by John J. Walters

As of right now, MeetingCaptain is in a state of transition.  We are going to look for ways to strip the product down to its bare essentials and pair it with an existing service so that it’s no longer a standalone startup.  Luckily, the WasabiVentures network of tech and productivity companies is fairly expansive, so it shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out a way to beneficially incorporate meeting organization/execution software into one of them.

The thought of merging what has been my first startup experiment with another product got me thinking: what was my favorite part of working on MeetingCaptain?  Honestly, it’s the blog.  Not only did I have the most fun writing it, I feel like there’s some great information here just waiting to be discovered.

I spent a good amount of time looking for articles on meetings all over the internet during the past several months and I found few sources of information that condensed things the way I did here.  Sure, there was the occasional article that summarized a few ideas, but most “meeting blogs” are just tech manuals and promotional venues for competing meeting programs — hardly a good resource for someone actually looking for help with their meetings.

Since we’re working to preserve the core of MeetingCaptain because we believe it can be a useful utility to small companies who want to leverage technology for their meetings without breaking the bank to purchase software or upgrade their hardware, I think it’s only fair that we also preserve the blog.  That’s why I am going to turn it into a sort of “meetings mini-series” on the WasabiVentures blog so that it’s there and ready to used by the entrepreneurial community.

Both the company and the blog will be on a bit of a hiatus starting now, although I will pop in with updates as often as possible.  I am determined to make this first foray into the world of the entrepreneur something of a success, even if it was mostly a learning experience that led to the creation of a halfway decent blog and an unfinished product.

by John J. Walters

When I took over MeetingCaptain it was only a partially-developed concept of a company in a competitive market.  Since then we have added a lot of new features and overhauled the central program but done little to make it marketable to the common man.  The site doesn’t quite tell you enough about the service, and things are still a little less intuitive and bug-free than I would like.  Clearly, we still have some work to do.

On the plus side, we are on our way towards a “version 3.0.”  We have detailed plans for improvement of the program itself as well as the website.  We are developing a marketing strategy to get it into the hands of you, the business professional who wants help with meetings but probably doesn’t yet know we exist.  On the negative side, we are also working on getting the investment and support we need to turn these plans into reality.  I am confident, but nothing is certain in this world.

Included in our plans to improve MeetingCaptain:

• A more intuitive profile setup that will make MC work the way you want it.
• Improvements and streamlining to the meeting creation process.
• Creation of a new “meeting interface” that will make MC a destination for meetings as well as a way to organize and follow-up on them.

Of course, we’ll still be offering out free trial, and we won’t be changing the fact that it’s free to participate in meetings.  We also are sticking with our price point of $5 per month for meeting organizers, which may be proof that we either have no idea what we’re doing or don’t like money as much as our competitors.  Most importantly, we are keeping everything “in the cloud,” which means you will never have to download any software or upgrade your computer to use our service.

Finally, I will continue to blog about how meetings suck and why they don’t have to, even if I continue to be our only regular reader for a little while.  Why?  Because I know that eventually someone who needs the information will find it.  That’s the nature of the internet — and the nature of MeetingCaptain.  We actually do feel passionate about making meetings better for everyone.

Here’s hoping we get to continue.