire the voice for the premade recordings?

~~~
patio11
I was hoping someone would ask that. Remember fiverr.com, the Mechanical Turk
for people with talent, where every task is priced at $5? Somebody was
offering to record a phone tree. I paid her $5 for half the job, liked what I
got, paid her $5 for the other half, then got her email for ongoing work at a
more appropriate wage.

God, I love the Internet.

Incidentally, the total cost of getting this project this far has been about
$450, including $250 put on deposit for Twilio. (Better to have too much than
too little, right?)

~~~
sachinag
A full list of all the tools/services you used for this project would be most
welcome. I've got: Twilio, PayPal WPP, Spreedly, Fiverr, and whoever your host
is.

~~~
patio11
[Edit: This got overly long. I'll blog it later.]

~~~
bvi
Looking forward to it!

If possible, I'd love to read up on how exactly you moved from concept to
product.

------
maxklein
If I were you, I'd drop the Wordpress and WooThemes link - it brings nothing
to your business and negatively affects those who care about such things.

Do you have experience in B2B? Cold calling and searching for your customer
instead of them searching for you? It's a very time-consuming task, much worse
in support than B2C.

~~~
patio11
_Cold calling and searching for your customer instead of them searching for
you?_

I don't know if this came across in my blog post: cold calling is not in the
cards here. I think there is a market niche which exists where it is not
profitable to do the cold calling, and believe that I can reach it with
scalable approaches like AdWords and AdSense, in much the same way that I
reached individual teachers because doing enterprise sales to their school
districts would not have been possible.

~~~
maxklein
You know, what I think is that this business is not going to work. There just
seem so many things unusual about it. If you cross $1500 a month, you're going
to have to give a detailed break-down of what made it work, because I bet I
would learn a lot.

Just looking at it, my instinct is saying "nah", so if I can retrain and learn
some new stuff that would be very useful.

~~~
mkramlich
If you cross $39,999/month with your biz you'll have to give a detailed
breakdown for us here too. ;)

------
qeorge
My haircutter absolutely calls me the day before each appointment to make sure
I'm going to show. Assuming its cheap yet professional, this seems like a no-
brainer for her.

If you could add a way for them to take appointments online that would be
killer.

------
JangoSteve
[Edit: I just realized the Pricing page says that only on the Enterprise
version is HIPAA compliance guaranteed. How can you get away with that? When
you deal with personally-identifiable health information (using a person's
cell phone number is personally identifiable), HIPAA compliance is not a
suggestion, it's a regulation enforced by the Office for Civil Rights. How are
the non-Enterprise level subscriptions even legal? ]

I actually built an application like this (but it was as a sub-contractor, so
I feel no obligation to promote it here).

The application I built allowed users to set their appointment reminder
settings to text and/or call their phone with an automated reminder message. I
also made it so that if you hit 3 on the message (there were a few options,
but 3 was my favorite), it would give you voice directions to your
appointment.

Also, is your appointment reminder application HIPAA compliant? It definitely
should be (<http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/>) since it deals with potentially
sensitive health information.

~~~
JangoSteve
I'll just add that I think I was letting my experience in creating this
application for medical and dental markets cloud my perception. I guess you
are targeting non-medical markets with this application and medical markets
only with the Enterprise plan.

------
Poiesis
Thoughts:

The sales pitch is too long IMO. If you end up keeping something like it post-
demo you should test alternatives.

The voice talkent is good. A bit too slow for my tastes but you need to do
research here to see what people can handle for speed. Maybe faster with an
easy "repeat" function. It always frustrates me when I miss something on a
recording and can't replay it.

The synthesized voice is really bad. Recording a real voice for every five
minute interval (or heck, everything) is not that bad.

I realize the recipient of the call is not your customer, but the faster you
can get off the phone the happier they'll be and the cheaper it is for you. If
I'm a business owner I'm thinking that people are going to hang up on this.
Even though the actual reminder is short you're reminding people of a long
call.

Minor "ad copy" bit: I think the people you areselling to are more likely to
recognize something like "text message to your mobile phone" than "SMS".

You need some sort of easier way for this to spread. Perhaps that will
naturally happen as customers hear about the product.

------
pchristensen
This whole article could be a case study on finding an idea and starting a
business.

"I want to be able to say something similar to 'Appointment Reminder will pay
for itself the first time it prevents a no-show.'" - despite patio11's
humility about sales, this sentence shows he has the right instinct.

------
sdfx
It's an interesting idea, but I'm not so sure about your price structure. I
guess that you don't want to bill for every notification, but have you thought
about billing for prevented no-shows (maybe on top of a base-price that
includes x appointments)? You could still make the case that your Reminder
pays for itself after the first no-show and make more money off of users that
benefit more from your product.

