Jamie Stephens – Founder of Bookd.com

Bookd.com is an online system designed to help businesses, both big and small, market and book their services. Book’d aims to simplify these everyday processes. From the “About Us” section on bookd.com, Jamie also explains:

“Book’d is more than just a Website for your services. It also has a powerful administration area that allows you to manage all your bookings, send online invoices, and track information about your customers. We have worked hard to make sure we cover all the right steps of managing your services and bookings.”

MO:

They say necessity is the mother of invention . . . was that your inspiration for Book’d? Were you finding a lack of online scheduling services available for local businesses and then decided that was a problem worth solving? Can you tell us a little about what the spark was for you and how the idea evolved, going from idea stage to product stage?

Jamie Stephens:

Creating a site for people to accept and manage bookings online was certainly not unique. There were actually a handful of companies already doing this previous to Book’d, but I didn’t feel like any of them were offering a compelling solution to consumers. Their interfaces were clumsy, and they simply didn’t look like much fun to use. At the same time I noticed there were countless booking applications on the Web that were started and abandoned. It looked like there were all kinds of people who had the same idea, but gave up on it for one reason or another. These two things encouraged me. I figured if the problem was really hard (or at least hard enough for others to give up on it), and I could come up with a simple interface for solving it, then I might have something.

My main goal in developing Book’d is to keep it simple. From the beginning, I realized this was going to be a challenge if I wanted to offer a booking solution to multiple industries and not just focus on a single vertical market. Physical trainers have different needs than hair salons; massage therapists have different needs than accountants. With each potential feature, I had to discern whether it would likely be used by the majority of my customers or whether it was just designed for a certain group of users. I found myself saying “no” on new features quite a bit. I’m hopeful that this has resulted in a simple system that is easy for anyone to immediately understand and use.

MO:

Some would say figuring out “Local” or even “Hyper Local” is the holy grail of online marketing. Book’d seems to be well positioned to really gain some traction in this arena. Is this something you consider when assessing the ‘big picture’ opportunity for your venture?

Jamie Stephens:

The activity around local marketing and discovery is very exciting right now. We have a number of different initiatives that we’ll be releasing to help our customers make their services more discoverable in “local” searches.

In terms of big picture, Book’d needs to do two things really well: 1.) manage bookings across the entire organization and 2.) allow new and existing customers to discover and book services online. In this way, Book’d is both a productivity tool and a marketing tool. Some people will use Book’d only for managing appointments that come in over the phone or in person and have little need for accepting new bookings online. Others are more interested in the ability to allow customers to book online and then simply funnel these appointments into another calendar such as Google Calendar, Outlook, or iCal. Our focus in the early days has been the productivity side of the app and help businesses save time and increase bookings with their existing customers. Now that this part has been rolling along fairly well, we are excited about the next stage, which is to help them reach out and get new customers. Most of our customers are booking appointments locally, so implementing location-based marketing strategies is going to be key.

MO:

I heard you speak last December while attending an event put on by the Journalism School at the University of Missouri along with the Regional Economic Development, Inc. (REDI) of Columbia, Mo. The event was titled “Economic Gardening & New Media – Growing Our Opportunities.” You’ve worked with the University on past projects and have “stayed connected” with key people there. In your experience, what ways can a university system help entrepreneurs looking to launch or grow a business? Have you found it easy to ‘navigate’ the university system to find available resources? Or is that an ‘acquired’ skill set that takes time and patience? I live about 10 minutes from the Mizzou campus and have yet to explore the advantages it might offer . . .

Jamie Stephens:

I am fortunate to have worked with a number of fantastic folks at Mizzou. Having spent a couple of years as an employee certainly helped me connect with many of the resources they have to offer. However, with that said, I am still regularly discovering significant new resources there. There is unfortunately no single place where someone can go to get a map of all the different resources the university has to offer. I have found this to be a recurring theme among students, faculty, and local businesses both at the “Economic Gardening” meeting and other meetings. I am encouraged, however, by the efforts of some individuals in the university, REDI, and some initiatives like MU Startups to change this. I am also hopeful for the new Club Innovation for Missouri Business (CLIMB) created by Rob Duncan, MU’s Vice Chancellor for Research. Seeing support for entrepreneurship come from higher up in the university will certainly only help create excitement and make resources more available for all.

