Ethan Anderson Launches Online ‘Scheduling Supermarket’

Red Beacon founder Ethan Anderson has unveiled his latest project, MyTime, a “scheduling supermarket” that sets dynamic pricing for unfilled appointments. Online scheduling intrigues us as a gateway towards promotions and transactions, but it remains underutilized by SMBs and the space is also highly fragmented.

The site launched today in Los Angeles with 1,106 “fully vetted” businesses participating. MyTime promotes open avails in service calendars with ads on social media, email and other channels. It takes a 40 percent, one-time commission from new customers that it attracts. Existing customers who use the system don’t cost the business anything. The system also handles online payment for businesses, sending out payments to businesses in the same day.

Anderson has been working on the project for a year, building a 15 person team. He has raised angel funding from scheduling vets such as Merchant Circle founder Ben T Smith IV, along with others such as Jason Calacanis and Dave McLure (500 Startups).

The site’s ambition is to aggregate as many businesses as possible on his “light” scheduling system to allow consumers to shop for appointments near them. It integrates data from 12 existing scheduling systems, including Google calendar, Zoc Doc, Schedulicity, iPhone/iPad and Android phones and others. A dozen more systems are being worked on.

Dynamic pricing is used to provide consumers with discount incentive during non-busy periods. Discounts could be 30 percent to 40 percent. Conversely, premiums can be charged for very busy times, such as Saturday mornings at hair dressers.

All services are guaranteed, and each service is vetted via social media and rating and review sites.While the site has 50 service categories, major segments are expected to be health and beauty, fitness, yoga, pet sitting and domestic services

Anderson says his experience launching Red Beacon, a services leads company, taught him that consumers want instantaneous service. “They don’t want to wait a day or two” to get a bid. All the pricing is right on the site and payments can be processed right there as well.