Rails Podcast

A while back, Geoffrey Grosenbach interviewed us for a podcast about the nitty-gritty details of building a production web site using Ruby on Rails. Topics include: scaling, when to diverge from Active Record, our approach to software design, SMS integration, the mobile phone user experience, how to receive email, customer support, generating dynamic graphics server-side (the badge) and client-side (the friend-page money graph), and international users. Listen to the podcast (32 minutes) on podcast.rubyonrails.org.

American public radio, Australian radio

The airwaves are buzzing with BillMonk! The producers of the American public radio show Future Tense did a great job explaining why you need BillMonk:

You go to dinner with five friends. You pay the bill with your credit card and everyone agrees to settle up later. The next day you go to a movie with two of those same friends and they pay for your ticket and popcorn and tell you to take it out of what they already owe you. It turns out two others at the dinner are roommates and you owe them for last month’s cable bill. At this rate, you’ll need a spreadsheet to keep track of the money flow. Or you can use the free, online service BillMonk.

Listen to the 5-minute show here.

Starting this week, we will also be the lead story for Cyber Shack, Australia’s most successful radio show about gadgets and games, broadcasting across the entire continent. We had a great time chatting with their host Charlie Brown, and can’t wait to hear the show (it will be available for download later this week).

Namaste (hello) India!

In the past two days, BillMonk has been featured in dozens of newspapers and magazines all over India. This flurry of press is thanks to a widely circulated story by the Press Trust of India (similar to the Associated Press).

Amongst the most prominent publications are the Times of India, the largest English daily newspaper in India with ~8 million readers; and the Dainik Jagran, a Hindi language daily with the highest readership amongst all newspapers in India, with ~20 million readers.

We’re excited because we’ve always considered India to be an ideal location for BillMonk, given the recent explosion of cell phones and households with Internet access. It’s very common to share the costs of food, housing, and utilities, especially among the rapidly growing young and urban middle-class. What’s more, BillMonk’s largest userbase outside of the US today is in India.

The image below is from a clipping from the Dainik Jagran that Gaurav’s uncle Rajesh sent him this morning. Seeing ‘BillMonk’ printed in Hindi was so cool that we just had to share it with you all.

Minority Rapport interview (podcast)

Doug Sherrets, a recent Wharton graduate who is the co-blogger of Minority Rapport, recently interviewed us for this podcast (18m). He asked about how we got started; our competitors (#1: pen and paper); whether it’s natural and socially acceptable to use a system like BillMonk; why we left our jobs at Amazon to start BillMonk; the business model; and the 20-year plan. (Also posted in Mr. Markets).

Media frenzy! Business 2.0, Digg, CNET and News 14

What a fantasic day of press! Our morning started with Business 2.0 posting the on-line version of their July 2006 article featuring us, Turning your cell phone into a wallet. Then we appeared in the CNET News.com story BillMonk, the college student’s accounting system, and the Raleigh North Carolina News 14 story Tracking informal loans is big business.

But what really made our day was that our loyal and wonderful users dugg the Business 2.0 story so it surfaced to the front of Digg.com. Wow! Thanks, everyone.

Two Nice Posts

Who works on a lovely sun-drenched Monday before the Fourth of July? Besides, uh, the rest of the world, it also seems to be on-line journalists. We were delighted to show up prominently on two (count ‘em, two!) great sites on a day we’d assumed would be relatively quiet.

Springwise (”your daily dose of entrepreneurial ideas”) gave this pithy profile about the service, which was categorized as a “Life Hack”. Heh.

Emily Chang of eHub posted this interview covering our design philosophy, goals, tools, and lifestyle. We appreciated her wide range of questions because they let us convey the number of different hats that entrepreneurs wear.

Business 2.0 magazine article

BillMonk opens the July 2006 Business 2.0 article The Bank Account in Your Phone. We’re delighted by the story, and doubly-so since it’s our first major coverage by a national publication. It was a real pleasure discussing social money and mobile applications with Michal Lev-Ram, the journalist.

The magazine is out in the stands now. We’ll put up a link to the article once it’s available online.

[Update 07/11/2006]

Check out the article online here.

BillMonk talk at Google

We were invited to speak at Google on Friday (6/16/06). A bunch of our users work at Google, so this was a great chance to meet them and share the thought process that went into building BillMonk. We even have the T-shirts to prove it! (I'm not kidding. It reads: I gave a tech talk at Google.)

Since it was rather last minute, we decided to just go ahead and drive down from Seattle to the Bay Area. Mmmyep, 12 hours on I-5. On the plus side, it gave Gaurav and me a great opportunity to chat about a huge range of BillMonk topics, from short-term technical designs to the 20 Year Plan.

While we were duly impressed with the Google campus, the tasty free breakfasts, lunches, and dinners, the electric scooters, the shuttle from SF, &c, our estimation did fall a notch when we learned there are, in fact, no Google company ponies. Honestly. How can you have a high-tech company offering its employees a weath of perks and forget the ponies? When WE get big, we'll have ponies. Promise.

Matt, Tommy, Nori, Larry, everyone else at Google, thanks again for hosting us - we had a blast!

[Update] You can see the talk on Google video

Pssst! Spread the word

We launched just a hair over four months ago. It's been thrilling to see how, in that short time, so many people have made BillMonk a part of their daily lives and use the heck out of the service.

While growth has been healthy, we'd like to take it to the next level and spread the word far and wide. We hear time and again that, once you learn that BillMonk exists to solve that irksome problem of borrowing-with-friends, you are instantly hooked. The trick is just learning that BillMonk exists.

While we do our best to contact schools and journalists, the best way to get the word out is through you, the user. You guys have already done a great job of spreading the service virally by adding your friends, for which we are deeply grateful. Some other ways to get the word out and show your support include:

• Talk about us with friends, family, and random strangers
• Put a library badge on your MySpace page, AIM profile, blog, or web page
• Blog about us
• Print out a flier and post it on your dorm room door, office bulletin board, coffee shop, you name it

Money flier (PDF)	Library flier (PDF)

Good morning, New York!

Tim Chan and Farnoosh Torabi of amNewYork, a daily morning New York City newspaper, addressed the tricky topic of Loaning Money to Friends and Family, citing us both as a source of insight and a solution (May 10, 2006). It's always great to be in print! We're excited by the resulting influx of New Yorkers, and would be delighted to hear from you about how to make BillMonk thrive in New York's unique urban environment. (Reprinted in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel)