Spanning Sync launches...and passes the "penny gap test" it seems

A quick word of congratulations to friend and fellow Enterprise Irregular Charlie Wood on his launch of Spanning Sync. It's been fascinating to watch Spanning evolve from a nascent idea in Charlie's head to a full-fledged commercial launch; and I wish him all the best.

Spanning Sync joins the wildly popular functionality of Apple's iCal with the Google Calendar and Gmail. Although I'm not an Apple user (yet!), I can appreciate the complexity of any two-synchronization between disparate calendaring and contact databases; and this is a service that almost every Mac user seems to crave.

The easiest way to get what Spanning is all about is to view the Demo.

While Spanning has, functionally, been well received there appears to be a bit of a boondoggle over the proposed pricing.  A quick read through the comments at TUAW suggest that Charlie may have to either:

A) Re-think his $25 per annum price point, or

B) Develop a more defined ROI use case. As a veteran of many software term sheets, I'm sure Charlie will handle this with his usual aplomb.

But the feedback he's getting is, in its own way, a positive when you counterbalance that against a fascinating piece Josh Kopelman penned this week on his blog.  Josh, a partner at First Round Capital, spins a cautionary tale of the challenges entrepreneurs face getting someone to pay for a service.

Josh Kopelman: The Penny Gap

...The truth is, scaling from $5 to $50 million is not the toughest part of a new venture - it's getting your users to pay you anything at all. The biggest gap in any venture is that between a service that is free and one that costs a penny...

If you read through the TUAW comments, you'll notice that almost everyone is willing to pay for the service, even if they don't want to pay the list price. Using Josh's "Penny Gap", Charlie is well ahead of the game.

Note: At the time of this writing I, and/or funds I maintain discretionary control over, did not maintain a position (long or short) in either Apple (AAPL) or Google (GOOG).

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