The ab|inventio Gazette

City of Nashua’s DMV selected QLess this week to solve their queueing needs after a competitive process.

Customers at The Boiling Crab are already giving QLess some great reviews.  Eddie C. from Cerritos writes in his 5-star review:

“You have to give them your phone number when you check in, so that they will call you and let you know when your table is ready.  This is pretty cool, since it allows you time to shop at the local stores around there, and not worry about missing your name called out.”  

Not an insignificant change given that the last review before The Boiling Crab went QLess on 9/24 said “Hate the wait”.

Eliminating your customers’ fear of being forgotten, and giving them the freedom to wait how and where they choose are just a couple of the many benefits that QLess can bring to your restaurant!

–Tim

Congratulations to the newest member of the QLess family, The Boiling Crab on being featured in the LA Times!

“Eating crayfish — also known as crawdads and mud bugs — is not for the squeamish. The more adventurous suck the juices from the head. Piles of cracked and shredded shells pile up in front of diners. The seafood smell hangs on customers’ clothing. But customers keep returning, and out-of-town visitors even buy pounds of crayfish to bring home.”

The article mentions that with TBC’s success, they’ve seen “lines out the door every night”.  Their customers are gonna love QLess!

–Tim

Keeping tabs on your business metrics has never been easier! You just have to see it.

One of our early investors was happy enough with what we are doing that he sextupled his investment in the abInventio fund. Thanks!

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