Blog

When Leah was selling me on working for RUNmyERRAND.com, she never mentioned  TV appearances. What can I say? Stars are bound to shine and I was burning bright on Friday’s Fox25 Ziptrip to Charlestown. I expected to be discovered earlier in my career but at least now I can avoid the illfate that comes a long with being a childhood star.

Fox pulled out all the stops for their new talent and had Olives restaurant cater some lobster for lunch, which I was told Todd English cooked himself. They weren’t stingy with dessert either and my pallet appreciated the gourmet cupcake from Biga Bread.

Of course as a celebrity I had to do some meet and greets. Here’s a pic of me about to shake hands with Mayor Menino(I expect Obama to be calling next).    

Fox wanted to ditch the RUNmyERRAND segment and use the time to interview me, but I figured I’d throw Leah and Rylan a bone for letting me know about the Ziptrip in the first place. I might even stick around as their intern despite a guaranteed spot on a new Fox reality show.

Hi, I’m Steve Liu, one of the @RUNmyERRAND summer interns. I’m going to be a junior at BC this fall and I’m excited to contribute to RME for the rest of the summer. I officially started last week, but I’ve already earned the nickname “The Researcher.” Part of this has to do with my background as a research assistant for @gallaugher at BC.

I’m interested in how smart businesses use social media such as blogs, Facebook, and Twitter to their advantage and recently, it seems that the food industry is taking note. Take for example @WholeFoods which posts discounts on their Twitter feed. That’s cool, but if you’re like me you’d rather find a nice place to grab a bite than try (and fail) to make something on your own. Well there’s something for those of us devoid of culinary talent as well. A recent Globe article highlighted several area restaurants Twittering about their menus and recipes. See what’s cooking at @LESPALIER or  @myersandchang. Or if you want the big picture you can check out @eatboston and @BostonTweet. It’s a great way for restaurants to engage their customers. @tupelo02139 built up a following even before it opened!

But why stop there? @kogibbq, an LA Korean barbeque known for their short ribs taco (yum) takes the concept even further. Kogi sells their food through two wandering trucks whose locations are announced on Twitter. Or if you prefer dessert, there’s @COOLHAUS which features five architecture inspired “prefab” flavor ice cream sandwiches. Can’t wait for either of these places to expand to Boston!

Don’t have the time to track down a roaming ice cream truck? Try posting an errand on RmE to have someone pick up your order. Place a lunch order from your favorite place and have it delivered to the office. Or better yet, jump on a group run. One runner gently lets you know that there is a planned errand or food run to a specific location, like Mike’s Pastry, Target, Costco or Cosi. Simply jump on the run with a list of your needs and voila, those items are delivered once the run is complete.

There are tons of great restaurants out there to try. What’s your favorite place to eat? Where would you like to see our runners go on Group runs? All this talk of food is making me hungry.

Scott Kirsner did a fabulous write up about RunMyErrand in Sunday’s Boston Globe.  His regular Sunday column Innovation Economy, plugs reader’s into the world of what’s new in Boston, as he shares his pulse on the startup and technology scene.  Past stories about Twitter and Boston’s own ShoeBuy.com give a insightful perspective into the what it takes to start a company, nurture it, and guide it to the point of profitability.  For us, we were thrilled to be able to share the early stages of our story.

So far, the first-time entrepreneur has done just about everything right. She has a great origin story: One night in February 2008, she and her husband, Kevin, were heading out to dinner when they realized there was no food left for their Labrador retriever. Musing over Mexican food about the possibility of a service that would handle small tasks like buying and schlepping a big bag of dog food, Busque used her iPhone to check whether the Web domain RunMyErrand.com was available. She snapped it up, and spent the next few months researching the idea.

June was innovation month here in New England, and there are a lot of great companies here do amazing things.  We find ourselves intertwined in this vibrant startup scene as well, and look forward to growing the business here.

Hello, it’s Cody your summer intern (and a Kanye West fan). Last Wednesday, Rylan’s negotiation skills helped me dodge a $90 student ticket price and set me up to volunteer handing out registration badges and running microphones at Xconomy’s Xsite summit on innovation, technology, and entrepreneurship. The stated theme for the day was: The Recovery Starts Here. Before attending, I thought this title was an attempt to give legitimacy to the various startups to be showcased at the event. Afterwards, I realized it was a rallying cry to the entrepreneur and venture capital community to reestablish Boston as the center of innovation and technology it once was. (That title moved out west to Silicon Alley after the boom in the 80’s as did many MIT grads and the deep pockets that funded the next wave of innovation).

Boston still has the best schools in the nation and the second biggest venture capitalist community, so how is it we are so easily overshadowed by the Valley? Although many people at the summit proposed answers to this question, the new media guys offered the most interesting one: buzz. People in Boston aren’t talking about the hot new website, the growing video game industry, and the dominant robotics cluster during the Sox game or while waiting in line at Dunkin Donuts. Why not? Not everyone in Boston works for a technology company. Many work in financial services, health care, or education. It’s not like the valley where local restaurant owners make investments decisions in the tech sector using the mood of their customers as a leading indicator.