Also: I don't know who the target audience for the base-price is. If you know
you have 10 and only 10 appointments per month, this plan may be fine, but
otherwise? Why not change it to a "1$ for every appointment"-Plan?

~~~
patio11
What do you perceive as the benefit to my business from going from an easy to
understand option to a complicated one which requires forecasting, math,
complexity, and anxiety about marginal costs nagging at my users every time
they sign in?

 _target audience for the [personal plan]_

Productivity bloggers. It exists to give my business something to offer them,
because they have something I want, and it is not really their money. _shh_

~~~
sdfx
I completely see your point about the fixed rate. However, the benefit of a
flexible plan is that you can lower the price of the initial payment and make
a little money every time you are really helping your customers (detecting a
no-show). You potentially save your customer money and take a fee for this
service. I get now that that's not what you want - just wanted to offer a
different perspective.

------
Sukotto
My first thought is how I could subvert this. Will there always be a free
demo?

If so, can a religious zealot / abusive ex-spouse / stalker / demagogue / etc
use this system to contact their victim(s)?

~~~
patio11
Ahh, a man after my own cynical heart.

While I trust you folks to not be abusive to verify this, if you were to
attempt to put in the same number twice, you would get an error message
telling you that to prevent spam that is not possible, but if you want to hear
the demo again you can call a 877 number from the phone you want to unblock
and then follow the instructions to unblock it.

That number is also the outbound caller ID for the demo calls, and explains
that the demo call was scheduled by someone on the website, and if you
received it in error we're sorry, etc, and you won't receive another one.

You'll note that the free demo doesn't allow folks to actually specify any of
the contents of the call. (Well, technically speaking, you can manipulate the
time, but that is it.)

Should some person use the paid version of the service in a malicious fashion,
I'll do what the phone company would do: block their account and cooperate
with the authorities.

------
rokhayakebe
Great market you are in. I am currently working on a identical application for
my day job, although we are focusing on a niche industry we have been serving
for a few years. Great design. I know companies that spend $1,000+ a month on
reminders and related messages.

Edit: looking at the HIPAA compliant feature I can tell you have done your
research very well :). Glad to see you in this space. Looking forward to some
"cooperative competition".

------
natrius
If you send a message asking if the customer is coming, I'd bet they'd be more
likely to cancel. "Not showing up is an acceptable option? In that case..."

~~~
dpritchett
I agree. A read-through of Cialdini's "Influence" should give us a better idea
on how to phrase this. Something like "looking forward to seeing you" is less
suggestive of a no-show.

That reminds me, I need to finish that book. I believe it's on the Personal
MBA list if that interests you.

[http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-
Robert...](http://www.amazon.com/Influence-Psychology-Persuasion-Robert-
Cialdini/dp/0688128165)

~~~
Psyonic
Is this the personal mba list you are referring to:
<http://personalmba.com/best-business-books/>

Or is there another one you find valuable?

~~~
dpritchett
I glanced at an associate's blog last week and he had his own list of PMBA
books reprinted from an original source. That looks like about the same list,
yes.

~~~
Psyonic
Cool, thanks. It does seem like a good list... looking over it, I've
read/listened to 4 so far... so only 95 to go! Ya right, but I will try to
read one from each category this year.

------
joelhaus
Three observations:

1) _Redundant Scheduling_

As an AR.org client, I would not revel in the idea of entering an appointment
more than once; it also needs to show up in my normal "scheduling" calendar.
Possible/partial solution: Google Calendar
<http://code.google.com/apis/calendar/>

2) _Zipcar - example #1_

They have a very effective implementation of an app that schedules/extends
your car appointment via SMS. It has saved me a $50 penalty on more than one
occasion.

3) _Time Warner Cable - example #2_

TWC has an automated call reminding customers when they have an appointment;
may be worth investigating. Anecdotally, as a reminder, it has been most handy
when an appointment was made a week or more in the future. Of c. 7
appointments over 6 years, I think it effectively reminded me to reschedule 1
of the two appointments I had to reschedule.

One last thought; two factors seem to be driving your choice of business: (1)
a focus on under-served niches, parlaying your marketing savvy and (2) unsexy
businesses, reducing the potential for competition from technically skilled
entrepreneurs... a very practical approach! Anyway, best of luck.

------
staunch
.org Yeesh. I assume you're planning to buy .com when its proven itself.

Getting tiny businesses like a Salon to use a web app for scheduling may be
very difficult. Many of them probably don't even really have a computer in
reception. Maybe you could let them route calls to a phone-based scheduler
(then email/SMS in the appointment to the staff).

~~~
patio11
The domainer who owns the .com is known for a resistance to selling and would
want 5 figures or more, and the .net is owned by a market leader in the space.
I can think of better things to spend my money on.

 _Many of them probably don't even really have a computer in reception._

You're certainly correct, but the market is so much bigger than me that I
expect it will not matter either way. We'll see if my prospective customers
routinely bring this up as an issue over the coming months.

------
ankeshk
There is definitely a demand for this product.

Idea #1: add a recurring feature. Where I can schedule a phone call or an SMS
to be sent every week / month / year on a specific date.

Idea #2: This may complicate your pricing plans a bit. But you want to offer:
$79 for first 300 appointments per month. 50 cents for every additional
appointment.

