CrowdClock – You Life Scheduled

Welcome back to another edition of CrowdClock Weekly Recommendations. Yet another week of "high praise" (as Nicolas Cage would say) has passed and our users are still asking us how to spend their free time. As always we have taken a break from our numerous galas and city-wide parades in our honor to give our users what they are asking for.

If this is your first time tuning in, allow us to acknowledge the great burden our users have of planning out what to do with their endless amounts of free time. Hours previously spent texting, calling, and emailing to schedule their calendars have become mere seconds through CrowdClock’s simple scheduling and syncing. 

For many, the task of planning their newfound free time is an almost unbearable challenge. So without further ado, here are our weekly recommendations for your limitless amounts of free time:

Painting: Stop starring at those barren white walls and add some spice and color to your life. From off-white to eggshell white, the options are endless. Just get ready for all the excitement that will come with your new exotic lifestyle.

Play Settlers of Catan: Like talking about wool, ore and grain? Neither do we. So instead of talking about it why not play a game where the entire goal is to collect pictures of wool, ore and grain! Who doesn't love practicing Resource Management for fun?

Canoeing: Grab a friend and a paddle. Nothing wrong with two guys spending hours straddling each other in a tiny metal boat. Just two men celebrating each other's strength. 

Shark Week!: August 10-16 promises to be action packed with such hits as Zombie Sharks and Alien Sharks: Return to the Abyss who can go wrong. 

Challenge: In honor of Sharknado 2 in theaters August 20th, try coming up with something scarier than a Sharknado. Hurricantelope, Tsunamipotamus, Batquake, and Climate-Changeabear are some serious contenders.

Join us every week for helpful suggestions about the best ways to spend your free time.

Until next time- Happy Clocking!

It's that time again. In response to the flood of fan mail and bronze statues erected in our honor, we have again decided to reward the CrowdClock community with our helpful tips for how to spend your free time. 

If this is your first time tuning in, allow us to acknowledge the great burden our users have of planning out what to do with their endless amounts of free time. Hours previously spent texting, calling, and emailing to schedule their calendars have become mere seconds through CrowdClock’s simple scheduling and syncing. 

For many, the task of planning their newfound free time is an almost unbearable challenge. So without further ado, here are our weekly recommendations for your limitless amounts of free time:

Puzzles: Essentially 52-Card Pickup made out of cardboard. Who doesn't want to spend hours sorting through virtually identical pieces only to find out you have one missing piece at the end? While those yet to discover CrowdClock are forced to look at pictures that are already made whole, our users have the luxury of piecing together their photos! 

Not a fan of puzzles? Duct tape the pieces together in a ball and spend the rest of your time making a Duct Tape Wallet... or for the overly ambitious- entering the Duck Tape Prom Dress Contest. 

Football is back! Week 1 of the Preseason is here and this Thursday will be full of football. Find your favorite team and be sure to add it to your calendar. With your extra time you can memorize every college football mascot. We will give you a head start- Whittier College is the Poets. No seriously. They are.

Your Free Concert of the Week. Check out Gavin DeGraw- this Tuesday at 8:45 ET Live Streamed thanks to Yahoo and LiveNation. 

If you aren't into songs about beef jerky, your truck, dog, or wife/sister you can skip the concert and put on your very own show using your own Talkboy from Home Alone. The Uncle Frank shower song turned out to be very useful for Kevin.

Join us every week for helpful suggestions about the best ways to spend your free time.

Until next time- Happy Clocking!

It is every founder's dream to be able to build great products that will garner amazing loyalty from its customers and users. What many people may not realize is that to get to that point, the point where you have an amazing product that your users will love, be enamored with, and fall completely head over heels with is when you have a very tight knit and strong founding team. A team that is genuine in its voice and allows this genuineness to seep across the whole company.

With this post I wanted to bring attention to the people who have made CrowdClock, and the new people who have joined CrowdClock to allow us to grow in ways we could only imagine. 

My co-founders at CrowdClock are:

Oliver Ahmadpour – he is first and foremost my dad, but also the best business partner any one person could ask for. His insight into using CrowdClock as a business owner is key to understanding businesses at large. 

Ankit Sharma is head of Engineering and he is a beast at programming. Nothing can stop him and he is also very witty to boot! 

Alex Harris is our CMO and a master at his craft in how messaging across the company should be honed to portray genuinely what we want to bring across audiences. 

Neil Weintraut has been a VC for most of his professional life, with such notable investments such as when.com (acquired by aol for $260mm), esurance, CareerBuilder, DemandForce (acquired by Intuit for $500mm) and many more. He is an industry titan and we are very fortunate to have him as our co-founder leading strategy at CrowdClock.

But we don't stop at co-founders only. We also have the following amazing talent who have been with us a for a long while, and joining us as well. 

