Pittsburgh Ventures

Image by Malabooboo via Flickr

Next up is crono, a CMU spinout of Jarun Ngamvirojcharoen, Liz Crawford, and Manuela Velloso.  They have created an application that makes the process of scheduling meetings easier.

Currently, they don’t have a website (that I could find), and their alpha product only works in Google Calendar.  They are targeting other polular calendar programs, such as Outlook.

For revenue, they plan to release a “freemium” version that provides a free version for basic use, and extra features for users who pay a subscription fee.  This is a tough way to build a business.

Scheduling is a tough problem, but the question I come back to is, “Does the world need another scheduling program?”  Perhaps the answer is yes, if the solution is compelling enough, but I know that Microsoft has tried and failed to create somthing like this, and if there was a load of value to be found here, Google would likely have built it already.  This feels like a feature - not a product or a business, at least at this point.