MO:

There was a portion during your talk at Mizzou, when . . . well . . . my eyes may have glazed over a bit . . . only because it was some heavy duty stuff that was way over my head . . . what the heck was that all about? You definitely seemed jazzed about it . . .

Jamie Stephens:

Haha! Yeah, you weren’t the only ones with eyes glazed over. I probably should have summarized a little more. :)

A few of us had been asked to speak about what unique offerings we saw at Mizzou that might provide opportunities for commercialization in the area of New Media. There are two areas that I am particularly excited about.

The first area is informatics and the Semantic Web. Semantic technologies have been around for awhile, but they have recently started to gain popularity with projects like OpenCalais sponsored by Reuters, Data.gov, FreeBase, WolframAlpha, the inclusion of semantic content within Google search results, and the decision in the New York Times to release its thesaurus to the linked data cloud, among others. I think that the tradition of expertise in the journalism school along with the MU Informatics institute could provide some unique opportunities to identify new publishing solutions that can integrate semantic data into news articles, journal articles, and other media. It could also provide opportunities to create and license data and technologies based on these semantic databases and services.

The second area I am excited about is developing new user interfaces with sensors and computational intelligence. I have had the privilege of interviewing Jim Keller (Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering) and Marilyn Rantz (School of Nursing) who are two of the researchers with the Center for Eldercare and Rehabilitation Technology and their project at TigerPlace. Some of the strategies the team devised include installing passive sensors in residential units at TigerPlace to determine whether the residents are engaging in normal activities or whether subtle signs of decompensation call for early intervention. Types of sensors include motion detectors, vibration sensors on the floors to detect falls, heat sensors around the stove area and refrigerator door, sensors in the bed to measure respiration, heartbeat, and restlessness, and even silhouette video sensors that can be used to build models of normal versus deviation-from-normal behaviors.

The reason I find this latter area so exciting is that there is so much exploration going on with sensors in consumer devices right now, and this has a profound effect on how we design user interfaces. We typically have thought of user interfaces as being on the computer screen, but we are increasingly physically interacting with devices, like bowling on the Nintendo Wii or shaking our iPhone to get restaurant recommendations. In fact, check out this video where students at the University of Michigan are using their iPhones as instruments: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2009/12/michigan-mobile-phone-ensemble/. There is much to be explored in this area, and I think MU has some unique talent to explore some of the opportunities.

MO:

Book’d was launched in June, 2009. As 2010 has rolled in, what key areas will you be focused on to continue to grow the business?

Jamie Stephens:

Insofar as 2009 was a year for building, 2010 will be a year for marketing and partnering. We have already engaged in some relationships with partners to offer Book’d as a private-label solution to their customers. We are looking at other partnerships where Book’d can be integrated into their offerings as a value-add service (look for some upcoming announcements on this). Another key area to look for is further integration with other products, both in the social arena as well as CRM and other marketing solutions. Needless to say, we’re pretty excited.

MO:

The last entrepreneurs’ meet-up we both attended hit a snafu, and we all ended up at a Starbucks at 9 pm . . . instead of talking over beers as I had hoped. I ended up making the strategically poor decision to drink a large coffee. Between talking with other entrepreneurs and drinking a large coffee, I don’t think I slept for the next 36 hours. Will you be attending future meet ups and if so, would you be kind enough to hit me with a chair or something heavy if you hear me ordering a large coffee again at 9:00 at night?

Jamie Stephens:

Ha! Yeah, well at least we didn’t get caught at the place with all the salsa dancers! :)

I’ll definitely be hitting the meet-ups in the future. I think that these informal gatherings are a key part of creating a culture of entrepreneurship here in Columbia. There are so many great things going on in Mid-MO, and I love seeing people connect the dots at these meetings – even if those dots won’t go way for the next 36 hours. :)