New ‘victim’ feature: who pays next?

The ‘victim’ feature launched at midnight. You can now ask Bill Monk to pick the person from a group of friends who should cover the group’s next shared bill, based on who owes the most within the group.

On the website, go to the “Groups” page. Or from your cell phone, send us a message: “v group-name” and we’ll tell you who that person is.

This is the credit card age. It’s so much easier if only one person ever has to pay! No more breaking twenties at the restaurant. Bill Monk takes care of rotating between people such that it all evens out over time. I think it’s going to be especially useful for groups of co-workers who go out to lunch together all the time.

Why the name “Bill Monk”?

Lots of people have asked us “why did you pick the name Bill Monk? Are you that obsessed by the Stumbling Monk?”

It is true that we came up with the name while at the Monk. But this was after several days of struggle to come up with a GREAT name for the site. (Point of clarification: the Stumbling Monk is a local pub in what used to be a typewriter factory. It features a constant rotation of Belgian ales and local Belgian-style ales. It is our home away from home; though we have learned the hard way that a 12.5% beer does, in fact, have twice the effect of normal beer.)

These were our criteria for our venture’s name:

• It must be easy-to-remember
• It must be short
• The domain name must be available
• It should convey the following:
• 3rd party neutrality
• friendliness
• trustworthiness
• We’d prefer to avoid torturing exsiting words into made-up forms, as is the current vogue with Web2.0 apps (for the record, I’m not a fan of the term “Web 2.0″)
• Ideally, it would be a noun that could be verbed

I’ll not subject myself to the shame of telling you some of our early ideas. But when Gaurav (I think it was him? the memory is fuzzy; see above re: 12.5% beer) said “hey, Bill Monk!” it was like clouds parting, sunshine streaming down (this image is very powerful for us Seattle types) and angels singing. It was one of those “OF COURSE!” moments in life. It came from nowhere and landed in our laps.

I love the name Bill Monk. It’s a bit weird, but it’s different and memorable. It clearly has something to do with money since it has the word “bill” in it. It personifies the character of impariality and trust; monks! Who wouldn’t trust a monk? We can do great things with developing a character to represent the site (today’s bald-headed blissful guy in our logo will grow to a full-fledged person, sometimes jolly and sometimes somber). And the domain name billmonk.com was available — and so was bmonk.com!

Our only concern is that some people might be vexed at possible stereotype of a monk, especially that of an Eastern monk bordering on the exotic Other. We intend our Monk to be neither an Eastern nor a Western monk. He’s just the Bill Monk. It’s what he does. He wants you and your friends to be happy and not worry so much about money.

First mention in the press

John Cook from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer contacted us the day after we launched, saying he was intrigued by our service. He listed us as his “Venture of the Week” with a very nice write-up:

http://blog.seattlepi.nwsource.com/venture/day.asp?pubdate=1/13/2006

One of the things that we find most gratifying is that everyone who hears about BillMonk immediately “gets it”; social money – informal debts between friends – has always been a thorn in everyone’s side.

When John and I talked on the phone, he was as surprised as we had been that, to the the best of our knowledge, there have been no other ventures that offer a centralized way to track informal debts. There have been lots of standalone apps (not to mention spreadsheets) for splitting bills and recording debts, but they weren’t centralized. And there have been several stabs at offering friends the ability to settle-up with one another with real cash or e-cash (of which PayPal is the most successful), but those are formal and pretty heavy-weight. One advantage of informal debts is that you can use a past debt as an informal currency for a future purchase. For example, my girlfriend owes me $100 for a deposit on a ski cabin; since then, she’s been picking up all our restaurant tabs and has beat down the debt to $30.

That said – and this answers a key point of John’s article, about how we’ll make money – we fullly intend to collaborate with financial institutions to offer our users the ability to settle up with cash when they see fit. If the social money market is as big as we think, this offers a great business opportunity for us and our partner institutions.

Launch!

The very first public version of Bill Monk is out! With luck, troublesome notes on the refrigerator door will become a thing of the past, and friendships can be freed from the burden of tracking money. (And fluffy bunnies will abound!)

How do we feel? Nervous (will you like it?), excited (we think you’ll like it!), and… sleepy.

Chuck owes Gaurav a couple of bucks, so he’ll buy the well-deserved rounds of beer – and Bill Monk it.