Friends with Business Benefits Update with Red Velvet Cupcakes!

• Posted March 30th, 2011
• By tsondermann (bio)
• Filed under: Community, Events/Presentation, Our Users are So Smart, Partners, Social Media, SXSW

You might remember that we spent a little time in Austin a few weeks ago. In addition to getting to hang out with a ton of Batchbook customers and partners, Michelle sat on a panel with some of our Small Business Web friends: Freshbooks, MailChimp and Formstack. The panel was moderated by Scott McMullan of Google. He’s part of the Google Enterprise group and leads the Google Apps Partners program.

Hold on. Google? Enterprise? Small Business? Yes! Scott has been a champion for small businesses for as long as we can remember and he made a big announcement at the start of the panel: Google Apps have become members of The Small Business Web. And we’re tickled to be in such good company. Google Apps and The Small Business Web share a common set of goals and philosophies. Specifically the the belief that web apps are more valuable when they integrate and work together. We continue to work hard to integrate Google Apps into Batchbook and have some exciting things coming up in the not to distant future that will strengthen those integrations.

The panel itself covered a range of topics from why and how web apps can work together to how small businesses can leverage the power of the web to help their business grow. The folks at SXSW have posted the audio of the panel, go have a listen!

I promised you cupcakes. Here goes. If you listen to the Q and A near the end of the panel, you’ll hear Jerome Breche from SnapEngage (one of our Batchmakers and a company we love working with, more on this soon!) ask a question about how a smaller company like his can gain exposure by integrating their app with some larger, more established ones. It was a great question and sparked some interesting conversation.

Around the BatchBlue offices, we’re fond of saying that the follow-up gets the worm. Some people would be amazed at how often simply following up on a phone conversation or an email or a blog comment can lead to some amazing opportunities. Jerome gets this. Prior to SXSW we told him we were co-hosting a Small Business Web event. He said he’d like to come. He showed up. We told him we were on a panel. He said he’d like to come. He showed up. And when he asked his question, one of the answers he got was from Chris Lucas at Formstack who said that when they launched Formstack, they sent cakes to every one of their integration partners. Just to say hello. The crowd had a good laugh. A week later we got some gigantic cupcakes from SnapEngage. Jerome follows up. And I’m writing about how much I love his company. The follow-up gets the worm.