What I learned from Calendar Combinator

I probably finished the functional prototype of Calendar Combinator this week. The final bit was a Chrome extension so you don’t have to interact with my website once it’s set up. I think all in it’s been 3 weeks of work.

As per usual - as I get to the end I’m 90% convinced it wasn’t a good idea.

Calendar Combinator (CC) is for people who regularly share volatile events between their own calendars to inform others of their schedule.

An example (taken from the website) of a typical problem CC was trying to solve is “Got a work trip that might get cancelled? Let your partner know automatically because if it’s cancelled in your work calendar it’ll automatically be cancelled in your personal calendar.”

Even though people probably experience the problem CC is trying to solve - it’s difficult to explain and I’ve struggled to reach them in their moment of pain. I set a couple of adwords campaigns to target what I thought they’d search for - “merge google calendars” or “sync google calendars”, but I think I’ve mainly picked up people who don’t understand that you can just subscribe to multiple calendars within your calendar client - people who just want all their calendars in one view.

The direct beneficiary of CC is the person who views your calendar - your partner who wants to know if you’re working late on Tuesday, or your client who wants to know if you’re available for a meeting. You - the user of CC - is actually an indirect beneficiary. You want your people to be able to see your availability but you personally can see your own calendars.

I would love love love to know how often people use the “Dupliate” or “Copy to..” buttons in Google Calendar. And then, how often they re-use those buttons for the same event. That number would probably indicate the market size of CC (a very small percentage of a very large group of people) because those buttons are the manual workaround. And for a lot of the time - they will do what the user wants. The problem with those buttons are:

• Changes aren’t synced from the original event to the copied event
• You’ve got to click it every time - events can’t be selected based on rules/filters/criteria

In case I forget - this project isn’t all negatives..

PROS

• Feeling in control of your time is a major factor in wellbeing - it’s a worthwhile cause
• A lot of people have calendars, and probably multiple calendars - a possibly large market
• Business users are those most likely to have multiple calendars and might consider it a business expense

CONS

• Hard to explain - because it’s niche
• Hard to reach potential users - because it’s niche
• Technically there is a lot of chaos!
• Users have to hand over the keys to their calendars which requires a lot of trust

What should I do next?

Other than letting it go - ask companies with employees who are likely to have 3+ google calendars if they are interested. Software consultancies spring to mind and probably because I’ve worked for a software consultancy. Targeting software consultancies would give me telephone numbers to call and might have a lower acquisition cost per user. I think @patio11 would agree.

Because the pitch for CC is either long or unclear, it probably makes sense to email rather than phone.

And then..