Clarence Huang has been with CrowdClock for a long time. He is the man behind the iOS App, and also planning out the future architecture of CrowdClock.

Michael Darius, our newest addition to the team is an award winning designer having worked with Steve Jobs at Apple, won the Time Magazine product of the year and so much more. 

Our advisors are:

Jeff Donahue who has been a rock, and has been advising us since inception! He is delight to work with, and an honor to call a friend. 

Kevin Reddy is a very successful entrepreneur having sold his company in 2004, been a principal at Booze & Allen, and a world traveler. 

Bogdan Cirlig is a super serial entrepreneur now working on his 9th startup! He has had 6 very successful exits with his first at age 19! 

With this team of a wordsmith, an oracle of what will be successful, an award winning designer, a monster of a programmer who sees nothing as impossible, and an insight into how businesses operate and think, CrowdClock is poised for amazing things. Which brings me to my next point. CrowdClock is on the verge of launching something amazing. It is a "reincarnation" of what we have  but in a much more evolved state with an amazing outlook for the near and long-term future. We simply cannot wait until we can start showing you what we mean. 

As always, thank you.

  Here at CrowdClock we know the great burden our users have of trying to figure out what to do with their immense amounts of free time. Hours previously spent texting, calling, and emailing to schedule their lives have become mere seconds through CrowdClock’s easy scheduling and syncing. Gone are the days of endless back and forth as users can find their common availability instantly.

For some, coping with their newfound free time is an almost unbearable challenge. Rushing to their aid, we are proud to introduce our weekly recommendations for your endless amounts of free time.

Knitting: Not just for grandmothers and spinsters anymore! CrowdClock users now have enough time to stitch a beret or even a mitten!

Don’t know what a beret is? No problem, Wikipedia it and spend the rest of your free time writing an angry letter to the French about the importance of making useful items of clothing.

Attend the Stearns County Board of Commissioners meeting at 9 a.m. Tuesday at the Administration Center, 705 Courthouse Square in Central Minnesota.

See a Free Concert. Watch Panic at the Disco LIVE online thanks to Yahoo and LiveNation- Wednesday, July 30 at 6:30 PT.

Purchase & Assemble Your Very Own Bleachers- Who doesn’t have THIS on their Amazon Wishlist? You may live in a 640 square foot apartment but your friends will love sitting on your 140-seat bleacher featuring foot planks on EVERY ROW!

Join us every week for helpful suggestions about the best ways to spend your free time.

Until next time- Happy Clocking!

It's been a while since I've last posted on our blog. As you can well imagine, we've been quite busy at CrowdClock continuing with our improvements based on your feedback. We're also hard at work building the next version of CrowdClock which will be unlike anything you've ever seen, but always wanted – even if you don't know it yet. 

But, with this post, I wanted to bring to light some new features we have been quietly rolling out. 

You can now Clock (schedule) with friends who have yet to sign up to CrowdClock. They don't even have to sign up. 

Users can now sync their Google Cals with CrowdClock

Users can now set parameters within CrowdClock so that their friends can only set Clocks with them when they want to show up as open (unless already booked through Google Cal)

When you Clock with friends or a business, CrowdClock now looks for Common Availability. This means if you are booked, and they are not, you most likely would not want that shown as an option anyways. So we don't. 

These are just some of the major features we have been rolling out on the Web App. We have not done any updates on the iOS App yet, as we want that to be the "full" upgrade in the very near future. But the coolest stuff with CrowdClock is what we are building behind the scenes. Imagine a world where every appointment you make, every choice you make will always be done with your actual happenings taken into consideration. You can kiss goodbye the days of where schedules will simply be simple. Or the days where hanging out with your buds will be a herculean task of texting, emailing, calling, facebook, and more. We can't wait to share those news with you, nor can we wait to announce additions to our growing team!

As always, thank you for your support!

Sincerely, 

We at CrowdClock just launched our new website, but it feels as though it is a brand new launch because it is a complete design overhaul from what we had before. Our old website was served its purpose. It acted more as a landing page to attract people to download our App. But CrowdClock is not just an App, nor is it just a website. CrowdClock is so much more, and we can't wait to share it with you guys. 

Here are some of the new things you will find with the Web App:

Brand new UI and color scheme

Emphasis on it being super easy

Users can search for any business on the site

Users can set appointments with businesses that are signed up, and request to get an appointment with those that are in the process of being signed up, or have not done so yet

Users can now also set appointments with their friends too just like on the iPhone App

Responsive Design to conform to any TCP/IP devices dimensions

We have a nifty tool on every page you get stuck on to ask questions you might have, suggest new ideas, and more

Super good Google Calendar sync for those of you who use Google Cal for your businesses

Robust inside analytical data about your business

Streamlined communications around appointments to cut down on the noise associated with emails, texts, and more

Please let us know how we are doing, what you like, dislike, suggest new ideas you might want us to incorporate, and more.  

