Last fall, I underwent a common but painful procedure – trying to cancel my cell phone contract. I had recently moved and was getting poor reception, but my phone company of five years wouldn’t let me go unless I paid a $200 termination penalty. Ultimately I decided to put up with the poor service and keep my $200, but only after losing several times that amount in time and happiness.

A simple idea occurred to me: if everyone has this problem, why not organize an overwhelming number of people to stop paying their bills until the phone company changes its policy? If you had enough people, the phone company would be forced to concede for their own survival. This idea may have once been naive, but the way the Internet has evolved — communities of like-minded people gathering on social networks, repositories of collective intelligence on wikis — it now seems to be a natural adaptation of collective action to the Web.

I casually mentioned this idea to Eric Lefkofsky, an entrepreneur and former employer. A few days later, Eric had convinced me to drop out of school and turn my idea into a company.

That was the beginning of The Point. As we analyzed the idea further, we realized we had stumbled onto a model that was capable of far more than settling petty consumer quibbles. We discovered that the same basic technique — withholding action until a “tipping point” is reached where the group’s combined action ensures success –solves a fundamental problem of getting people to do things together. We want to know that enough people are involved that our effort won’t be a waste of time.

Today we introduce The Point. We’ve taken our best stab at creating an environment for group action that leverages the intrinsic benefits of the Web, and we think we’ve done a pretty good job. We have lots to learn, and await your feedback so we can develop The Point in a direction that meets your needs.

We are thrilled to launch and can’t wait to hear what you think.

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