Meetings. Classes. Concerts. Coffee dates. Cable guys. Calendars are bursting at the digital seams, and yet we're still pulling dates from texts, invitations, and websites. We dig for preexisting engagements, search for new things to do, and manually shuffle them into the cloud. Good news – RedCurrent is here to ease the pain.
RedCurrrent is building the "One Place" for calendars, schedules and events in the Twin Cities. Hosting calendars from places like theaters and museums to breweries and ballparks, RedCurrent is the go-to place for events and agendas. Plus, it's easy to plug favorite events into whatever calendar platform you already use. Their intuitive site and app allow you to keep up with your schedule while discovering exciting events you might have missed otherwise. We caught up with RedCurrent to see what's on the agenda for the startup, and what's in store for Beta.MN 2.0.
Tell us the story of how and why you started your company.
RedCurrent started as a "these things are a serious pain" discussion, specifically:
- Managing a digital calendar is a nightmare. The actual calendar isn't the problem. Google, iCal and Outlook work pretty well. The problem is that getting the information you need and want into your calendar is ridiculously difficult, because this information comes in so many different formats. We get emails, phone calls, texts, newsletters, downloads, feeds, etc. and these incompatible formats usually mean we end up typing most events into our calendar by hand. If something gets changed or updated, the whole process starts over.
- Finding out what’s going on is hard. It doesn’t matter whether you talk to singles interested in nightlife or families looking to avoid cabin fever, everyone thinks the task is tedious and, inevitably, you find out about the thing you wanted to attend a couple days too late.
The discussion then turned into a "wouldn't it make our lives easier if" brainstorm. After reassuring ourselves that the problems we were trying to solve were universal – regardless of geography, demographic or interest – and that we had or could acquire the relevant skill sets to give the idea a fair chance at success, RedCurrent, the One Place for every calendar, schedule and event, was born.
What's your most recent success or milestone hit?
We launched our webapp on March 21st.
Where do you see your startup in 1 year?
Executing the initial steps in a national rollout.
