Chord – cut the circle! | BUSN39100 Augmented Intelligence

The Why:

Ever been wandering around in a huge room full of people who you never met, thinking who to talk to next and how to avoid the crop circles? That ambiguity is a big reason for networking anxiety.

“I hate networking” is something that executives and MBA students alike say often. Networking makes people feel uncomfortable and dirty, as the process seen as exploitative, and inauthentic.

But studies show that networking is a tool essential to success in today’s world. Professionals who network effectively both internally and externally are more successful than their colleagues who do not excel at networking. With that said it is not surprising that there are so many trainings, seminars, and books on how to network better, as well as on how to change people’s attitude towards networking.

Networking is especially needed in fields where people often have no big names on their resumes and need to prove their credibility through personal connections and recommendations, for example, startups.

The What:

We believe there is a way to make networking more pleasant and more effective. Chord is a startup that unites the latest developments in machine learning and crowdsourcing, through our finely tuned algorithms and human touch we create connections that will make the networking something anyone will be able to enjoy.

The How:

The user will first have to create his profile, where we will learn about his goals and his background, not only professional but also interests. This is achieved by either taking a quiz or connecting users social network accounts and supplementing those with additional questions.

The second step, the user will identify the event he will want to attend. This can be done manually, but we also will offer browser extensions that will detect an event when the user sign-ups, through analyzing event pages or calendar entries.

Third step, the machine algorithm will analyze the event and the participating and prepare a short-list of candidates to network with, that list will then be transferred to our human crowdsources after being stripped of all the identifying data, crowdsources will then look at the data and use common sense to identify best opportunities, this information will be fed back to the algorithm, which will use multiple sources to generate final list, as well as potential topics for discussion.

The $$$

The startup has a few options to generate revenues, first, we will be able to charge the participants a small fee per event, depending on the size and complexity. Second, charge event organizers, after creating a large networking effect, hosts will be interested in our services to attract more people to their events, as people will be more willing to go if they know that their networking will be fruitful.

The ???

Chord offers quite a few alterations that might lead to new business models and ways to create value. For example, CREATE networking events based on mutually beneficial connections, those events will be designed in a way that will allow for more deep connections.

It can become a new social network or be used with LinkedIn or similar professional networks to help people who will benefit from connecting. It will be opt-in.

Chord could give events scores based on how ‘fruitful’ the connections are and predict the quality of the event.

It also could be installed in a device that people will have with them and analyze the movement patterns, that will later be used in improving the layouts of different events, as well as used for scientific research.

The BIG ONE:

We require $450,000 to launch the web-app and promote it. $400,000 will be spent on salaries and the websites and the remaining $50,000 on marketing and awareness generation.

The Team: