The ab|inventio Gazette

I am most pleased to announce the appointment of Steve Glovsky as an Executive-in-Residence at ab|Inventio. In that capacity, Steve’s role is to help commercialize ab|Inventio’s technologies. Steve supports ab|Inventio’s technologists and engineers on the business side, providing corporate business development, sales, marketing and operations guidance and support.

Prior to ab|Inventio Steve helped grow MaxPreps (the ESPN.com for HS Sports) into a national media company focused on prep sports, resulting in a sale to CBS for a reported $42 million. Steve worked closely with MaxPreps’s CEO to develop the business strategy and then helped the CEO’s young employees execute on that strategy. Steve stood in as MaxPreps’ business development executive and completed deals with ESPN, NFL, USAToday, Topix, Westwood One, Verizon and many others. Steve also stood in as MaxPreps’ mobile product executive and developed a full featured mobile application for Verizon’s deck. This mobile application was the only non major brand product on Verizon’s sports deck. It was CBS, ESPN, FOX and the MaxPreps product.

Steve began his technology career in 1987 with Security Pacific National Bank (SPNB). At SPNB Steve was the general manager of the first remote business banking product using personal computers (PC Banking). Steve worked with American Airline’s SABRE division to develop this product. Steve also was on the team that developed a comprehensive consumer and small business customer relationship model (CRM) focusing on profitability. In addition, Steve was on the innovations team that evaluated automated teller machines (ATM) (Diebold, IBM, etc.) and later developed and maintained the models supporting the ATM implementation and roll out. After Bank of America acquired SPNB, Steve became a Regional Chief Financial Officer responsible for 250+ bank branches, a 7,000 employee incentive program and a $500 million operating budget.

After Bank of America, Steve started his own eLearning Company that he grew from 3 employees generating $150 thousand in revenues to over 20, generating $2 million in revenues. RKG Interactive (www.rkgi.com) became Macromedia’s # 2 corporate reseller within 24 months. Steve was in charge of all non technical activities including sales, marketing and finance. Customers included the US Army, So. Cal. Edison, Apple, PacifiCare, PIMCO, Intel, Toyota and Nissan.

Since 2000, Steve has been assisting CEOs and general managers bring new products and services to market. Steve’s projects have included a distributed processing technology developed at NASA, a web based advertising product used by hundreds of publishers, a white label entertainment content website producing original content on a daily basis, a teenage acne product and a bioagent detection device.

During this time Steve has completed deals, built products for and/or negotiated with the following organizations:

I stopped by Barney’s Beanery today and ate one of their great appetizer platters. On my way out, I asked Betsy, a hostess, how QLess was working for them. Here is what she had to say:

“Everyone loves it! I love it. It saves me a lot of time.”

–Alex

The Boiling Crab, perhaps the most popular Cajun restaurant chain in California and Texas, is going QLess for 3 of its restaurants. Welcome to the QLess family!

–Alex

As Yahoo’s Santa Monica offices dealt with an hour-long power outage and cell phones turned useless all day across Southern California, abInventio’s websites remained fully operational through the 5.4-magnitude earthquake. None of our data centers serving Whozat, HoundWire, REPcloud and QLess in Altadena, Santa Monica or Texas were affected. Indeed, HoundWire was among the first news organizations to report the earthquake, within a half hour of the event.

–Alex

A new survey shows that more than 90% of restaurant guests surveyed said they prefer a QLess restaurant than one w/o QLess, and that they’d wait longer for a table if QLess was available. Something that was borne out by the fact that guests waited up to 3.17 hours to get a table using QLess (and actually sat to eat after that). In fact, the revenues from people who wait more than 45 minutes alone give a highly positive ROI for the cost of QLess –making the extra customer satisfaction for every guest a free bonus.

That’s what Jonah Dumont, manager of Barney’s Beanery Santa Monica, said today of QLess. Barney’s was voted #1 place to watch sports in the Los Angeles area. With no having to stand in line, it’s no wonder the crowds love it. Check it out at www.barneysbeanery.com or stroll over to 1351 3rd St. Promenade, Santa Monica. It’s a joy of a place to eat.

Joe has a long history of entrepreneurship including The Desktop Factory at Idealab and deep industry expertise from his time at Lavi Industries, makers of the stanchions that keep physical lines organized at airports and other locations. Joe contacted us after seeing a demo of QLess, impressed by our potential. Welcome, Joe!

Yesterday was the tail-end of a weekend with record-setting heat here in L.A.  What a great day to stand in a line of 1000 people at the airport, waiting to get through security.

“The line, described by the reporter as ‘the longest I’ve ever seen at this terminal, and I fly here a lot,’ stretched west from the terminal doors past the adjacent Terminal 2 entrance.  People were shading themselves in the hot sun.  The 10 a.m. LAX temperature was 86 degrees, and there was no breeze and a scorching sun.”

Now imagine the same scenario with QLess.  Passengers could have found a nice air-conditioned spot to hang out and grab a drink while waiting to go through security, instead of standing in the sun, breathing car exhaust fumes for hours.

–Tim

Following in the footsteps of last month’s “An almost-perfect trip to Disneyland”, now Valleyfair in Minnesota is making news by changing their policy to make guests with disabilities wait in long lines for rides.  The park used to let disabled guests skip the lines, but this policy was being abused.  I just had a friend tell me a couple weeks ago how her boyfriend would always put on a fake cast, and rent a wheel-chair whenever he went to a theme park, just so he could skip the lines.  So it’s easy to imagine how badly out of control this policy was getting, and what drove Valleyfair to this decision.

Now imagine Valleyfair with QLess, where, nobody has to wait in line, and everyone is treated equally.  From the article:

“At the end of the day, what we all want to strive for is being treated like everybody else. So we will all have to gain patience.”

QLess will let all guests, disabled or not, stop standing in line, be treated equally, and spend their time at the park doing whatever they like.

–Tim

“We love your new system!”, they keep telling the hostess. And Barney’s management loves keeping their customers happy. And coming back.

Barney’s even learned that they have a huge clientele from another city. A city that may soon be seeing a new Barney’s!