Y Combinator’s Anyvite Takes On Evite, Keeps Things Simple

http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/07/01/y-combinators-anyvite-takes-on-evite-keeps-it-simple/

by rwebb • 18 years ago

81 38 18 years ago

techcrunch.com

Alex3917• 18 years ago

I like the concept, but the color and font of the logo makes me think AnyWine.

soundsop• 18 years ago

Same people as Coordinatr: http://coordinatr.com/about ? The sites seem very similar.

drm2373• 18 years ago

Yeah, it's the next iteration of Coordinatr. Coordinatr has been a great proof of concept for us and very useful for gathering user feedback. With our YC launch, we've added a ton of features and have really tried to improve the user experience.

pchristensen• 18 years ago

Congrats! I wasn't that excited about YAEK until I realized it was you guys that made it. Coordinatr was the best user experience I've had with software because of how receptive and responsive you were to the feedback I gave. I wish you the best of luck and I will be using AnyVite!

JasonK• 18 years ago

I mentioned the similarities towards the end of the post. Anyvite is basically a clone with more features.

auston• 18 years ago

What I love about anyvite... It lets me use my coordinatr login!

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

Yup! If you have an account on Coordinatr, then all of your data and past history should be available to you.

defen• 18 years ago

PLEASE crush Evite...they're my least favorite internet company that everybody uses. Good luck.

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

We would be more than happy to oblige! Whatever you can do to spread the word about Anyvite would be much appreciated ;)

phd2000• 18 years ago

Good luck on this but everyone I know just uses Facebook to coordinate events. Plus Facebook Mobile lets you keep updated even on the go.

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

We realize that Facebook is a dominant competitor in this market space and a lot of people use it for creating events, but there are still some people we've talked to who aren't entirely happy with it, as well as some market segments out there that aren't avid Facebook users.

jyu• 18 years ago

How big is the addressable market? What you just described sounds pretty small.

"...still some people we've talked to who aren't entirely happy with it" This sounds like people that are slightly annoyed, and not really displeased enough to switch over to something else.

blurry• 18 years ago

For my last party invite, I tried using facebook but a lot of people balked at it. Pretty sure the reason was that it forces you to think that you need to sign up/log in and people just want to have an easy access to event time/address, and a yes/no button to rsvp.

I just created a test on anyvite and it was super easy and common-sense. Definitely preferrable to facebook in my opinion. Two comments though:

1. RSVP dropdown is smallish/hard to notice. 2. Background images stretch in an ugly way, at least on my work IE 1024 x 768.

Otherwise, a great site!

copenja• 18 years ago

This really depends on your specific group of friends.

For example, most of my friends do not use Facebook.

But all of my friends use email.

omnipath• 18 years ago

I don't particular use Evite (I mean, I know what the site is, but that's about it.)

What are these problems that Evite supposedly has? From what I seen, people in general don't have a problem using them. Lay people, I mean.

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

Using Evite is not the most intuitive thing in the world. We hear from lots of people who won't create invites using it because it's just too confusing to use.

alaskamiller2• 18 years ago

Not much.

The biggest complaints has always been the placement of ads on the invitations and their insistence on drawing you to the site to look at any relevant information (which in turn increases the pageviews and expands their ad inventory). But that's their business model. Few other people have hooked on a more clever way of making money off invitations.

These toys that people make, and yes they are just toys, flame out quite quickly despite people clamoring that Evite's evil and so on. Here's a list of other similar services taking on Evite:

Mypunchbowl (complete event coordination)

Planypus (fuzzy arrangement)

Goovite (simplistic invitation system)

Invitastic (pretty invite templates)

Eventful

Imthere

Madeit

Crush3r (hipster/pretty invite templates)

Partee

Renkoo (friends getting together)

Skobee (dead)

Socializr

Upcoming

Zvents

Pownce can also be considered a similar service. Tack on the current trend of location-aware social apps like Loopt and you have another layer. Those apps are likely where these apps will evolve into. Plus the old standbys of email and phones.

