Monday, June 6, 2011
Interview with Jerry Nettuno, Schedulicity
For today's interview, we talked with Jerry Nettuno, Founder and CEO of Bozeman, Montana-based Schedulicity (www.schedulicity.com), a fast growing provider of online scheduling software.
What is Schedulicity?
Jerry Netuno: It's very simple. Schedulicity has positioned itself as a leader in the online appointment scheduling market. You can think of it as the OpenTable but for the everyday services people book. We're helping small businesses in the U.S. and Canada by automating the time consuming process of booking clients. We've also pioneered the integration of social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter, email, and a full mobile platform. We have booked over 4 million appointments so far, and have a run rate of 300 million dollars in service-based commerce facilitated through our portal. Some of the stats which are encouraging for Schedulicity, is we are now booking an appointment every seven seconds on Schedulicity around the clock. We're also in over 1900 cities in North America, and are adding between 500 and 700 new providers a week. We've got a leadership position in an untapped marketplace, and we're also helping small businesses fill their books, schedule more appointments, get new customers, and create new, loyal customers. We're helping them by eliminating the inefficient parts of their business.
What kinds of businesses benefit most from your service?
Jerry Netuno: Right now, we are in almost 40 different verticals. Our subscribers are anything from dog groomers to CPAs, and everything in between. We also have hairstylists, electricians, acupuncturists, beauty people, medical day spas, golf coaches, tennis coaching--it's pretty much anything you can imagine, where you might schedule an appointment or class.
How do you charge for your services?
Jerry Netuno: One of the exciting things, is we've been able to bring our product to a very enormous market, which has been unserviced. A single service provider only pays $19.00 a month, and multiple providers in one location pay $39 a month. For that very low cost, they're receiving an ROI that in most cases pays for itself within an hour of when they sign up.
What is the biggest reason people stay and use your service?
Jerry Netuno: We worked very hard, and spent several years ourselves behind small businesses, and we've spent thousands of hours cracking the code. We really learned very quickly that this is not just about putting a calendar online, but rather understanding the situation between the provider and customers and how that relationship works. Our business application gives them lots of very powerful tools, to not only schedule appointments but also build and strengthen relationships with their existing customers. It also has really neat integration with tools like Facebook, Twitter, and all of those things. Those are the same social media tools that Schedulicity has used to grow our own business. We believe that we're able to offer a great product experience to both sides, and that for small service provider, we're offering them a value and ROi that is sometimes 10 to 20 times what they are actually paying for it.
For consumers, it's a very addictive technology. Once you start scheduling with your hairstylist, that really starts to point out inefficiencies with your other service providers you're scheduling daily appointments with. Consumers tell them, they sign up, and if they don't those consumers start looking for other service providers in the area who do schedule on Schedulicity.
Most folks do not think of Bozeman as a technology town, yet you look to have a thriving business with a well rounded team - how did you build out that team and how difficult was that?
Jerry Netuno: It's been one of the greatest pleasures of my life. It's kind of misnomer, although Bozeman is a mountain town, it is quite the tech town. We have a guy from San Francisco, who sold his company for several hundred million dollars, and who started RightNow Technologies, which is now publicly traded and employs hundreds and hundreds. Another successful company here is Zoot. There is quite the burgeoning tech community here in Bozeman. It's not Silicon Valley, but it's not in a place you couldn't imagine it happening. Most people just don't realize it. We've built our whole team in Bozeman.
Finally, what's your next big goal?
Jerry Netuno: Schedulicity is positioned as the brand for when someone wants to schedule an appointment online. We want to own online scheduling. We're positioning ourselves that way, and between our press and growth numbers, and how huge companies are contacting us on a weekly basis on partners, we've gotten into a really exciting spot. If you're a big company--whether that is Yahoo, Google, Facebook, or Groupon, and you really want to get into the weeds and win the local space, you need to be able to control that inventory. We're able to control that inventory and the calendar of those people, by providing a service that actually pays for itself, and provides real value. I think we've put ourselves in a great position, right between the service providers and their customers.
Thanks, and good luck!