Or maybe implement the credit system. Like how istockphoto.com does. $1 for
every 2 credits (with a minimum $10 purchase). $79 a/c comes with 300 free
credits that last for a month.

Such a pricing strategy helps you retain folks who don't want to or can't get
stuck (because of policy) to a recurring payment plan.

------
URSpider94
Patio writes: "So here’s a trick I’ve learned in Japan: there are a million
ways to tell people 'no'."

Man, is that ever true, and something we Americans could learn from.

------
sztanpet
I really like the idea, but I would make it even more general. Granted one
could use it right now for absolutely everything, but the title says
appointment reminder, I would personally use it to remind people interested in
e-sports related streams. Here's another idea, having the ability for this to
send me IM messages or URL callbacks would be even better.

~~~
patio11
I actually thought "Hey, this would work for WoW guilds" and immediately saw
myself getting emails from a bunch of people arguing about how expensive $9
was when they could get email to their iPhones for free. If that market
interests anybody here, feel free to go for it! I'll be talking to the 30 ~ 50
year old ladies who pay money for things.

~~~
gizmomagico
Your new venture seems very thoroughly thought-out, and I wish you good luck
with it! I bet you've grown tired of hearing "you're an inspiration to us
all".

But $770 for a 45-minute dentist's appointment?! Is that normal in Japan?

~~~
patio11
No, it is rather substantially cheaper here. Until recently I had not been
wowed by Japanese dentistry, so I got some long-delayed work done last time I
was in America on a cash basis. (Happily, when one of the fillings that cost
$~X00 popped out and I had to visit the first dentist I found on Google Maps
by my office, I had a wonderful experience but for the searing pain of losing
a filling, and will be going to him from now on.)

None of the above is intended as a commentary on the relative merits of
national health insurance.

~~~
gizmomagico
Alright, I can imagine dental care being expensive in America. I suppose that
side is run by the insurance companies too?

------
muhammadatt
This is great. I have no idea whether this idea will work or not, but I really
enjoyed reading about your process. It sounds like you have really embraced
the lean startup, customer development philosophy. I have to admit that I had
never heard of you until I saw you interview on Gabriel's website, but have
been intrigued ever since. Thanks for sharing.

------
Scott_MacGregor
Good idea, if it were mine I would make text message to cellular the standard
notification feature with a fallback to e-mail only if the text message did
not go through, or if the customer opted in for it instead of text.

I would also try offering a 15 day free trial for the businesses and sell
packages on a quarterly, 6 month and yearly basis vs monthly.

~~~
dpritchett
Texts are still pricey for some folks, particularly with US cellular carriers.
I only just upgraded from $0.20/msg a la carte to a $5/month 200 messages
plan.

------
subbu
Slightly off-topic. But I am always looking for good web app themes. Is this
the theme you have used for calendar app? <http://themeforest.net/item/sharp-
admin-template/83085>

------
scottshapiro
Reminds me of QLess that just got funded yesterday
[http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/qless-saves-you-the-
annoyan...](http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/qless-saves-you-the-annoyance-of-
standing-in-line/)

------
samd
It looks like you're targeting medical offices with that enterprise plan, but
it just seems far too expensive for them. At that price your service is
starting to cost as much as EMRs or practice management software.

~~~
patio11
I'd be one of the cheapest solutions on the market at that price point.
Enterprise sales, hooooo. It isn't irrational, either: like I said, if the
dentist rescues a single appointment with me, he gets $750 in cash the same
day.

That said, as I alluded to, I did not primarily include that plan out of a
desire to sell it. It won't be available at launch: it just gives folks fair
warning that the other plans are not guaranteed to be HIPAA friendly, and
additionally makes everything else I sell look cheap by comparison to what the
Big Boys use. As I mentioned, that appears to be essentially all of the space
at the moment.

~~~
samd
Right, I think there are many software niches that are still dominated by
over-priced enterprise solutions, and the web is eventually going to destroy
them.

If you eventually want to compete with those guys though, wouldn't you rather
have a significantly lower price to make people consider switching? Or do you
think having too low of a price will make people dismiss your business as
shady, unreliable, etc.?

------
sourc3
It's funny how you beat me to it :) I am working on pretty much the same
product, about to launch in two weeks. It's good to know that you saw an
opportunity in this as well. Best of luck.

------
voxio
My Blackberry and iPhone let me know when I have appointments.

~~~
patio11
That solves your appointment problem, but it does not solve your _salon's_
appointment problem, because your salon cannot buy their entire clientele an
iPhone. They can, however, rely on their entire clientele already having voice
service.

This is why Twilio (and related technologies) are so awesome: it turns the
humblest cell phone in Africa into something which, for all practical
purposes, speaks HTTP.

------
FreeRadical
I was wondering why you were not on HN much recently!

------
mnemonicsloth
A Bug?

The "Appointment Reminders" link below the slider should de-highlight when the
user mouses over the link beside it, right?

------
tome
Why do these businesses not charge for missed appointments?

------
againstyou
well, if you look your www.bingocardcreator.com design, this one is much much
better ;)

