Boston Archive

Boston-based event planning service MyPunchbowl has announced that they have completely relaunched the service today. Last month the company raised $2.1 million in venture capital funding. The big piece of their relaunch is the new Design Studio feature.

The basic idea of Design Studio is that it allows you to very heavily customize a save the date or event invitation. Anything can be customized from photos, colors and text. What’s neat is that everything is customizable so while the background might enter the invitation in blue, it can be changed to pink or green. CEO Matt Douglas seems to love the fact that you can now add ribbons to your invitations. With all of the options available, it will make sure your Halloween invite doesn’t look like the 1,000 others you will receive.

The basic flow is to create a "pick a date" mailing where you ask your event attendees when works for them. Then a "save the date" mailing which can be up to a year in advance. Then the actual event invitation. MyPunchbowl also helps with things like travel and local services to make the event special. Then the thank you note. Basically MyPunchbowl is attempting to be the one stop for the entire event plan. 

Earlier this summer, eVite relaunched and added the option for users to contribute their own designs. I’d suggest that MyPunchbowl adds that option as well. It will get users excited about putting even more time and effort into their designs.

Here’s CEO Matt Douglas demonstrating how the Design Studio works:

Earlier this month we reviewed offline ad marketplace Tapinko. Today we bring another local advertising marketplace, this time it’s for "flyers" on local newspaper and event Web sites. Part of the PaperG group out of the Boston area, Flyerboard provides advertisers with an easy way to reach local markets. The company says an ad can be up and running within 5 minutes.

Co-founder and CEO Victor Wong notes, "We took the concept of a local bulletin board and brought it online so that local advertisers can post flyers on their favorite local websites. Users can use the intuitive graphic interface to go through local listings. The original product took off at Yale and Harvard where the founders are attending."

Currently the Flyerboard service is available in Boston and in New Haven. Wong notes that this month they plan to roll out the online advertising service in New York City.

I found the ordering process simple and if they offer enough publisher variety, the service could work. The real key is getting buyers into the system – signing publishers is easy.

Boston-based MyPunchbowl has announced they have raised a $2.1 million Series A round of venture capital funding. The funding was led by NY-based Contour Venture Partners and included participating from current investors Intel Capital and eCoast Angels. Punchbowl Software notes that the funding will be used to pursue strategic opportunities and grow the Punchbowl Software development team. MyPunchbowl is an end-to-end party planning tool rather than just an invite service such as eVite. Their mission is to, "make the event host look good". The company notes that their traffic has gone up 20 percent month over month.

MyPunchbowl recently launched a Facebook application and integrated Kayak trip planning services.

Check out all of our MyPunchbowl coverage including my interview with founder and CEO Matt Douglas.

Boston-based Internship Ratings helps you find the right internship by reading reviews and ratings from others on their internships. The service went live about six months ago and currently features 150 companies and has over 200 members. There’s also an Internship Ratings blog which features a variety of experts discussing the various facets of internships.

The service appears to be ad-supported. Internship Ratings has a Facebook page but doesn’t link to it from their site. This type of service has huge potential if they apply a social layer to the site. Why can’t I friend other users? Where’s the profile page for users who have signed up that has their social network contact info? Most importantly, where’s the internship job board? Why not help students find internships? Where are the video comments? Where’s the reviews feed? This site targets one of the most ideal demographic sets, but is barely offering anything more than a simple (but good looking) review board. The service is up for six months, it’s time to make it sticky.

Internship Ratings was founded by two Boston University business school students, Stephanie Gurtman and Lauren Grunstein. Amanda Gravel interviewed the pair of entrepreneurs at an event this week in Boston. Here’s the brief interview:

Last week I met with 211me CEO Robert DeFranco to discuss the 211me service. 211me is basically a mobile mashup creator – it takes the information you have and creates fancy, styled mobile cards that you can share.

There are several uses for these cards including: for fun with friends, bars and venues can use the cards to promote an event, and as a business card replacement. I could see consumer-facing companies using these cards to promote a product or marketing campaign.

211me works like any text messaging – you sms to a code and it sends you back the requested mobile card. If your phone supports mobile browsing, you get the full experience. If not, you get just the text message with the pertinent details. This makes the service accessible on 100% of mobile devices.

I think the idea of having to click to open a browser and then view a card and then take some action from it could be very limiting for the service – especially for mobile users who are new to texting.

DeFranco says that Mozes is probably the closest competitor to 211me. There’s also a couponing API that allows stylized coupons like the ones below to be sent out – this is a local marketing play.

Part of me thinks that 211me would be smart to seperate the "fun" side from the "marketing" side. The marketing side is where this type of offering could really take off. Get the right celebrity, movie or product to push their cards and it could hit the sweet spot. This is assuming that the technology is as easy to use as possible. Just getting the boring text message is probably not a "win" overall.

211me is based just outside Boston and was founded in 2007. They have raised $1.7 million to-date and have filed several patents. The 211me application went live quietly in March 2008 and they have started to promote the app last month.

Here are a few sample 211me cards:

CenterNetworks is a media sponsor of the POPSignal party in Boston on May 15th. The party will be held at Tequila Rain which is next door to Fenway Park where those "redsox" play. The party is already sold out at over 400 guests but we have 30 exclusive CenterNetworks invites!

POPSignal co-founder Jay Meattle explained how the event got started, "Brian and I are really doing this to bring the tech community together in an informal environment.  The more people from the tech and startup community we get to come to this event, the better for Boston’s tech community as a whole."

There are some great sponsors making the event possible including: Microsoft, TripAdvisor (one of my favorite sites!), PerkettPR T3 Advisors and AtlasVenture.

Check out all of the details for the event and register here using the following code: pop1cn. Be quick — we only have 30!

Boston-based online money management tool Geezeo has taken a $1.2 million investment from TheStreet.com. The investment equals a 13% in Geezeo and the company noted that TheStreet.com has an option to purchase the company over the next year based on an equity value of $12 million. The deal also will match Geezeo with Promotions.com (recently acquired by TheStreet.com). This match will allow Geezeo to run more marketing campaigns to push their signup levels even further.

Geezeo’s tagline is, "Educated Financial Decisions." The tools they provide help you to track, monitor and review your finances to keep things in order. With the current state of the economy, Geezeo should be playing up the nature of their tool in helping stretch every dollar. This deal represents more than just an investment by a VC; it will provide significant distribution for Geezeo and increase their membership levels by joining the mainstream and leaving the tech-only market.

The other sites that TheStreet currently operates include: Stockpickr.com, BankingMyWay.com and MainStreet.com. I am curious whether any of the current U.S. online financial tools will expand internationally.

Check out my interview with the Geezeo founders. Other companies in the online money management space include Spendview and Wesabe.