We look forward to continuing to serve our awesome customers and users alike! 

Sincerely,

It's been a while since the last post. I am glad to be posting this time that I can personally feel great momentum growing for the startup community in San Diego. Startups here are continuing to grow, continuing to push the boundaries, and continuing to do great things. What San Diego is doing now as well is that it is getting better connected. I saw this first hand yesterday when Eric Otterson of Cooley had me and a few other founders of San Diego over to a meet and greet with Charles Hudson of SoftTechVC. 

Charles had many very good things to say about the investment community, such as that they invest in teams, in people, and do not look to companies with the most "traction". This traction he spoke of is quite the opposite to what San Diego investors are used to, because here they always ask, "how many customers, how much revenue, etc". He stated that they invest in the potential of ideas that can only be driven by great teams. And when asked what he meant by teams, his answer was very straight forward and honest, "Teams means how well have you worked together in the past, what sort of relationship have you had prior to this. I don't like deals where the founders met at a hackathon and became co-founders". He also stated that story is crucial to get a VC on board, and not always the product being revolutionary. San Diego has many, many great stories to tell. From companies like Zesty, Brandisity, The Rocketship Podcast, GoTribal, RockMyRun, Diggen, and so much more! Zesty and Brandisity are two startups who have taken zero outside capital and are crushing it! A few of us have banded together to bring more awareness, more interconnectivity, and more organic collisions occurring in San Diego through the recently launched organization LocalStartups.co We are currently building the site and have a signup page up right now for all San Diego startups. We will be releasing more info very soon.

I have come to the understanding that we have two choices. We either sink with the attitude that the glass is half empty, or we rise to the occasion and come to the understanding that the glass is never empty. The glass is always filled with something, even if it is only air. 

Join me and others on this journey to continue making San Diego greater than ever before. 

Sincerely,

As many of you have recently seen with my last two posts and the condensed version on Voice of San Diego, I have shown some concern for the health of San Diego as a viable startup community. And this is not just because of some missteps of the community at large, but also because of our own city government putting in place a law that prohibits startups from operating from home in many instances, as well as limiting the hours from 8am to 5pm. I won't attempt to go into that with this post as Olin Hyde is doing a remarkable job of getting our startup community's voice heard with Katherine Poythress of the UT leading the journalistic investigation into it. She recently did a story on Plug and Play and featured CrowdClock pretty heavily as well. 

What I will instead focus on this time is what can we do to improve with the hand we have been dealt with in San Diego. Do we pack up like so many before us and head north? Do we look down on those of us who critique San Diego and do nothing to improve it? Believe me, I have been told to my face that "San Diego is not Silicon Valley, and it never will be". That attitude rubs me the wrong way because in effect it means even those of us considered "successful" in our community are not even trying to compete with the best of the best. We have to compete in my opinion. We should not try to become them, that is not what I have ever intended, but compete with them with what we have. Boulder, Austin, Boston, New York, these are all cities which are doing a damn fine job of it. Some of you look to the Forbes article about San Diego being the #1 city for startups. I love it! It's a great article, and a great morale booster for us. But let us not delude ourselves into thinking that we are anywhere close to where have to be. We must continue the fight. Blair Giesen is doing a very fine job of bringing lots of positive attention to San Diego as can be seen in his latest Voice of San Diego article, like Brant and Eric have been doing for years. So I am doing that by putting together something quite exciting with industry shakers and movers. The people who are already knee deep in the community, as well as those who are just starting out. There will be much more information coming out soon on this. You will hear from one of us about this soon. And eventually, everyone will. 

At CrowdClock we have some very exciting things going on as well. We've gotten a lead investor from the Bay Area, a very fine new Director of Business Development also joining us from the Bay Area who will help us grow to the next level. More on that announcement coming soon. 

Sincerely,

CrowdClock launched its Beta site October 29, 2013. We have now added hundreds of service providers to our platform. But, we did not launch our consumer facing App, and our APIs until last week. Since then, we have been very fortunate in the very positive receptions we have received from new users who downloaded our App but also from business who decided to transform their existing websites from being passive and informative websites, into active touch-point websites that actively engages their present and future customers. And just a few days ago we got a message from one of our clients that they were now receiving new clients through CrowdClock! They were ecstatic! They are now building a robust cloud based database because of CrowdClock. What this means for businesses like them is that they get to have an easy to access cloud based database with their clients, the services they have booked for in the past, and much more! We look forward to continue serving them and businesses like them. It's what "tickles our fancy" because we live, breath, dream, and work for our clients, that's why our business model is pay per performance. We only charge if/when we deliver on our promise. Create margin optimization for businesses $0.20 at a time.

