Get Center’d - Search for People, Places, Events
The folks at Center’d just love it when a plan comes together. Unfortunately, that rarely happens without heroic efforts, hundreds of emails, and a fair amount of anxiety. What to do?
Why is it so challenging? Who is going, where are we going, when are we going. Easy, right? Except that it isn’t. In fact, no one has created an experience that gets all three of these pieces right. And until someone does, we will either continue to endure, or stop making plans altogether. Sigh.
At Center’d, they’ve been thinking about how to solve the challenges that exist in making plans. From the smallest get together, where you just can’t decide on where to eat and oh-my-goodness-I-can’t-take-it- anymore-maybe-I’ll-just-stay-home-and-wash-my-cat, to the large fund raisers and school activities that require signups and hundreds of emails and weeks of planning, one thing is clear: They can help.
That’s good, because you may notice on this map that there are no icons on Covesville! But if you come to visit, we’ll search for the nearest pizza, which is the blue fork icon north of us on Route 29.
Center’d says, “Hear us out. We can give you the tools you need to easily organize people, places, and times. Using the latest space-age technology, we have concocted features such as:
• Polling tools: Enable your guests to take some of the burden of coming to consensus on the place and time to meet. That would be nice, since they will probably forget to bring the chili. Again.
• Task Management and Volunteer Sign-up: Now you can easily get the team you need to do the stuff you need.
• Connection management and calendar sharing: Now that you are suddenly so organized, and ready to pull off the perfect girls’ night out/summer camp/grandparents day/birthday party/first date/last date, let’s make sure those who are important to you can view your calendars. But not everyone, and not every event. We can keep a secret.
• Explore neighborhoods: We’ll even help you out with finding other places and events. How would you like a view of your world filtered by the recommendations of people you trust? How would you like to be at the center, and have the people, places, and plans you care about revolve around you, just waiting to be experienced? We like that idea. In fact, we like it so much, we built it.”
Here’s a result taken from our life, the only pizza place for miles, Dr. Ho’s Humble Pie!
“Whether you want to plan a large grandiose soiree, an informal rendezvous, a down home hootenanny, or you just want a place to go, we are here to help your world organize itself and revolve around you. That’s the benefit of being Center’d.”
After having his first child, it became clear to co-founder Chandu that finding things like pediatricians, day care, or baby sitters in his local area was incredibly frustrating. Each new “search” for a service or place ended with him making numerous phone calls and sending tons of emails to determine what met his needs. Chandu realized what he needed was an efficient way to get trusted recommendations from his existing network and a site where that information could be archived and used by others (Eureka!). He set out to build a product that combined local information and social utility by starting Fatdoor, which would eventually evolve into who we are today.
For co-founder Jennifer, it was summer camp. Finding information on camps for her children became a daunting task every January. From getting the obvious information about a camp (do you feed the children or give them a sharp stick and send them into the woods?) to coordinating with friends, the days, emails, phone calls, and Web pages stacked up quickly. The worst part? Because none of this information is stored in an easily accessible way, the entire process repeats itself every year!
Convinced there was a better way, Chandu and Jennifer began thinking about how they could address this issue, and after meeting decided to combine their efforts and bring all their shared experience and knowledge together. Lucky for them, they found an incredibly talented underground team of ninjas who escaped government persecution and travelled the country helping people and performing odd jobs.
This was just the right team for the job, and Center’d was born.
