3 ms·

Anyvite: Event Creation Made Easy (YC Summer 08)

13 points by fallentimes 18y ago

aston 18y ago
We've been using Anyvite to schedule our weekly poker games. In general, it's a great experience. My only wish is that I could copy an event to a new day and/or make a recurring event.
- jmorin007 18y ago
  We'll be pushing out that feature in the very near future.
fallentimes 18y ago
I want Anyvite widgets.
- jmorin007 18y ago
  Soon my friend...very very soon.
wayne 18y ago
I'm a huge fan of anything that can displace Evite, but when organizing events, I found I consistently fall back to Evite. Anyvite adds nice-to-haves like RSS, mobile support, and a much cleaner/streamlined UI, but none of these are MUST-haves. If I use anything but Evite I risk people not recognizing the email as an invitation and deleting it. Plus, I have to put up with all the "Why didn't you just use Evite?" jokes. As cool as AnyVite (and Renkoo and Socializer and mypunchbowl and Google Calendar) is, I'd rather spend the extra 10 minutes muddling through Evite. I guess that's sad.
- jmorin007 18y ago
  I'm curious as to what would you consider a must-have feature to be in an invitation creation site? With more and more people relying on mobile Internet access while on the go, I would think that a mobile interface to view and manage your invitations would be a bit more than a nice-to-have feature. The other issues that you present are definitely hurdles to overcome when attempting to take on a product with a well known brand in the space, but are not insurmountable, as we've seen continued user adoption of Anyvite. Hopefully, in the future, we'll have the product to the point where you wont even consider spending an extra ten minutes on Evite when organizing an event.
fauigerzigerk 18y ago
I was invited to a wedding recently. The logistics were rather complicated as it took place in a somewhat remote location that few guests had known before. People were travelling there from far afield using all kinds of transport, some of which had to be chartered just for the event. Also, the whole thing didn't take place in one single location. We were actually moving between at least three locations and a lot of other coordination intensive stuff was going on. Now when I think back what the invitations looked like, it was nothing like what these invitation sites offer. There were maps and train/bus schedules and reservations and bad wheather provisions and different cases for different groups of people and a lot of real time coordination until very late. Of course there were people who were not in the digital age at all, so everything had to be printed and mailed as well. I don't know whether it makes sense for sites like Anyvite to cater to these kinds of complicated events and include event organisation features on top of invitations. These events are of course much less frequent (I personally remember only three comparably complicated events). Organisers could certainly use help with that, on other hand rare complicated processes in the consumer space are dangerous for software makers as people don't like to learn stuff if they need it only once every few years. It would have to be simple AND powerful and integrate a lot of communication channels and information sources. It's difficult to get right I think.

13 points by fallentimes 18y ago

aston 18y ago

We've been using Anyvite to schedule our weekly poker games. In general, it's a great experience. My only wish is that I could copy an event to a new day and/or make a recurring event.

jmorin007 18y ago
We'll be pushing out that feature in the very near future.

fallentimes 18y ago

I want Anyvite widgets.

jmorin007 18y ago
Soon my friend...very very soon.

wayne 18y ago

I'm a huge fan of anything that can displace Evite, but when organizing events, I found I consistently fall back to Evite. Anyvite adds nice-to-haves like RSS, mobile support, and a much cleaner/streamlined UI, but none of these are MUST-haves. If I use anything but Evite I risk people not recognizing the email as an invitation and deleting it. Plus, I have to put up with all the "Why didn't you just use Evite?" jokes. As cool as AnyVite (and Renkoo and Socializer and mypunchbowl and Google Calendar) is, I'd rather spend the extra 10 minutes muddling through Evite. I guess that's sad.

jmorin007 18y ago
I'm curious as to what would you consider a must-have feature to be in an invitation creation site? With more and more people relying on mobile Internet access while on the go, I would think that a mobile interface to view and manage your invitations would be a bit more than a nice-to-have feature. The other issues that you present are definitely hurdles to overcome when attempting to take on a product with a well known brand in the space, but are not insurmountable, as we've seen continued user adoption of Anyvite. Hopefully, in the future, we'll have the product to the point where you wont even consider spending an extra ten minutes on Evite when organizing an event.

fauigerzigerk 18y ago

I was invited to a wedding recently. The logistics were rather complicated as it took place in a somewhat remote location that few guests had known before. People were travelling there from far afield using all kinds of transport, some of which had to be chartered just for the event. Also, the whole thing didn't take place in one single location. We were actually moving between at least three locations and a lot of other coordination intensive stuff was going on. Now when I think back what the invitations looked like, it was nothing like what these invitation sites offer. There were maps and train/bus schedules and reservations and bad wheather provisions and different cases for different groups of people and a lot of real time coordination until very late. Of course there were people who were not in the digital age at all, so everything had to be printed and mailed as well. I don't know whether it makes sense for sites like Anyvite to cater to these kinds of complicated events and include event organisation features on top of invitations. These events are of course much less frequent (I personally remember only three comparably complicated events). Organisers could certainly use help with that, on other hand rare complicated processes in the consumer space are dangerous for software makers as people don't like to learn stuff if they need it only once every few years. It would have to be simple AND powerful and integrate a lot of communication channels and information sources. It's difficult to get right I think.