NEWS

StartUp: A synchronized digital calendar for families

Barbara Livingston Nackman
Julie Roche and her husband Dennis Roche are photographed in their office for their new startup, Burbio in Pelham on July 10, 2014.
  • Complicated daily lives can lead to chaos and missed events.
  • Pelham mom creates digital family calendar to simply coordination of schedules.
  • Burbio.com will be live online in August with no cost to use.

Like most busy moms, Julie Roche spends hours each day coordinating multiple calendar entries and juggling family and work schedules.

With four children ages 16, 15, 13, 10, this Pelham family has four different school calendars, 16 sports teams throughout the year and dozens of other schedules for yoga, recreation and volunteer commitments. And then there are birthdays, family events and jogging dates.

"I kept thinking that there should be a digital solution to this. I mean there is to everything else in our lives," Roche recalls saying to her husband, Dennis Roche. "So we decided we would try to come up with something to solve the problem."

They developed Burbio — a play on the word suburban — an online tool to manage multiple calendars for multiple family members. The goal is to keep a family organized and everyone in the know about what each member has on tap when and where. The couple created Burbio last year and after a year of beta-testing, the website is expected to go live in August.

WHO: Julie Roche has worked in marketing and project-based research. She is working with her husband, Dennis Roche, and has help from several interns and part-time workers.

WHAT: Burbio.com is "a Web and mobile application that marries personal calendaring with local calendar content to become a mom's home screen or first app of the day," says Julie Roche. The software takes input from community organizations, such as schools, libraries and sports organizations, allowing the user to download entire calendars or selected entries. The user can also add personal entries like medical appointments, music lessons and gym appointments. It can be consulted every morning and set up with "alerts" or printed out for a family or individual users.

SEEDS: The Roches allocated a little more than $50,000 for the initial test market and start-up expenses and then raised nearly $440,000 in additional capital. The site will grow "virally as groups put up their calendar and invite their members to view and sync with the site," says Julie Roche.

HURDLES: Finding the right technical team, but after a few tries Burbio has settled on a NYC-based team.

HIGH POINTS: Seeing how their Pelham community embraced it: The target was about 1,500 families, but within a few months she says the site had well over 2,000 unique visitors and inquiries from other locales.

NEXT STEPS: Burbio will expand via "concentrated county launches" within major markets. "This will ensure that Burbio.com has a critical mass of the primary calendars parents need to run their lives allowing Burbio to become both a valuable personal and community resource," explains Roche. Once the system is launched, local ads and sponsorships will be sold, along with a paid Burbio app and premium membership. Staff will work with communities and groups to boost calendar options and another team will guide users. Besides a website at www.burbio.com it is on Twitter @BurbioCalendar and burbio.com on Facebook.

ASK THE EXPERTS:

Michael Baker

Baker is CEO and Founder of Entrepreneur's Shack in Millwood and a partner at Susan Lawrence Gourmet Foods in Chappaqua.

Burbio makes sense for a busy suburban family. From a business point of view the question is how much revenue can it generate? I can see local businesses paying to be on Burbio but as a user too many ads would become intrusive.

As a grandfather I would pay for the service, if I could view my daughter's Burbio calendar. Besides just being curious about my daughter's family schedule it would help me plan how I can help her or plan to see soccer games, swim meets et cetera.

Expansion of Burbio to other communities will be a great income source if the local nature can be preserved. The community feeling of Burbio is comforting and the glue that will hold it together.

Michelle Christie

Christie is Founder of MACsWomen, which stands for Motivators and Creators Women's Group, and is a consultant on social media programs for business.

Absolutely love the idea! This is a product that I would use for myself as a business owner as well as share with my community of women entrepreneurs. We lead busy lives and as women especially, with the children, husband, the home and business, it gets to be quite hectic. Having a tool that helps with organizing your personal life and your professional life, as well as provide a resource for happenings in your local area is very salable!

The streams of revenue are also sound. A strategic plan needs to be implemented for social media management and branding. Adding social media buttons to the site for users to stay connected or as a way for them to log in is another option that should be explored.

Martin J. Lecker

Lecker is a SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor in the business department at Rockland Community College, SUNY .

Overall, the concept is excellent. With a low overhead and part-time website designers, along with interns, it might behoove the entrepreneur to consider either cross training or hiring a sales advertising specialist to actively recruit potential advertisers. The one main challenge that may be problematic is the competition, such as Cozi, PlamLife, Google Calendar, iCal and momAgenda.com. How is Burbio different, other than being in the local Pelham area?

One possible approach is to differentiate your market. Currently, the primary target market appears to be micro-marketed (focused mainly on Pelham residents, whose children are in school). One suggestion is to segment the market into three target groups: student users, parent users and retiree users. In this way, if marketed properly, there is much potential. Opening up your customer base would improve advertising possibilities and help to differentiate yourself from competitors.

What do you think?

Add your comments on this startup at lohud.com. And send suggestions on other new business startups to bnackman@lohud.com

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@barbaranackman