This week and early next week CrowdClock will be operating from San Diego, as well as from San Francisco. We hope to be able to report back from amazing news and updates soon!

Sincerely,

By now you may heard that CrowdClock finally launched its long awaited iPhone App just this past weekend. And what a weekend it was! If you have not downloaded the App yet, we (of course) highly recommend you do so ASAP. After all, you don’t want to be part of the statistics of having wasted 1.2 years of your life being put on hold. 

This post is primarily dedicated to business owners who have yet to sign up to CrowdClock. I’d like to highlight some of the reasons why CrowdClock makes sense for your business, and why you should sign up. 

It’s Free to sign up

No minimum monthly fees

Auto reminders for your clients appointments (Free)

Messaging capability between your business and your client (Free)

Rich analytics data (Free)

Employee scheduling management

Syncing with your existing calendar*

Appointments are instant and fill up your calendar

You control how to open up your time slots

Appointments can be set from your own website (widget is free)

Appointments can be set from CrowdClock smartphone App

You only pay $0.20 per set appointment

Those are some of the reasons why CrowdClock makes sense for your business. But there are far more reasons as well. If you are a doctor, you might be using something like ZocDoc which is a great tool to use, except you have to pay $500 per month regardless of appointments being set or not. Our informal survey with our doctor clients showed that the majority of ZocDoc users are 35 years or under. Then the question becomes how likely are people under 35 to visit their doctor that often to justify having a dedicated App for their doctor? Because 80% of Apps that are downloaded are not used anymore a month into the download. So that becomes a problem. With CrowdClock all of your appointments fall under one roof. Users can make appointments with their doctor, real estate agent, accountant, hair stylist, mechanic, and much more. They can even make appointments with their friends and family. What this means to you, the business owner is that by signing up with CrowdClock, you are simplifying the whole process for your own clients, and you are making that much easier to take on more clients without incurring more costs. 

If you are a business owner reading this, ask yourself the following:

What do I have to lose if it’s all free until I get a client?

What do I have to lose by making my passive website become an active website that allows instant appointments?

Would I be able to run my business better by having more analytical data of my operations? And all of it for free?

If you answered yes to only one, or more, then you should talk to our sales support team about your own needs and how we can meet them. To contact us, please choose one of the following:

email us at [email protected] 

Call us Toll Free at 877-529-4506 M-F 8:00am - 6:00pm PST

Or sign up on CrowdClock.com 

We look forward to serving your business, and to our users, we look forward to giving you the best experience when making your appointment with your favorite businesses and friends. 

Sincerely,

yashar

Monday is finally here...

It's App submission day here at CrowdClock. We have been working extremely hard to get to this point for the past couple of years. We have been plagued with hardships of every kind you could imagine. Friendships were lost and broken, trust was sent into the abyss at times, but through it all we have persevered by taking a step back, reflect on the mistakes we made and then taken leaps over the problems. All of that hard work has resulted in the best close-knitted and amazing team we have in place today!

Our web developer moved up in taking ownership of the APIs and is now leading that charge with confidence. Our designer has proved to be simply flawless in his vision of what CrowdClock should look, feel, and work like. He has been able to translate our crude wireframes, our vision of what things should look and work like, and delivered a breathtaking UX for CrowdClock. You will soon be seeing his touch on our website as well. Even our logo has gone through his hands and come out that much better, that much more meaningful. And above all, the new designs are light, fun, and joyful! Just like our App as you will see once you can download it from the App Store. 

Our first batch of customers have provided us with amazing feedback on what they felt was missing, or wanted added to their business. And there has been no client that has been more vocal about it than the owner of White Orchid Salon & Spa and we are eternally grateful for her invaluable and amazing input. If you haven't been to their amazing place I highly recommend it!

When submitting an App, there is a great resource you can find at iDev101 that provides very easy follow instructions and requirements. We highly recommend it. 

Please Like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and stay tuned for our App release.

Warm regards,

yashar

The time is finally here!

We have been up working for the past 24 hours straight in engineering and product to ensure that when we submit our App to the Apple App Store, that it is the most polished, bug-free, amazingly great App that can be submitted. It is part of the life of a startup, and one that we wouldn't trade for anything! Creating, building, and delivering the best product to our users and customers is what keeps us working harder and harder. Longer and longer. Once it is submitted, we will then be eagerly anticipating the day it gets "approved" and is finally out in the wild for you guys to use, play with, and best of all, making your lives that much easier. 

The next task after this is our website. It too is undergoing a major redesign, and rethinking right now. Right now it functions like a glorified landing page for visitors to download (once App is up) the App, and for businesses to manage their business accounts. But the new version will have all of the features and functionalities of the App itself where users who don't have an iPhone, or want to use the Web, will be able to set appointments with their favorite businesses, friends and family, and much more. We can't wait to get to that milestone either!

Until next update, thank you all so much!

yashar