Interview: Divvy lets you design our own reservation and billing engine.
Divvy let’s you design your own online reservation and billing system for just about anything. I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting founder Aaron Freed but I do know one of his colleagues Jenny Hall who formerly ran Trendi.com. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to meet Aaron soon but until then, I’ll let him talk a bit about his latest venture.
So I understand you came into web technology through a slightly different path. Tell us about yourself.
I spent 16 years in the Air Force: four at the Academy and 12 as an active-duty pilot. When I got out (about four years ago), I found that when I had nothing to do, I had no time to do it. So, I became a barista at Starbucks. That job got me out of bed and moving, albeit at 4:30 in the morning. One day short of one year after my first day on the job, I hung up my apron and started Divvy. As they say, fools rush in…
They way people develop ideas is always interesting to me. How did you decide on the Divvy concept?
Necessity and serendipity. About three years ago, I was running around Lake Union with my friend, Chris Wood (CEO of Clario, Inc.), and talking about creating a way to share an asset (such as a car) between friends. I started building something like that around two years ago – a tool that allowed people within a community to borrow stuff from each other. While I loved the values of the business, I didn’t know to overcome the cold start problem, social networking seemed to be reaching saturation, and there wasn’t a viable revenue model. So, when my condo association decided to end its contract with then-Flexcar and lease its own community vehicle, I offered to build a website which would allow homeowners to book and pay for the car. We completed that project in February and I thought to myself: why stop with just the car? What about a system for reserving and paying for all the other amenities? And then I thought: why stop with just a condo and its amenities? What about any type of entity and any type of asset? Thus Divvy was born…an erector set for building your own reservation system.
Give a few examples of how someone might use Divvy.
Current formal community uses include condo residents booking their common amenities, company employees scheduling financial advice sessions, and a coworking space scheduling desks. Within the next couple of weeks, we should be up and running in a church to schedule Sunday school rooms, in a fitness club for scheduling spa services and group classes, and in a community association for scheduling its facilities. Informal community (or peer-to-peer) applications currently include an airplane owner renting out his airplane to his pilot friends, a couple with a parking space they rarely use who are making it available to their friends and neighbors on an hourly basis (for a buck an hour), and me, sharing my Vespa with my friends (it’s a sweet ride. Here’s a picture).
How do you think you are most likely going to find users? Partnerships? SEO? Advertising?
For starters, the usual suspects: we just brought on a social media marketer (An Bui), an SEO tech (Stuart Jenner of Marketek), and a PR firm (Scoville PR) to help insert Divvy into existing conversations, to establish an online presence, and to tell Divvy’s story. We have all sorts of stories to tell — ones that are particularly relevant in today’s economy and ‘greengeist’. Product complete and beta-tested, we’re squarely in a channel validation phase for the next two months, listening to the market to tell us where to go; even though we have some initial targets, we don’t want to put all of our eggs in one basket quite yet. Condominiums are an under-served market when it comes to automated scheduling; management companies and community web service providers are excellent partners for that vertical. Coworking groups are showing an interest in our service and so we have joined that conversation. I was just contacted by someone who wants to partner with Divvy to create a city-wide reservable space repository (training rooms, party venues, etc…), which makes me believe that there could be a franchise angle. Ultimately, however, all these enterprise installations are intended to be revenue-generating trojan horses which put Divvy in front of people like you and me, who may in turn be nudged to create our own Divvy subdomains. We aim to transform community and to transform commerce. As I like to put it: we’re Web 2.0, getting down to business.
What are two of your other favorite start-ups in Seattle?
Kashless and i-booze. The former because Martin’s notion of ‘recommerce’ is a category which suits Divvy and I think he has executed his vision well. The latter because I get it; we run out of beer at Divvy’s fun Fridays every week.
Personal hero?
I have never been able to answer this question. I guess I prefer to think in terms of heroic moments created by people who are no grander than the rest of us. I saw a man at a restaurant recently. He was with his special needs son and he was being so patient, serene and loving in what I have no doubt is a trying reality. He was my hero that day.
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Kelly, thanks for interviewing Aaron. I enjoy reading/hearing/seeing his thoughts and work, especially on Divvy. Aaron’s creativity, energy and focus inspires me.
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