The panel also suggested that Boston entrepreneurs are more conservative than their counterparts in the Wild West. They don’t put themselves in the eye of the public as much or hype their company up to anyone beyond venture capitalists. Although I would agree that culturally New Englanders are more conservative, it’s hard to get anyone who’s not a geek excited about a new enterprise cloud computing solution.

Here at RUNmyERRAND we are devoting a lot of time thinking of ways to create buzz in Boston. Initially, I thought it would be easy since our company is so unique and consumer facing, but it is indeed more challenging than I anticipated. Not to worry, we have a couple things up our sleeves. Don’t be surprised to see people in green RUNmyERRAND T-shirts out on the streets promoting the site or me in a Gumby costume riding the T!

If you have any ideas for us, we would love to hear from you. In the meantime, talk us (and other Boston startups) up!

The fantastic folks over at Xconomy asked me to write a quick article about RunMyErrand’s kick off week at the Facebook Fund Incubator program – fbFund REV.  Hope you enjoy taking a glimpse into the program with me!

The office space Facebook provided is pretty neat, too. It’s three stories (plus a roof deck) right in the heart of downtown Palo Alto. It is the original Facebook office; the company had just moved out a mere three weeks before we arrived, and impressions of the original group linger in wall graffiti like hieroglyphics written on cave walls, not to mention the whips of Ethernet and power cords descending from the ceiling.

REV’ing it up with Facebook

Hi, it’s Rebecca, a marketing consultant working with the expanding team here at RME! In a start up environment it is easy to focus only on the day-to-day, growing the business and securing financing. However since I am only 3 weeks young to RmE I have the gift of perspective, at least for now, before more papers start piling up on my desk.

One thing that struck me immediately, is that the entire team at RmE is about helping other people. I do not mean within the confines of the service itself, but in our personal lives too. When Leah Busque founded RmE she simply thought she was helping connect people in need of solutions with those who had them. But, in looking back at her life, it was clear she was destined to help people all along.

In middle school she was voted most dependable, a label that at the time may have seemed kind of boring, but it underscores a reoccurring pattern of service in her life – between tutoring at the Boys and Girls Club and volunteering through out her community.

Our Chief Runner, Rylan, is no different. Even after serving 4 years in the United States Navy, he still had a hankering to give something to his community and found his place at RmE helping businesses grow and flourish and still finds time to volunteer at local homeless shelters for veterans. Our chief storyteller, Robbie, has his own secret way of giving to the community too – and although I cannot divulge the details, it entails gifting free Dunkin Donuts to strangers. Our interns emanate the same generosity, first for donating their precious time and ideas to RmE but also when not at RmE they can be found serving those in hospitals.

For a newcomer to the RmE family, it was inspiring to see that RmE practices what we preach. Sometimes it just feels good to help. Sometimes it feels good to be helped. Isn’t that what RmE is all about?

Tell us about your experience giving back? Or tell us how using RmE makes you feel about giving to your community at large.

As part of the fbFund REV program, we had to create a short video introducing some of the team, and sharing something “interesting” about ourselves. Here was our stab at it.

Hello from inside the RUNmyERRAND (Zipcar) offices. My name is Cody Kieltyka and I am one of two Boston College students interning at RUNmyERRAND.com this summer. I’m done with finals and ready to start contributing in anyway I can… even if it means dressing up in a modified Gumby costume once in while  (more information coming soon).

After taking a glimpse at the fun and excitement of entrepreneurship in @gallaugher’s TechTrek  field study to Silicon Valley, I knew I wanted to work at a startup technology company this summer. For me, I found that although it was cool to visit the tech giants like Google, Apple, and Ebay, it was way more interesting to speak with the founders and managers at startups like Facebook, Digg, and SocialText.

Back in Boston, I found this same intrigue during my interview at RUNmyERRAND.com. Not only did I like the idea behind the company, I relished the opportunity to have a big impact even while only being an intern.

We have some very exciting plans for this summer and I look forward to keeping everyone in the loop about them and other fun things happening in Boston.

On a daily basis we are bombarded with rave reviews and feedback from people using RunMyErrand.  Over the weekend, one of our new runners and talented ballerina, Magdelena G, shared her experience with us.

Magdelena G.

“I just wanted to let you know that I ran my first errand last night.  It was a great experience, and I just wanted to let you know that I think this site is fabulously well organized in terms of it’s functionality.  I’m glad to be a part of this, and I think that even more than people just being able to cross things off of their to-do lists, it will allow for some reestablishment of community on a human level.  It is basically using virtual social networking to create interactions between people that are avoided more and more everyday thanks to the internet boom.   I look forward to doing more work, and helping the site succeed.”

Thanks, Magdelena, you hit the nail on the head!  Instead of using technology to further separate true human interaction between people, we are leveraging it to strengthen these bonds.  This also reminds me of a tweet I took away from Jeff Pulver’s Social Media Jungle:

@daveatkins – At #smjbos thinking…social media could be the answer to restore community by connecting people to each other in real life.

It is so rewarding to see people immediately understanding the RME vision.