In the end they all do the same thing: you type in info and it gets sent out, sometimes you get to gussy up the invites. The strategic advantage you have is simply size and inertia. If there's going to be anyone that's capable of crushing Evite it would only be Facebook.

drm2373• 18 years ago

Not Much? I think you may be in the minority of people who think that evite doesn't have many issues...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evite#Criticism

http://www.time.com/time/specials/2007/article/0,28804,16383...

http://www.wired.com/culture/culturereviews/magazine/16-02/s...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/13/magazine/13wwln-medium-t.h...

http://www.evitesucks.com/

http://www.jabrams.com/thetruthaboutevite.html

http://venturebeat.com/2006/09/19/why-i-hate-evite/

http://valleywag.com/tech/modern-and-awkward/8-companies-we-...

apu• 18 years ago

Some minor suggestions/bugs:

1. It would be nice to have a button which pops-up a small calendar (something like on kayak.com or any other flight site). The automatic parsing is nice, but for the less web-savvy, a button would be easier to grok.

2. The time parsing is a little funky. If I type in 9:30, it auto-detects as PM. If I add a space after that, it suddenly switches to AM. This might catch people off guard.

3. The auto date parsing is awesome (with the 'natural language' feature). However, I found that the word 'tonight' doesn't work...perhaps you want to add it to your dict?

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

Great suggestions! We're definitely going to add the pop up calendar ASAP and will look into the other bugs with the date and time stuff.

Thanks for the recommendations!

morbidkk• 18 years ago

Havent you guys checked purpleTrail.com It has even more features; please check out

drm2373• 18 years ago

Yeah, we have seen purpletrail. As the article said, we're going for simple and straightforward. We're also pretty big believers that "more features" does not mean something is better.

OneSeventeen• 18 years ago

Similarly, have y'all seen mobaganda.com? It is doing the simple == better thing, as well. I notice you guys seem (I haven't actually used either site yet) to have a few more features. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts.

paulweels• 18 years ago

yes... i hve checked out http://www.purpletrail.com and the site is pretty neat with some great features... i guess worth giving a try... and it also has desktop and mobile... abilities

initself• 18 years ago

I just started a party at my house in an hour!

mwinters58• 18 years ago

how come I didn't get an SMS invite? I'm so bored at home...

timr2• 18 years ago

How are you guys planning to get traction? This is a really crowded field, and adoption doesn't appear to be driven by rational behavior. For example, Invitastic (http://invitastic.com) is already a pretty darned good replacement for Evite, but nobody knows about it (no personal association; they just happen to be a local company in the space).

Also, a few seconds of googling turned up this laundry list of pretenders to the throne:

http://www.scurrilous.com/blog/archives/2007/03/30/evite-alt...

jmorin0076• 18 years ago

Agreed, it is a crowded market space with different sites targeting different sub-segments. We have some ideas that we're working on for user adoption and growth.

marketer• 18 years ago

Specifically about invitastic -- they never made any serious attempt to go after evite. Jackson Fish Market is more of a marketing/consulting company. They developed invitastic for a client to promote a product (which is an interesting business model).

timr2• 18 years ago

True, but it's not that they don't want to take down evite -- they just realize the difficulty of the task, and prefer to take a few quick shots at the goal instead. Their subsidized development model is a really just a hedging strategy against the failure of any particular app.

I think the important point is that they've built a great evite-replacement product that nobody is using. There's clearly something interesting going on here, and I wonder if it's a case of evite being good enough? Geeks may complain about evite, but there are enough good replacements out there that the general public could have switched already.

tx• 18 years ago

I've been using Google's calendar to send out invitations. How are these sites different? I.e. what's the point?

jamesjyu• 18 years ago

I definitely agree with this. I don't think anyone has yet figured out the X factor that has got evite all the traction. Maybe evite didn't even have an X factor (just luck and timing), but, certainly, any new players in the field need to have an edge somehow to succeed.

prakash• 18 years ago

didn't renkoo (adam rifkin's company) start out trying to do the same thing?

chez17• 18 years ago

No matter how good the service is, I think the design of the homepage could use a lot of work. Just my two cents.

fbailey• 18 years ago

http://de.amiando.com/index.html?requestLanguage=EN

The european competitor, as a I european I prefer them

fletch• 18 years ago

"Anyvite" is way to close to "an Evite."

Good luck not getting sued. Sincerely. :/

aasarava• 18 years ago

But Evite is way close to "invite" -- and Evite is going to have a pretty hard time showing that it has ownership over all derivations of the word.

Y Combinator’s Anyvite Takes On Evite, Keeps Things Simple

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