Archive for March, 2008

A test post using Zemanta

Mar 27, 2008 in Uncategorized, Entrepreneurship and Venture Capital, Pikum

I read Mike Butcher’s post on Zemanta (at Techcrunch UK) and thought I’d give it a try.  Installation was a snap.  Now, it’s telling me it will update and provide suggestions in 110 characters (make that 96).

Something I setup yesterday for Pikum was a twitter profile that will be focused on twittering about sports.  TwitsportsTwitter is an interesting platform for discussion of sports as things happen during a game, day, etc… Check it out.

An interesting thing about Zemanta.. It tells you when the next update will be, but it doesn’t tell you that you can click on that area and it will update immediately. If they changed the text to “Update in 275 characters or click to update now” - it would increase usability.

Overall, I really like the product. I know it will help me increase the number of relavent links in my blog posts.  Great product guys.

IKEA - It gets worse - their service is awful, awful, awful

Mar 22, 2008 in Uncategorized, Marketing, Word of Mouth, Personal, Business, London

JOIN THIS FACEBOOK GROUP: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493 

IKEA told me that the only way I can complain or possibly get compensation for getting mistreated is by writing to some address in the UK.  That’s no fun, I’d rather find everyone else who IKEA has treated this way and get us together through Facebook.  If you’ve been treated poorly by IKEA, join this group - or if you just want to show a big stuffy corporation that doesn’t value service that customers do matter and that it might be worthwhile to listen to customers rather telling them they “need to write to blah blah UK to register a complaint”, JOIN THIS GROUP- http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12256012493
The rest of the story….

IKEA had told us they would deliver our cabinets on Tuesday(for the first parts of the story see here, here, and here).  Remember, I ordered this stuff in the middle JANUARY.  On Tuesday, we never got the delivery, and finally were told that “they were at your place at 7:30AM, but didn’t know which flat the raised ground floor one was and were afraid to ring the wrong bell so they left” -

Are you serious?  How incompetent can one company (or it’s outsourced delivery reps) be?  So, Kellee called them and  they promised that they would then deliver our order before Saturday, or at the worst, first thing on Saturday (before 9AM).  It’s now Saturday at 5:20… Do we have the order? Of course not.

At about 3, I get a call from DHL saying IKEA has moved the order to some other courier (no reason known).  Sorry, they can’t tell me who or what’s going on - I have to call IKEA.

I call IKEA.  The girl says “I don’t know why your order is being switched from courier to another - there aren’t any problems on your route” - I run out of pay as you go minutes on my Orange phone, and thus get cut off.

top up phone minutes (remembering that IKEA has cost me something like 10-15 pounds between the times I’ve now spoken to them through this drama)

I call back.  A new girl asks me to hold on while she finds out what’s going on. Remembering the pence ticking away as I’m on hold, I respectfully decline, asking her to call me back.  A couple minutes later, I get a call back. “Don’t worry, all the orders will be delivered tonight, including yours. They’re just running late.”

Me…” So, you expect me to sit around all evening as well?  I’ve got family visiting from the US and wanted to take them out.”

“her - I really do apologize”

At this point, I started asking for compensation.  She said they can’t do anything beyond giving me the delivery cost back (which they already had done when they messed it up last time.  I said that wasn’t good enough. I asked to speak to a supervisor.  She put me on hold and came back saying the supervisor said that’s all they can do.

At this point, I was getting very agitated.  I ask again to speak to the supervisor. I’m told I can’t do that.  I ask for a supervisor’s name -I’m told I can’t have it.  I’m told that what I’ll need to do is write to their customer response team (they mistreat customers so often they have staff dedicated to this!)… I try to explain my position to the rep in a way that personalizes it…”what if IKEA told you to come in to work today at 9, had you sit until 5, then said - oops, we don’t need you, we’re not paying you, and your only recourse is to write to some office in Ipswich”… She says - “sorry, I can’t do anything else”.

This is where I explain that I can. I can write about it online, I can start a facebook group, I can become a pain that is going to cost them well north of whatever compensation they could have provided (I would have been happy with even a 50 pound voucher). She has nothing to say, so I hang up.

So here I am - IKEA, you are the first company to make me a determined detractor. I will share this story with anyone who cares to listen, and it has gotten me so annoyed that not only have setup a facebook group, but I’ve budgetd $25 towards buying ads on facebook to spread the word about that group.  That’s right, your service has been so bad that I’m choosing to spend money to tell people how bad it is.  And all this could have been avoided with some reasonable service and someone at IKEA taking responsibility when things did go badly.

Facebook group growing…67 members as of right now

Mar 20, 2008 in Uncategorized, Pikum

slowly but steadily picking up steam…

Pikum announces £2.6M Series A led by Virgin and First Round Capital

Mar 05, 2008 in Uncategorized, Friendent, Pikum

Pikum gif

I’m really happy to announce that Pikum has closed our Series A financing. It was led by Virgin (Virgin USA to be precise), and First Round Capital participated as did some of our early angel investors. We’re excited to have Virgin on board as an investor and really happy to have First Round’s continued support. Getting the round closed was different than any other financing I’ve been involved with , mostly due to the intricacies of Gibraltar law (more on that in a future post), however the team and I are now focused on continuing to move Pikum forward to launch. Here’s the copy for the full release.

Social gaming start-up Pikum closes £2.6 million financing led by Virgin USA 5 March 2008 – Pikum, an online social gaming start-up launching in the UK, has secured investment of £2.6 million from Virgin USA.

Pikum – a new kind of game created and played between friends - is the brainchild of 28-year old entrepreneur, Sean Glass, who previously co-founded higher education-focused online financial services company, Higher One (Higher One was ranked number 85 on the Inc. 500 list of fastest growing U.S. private companies in 2007). Pikum’s founding management team also includes Johannes Larcher, Pikum’s CEO, who was a member of Overture’s executive team until its sale to Yahoo! in 2003, and most recently was CEO of online education firm Academy123 (acquired by Discovery Communications in 2006).

The funding round included participation from leading early stage U.S. based venture fund, First Round Capital, who also led Pikum’s seed financing in March 2007. Sean Glass, founder and chairman, Pikum, says: “We’re working hard to build a game and platform that is easy to use and provides great competitive entertainment for groups of friends online. Having the backing of a global brand that stands for entertainment, fun, and high levels of service is great validation for what we are building.”

More details will be available later in Spring 2008. -

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