Technically Speaking

Planypus, the Chicago, IL based event planning company is launching a new look today. The team has aggressively responded to their users needs and suggestions. In my mind this makes Planypus the leader in the event planning sphere.

While other event planning sites seem to gain all the press as well as the VC funding, Planypus moves forward and addresses the issues that their users find. This company has been a favorite of this blog as well as a sponsor (disclaimer) but from the first time I viewed them, I saw a winning product.

They don’t remain stale, old, and uninviting. In fact the new look along with new ideas has bolted this company into first place over other event planning sites. You can have all the VC funding in the world, but if your product is not up to par, it will fail. Money isn’t a key to building a winning product.

The team at Planypus responded to suggestions from its users, both new and converts from its competitors, and added the ability to:
• See old plans
• Vote not only on dates and times, but also on miscellaneous ideas
• Tag friends in bulk
• The ability to send friends private messages
• Merge multiple emails into one account
• Chose new, fun icons
• A complete restyle of user profiles

In the current online event planning industry, other companies are still stuck in the announcement state of mind. They help their users announce their plans but stop short of allowing the group of friends to collaborate and discuss details. According to one observer, “Planypus is on the cutting edge of event planning.”

The team at Planypus listened to its users, and over the last month added a large variety of new features, visual uplifts, and performance enhancements. Yan Pritzker, CEO and founder stated that the, “passionate users have been the single most important factor of our success. They give us ideas, yell at us when we have done something wrong, and shape Planypus into what it is today.”

Planypus is the product of Fifteen Reasons LLC, a startup based in Chicago and Washington D.C. The company was started in 2006 by five seasoned software engineers and entrepreneurs, with backgrounds including IBM, KPMG, and Orbitz, who share a vision to drastically simplify the way people make plans together.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 3:51 am and is filed under Planypus, Technically Speaking. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.