Did you ever wonder why the tens of thousands of creative ideas that people have don’t come to fruition? I’m sure there are a myriad of reasons but I think one of the top contenders has to be because our friends and colleagues tell us our idea isn’t viable – sometimes even saying it’s ridiculous or stupid. That had to have happened to Dan Florio the creator of RunPee.com, a site whose tag line is “helping your bladder enjoy going to the movies as much as you do.” But fortunately for Florio he pursued his idea and now 3,500 people a day are checking out when the best time is to sneak out of a movie at the cinema and use the restroom without worrying about missing a crucial scene.
"The idea came from watching King Kong the re-make in 2005," said Florio, referring to Peter Jackson's marathon three-hour blockbuster. Throughout much of the movie, he said during an interview with ABC news, he was desperate to relieve himself.
"I kept thinking, I wish they would just kill this ape so that I could get to the men's room," he said. Although he stayed until the end of the movie, he had spotted a several minute sequence that wasn’t significant to the plotline. "I just could have gone to the men's room during the scene and I could have enjoyed the end of the movie and the movie would have been better." That was the spark that eventually lit the creation of RunPee.com in August 2008.
Here how RunPee works, you start by selecting a movie that’s currently in theaters. I selected Julie and Julia and learned that the running time is 2 hours and 3 minutes. “Can you hold it that long?’ the site queries while displaying an easy to read linear scale from 0 to 123 minutes that showed me my first window or bathroom-break of opportunity was at 42 minutes, “right after the lobster fiasco is over”. If I wanted to know what I missed, which Run Pee ensures would not be crucial to understanding the plotline, they provide a synopsis of what happened. They also let me know that I could safely sneak out at 56 minutes or 1 hour and 27 minutes and include a printer icon to easily download a copy of the times to take along to the show.
As of July of this year there’s an iPhone application available for download from iTunes (cost - 99 cents) with a built in timer that you can check while you’re in the movie. And (I love it!) RunPee is in the process of adding a vibration that lets you know the pee-worthy part of the movie is coming in a few minutes. Applications will soon be available for Blackberry, Nokia, Palm Pre, Windows Mobile and Android phones.
Still think it’s ridiculous…sort of like a Seinfeld episode? Maybe so but like Jerry, Florio and his new partners, brothers John and Sam Shahidi, and Cincinnati Bengals’ quarterback Jordan Palmer, are expanding their brand and increasing licensed products (think organic cotton tees and other clothing with the “half-full” logo and the phrase “Because a Bladder is a Terrible Thing to Hold”) at a time when other ventures are folding. Reader comments and blogs I read tell the story of a lot of happy people, including people with multiple sclerosis and women from The Red Hat Society. You could be one of those happy people.
Think of the times when you went out to dinner with friends before the movies and drank diet cokes or a pitcher of beer and then had to sit in a movie theater, distracted because nature was calling but not wanting to leave because it’s a mystery/suspense movie and you don’t want to miss a key clue. With RunPee you can be worry-free because they tell you a safe time to go.
For parents of younger children this is a great innovation because that soda you swore you weren’t going to buy them but did anyway has them squirming and whining that they have to go to the bathroom. You no longer have to be concerned that you’ll miss startling news akin to Darth Vader telling Like Skywalker’s that he’s his father.
So next time you have an idea talk about it with people that will support you in thinking about it and looking at it from a variety of perspectives. You don’t want to get shot down by a naysayer before you’ve examined all the possibilities of your ideas. Who knows your friends might even suggest great ideas like creating an affiliate relationship with Amazon for bladder control products.
This article first appeared in The Eastern Pennsylvania Business Journal in August 2009.